style="font-size:15px;"> And then everything vanished. The dress, the room, the love, the pity, the looking-glass, and the canary’s cage—all vanished. Here she was in a corner of Mrs. Dalloway’s drawing-room.
But it was all so paltry to care so much at her age with two children, to be so dependent on people’s opinions. It was all so paltry not to have principles or convictions. It was all so paltry not to be able to say as other people did, “There’s Shakespeare! There’s death! We’re all weevils in a captain’s biscuit.”
She came into the room. But she looked foolish and self-conscious. She simpered like a schoolgirl. She slouched across the room, like a mongrel.
“Now the fly’s in the saucer,” she said to herself, “right in the middle. It can’t get out. The milk is sticking its wings together.”
“It’s so old-fashioned,” she said to Charles Burt.
He stopped on his way to talk to someone else.
She meant the picture and not her dress, that was old-fashioned. And one word of praise, one word of affection from Charles can change everything. “Mabel, you’re looking charming tonight!”
Charles said nothing of the kind, of course. He was malice itself.
“Mabel’s got a new dress!” he said.
The poor fly was absolutely shoved into the middle of the saucer. Really, he had no heart. He had no kindness, only a veneer of friendliness. Miss Milan was much more real. Miss Milan was much kinder.
“Why,” she asked herself, “can’t I feel one thing always? Why can’t I feel quite sure that Miss Milan is right? Why can’t I feel Charles wrong and stick to it? Why can’t I feel sure about the canary? Why can’t I feel pity and love in a room full of people?”
It was her odious, weak character again. She can’t be seriously interested in conchology, etymology, botany and archeology, like Mary Dennis, like Violet Searle.
Then Mrs. Holman saw her. Of course a thing like a dress was beneath Mrs. Holman’s notice. Not to have value, that was it, she thought. All the time she saw little bits of her yellow dress in the round looking-glass. It was amazing to think how much humiliation and agony and effort and passion were contained in this thing. Ah, this greed was tragic. It was like a row of cormorants. It was tragic!
In her yellow dress tonight she knew that she was condemned. She was despised. It seemed to her that the yellow dress was a penance. She deserved this penance. But it was not her fault, after all. They were ten in the family. They never had enough money. Her mother carried great cans. She was just like her aunts. She wanted to live in India. She wanted to marry to some hero like Sir Henry Lawrence. She wanted to marry some builder in a turban.
She married Hubert, with his job in the Law Courts. They live in a small house. They live without proper maids. She is a fretful, weak, unsatisfactory mother and a wobbly wife, like all her brothers and sisters. Except perhaps Herbert. That wretched fly—where did she read the story about the fly and the saucer? Yes, she had those moments. But now she is forty. By degrees she will cease to struggle anymore. But that is deplorable!
She will go to the London Library tomorrow. She will find some wonderful, helpful, astonishing book. A book by a clergyman, by an American. Or she will walk down the Strand. She will enter a hall. A miner will tell about the life in the pit. Suddenly she will become a new person. She will be absolutely transformed. She will wear a uniform. She will be called Sister Somebody. She will never think about clothes again.
She got up from the blue sofa. The yellow button in the looking-glass got up too. She waved her hand to Charles and Rose. She did not depend on them. The yellow button moved out of the looking-glass. She walked towards Mrs. Dalloway and said,
“Good night.”
“But it’s too early to go,” said Mrs. Dalloway. She was always charming.
“I’m afraid I must,” said Mabel Waring. “But,” she added in her weak, wobbly voice. It sounded ridiculous when she tried to strengthen it, “I enjoyed myself enormously.”
“I enjoyed myself,” she said to Mr. Dalloway. She met him on the stairs.
“Lies, lies, lies!” she said to herself. “Right in the saucer!” she said to herself as she thanked Mrs. Barnet.
The Shooting Party
She got in. She put her suit case in the rack, and the brace of pheasants on top of it. Then she sat down in the corner. The train was rattling through the midlands. The fog came in. She opened the door. She enlarged the carriage. M. M.—those were the initials on the suit case. M. M. was staying the week-end with a shooting party. She was telling over the story now. She was lying back in her corner. She did not shut her eyes. But clearly she did not see the man opposite. She did not see the coloured photograph of York Minster. But she heard them. For as she gazed, her lips moved. Now and then she smiled. And she was handsome; tawny; but scarred on the jaw. The scar lengthened when she smiled. She was dressed out of fashion as women dressed, years ago, in pictures. She did not seem exactly a guest, nor yet a maid. She had only a suitcase and the pheasants. She listened to what they were saying. She said “Chk.” Then she smiled.
“Chk,” said Miss Antonia.
Then she pinched her glasses on her nose. The damp leaves fell across the long windows of the gallery. Then the trees in the Park shivered.
“Chk,” Miss Antonia sniffed again.
The wind sighed. The room was draughty. Now and then a ripple, like a reptile, ran under the carpet. On the carpet lay panels of green and yellow. The sun rested there. Then the sun moved. Miss Antonia looked up as the light strengthened. Her forefathers—the Rashleighs—owned vast lands, so they said. Over there. Up the Amazons. Freebooter. Voyagers. Captives. Maidens. Miss Antonia grinned. The finger of the sun rested on a silver frame. Then on a photograph; on an egg-shaped baldish head; on a lip; and the name “Edward”.
“The King,” Miss Antonia muttered, “had the Blue Room.”
They were driving the pheasants out in the King’s Ride, across the noses of the guns. The birds spurted up from the underwood like heavy rockets. Reddish purple rockets. Then they faded. They dispersed gently.
In the road, a cart stood. Soft warm bodies, with limp claws, and still lustrous eyes. The birds seemed alive. They looked relaxed and comfortable. Then the Squire cursed and raised his gun.
Miss Antonia stitched on. Now and then a tongue of flame reached the grey log. Miss Antonia looked up for a moment, as a dog stares at a flame. Then the flame sank. She stitched again.
Then, silently, the enormously high door opened. Two lean men came in. They drew a table over the hole in the carpet. They went out. They came in. They laid a cloth upon the table. They went out. They came in. They brought a green baize basket of knives and forks; and glasses. They brought sugar casters; and salt cellars; and bread. They brought a silver vase with three chrysanthemums in it. Miss Antonia stitched on.
Again the door opened. A little dog trotted in, a spaniel. It paused. And then old Miss Rashleigh entered. A white shawl clouded her baldness. She hobbled. She crossed the room. She hunched herself in the high-backed chair by the fireside. Miss Antonia stitched on.
“They are shooting,” she said at last.
Old Miss Rashleigh nodded. She gripped her stick.
