Section twenty five. He had reached his hotel. He crossed the hall with
its mounds of reddish chairs and sofas, its spiked, leaved, withered looking
plants. He got his key off the hook. The young lady handed him
some letters. He went upstairs. He saw her most often at Burton in
the late summer, when he stayed there for a week or fortnight, even
as people did in those days. First, on top of some hill there
she would stand, hands clapped to her hair, her cloak blowing out,
pointing, crying to them. She saw the seven beneath or in a wood,
making the kettle boil very ineffective with her fingers, the smoke curtsying,
blowing in their faces, her little pink face showing through, begging water from
an old woman in a cottage who came to the door to watch them go.
They walked always, the others drove. She was board driving, disliked
all animals except that dog. They tramped miles along roads. She would break
off to get her bearings pilot him back across country. And all the time
they argued, discussed poetry, discussed people, discussed politics. She was a
radical then, never noticing a thing except when she stopped, cried out at
a view or a tree, and made him look with her, and so
on again through stubble fields, she walking ahead with a flower of her aunt,
never tired of walking, for all her delicacy to drop down on Burton
in the dusk. Then after dinner, Old Bretkopf would open the piano and
sing without any voice, and they would lie sunk in armchairs, trying not
to laugh, but always breaking down and laughing, laughing, laughing at nothing
brett Kopf was supposed not to see. And then in the morning, flirting
up and down like a wagtail in front of the house. Oh, it
was a letter from her, this blue envelope that was her hand, and
he would have to read it. Here was another of those meetings, bound
to be painful to read her letter needed the devil of an effort, how
heavenly it was to see him. She must tell him that that was all.
But it upset him, It annoyed him. He wished she hadn't written
it. Coming on top of his thoughts. It was like a nudge in
the ribs. Why couldn't she let him be? After all, she had
married Dollaway and lived with him in perfect happiness all these years. These hotels
are not consoling places, far from it. Any number of people had hung
up their hats on those pegs. Even the flies, if you thought of
it, had settled on other people's noses. As for the cleanliness which hit
him in the face, it wasn't cleanliness so much as baareness, frigidity,
a thing that had to be some arid matron made her rounds at dawn,
sniffing, peering, causing blue nosed maids to scour for all the world,
as if the next visitor were a joint of meat to be served on a
perfectly clean platter. For sleep, one bed for sitting in, one armchair,
for cleaning one's teeth and shaving one's chin, one tumbler, one looking
glass, books, letters, dressing gowns slipped about on the imper personality of
the horsehair like incongruous impertinences. And it was Clarissa's letter that made him see
all this heavenly to see you, she must say. So he folded the
paper, pushed it away. Nothing would induce him to read it again.
To get that letter to him. By six o'clock she must have sat down
and written it. Directly he left her stamped it sent somebody to the post.
It was, as people say, very like her. She was upset
by his visit. She had felt a great deal had for a moment when
she kissed his hand, regretted, envied him, even remembered, possibly for
he saw her look it something he had said, how they would change the
world if she married him. Perhaps whereas it was this, it was middle
age, it was mediocrity. Then forced herself, with her indomitable vitality,
to put all that aside, there being in her a thread of life which
for toughness, endurance, power to overcome obstacles and carry her triumphantly through.
He had never known the like of yes. But there would calm a reaction.
Directly he left the room. She would be frightfully sorry for him.
She would think what in the world she could do to give him pleasure,
short always of the one thing. And he could see her, with the
tears running down her cheeks, going to her writing table and dashing off that
one line which he was to find, greeting him heavenly to see you,
and she meant it. Peter walsho Hald now unlaced his boots, but it
would not have been a success. Their marriage, the other thing, after
all, came so much more naturally. It was odd, it was true,
lots of people felt it. Peter Walsh, who had done just respectably,
filled the usual posts adequately, was liked, but thought a little cranky,
gave himself airs. It was odd that he should have had, especially
now that his hair was gray. A contented look, a look of having
reserves. It was this that made him attractive to women, who liked the
sense that he was not altogether manly. There was something unusual about him,
or something behind him. It might be that he was bookish, never came
to see you without taking up the book on the table he was now reading
with his bootlac's trailing on the floor, or that he was a gentleman,
which showed itself in the way he knocked the ashes out of his pipe,
and in his manners. Of course, to women, for it was very
charming and quite ridiculous how easily some girl without a grain of sense could twist
him round her finger. But at her own risk, that is to say,
though he might be ever so easy, and indeed, with his gaiety
and good breeding, fascinating to be with. It was only up to a
point she said something. No, no, He saw through that. He
wouldn't stand that. No No. Then he could shout and rock and hold
his sides together over some joke with men. He was the best judge of
cooking in India. He was a man, but not the sort of man
one had to respect, which was a mercy, Not like Major Simmons,
for instance, Not in the least like that, Daisy thought, when,
in spite of her two small children she used to compare them. He pulled
off his boots, he emptied his pockets. Out came with his pocket knife
a snap shot of Daisy on the verandah, Daisy all in white with a
fox terrier on her knee, very charming, very dark, the best he
had ever seen of her. It did come, after all, so naturally,
so much more naturally than Clarissa. No fuss, no bother, no
finicking and fidgeting, all plain sailing and the dark, adorably pretty girl on
the veranda, exclaimed he could hear her. Of course, of course she
would give him everything, she cried, She had no sense of discretion.
Everything he wanted, she cried, running to meet him. Whoever might be
looking and she was only twenty four, and she had two children. Well
well, well, indeed, he had got himself into a mess at his
age, and it came over him when he woke in the night pretty forcibly.
Suppose they did marry for him, it would be all very well,
But what about her, missus Burgess, a good sort and no chatterbox in
whom he had confided. Thought this absence of his in England, ostensibly to
see lawyers, might serve to make Daisy reconsider think what it meant. It
was a question of her position, missus Burgess, said, the social barrier,
giving up her children, she'd be a widow with a past one of
these days, draggling about in the suburbs, or more likely indiscriminate, you
know, she said, what such women get like with too much paint.
But Peter Walsh poo pooed all that. He didn't mean to die yet.
Anyhow, she must settle for herself, judge for herself. He thought,
padding about the room in his socks, smoothing out his dress shirt. For
he might go to Clarissa's party, or he might go to one of the
halls, or he might settle in and read an absorbing book written by a
man he used to know at Oxford. And if he did retire, that's
what he'd do, write books. He would go to Oxford and poke about
in the bodily and vainly. The dark, adorable pretty girl ran to the
end of the terror, vainly waved her hand, vainly cried. She didn't
care a straw what people said. There. He was the man she thought,
the world of the perfect gentleman, the fascinating that distinguished, and his
age made not the least difference to her. Padding about a room in an
hotel in Bloomsbury, shaving washing, continuing as he took up cairns, put
down razors, to poke about in the Bodilian and get at the truth about
one or two little matters that interested him. And he would have a chat
with whoever it might be, and so come to disregard more and more precise
hours for lunch and mise engagements. And when Daisy asked him as she would
for a kiss, a scene failed to come up to the scratch, though
he was genuinely devoted to her. In short, it might be happier as
missus Burgess said that she should forget him or merely remember him as he was
in August nineteen twenty two, like a figure standing at the cross roads at
dusk, which grows more and more remote as the dog cart spins away,
carrying her securely fastened to the back seat, though her arms are outstretched,
and as she sees the figure dwindle and disappear, still she cries out how
she would do anything in the world, anything, anything, anything. He
never knew what people thought. It became more and more difficult for him to
concentrate. He became absorbed, He became busied with his own concerns, now
surly, now gay, dependent on women, absent minded, moody, less
and less able. So he thought as he shaved, to understand why Clarissa
couldn't simply find them a lodging and be nice to Daisy, introduce her,
and then he could just just do what, just haunt and hover. He
was at the moment, actually engaged in sorting out various keys, papers,
swoop and taste, be alone, in short, sufficient to himself, and
yet nobody, of course, was more dependent upon others. He buttoned his
waistcoat. It had been his undoing. He could not keep out of smoking
rooms, liked colonels, liked golf, liked bridge, and above all women's
society, and the fineness of their companionship, and their faithfulness and audacity and
greatness in loving, which, though it had its drawbacks, seemed to him.
And the dark, adorably pretty face was on top of the envelopes,
so wholly admirable, so splendid a flower to grow on the crest of human
life, And yet he could not come up to the scratch, being always
apt to see round things. Clarissa had sapped something in him permanently, and
to tire very easily of mute devotion, and to want variety in love,
though it would make him furious if Daisy loved anybody else, furious, for
he was jealous, and controllably jealous. By temperament. He suffered tortures.
But where was his knife, his watch, his seals, his note case,
and Clarissa's letter, which he would not read again but liked to think
of, and Daisy's photograph? And now for dinner. They were eating,
sitting at little tables round vases, dressed or not dressed, with their shawls
and bags laid beside them, with their air of false composure, for they
were not used to so many courses at dinner and confidence, for they were
able to pay for it and strain, for they had been running about London
all day, shopping, sightseeing, and their natural curiosity, for they looked
round and up as the nice looking gentlemen in horn rimmed spectacles came in,
and their good nature, for they would have been glad to do any little
service such as lender, timetable or impart useful information, and their desire pulsing
in them, tugging at them subterraneously, somehow to establish connections, if it
were only a birthplace Liverpool, for example, in common or friends of the
same name, with their furtive glances, odd silences and sudden withdrawals into family
jocularity and isolation. There they sat eating dinner when mister Walsh came in and
took his seat at a little table by the curtain. It was not that
he had said anything, for being solitary, he could only address himself to
the waiter. It was his way of looking at the menu, of pointing
his forefings to a particular whine, of hitching himself up to the table,
of addressing himself seriously, not gluttonously, to dinner that won him their respect,
which, having to remain unexpressed for the greater part of the meal,
flared up at the table where the Morrises sat when mister Walsh was heard to
say, at the end of the meal bartlet Pears, why he should have
spoken so moderately yet firmly, with the air of a disciplinarian, well within
his rights which are founded upon justice. Neither Young Charles Morris nor Old Charles,
neither Miss Elaine nor Missus Morris knew. But when he said Bartlet Pears,
sitting alone at his table, they felt that he counted on their support
in some lawful demand, was champion of a cause which immediately became their own,
So that their eyes met his eyes sympathetically, And when they all reached
the smoking room simultaneously, a little talk between them became inevitable. It was
not very profound, only to the effect that London was crowded, had changed
in thirty years, that mister Morris preferred Liverpool, that Missus as Marris had
been to the Westminster Flower Show, and that they had all seen the Prince
of Wales. Yet, thought Peter Walsh, no family in the world could
compare with the Morrises none whatever, and their relations to each other are perfect,
and they don't care a hang for the upper classes, and they like
what they like. And Elane is training for the family business, and the
boy has won a scholarship at Leeds, and the old lady, who is
about his own age, had three more children at home, and they have
two motor cars. But mister Morris still mends the boots on Sunday. It
is superb. It is absolutely superb, thought Peter Walsh, swaying a little
backwards and forwards with his liqueur glass in his hand, among the hairy red
chairs and ashtrays, feeling very well pleased with himself. For the Morrises liked
him. Yes, they liked a man who said Bartlet pears. They liked
him. He felt he would go to Clarissa's party. The Morris has moved
off, but they would meet again. He would go to Clarissa's party because
he wanted to ask Richard what they were doing in India, the conservative Duffers,
and what's being acted? And music, oh yes, and mere gossip.
For this is the truth about our soul, he thought, ourself.
Who fish like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities, threading her way between
the bowls of giant weeds, over sun flickered spaces, and on and on
into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable. Suddenly she shoots to the surface
and sports on the wind wrinkled waves that has a positive need to brush,
scrape, kindle herself, gossiping what did the government mean Richard Dollaway would know
to do about India? End of section twenty five read by Hannadorma, London,
twenty fourth of October twenty twenty one.