Section twenty two. Suddenly Elizabeth stepped forward and most competently bordered the omnibus in
front of everybody. She took a seat on top the impetuous creature A pirate
started forward, sprang away. She had to hold the rail to steady herself.
For a pirate, it was reckless, unscrupulous, bearing down, ruthlessly,
circumventing, dangerously, boldly snatching a passenger or ignoring a passenger, squeezing
eel like and arrogant in between, and then rushing insolently all sails spread up
Whitehall. And did Elizabeth give one thought to poor miss Kilman, who loved
her without jealousy, to whom she had been a fawn in the open,
a moon in a glade. She was delighted to be free. The fresh
air was so delicious. It had been so stuffy in the army and navy
stores. And now it was like riding to be rushing up Whitehall. And
to each movement of the omnibus, the beautiful body in the fawn colored coat
responded freely like a rider, like the figurehead of a ship. For the
breeze slightly dis arrayed her. The heat gave her cheeks the pallor of white
painted wood, and her fine eyes, having no eyes to meet, gazed
ahead, blank bright, with the staring, incredible innocence of sculpture. It
was always talking about her own sufferings that made miss Kilman so difficult. And
was she right if it was being on committees and giving up hours and hours
every day. She hardly ever saw him in London that helped the poor.
Her father did that? Goodness knows if that was what Miss Kilman meant about
being a Christian. But it was so difficult to say, Oh, she
would like to go a little further. Another penny? Was it to the
strand? Here was another penny? Then she would go up the strand.
She liked people who were ill. And every profession is open to the women
of your generation, said miss Kilmen. So she might be a doctor,
She might be a farmer. Animals are often ill. She might own a
thousand acres and have people under her. She would go and see them in
their cottages. This was Somerset House. One might be a very good farmer,
And that, strangely enough, though Miss Kilman had her share in it,
was almost entirely due to Somerset House. It looked so splendid, so
serious, that great gray building. And she liked the feeling of people working.
She liked those churches, like shapes of gray paper breasting the stream of
the strand. It was quite different here from Westminster, she thought, getting
off at Chancery Lane. It was so serious, it was so busy.
In short, she would like to have a profession. She would become a
doctor, a farmer, possibly go into parliament if she found it necessary,
all because of the strand, the feet of those people busy about their activities,
hands putting stone to stone, mines eternally occupied not with trivial chatterings comparing
women to poplars, which was rather exciting, of course, but very silly,
but with thoughts of ships, of business, of law, of administration,
and with it all so stately. She was in the temple gay,
there was the river, pious, there was the church. Made her determined,
whatever her mother might say, to become either a farmer or a doctor.
But she was, of course rather lazy, and it was much better
to say nothing about it. It seemed so silly. It was the sort
of thing that did sometimes happen when one was alone. Buildings without architects,
names, crowds of people coming back from the city, having more power than
single clergyman in Kensington, than any of the books. Miss Kilnet had lent
her to stimulate what lay slumbrous, clumsy and shy on the mine's sandy floor,
to break surface as a child suddenly stretches its arms. It was just
that, perhaps a sigh, a stretch of the arms, an impulse,
a revelation which has its effects forever, and then down again. It went
to the sandy floor. She must go home, she must dress for dinner.
But what was the time? Where was a clock? She looked up
Fleet Street. She walked just a little way towards Saint Paul's, shyly,
like someone penetrating on tiptoe, exploring as strange house by night with a candle
on edge, lest the owner should suddenly fling wide his bedroom door and ask
her business. Nor did she dare wander off into queer alleys, tempting by
streets any more than in a strange house open doors which might be bedroom doors
or sitting room doors, or lead straight to the larder, for no dollaways
came down the strand daily. She was a pioneer astray venturing, trusting.
In many ways. Her mother felt she was extremely immature, like a child,
still attached to dolls, to old slippers, a perfect baby, and
that was charming. But then, of course there was in the Delaway family
the tradition of public service, abbesses, principles, head mistresses, dignitaries in
the republic of women. Without being brilliant, any of them, they were
that she penetrated a little further in the direction of Saint Paul's. She liked
the geniality, sisterhood, motherhood, brotherhood of this uproar. It seemed to
her good, the noise tremendous, and suddenly there were trumpets, the unemployed
blaring, rattling about in the uproar, military music, as if people were
marching. Yet, had they been dying, had some woman breathed her last,
and whoever was watching, opening the window of the room where she had
just brought off that act of supreme dignity, looked down on Fleet Street,
that uproar, that military music, would have come triumphing up to him,
consolatory, indifferent. It was not conscious. There was no recognition in it
of one fortune or fate. And for that very reason, even to those
dazed with watching for the last shivers of consciousness on the faces of the dying,
consoling forgetfulness in people might wound their ingratitude corode, But this voice,
pouring endlessly year in year out, would take whatever it might be, this
vow, this van this life, this procession, would wrap them all about
and carry them on, as in the rough stream of a glacier. The
ice holds a splinter of bone, a blue petal, some oak trees,
and rolls them on. But it was later than she thought. Her mother
would not like her to be wandering off alone like this. She turned back
down the strand. A puff of wind in spite of the heat, there
was quite a wind blew a thin black veil over the sun and over the
strand. The faces faded, The omnibuses suddenly lost their glow, For although
the clouds were of mountainous white, so that one could fancy hacking hard chips
off with a hatchet, with broad golden slopes, lawns of celestial pleasure gardens
on their flanks, and had all the appearance of settled habitations assembled for the
conference of gods above the world. There was a perpetual movement among them signs
were interchanged when, as if to fulfill some scheme arranged already, Now a
summit dwindled. Now a whole block of pyramidal size, which had kept its
station inalterably advanced into the midst or gravely led the procession to fresh anchorage.
Though they seemed at their posts at rest in perfect unanimity, nothing could be
fresher, freer, more sensitive, superficially than the snow white or gold kindled
surface. To change, to go, to dismantle the solemn assemblage was immediately
possible, and in spite of the grave fixity, the accumulated robustness and solidity,
now they struck light to the earth, now darkness. Calmly and competently,
Elizabeth Dollaway mounted the Westminster Omnibus, going and coming, beckoning, signaling.
So the light and shadow which now made the war gray, now the
banana's bright yellow now made the strand gray. Now made the Omnibus as bright
yellow, seemed to Septimus Warren Smith, lying on the sofa in the sitting
room, watching the watery gold glow and fade with the astonishing sensibility of some
live creature on the roses on the wallpaper. Outside. The trees dragged their
leaves like nets through the depths of the air. The sound of water was
in the room. Through the waves came the voices of birds singing. Every
power poured its treasures on his head, and his hand lay there on the
back of the sofa, as he had seen his hand lie when he was
bathing, floating on the top of the waves. While far away on shore
he heard dogs barking and barking far away. Fear no more, says the
heart in the body. Fear no more. He was not afraid. At
every moment, nature signified by some laughing hint, like that gold spot which
went round the wall. There there there her determination to show, by brandishing
her plumes, shaking her tresses, flinging her mantle this way and that,
beautifully, always beautifully, and standing close up to breathe through her hollowed hands
Shakespeare's words, her meaning Risha, sitting at the table twisting a hat in
her hands, watched him, saw him smiling. He was happy then,
but she could not bear to see him smiling. It was not marriage,
It was not being one's husband to look strange like that, always, to
be starting laughing, sitting hour after hour, silent or clutching her and telling
her to write. The table drawer was full of those writings about war,
about Shakespeare, about great discoveries, how there is no death. Lately he
had become excited suddenly for no reason, and both doctor Holmes and Sir William
Bradshaw said excitement was the worst thing for him, and waved his hands and
cried out that he knew the truth, He knew everything. That man,
his friend who was killed Evans, had come, he said. He was
singing behind the screen. She wrote it down just as he spoke it.
Some things were very beautiful. Others sheer nonsense. And he was always stopping
in the middle, changing his mind, wanting to add something, hearing something
new, listening with his hand up. But she heard nothing. And once
they found the girl who did the room reading one of these papers in fits
of laughter. It was a dreadful pity. For that made Septimus cry out
about human cruelty, how they tear each other to pieces, the fallen,
he said, they tear to pieces. Homes is on us, he would
say, and he would invent stories about homes, homes eating porridge, Holmes
reading Shakespeare, making himself roar with laughter or rage. For doctor Holmes seemed
to stand for something horrible to him, human nature, he called him.
Then there were the visions. He was drowned, he used to say,
and lying on a cliff with the gulls screaming over him. He would look
over the edge of the sofa down into the sea. Or he was hearing
music. Really it was only a barrel organ, or some man crying in
the street. But lovely, he used to cry, and the tears would
run down his cheeks, which was to her the most dreadful thing of all
to see a man like Septimus, who had fought, who was brave,
crying. And he would lie listening, until suddenly he would cry that he
was falling down, down into the flames. Actually she would look for flames.
It was so vivid, but there was nothing. They were alone in
the room. It was a dream, she would tell him, and so
quiet him at last. But sometimes she was frightened too. She sighed as
she sat sewing. Her sigh was tender and enchanting, like the wind outside
of wood in the evening. Now she put down her scissors. Now she
turned to take something from the table, A little stir, a little crinkling,
a little tapping, built up something on the table there where she sat
sewing. Through his eyelashes, he could see her blurred outline, her little
black body, her face and hands, her turning movements at the table as
she took up a reel or looked as she was apt to lose things for
her silk. She was making a hat for Missus Filmer's married daughter, whose
name was He had forgotten her name. What is the name of Missus Filmer's
married daughter, he asked. Missus Peters said, Richa. She was afraid
it was too small, she said, holding it before her. Missus Peters
was a big woman, but she did not like her. It was only
because Missus Filmer had been so good to them. She gave me grapes this
morning. She said that Riesha wanted to do something to show that they were
grateful. She had come into the room the other evening and found Missus Peters,
who thought they were out playing the gramophone. Was it true, he
asked, she was playing the gramophone. Yes, she had told him about
it at the time. She had found Missus Peters playing the gramophone. End
of section twenty two read by Hannah Dormer, London, tenth of October twenty
twenty one,