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Section twenty nine. But was it
Lady Bruton whom she used to know?

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Was it Peter Walsh? Grown gray? Lady Rossita asked herself, who had

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been Sallie Seaton? It was old
Miss Parry, certainly, the old aunt

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who used to be so cross when
she stayed at Burton. Never should she

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forget running along the passage naked and
being sent for by Miss Parry and Clarissa,

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Oh, Clarissa. Salie caught her
by the arm. Clarissa stopped beside

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them. But I can't stay,
she said, I shall come later.

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Wait, she said, looking at
Peter and Sallie. They must wait.

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She meant, until all these people
had gone. I shall come back,

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she said, looking at her old
friends Sallie and Peter, who were shaking

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hands. And Sallie, remembering the
past, no doubt, was laughing,

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But her voice was wrung of its
old ravishing richness, her eyes not a

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glow as they used to be when
she smoked cigars. When she ran down

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the passage to fetch her sponge bag
without a stitch of clothing on her and

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Ellen Natkins asked what if the gentleman
had met her? But everybody forgave her

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she stole a chicken from the larder
because she was hungry. In the night,

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she smoked cigars in her bedroom.
She left a priceless book in the

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punt. But everybody adored her,
except perhaps Papa. It was her warmth,

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her vitality. She would paint,
She would write old women in the

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village. Never to this day forgot
to ask after your friend in the red

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cloak, who seemed so bright.
She accused Hugh Whitbred, of all people.

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And there he was, her old
friend, Hugh, talking to the

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Portuguese ambassador of kissing her in the
smoking room to punish her for saying that

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women should have votes. Vulgar men
did, she said, And Clarissa remembered

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having to persuade her not to denounce
him at family prayers, which she was

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capable of doing with her daring,
her recklessness, her melodramatic love of being

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at the center of everything and creating
scenes. And it was bound Clarissa used

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to think to end in some awful
tragedy, her death, her martyrdom,

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instead of which she had married quite
unexpectedly, a bald man with a large

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buttonhole who owned it was, said
Cotton Mills at Manchester, and she had

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fire boys. She and Peter had
settled down together. They were talking.

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It seemed so familiar that they should
be talking. They would discuss the past

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with the two of them, more
even than with Richard. She shared her

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past. The garden, the trees, old Joseph Brettcof singing brahms without any

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voice, the drawing room wallpaper,
the smell of the mats a part of

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this. Sally must always be,
Peter must always be. But she must

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leave them. There were the Bradshaws, whom she disliked. She must go

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up to Lady Bradshaw in gray and
silver, balancing like a sea lion at

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the edge of its tank, barking
for invitations. Duchesses the typical successful man's

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wife. She must go up to
Lady Bradshaw and say, But Lady Bradshaw

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anticipated her. We are shockingly late, dear missus Dollaway. We hardly dared

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to come in, she said,
And Sir William, who looked very distinguished

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with his gray hair and blue eyes, said yes. They had not been

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able to resist the temptation. He
was talking to Richard about that bill,

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probably which they wanted to get through
the commons. Why did the sight of

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him talking to Richard cull her up? He looked what he was, a

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great doctor, a man absolutely at
the head of his profession, very powerful,

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rather worn. For think what cases
came before him, people in the

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uttermost depths of misery, people on
the verge of insanity, husbands and wives.

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He had to decide questions of appalling
difficulty. Yet what she felt was

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one wouldn't like Sir William to see
one unhappy. No, not that man.

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How is your son at Eton,
she asked Lady Bradshaw. He had

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just missed his eleven, said Lady
Bradshaw, because of the mumps. His

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father minded even more than he did, she thought, being she said,

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nothing but a great boy himself.
Clarissa looked at Sir William talking to Richard.

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He did not look like a boy, not in the least like a

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boy. She had once gone with
someone to ask his advice. He had

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been perfectly right, extremely sensible.
But heavens, what a relief to get

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out to the street again. There
was some poor, wretched sobbing, she

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remembered, in the waiting room,
but she did not know what it was

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about. Sir William. What exactly
she disliked only Richard agreed with her.

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Didn't like his taste, didn't like
his smell, but he was extraordinarily able.

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They were talking about this bill,
some case, Sir William was mentioning,

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lowering his voice. It had its
bearing upon what he was saying about

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the deferred effects of shell shock.
There must be some provision in the bill,

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sinking her voice, drawing Missus Dollaway
into the shelter of a common femininity,

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a common pride in the illustrious qualities
of husbands and their sad tendency to

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overwork. Lady Bradshaw, poor goose
one didn't dislike her, murmured how just

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as we were starting, my husband
was called upon the telephone. A very

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sad case. A young man,
that is what Sir William was telling.

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Mister Dollaway had killed himself. He
had been in the army. Oh,

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thought Clarissa, in the middle of
my party, here's death, she thought.

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She went on into the little room
where the Prime Minister had gone with

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Lady Bruton. Perhaps there was somebody
there, but there was nobody. The

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chairs still kept the impress of the
Prime Minister and Lady Bruton. She turned

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deferentially. He sitting four square authoritatively. They had been talking about India.

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There was nobody. The party's splendor
fell to the floor. So strange it

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was to come in alone in her
finery. What business had the Bradshaws to

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talk of death? At her party? A young man had killed himself,

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and they talked of it at her
party. The Bradshaws talked of death.

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He had killed himself, But how
always her body went through at first when

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she was told suddenly of an accident, her dress flamed, her body burnt.

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He had thrown himself from a window
up, had flashed the ground through

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him, blundering, bruising, went
to the rusty spikes. There he lay

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with a thud, thud thud in
his brain, and then a suffocation of

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blackness. So she saw it.
But why had he done it? And

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the Bradshaws talked of at her party. She had once thrown a shilling into

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the serpentine, never anything more,
but he had flung it away. They

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went on living. She would have
to go back. The rooms were still

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crowded. People kept on coming.
They all day. She had been thinking

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of Burton, of Peter, of
Sally. They would grow old a thing

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there was that mattered, a thing
wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured

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in her own life, Let drop
every day in corruption lies chatter. This

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he had preserved. Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate people

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feeling the impossibility of reaching the center
which mystically evaded them. Closeness drew apart,

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rapture faded. One was alone.
There was an embrace in death.

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But this young man who had killed
himself, had he plunged holding his treasure.

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If it were now to die,
twere now to be most happy,

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she had said to herself, once
coming down in white or there were the

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poets and thinkers. Suppose he had
had that passion and had gone to Sir

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William Bradshaw, a great doctor,
yet to her obscurely evil, without sex

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or lust, extremely polite to women, but capable of some indescribable outrage,

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forcing your soul. That was it. If this young man had gone to

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him, and Sir William had impressed
him like that with his power, might

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he not then have said? Indeed
she felt it. Now life is made

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intolerable. They make life intolerable men
like that. Then she had felt it.

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Only this morning. There was the
terror, the overwhelming incapacity one's parents

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giving it into one's hands, this
life to be lived to the end,

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to be walked with serenely. There
was in the depths of her heart an

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awful fear. Even now, quite
often, if Richard had not been there

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reading the times, so that she
could crouch like a bird and gradually revive,

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send roaring up that immeasurable delight,
rubbing stick to stick one thing with

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another, she must have perished.
But that young man had killed himself.

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Somehow. It was her disaster,
her disgrace. It was her punishment to

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cease, sink and disappear. Hear
a man there, a woman, in

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this profound darkness, and she forced
to stand here in her evening dress.

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She had schemed, she had pilfered. She was never wholly admirable. She

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had wanted success, Lady Beckxborough and
the rest of it. And once she

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had walked on the terrace at Burton, it was due to Richard she had

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never been so happy. Nothing could
be slow enough, nothing last too long,

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No pleasure could equal, she thought, straightening the chairs, pushing in

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one book on the shelf. This
having done with the triumphs of youth,

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lost herself in the process of living, to find it with a shock of

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delight as the sun rose as the
day sank. Many a time had she

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gone at Burton when they were all
talking to look at the sky, or

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seen it between people's shoulders at dinner, seen it in London when she could

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not sleep. She walked to the
window. It held foolish as the idea

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was something of her own in it. This country sky, this sky above

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Westminster. She parted the curtains.
She looked, Oh, but how surprising.

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In the room opposite, the old
lady stared straight at her. She

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was going to bed, and the
sky it will be a solemn sky.

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She had thought it will be a
dusky sky, turning away its cheek in

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beauty. But there it was,
ashen pale, raced over quickly by tapering

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vast clouds. It was new to
her. The wind must have risen.

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She was going to bed. In
the room opposite, it was fascinating to

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watch her moving about, that old
lady, crossing the room, coming to

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the window. Could she see her? It was fascinating with people still laughing

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and shouting in the drawing room,
to watch that old woman quite quietly going

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to bed, She pulled the blind. Now the clock began striking. The

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young man had killed himself, but
she did not pity him. With the

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clock striking the hour one, two, three, she did not pity him.

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With all this going on there,
the old lady had put out her

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light. The whole house was dark. Now with this going on, she

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repeated, and the words came to
her, fear no more the heat of

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the sun. She must go back
to them. But what an extraordinary night.

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She felt somehow very like him,
the young man who had killed himself.

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She felt glad that he had done
it, thrown it away. The

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clock was striking, the leaden circles
dissolved in the air. He made her

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feel the beauty, made her feel
the fun. But she must go back,

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She must assemble, She must find
Sallie and Peter. And she came

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in from the little room. But
where is Clarissa, said Peter. He

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was sitting on the sofa with Sallie. After all these years, he really

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could not call her, lady Rossiter. Where's the woman gone to? He

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asked, where's Clarissa? Sally supposed, and so did Peter. For the

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matter of that, that there were
people of importance, politicians whom neither of

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them knew unless by sight in the
picture papers, whom Clarissa had to be

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nice to, had to talk to. She was with them. Yet there

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was Richard Dollaway, not in the
cabinet. He hadn't been a success,

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Sally supposed. For herself. She
scarcely ever read the papers. She sometimes

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saw his name mentioned, but then
well, she lived a very solitary life

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in the wilds. Clarissa would say, among great merchants, great manufacturers,

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men, after all, who did
things. She had done things too.

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I have five sons, she told
him, Lord Lord, what a change

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had come over her? The softness
of motherhood, its egotism too. Last

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time they met, Peter remembered had
been among the cauliflowers in the moonlight,

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the leaves like rough bronze, she
had said, with her literary turn,

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and she had picked a rose.
She had marched him up and down that

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awful night, after the scene by
the fountain, who was to catch the

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midnight train? Heavens he had wept. End of section twenty nine, read

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by Hannah Dorma, London, twenty
fourth of October twenty twenty one.