Section twenty nine. But was it Lady Bruton whom she used to know?
Was it Peter Walsh? Grown gray? Lady Rossita asked herself, who had
been Sallie Seaton? It was old Miss Parry, certainly, the old aunt
who used to be so cross when she stayed at Burton. Never should she
forget running along the passage naked and being sent for by Miss Parry and Clarissa,
Oh, Clarissa. Salie caught her by the arm. Clarissa stopped beside
them. But I can't stay, she said, I shall come later.
Wait, she said, looking at Peter and Sallie. They must wait.
She meant, until all these people had gone. I shall come back,
she said, looking at her old friends Sallie and Peter, who were shaking
hands. And Sallie, remembering the past, no doubt, was laughing,
But her voice was wrung of its old ravishing richness, her eyes not a
glow as they used to be when she smoked cigars. When she ran down
the passage to fetch her sponge bag without a stitch of clothing on her and
Ellen Natkins asked what if the gentleman had met her? But everybody forgave her
she stole a chicken from the larder because she was hungry. In the night,
she smoked cigars in her bedroom. She left a priceless book in the
punt. But everybody adored her, except perhaps Papa. It was her warmth,
her vitality. She would paint, She would write old women in the
village. Never to this day forgot to ask after your friend in the red
cloak, who seemed so bright. She accused Hugh Whitbred, of all people.
And there he was, her old friend, Hugh, talking to the
Portuguese ambassador of kissing her in the smoking room to punish her for saying that
women should have votes. Vulgar men did, she said, And Clarissa remembered
having to persuade her not to denounce him at family prayers, which she was
capable of doing with her daring, her recklessness, her melodramatic love of being
at the center of everything and creating scenes. And it was bound Clarissa used
to think to end in some awful tragedy, her death, her martyrdom,
instead of which she had married quite unexpectedly, a bald man with a large
buttonhole who owned it was, said Cotton Mills at Manchester, and she had
fire boys. She and Peter had settled down together. They were talking.
It seemed so familiar that they should be talking. They would discuss the past
with the two of them, more even than with Richard. She shared her
past. The garden, the trees, old Joseph Brettcof singing brahms without any
voice, the drawing room wallpaper, the smell of the mats a part of
this. Sally must always be, Peter must always be. But she must
leave them. There were the Bradshaws, whom she disliked. She must go
up to Lady Bradshaw in gray and silver, balancing like a sea lion at
the edge of its tank, barking for invitations. Duchesses the typical successful man's
wife. She must go up to Lady Bradshaw and say, But Lady Bradshaw
anticipated her. We are shockingly late, dear missus Dollaway. We hardly dared
to come in, she said, And Sir William, who looked very distinguished
with his gray hair and blue eyes, said yes. They had not been
able to resist the temptation. He was talking to Richard about that bill,
probably which they wanted to get through the commons. Why did the sight of
him talking to Richard cull her up? He looked what he was, a
great doctor, a man absolutely at the head of his profession, very powerful,
rather worn. For think what cases came before him, people in the
uttermost depths of misery, people on the verge of insanity, husbands and wives.
He had to decide questions of appalling difficulty. Yet what she felt was
one wouldn't like Sir William to see one unhappy. No, not that man.
How is your son at Eton, she asked Lady Bradshaw. He had
just missed his eleven, said Lady Bradshaw, because of the mumps. His
father minded even more than he did, she thought, being she said,
nothing but a great boy himself. Clarissa looked at Sir William talking to Richard.
He did not look like a boy, not in the least like a
boy. She had once gone with someone to ask his advice. He had
been perfectly right, extremely sensible. But heavens, what a relief to get
out to the street again. There was some poor, wretched sobbing, she
remembered, in the waiting room, but she did not know what it was
about. Sir William. What exactly she disliked only Richard agreed with her.
Didn't like his taste, didn't like his smell, but he was extraordinarily able.
They were talking about this bill, some case, Sir William was mentioning,
lowering his voice. It had its bearing upon what he was saying about
the deferred effects of shell shock. There must be some provision in the bill,
sinking her voice, drawing Missus Dollaway into the shelter of a common femininity,
a common pride in the illustrious qualities of husbands and their sad tendency to
overwork. Lady Bradshaw, poor goose one didn't dislike her, murmured how just
as we were starting, my husband was called upon the telephone. A very
sad case. A young man, that is what Sir William was telling.
Mister Dollaway had killed himself. He had been in the army. Oh,
thought Clarissa, in the middle of my party, here's death, she thought.
She went on into the little room where the Prime Minister had gone with
Lady Bruton. Perhaps there was somebody there, but there was nobody. The
chairs still kept the impress of the Prime Minister and Lady Bruton. She turned
deferentially. He sitting four square authoritatively. They had been talking about India.
There was nobody. The party's splendor fell to the floor. So strange it
was to come in alone in her finery. What business had the Bradshaws to
talk of death? At her party? A young man had killed himself,
and they talked of it at her party. The Bradshaws talked of death.
He had killed himself, But how always her body went through at first when
she was told suddenly of an accident, her dress flamed, her body burnt.
He had thrown himself from a window up, had flashed the ground through
him, blundering, bruising, went to the rusty spikes. There he lay
with a thud, thud thud in his brain, and then a suffocation of
blackness. So she saw it. But why had he done it? And
the Bradshaws talked of at her party. She had once thrown a shilling into
the serpentine, never anything more, but he had flung it away. They
went on living. She would have to go back. The rooms were still
crowded. People kept on coming. They all day. She had been thinking
of Burton, of Peter, of Sally. They would grow old a thing
there was that mattered, a thing wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured
in her own life, Let drop every day in corruption lies chatter. This
he had preserved. Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate people
feeling the impossibility of reaching the center which mystically evaded them. Closeness drew apart,
rapture faded. One was alone. There was an embrace in death.
But this young man who had killed himself, had he plunged holding his treasure.
If it were now to die, twere now to be most happy,
she had said to herself, once coming down in white or there were the
poets and thinkers. Suppose he had had that passion and had gone to Sir
William Bradshaw, a great doctor, yet to her obscurely evil, without sex
or lust, extremely polite to women, but capable of some indescribable outrage,
forcing your soul. That was it. If this young man had gone to
him, and Sir William had impressed him like that with his power, might
he not then have said? Indeed she felt it. Now life is made
intolerable. They make life intolerable men like that. Then she had felt it.
Only this morning. There was the terror, the overwhelming incapacity one's parents
giving it into one's hands, this life to be lived to the end,
to be walked with serenely. There was in the depths of her heart an
awful fear. Even now, quite often, if Richard had not been there
reading the times, so that she could crouch like a bird and gradually revive,
send roaring up that immeasurable delight, rubbing stick to stick one thing with
another, she must have perished. But that young man had killed himself.
Somehow. It was her disaster, her disgrace. It was her punishment to
cease, sink and disappear. Hear a man there, a woman, in
this profound darkness, and she forced to stand here in her evening dress.
She had schemed, she had pilfered. She was never wholly admirable. She
had wanted success, Lady Beckxborough and the rest of it. And once she
had walked on the terrace at Burton, it was due to Richard she had
never been so happy. Nothing could be slow enough, nothing last too long,
No pleasure could equal, she thought, straightening the chairs, pushing in
one book on the shelf. This having done with the triumphs of youth,
lost herself in the process of living, to find it with a shock of
delight as the sun rose as the day sank. Many a time had she
gone at Burton when they were all talking to look at the sky, or
seen it between people's shoulders at dinner, seen it in London when she could
not sleep. She walked to the window. It held foolish as the idea
was something of her own in it. This country sky, this sky above
Westminster. She parted the curtains. She looked, Oh, but how surprising.
In the room opposite, the old lady stared straight at her. She
was going to bed, and the sky it will be a solemn sky.
She had thought it will be a dusky sky, turning away its cheek in
beauty. But there it was, ashen pale, raced over quickly by tapering
vast clouds. It was new to her. The wind must have risen.
She was going to bed. In the room opposite, it was fascinating to
watch her moving about, that old lady, crossing the room, coming to
the window. Could she see her? It was fascinating with people still laughing
and shouting in the drawing room, to watch that old woman quite quietly going
to bed, She pulled the blind. Now the clock began striking. The
young man had killed himself, but she did not pity him. With the
clock striking the hour one, two, three, she did not pity him.
With all this going on there, the old lady had put out her
light. The whole house was dark. Now with this going on, she
repeated, and the words came to her, fear no more the heat of
the sun. She must go back to them. But what an extraordinary night.
She felt somehow very like him, the young man who had killed himself.
She felt glad that he had done it, thrown it away. The
clock was striking, the leaden circles dissolved in the air. He made her
feel the beauty, made her feel the fun. But she must go back,
She must assemble, She must find Sallie and Peter. And she came
in from the little room. But where is Clarissa, said Peter. He
was sitting on the sofa with Sallie. After all these years, he really
could not call her, lady Rossiter. Where's the woman gone to? He
asked, where's Clarissa? Sally supposed, and so did Peter. For the
matter of that, that there were people of importance, politicians whom neither of
them knew unless by sight in the picture papers, whom Clarissa had to be
nice to, had to talk to. She was with them. Yet there
was Richard Dollaway, not in the cabinet. He hadn't been a success,
Sally supposed. For herself. She scarcely ever read the papers. She sometimes
saw his name mentioned, but then well, she lived a very solitary life
in the wilds. Clarissa would say, among great merchants, great manufacturers,
men, after all, who did things. She had done things too.
I have five sons, she told him, Lord Lord, what a change
had come over her? The softness of motherhood, its egotism too. Last
time they met, Peter remembered had been among the cauliflowers in the moonlight,
the leaves like rough bronze, she had said, with her literary turn,
and she had picked a rose. She had marched him up and down that
awful night, after the scene by the fountain, who was to catch the
midnight train? Heavens he had wept. End of section twenty nine, read
by Hannah Dorma, London, twenty fourth of October twenty twenty one.