They mounted to the schoolroom, which was now empty; and threw themselves into deep arm chairs. Phyllis lit a cigarette, and Rosamond sucked peppermints, as though they induced to thought.
‘Well, my dear,’ said Phyllis at last, ‘what do we decide? It is June now; our parents give me till July: little Middleton is the only one.’
‘Except—’ began Rosamond.
‘Yes, but it is no good thinking of him.’
‘Poor old Phyllis! Well, he’s not a bad man.’
‘Clean sober, truthful industrious. O we should make a model pair! You should stay with us in Derbyshire.’
‘You might do better,’ went on Rosamond; with the considering air of a judge. ‘On the other hand, they won’t stand much more.’
‘They’ intimated Sir William and Lady Hibbert.
‘Father asked me yesterday what I could do if I didn’t marry. I had nothing to say.’
‘No, we were educated for marriage.’
‘ You might have done something better. Of course I’m a fool so it doesn’t matter.’
‘And I think marriage the best thing there is — if one were allowed to marry the man one wants.’
‘O I know: it is beastly. Still there’s no escaping facts.’
‘Middleton,’ said Rosamond briefly. ‘He’s the fact at present. Do you care for him?’
‘Not in the least.’
‘Could you marry him?’
‘If her Ladyship made me.’
‘It might be a way out, at any rate.’
‘What d’you make of him now?’ asked Phyllis, who would have accepted or rejected any man on the strength of her sister’s advice. Rosamond, possessed of shrewd and capable brains, had been driven to feed them exclusively upon the human character and as her science was but little obscured by personal prejudice, her results were generally trustworthy.
‘He’s very good,’ she began; ‘moral qualities excellent: brains fair: he’ll do well of course: not a scrap of imagination or romance: he’d be very just to you.’
‘In short we would be a worthy pair: something like our parents!’
‘The question is,’ went on Rosamond; ‘is it worth while going through another year of slavery, till the next one comes along? And who is the next? Simpson, Rogers, [Leiscetter?].’
At each name her sister made a face.
‘The conclusion seems to be: mark time and keep up appearances.’
‘O let’s enjoy ourselves while we may! If it weren’t for you, Rosamond, I should have married a dozen times already.’
‘You’d have been in the divorce court my dear.’
‘I’m too respectable for that, really. I’m very weak without you. And now let’s talk of your affairs.’
‘My affairs can wait,’ said Rosamond resolutely. And the two young women discussed their friends’ characters, with some acuteness and not a little charity till it was time to change once more. But two features of their talk are worth remark. First, that they held intellect in great reverence and made that a cardinal point in their enquiry; secondly that whenever they suspected an unhappy home life, or a disappointed attachment, even in the case of the least attractive, their judgments were invariably gentle and sympathetic.
At four they drove out with Lady Hibbert to pay calls. This performance consisted in driving solemnly to one house after another where they had dined or hoped to dine, and depositing two or three cards in the servant’s hand. At one place they entered and drank a cup of tea, and talked of the weather for precisely fifteen minutes. They wound up with a slow passage through the Park, making one of the procession of gay carriages which travel at a foot’s pace at that hour round the statue of Achilles. Lady Hibbert wore a permanent and immutable smile.
By six o’clock they were home again and found Sir William entertaining an elderly cousin and his wife at tea. These people could be treated without ceremony, and Lady Hibbert went off to lie down; and left her daughters to ask how John was, and whether Milly had got over the measles. ‘Remember; we dine out at eight, William,’ she said, as she left the room.
Phyllis went with them; the party was given by a distinguished judge, and she had to entertain a respectable K.C.; her efforts in one direction at least might be relaxed; and her mother’s eye regarded her with indifference. It was like a draught of clear cold water, Phyllis reflected, to talk with an intelligent elderly man upon impersonal subjects. They did not theorise, but he told her facts and she was glad to realise that the world was full of solid things, which were independent of her life.
When they left she told her mother that she was going on to the Tristrams, to meet Rosamond there. Lady Hibbert pursed up her mouth, shrugged her shoulders and said ‘very well,’ as though she would have objected if she could have laid her hands on a sufficiently good reason. But Sir William was waiting, and a frown was the only argument.
So Phyllis went separately to the distant and unfashionable quarter of London where the Tristrams lived. That was one of the many enviable parts of their lot. The stucco fronts, the irreproachable rows of Belgravia and South Kensington seemed to Phyllis the type of her lot; of a life trained to grow in an ugly pattern to match the staid ugliness of its fellows. But if one lived here in Bloomsbury, she began to theorise waving with her hand as her cab passed through the great tranquil squares, beneath the pale green of umbrageous trees, one might grow up as one liked. There was room, and freedom, and in the roar and splendour of the Strand she read the live realities of the world from which her stucco and her pillars protected her so completely.
Her cab stopped before some lighted windows which, open in the summer night, let some of the talk and life within spill out upon the pavement. She was impatient for the door to open which was to let her enter, and partake. When she stood, however, within the room, she became conscious of her own appearance which, as she knew by heart, was on these occasions, like that of ladies whom Romney painted. She saw herself enter into the smokey room where people sat on the floor, and the host wore a shooting jacket, with her arch little head held high, and her mouth pursed as though for an epigram. Her white silk and her cherry ribbons made her conspicuous. It was with some feeling of the difference between her and the rest that she sat very silent scarcely taking advantage of the openings that were made for her in the talk. She kept looking round at the dozen people who were sitting there, with a sense of bewilderment. The talk was of certain pictures then being shown, and their merits were discussed from a somewhat technical standpoint. Where was Phyllis to begin? She had seen them; but she knew that her platitudes would never stand the test of question and criticism to which they would be exposed. Nor, she knew, was there any scope here for those feminine graces which could veil so much. The time was passed; for the discussion was hot and serious, and no one of the combatants wished to be tripped by illogical devices. So she sat and watched, feeling like a bird with wings pinioned; and more acutely, because more genuinely, uncomfortable than she had ever been at ball or play. She repeated to herself the little bitter axiom that she had fallen between two stools; and tried meanwhile to use her brains soberly upon what was being said. Rosamond hinted from across the room that she was in the same predicament.
At last the disputants dissolved, and talk became general once more; but no one apologised for the concentrated character it had borne, and general conversation, the Miss Hibberts found, if it did occupy itself with more trivial subjects, tended to be scornful of the commonplace, and knew no hesitation in saying so. But it was amusing; and Rosamond acquitted herself creditably in discussing a certain character which came into question; although she was surprised to find that her most profound discoveries were taken as the starting point of further investigations, and represented no conclusions.
Moreover, the Miss Hibberts were surprised and a little dismayed to discover how much of their education had stuck to them. Phyllis could have beaten herself the next moment for her instinctive disapproval of some jest against Christianity which th
e Tristrams uttered and applauded as lightly as though religion was a small matter.
Even more amazing to the Miss Hibberts however was the manner in which their own department of business was transacted; for they supposed that even in this odd atmosphere ‘the facts of life’ were important. Miss Tristram, a young woman of great beauty, and an artist of real promise, was discussing marriage with a gentleman who might easily as far as one could judge, have a personal interest in the question. But the freedom and frankness with which they both explained their views and theorised upon the whole question of love and matrimony, seemed to put the whole thing in a new and sufficiently startling light. It fascinated the young ladies more than anything they had yet seen or heard. They had flattered themselves that every side and view of the subject was known to them; but this was something not only new, but unquestionably genuine.
‘I have never yet had a proposal; I wonder what it feels like,’ said the candid considering voice of the younger Miss Tristram; and Phyllis and Rosamond felt that they ought to produce their experiences for the instruction of the company. But then they could not adopt this strange new point of view, and their experiences after all were of a different quality entirely. Love to them was something induced by certain calculated actions; and it was cherished in ball rooms, in scented conservatories, by glances of the eyes, flashes of the fan, and faltering suggestive accents. Love here was a robust, ingenuous thing which stood out in the daylight, naked and solid, to be tapped and scrutinised as you thought best. Even were they free to love as they chose, Phyllis and Rosamond felt very doubtful that they could love in this way. With the rapid impulse of youth they condemned themselves utterly, and determined that all efforts at freedom were in vain: long captivity had corrupted them both within and without.
They sat thus, unconscious of their own silence, like people shut out from some merrymaking in the cold and the wind; invisible to the feasters within. But in reality the presence of these two silent and hungry eyed young women was felt to be oppressive by all the people there; although they did not exactly know why; perhaps they were bored. The Miss Tristrams, however, felt themselves responsible; and Miss Sylvia Tristram, the younger, as the result of a whisper, undertook a private conversation with Phyllis. Phyllis snatched at it like a dog at a bone; indeed her face wore a gaunt ravenous expression, as she saw the moments fly, and the substance of this strange evening remained beyond her grasp. At least, if she could not share, she might explain what forbade her. She was longing to prove to herself that there were good reasons for her impotence; and if she felt that Miss Sylvia was a solid woman in spite of her impersonal generalisations, there was hope that they might meet some day on common ground. Phyllis had an odd feeling, when she leant forward to speak, of searching feverishly through a mass of artificial frivolities to lay hands on the solid grain of pure self which, she supposed lay hid somewhere.
‘O Miss Tristram,’ she began, ‘you are all so brilliant. I do feel frightened.’
‘Are you laughing at us,’ asked Sylvia.
‘Why should I laugh? Don’t you see what a fool I feel?’
Sylvia began to see, and the sight interested her.
‘Yours is such a wonderful life; it is so strange to us.’
Sylvia who wrote and had a literary delight in seeing herself reflected in strange looking-glasses, and of holding up her own mirror to the lives of others, settled herself to the task with gusto. She had never considered the Hibberts as human beings before; but had called them ‘young ladies’. She was all the more ready now therefore to revise her mistake; both from vanity and from real curiosity.
‘What do you do?’ she demanded suddenly, in order to get to business at once.
‘What do I do?’ echoed Phyllis. ‘O order dinner and arrange the flowers!’
‘Yes, but what’s your trade,’ pursued Sylvia, who was determined not to be put off with phrases.
‘That’s my trade; I wish it wasn’t! Really Miss Tristram, you must remember that most young ladies are slaves; and you mustn’t insult me because you happen to be free.’
‘O do tell me,’ broke forth Sylvia, ‘exactly what you mean. I want to know. I like to know about people. After all you know, the human soul is the thing.’
‘Yes,’ said Phyllis, anxious to keep from theories. ‘But our life’s so simple and so ordinary. You must know dozens like us.’
‘I know your evening dresses,’ said Sylvia; ‘I see you pass before me in beautiful processions, but I have never yet heard you speak. Are you solid all through?’ It struck her that this tone jarred upon Phyllis: so she changed.
‘I daresay we are sisters. But why are we so different outside?’
‘O no, we’re not sisters,’ said Phyllis bitterly; ‘at least I pity you if we are. You see, we are brought up just to come out in the evening and make pretty speeches, and well, marry I suppose, and of course we might have gone to college if we’d wanted to; but as we didn’t we’re just accomplished.’
‘We never went to college,’ said Sylvia.
‘And you’re not accomplished? Of course you and your sister are the real thing, and Rosamond and I are frauds: at least I am. But don’t you see it all now and don’t you see what an ideal life yours is?’
‘I can’t see why you shouldn’t do what you like, as we do,’ said Sylvia, looking round the room.
‘Do you think we could have people like this? Why, we can never ask a friend, except when our parents are away.’
‘Why not?’
‘We haven’t a room, for one thing: and then we should never be allowed to do it. We are daughters, until we become married women.’
Sylvia considered her a little grimly. Phyllis understood that she had spoken with the wrong kind of frankness about love.
‘Do you want to marry?’ asked Sylvia.
‘Can you ask? You are an innocent young thing! — but of course you’re quite right. It should be for love, and all the rest of it. But,’ continued Phyllis, desperately speaking the truth, ‘we can’t think of it in that way. We want so many things, that we can never see marriage alone as it really is or ought to be. It is always mixed up with so much else. It means freedom and friends and a house of our own, and oh all the things you have already! Does that seem to you very dreadful and very mercenary?’
‘It does seem rather dreadful; but not mercenary I think. I should write if I were you.’
‘O there you go again, Miss Tristram!’ exclaimed Phyllis in comic despair. ‘I cannot make you understand that for one thing we haven’t the brains; and for another, if we had them we couldn’t use them. Mercifully the Good Lord made us fitted for our station. Rosamond might have done something; she’s too old now.’
‘My God,’ exclaimed Sylvia. ‘What a Black Hole! I should burn, shoot, jump out of the window; at least do something!’
‘What?’ asked Phyllis sardonically. ‘If you were in our place you might; but I don’t think you could be. O no,’ she went on in a lighter and more cynical tone, ‘this is our life, and we have to make the best of it. Only I want you to understand why it is that we come here and sit silent. You see, this is the life we should like to lead; and now I rather doubt that we can. You,’ she indicated all the room, ‘think us merely fashionable minxes; so we are, almost. But we might have been something better. Isn’t it pathetic?’ She laughed her dry little laugh.
‘But promise me one thing, Miss Tristram: that you will come and see us, and that you will let us come here sometimes. Now Rosamond, we must really go.’
They left, and in the cab Phyllis wondered a little at her outburst; but felt that she had enjoyed it. They were both somewhat excited; and anxious to analyse their discomfort, and find out what it meant. Last night they had driven home at this hour in a more sullen but at the same time in a more self-satisfied temper; they were bored by what they had done, but they knew they had done it well. And they had the satisfaction of feeling that they were fit for far better things. Tonight they were not bo
red; but they did not feel that they had acquitted themselves well when they had the chance. The bedroom conference was a little dejected; in penetrating to her real self Phyllis had let in some chill gust of air to that closely guarded place; what did she really want, she asked herself? What was she fit for? to criticise both worlds and feel that neither gave her what she needed. She was too genuinely depressed to state the case to her sister; and her fit of honesty left her Phyllis and Rosamond with the conviction that talking did no good; and if she could do anything, it must be done by herself. Her last thoughts that night were that it was rather a relief that Lady Hibbert had arranged a full day for them tomorrow: at any rate she need not think; and river parties were amusing.
THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF MISS V.
It is a commonplace that there is no loneliness like that of one who finds himself alone in a crowd; novelists repeat it; the pathos is undeniable; and now, since the case of Miss V., I at least have come to believe it. Such a story as hers and her sister’s — but it is characteristic that in writing of them one name seems instinctively to do for both - indeed one might mention a dozen such sisters in one breath. Such a story is scarcely possible except in London. In the country there would have been the butcher or the postman or the parson’s wife; but in a highly civilised town the civilities of human life are narrowed to the least possible space. The butcher drops his meat down the area; the postman shoves his letter into the box, and the parson’s wife has been known to hurl the pastoral missives through the same convenient breach: no time, they all repeat, must be wasted. So, though the meat remain uneaten, the letters unread, and the pastoral comments disobeyed, no one is any the wiser; until there comes a day when these functionaries tacitly conclude that no. 16 or 23 need be attended to no longer. They skip it, on their rounds, and poor Miss J. or Miss V. drops out of the closeknit chain of human life; and is skipped by everyone and for ever.
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 258