RICHARD DALLOWAY had turned white. He stood, frozen, in the middle of his room, one hand cupped against the side of his face, the other wrapped around his waist. He was trembling; he was in despair. All around him now there were sounds of movement, of bustling; of people—Clarissa, Elizabeth, the servants, he supposed, people getting ready for the party; while so still and statue-like was he that he might as well have been made of stone or bronze or marble. For he had just seen his brother, his beloved Duncan—as fresh and as vivid as if it were yesterday, dead. And what was a party to that? Nothing! No, he couldn’t go through with it (for though he stood, stuck, motionless, in one place, his mind was like quicksilver). Why? he asked. Why now? And what had triggered it, set it off? (He hadn’t revisited that scene for many, many years!) Now he tried retracing his steps: what had he been doing at the precise moment he had seen it? He was worrying over Robbie (he remembered)—what to do about Robbie’s having come to the house; he was pacing and thinking, meanwhile, about his responsibilities for the party. And amidst pacing, he had turned around (for he had reached the door)—and it was then he had seen it; turning around—there it was. But what was it? Was it some shadow in the window which somehow reminded him of it? Was that it? Or (he asked himself now, sitting down on the bed), was it the thing itself? Had he, for some reason, revisited, recalled the scene itself in his mind, that horrible scene he had witnessed some forty years ago?
Now he remembered as if it were yesterday. It was a cold autumn morning. Early. He had awakened before sunrise and gone off alone for a walk before school (as he sometimes did); Duncan, as far as he knew, was still asleep, for he could see his outline beneath the bedcovers as he looked back before slipping out the door. Indeed, everyone—the entire house, it seemed—was still asleep, for all was silent. Once outside, he felt invigorated, crunching along through the grass and fallen leaves (he looked down at his boots)—for there was a touch of frost on the ground, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his coat. The air was fresh and cool and ever-so-slightly biting. He heard a crow’s call and looked up. There, in a yew tree—so black it shone blue in the early morning light; black and shining in the tree; its golden beak opening and closing as it called out, saying what? he had wondered. (Oh! to know bird language, he had thought.) Then back at eye-level, the fragile crystals of frost in the soft sunlight, indeed the whole world, his whole world, sparkled, glittered there before him. He could see his breath as he walked down the hill in back of the house to the stream, and then along the side of it. He bent over and trailed his hand in the water. Freezing cold. He cupped his hands together, drawing the water, and then splashed it onto his face. So refreshing! And he remembered thinking, at that very moment, that he could understand why autumn was Duncan’s favourite season (there was a sense of rebirth, of renewal in it), though his own favourite season was summer; but really he liked them all. Then he had stood up and seen the sun; had, in fact, been dazzled by the sun—a pale yellow lemon surrounded by a luminous, even paler pink, and then the washed-out for-ever of blue sky.
He kicked at the leaves as he climbed back up the hill, sending a few spiralling into the air for a brief moment—yellow and red, but mostly dead, brown leaves, for it was mid-November. And then, reaching level ground and the yard, he had—and this he could not explain, indeed he had never been able to sufficiently explain it to himself (or to anyone else), then he had walked into the tool shed. It was not customary, not something he usually did, either generally or at the end of these early morning walks. Nor could he recall feeling at all pulled, compelled to walk into the shed, as if something either ominous or pleasant, some sort of message awaited him. No, it was simply—what? Chance? Fate? For there was no good reason (a fact about which his father was later suspicious; his father actually accused him of helping his brother). But no, there was no reason, good or bad. And so he had pulled open the door to the tool shed, heard the rusty hinges squeaking, and walked in.
At first he was blinded by the morning light pouring in through the dusty, cobwebbed windows. But then his eyes adjusted, and he saw it. There! There it was. There he was—a white, bloodless Duncan, hanging on a rope by his neck from one of the rafters. No! Richard turned away. It couldn’t be! No! It wasn’t possible; it must have been an apparition. He was still in bed, dreaming. The sun was in his eyes. It was a mistake. He turned to look again. And this time, taking in the scene, the facts of it, and realising, through his eyes, the truth of what was before him (which had been instantly comprehended by his brain—all of which took a mere second or two), he screamed! He ran and hugged Duncan about the legs, screaming and crying hysterically now and trying to talk to Duncan all the while, to talk sense to him, to talk him down—anything to deny, to put to rest, to counteract the horror of what he was seeing. So confused and upset did he become that before long he was trying to pull Duncan down by his legs, screaming and crying and then hitting at Duncan until he could stand no more and fell down in the dirt floor and lay there (for what seemed an eternity), looking at the dust particles drifting in the shaft of sunlight coming in through the window, feeling the dust as it stuck to his wet face. Then, suddenly, a strange calm overtook him as he looked up and recognised the rope around his brother’s neck. His father had borrowed it from Uncle Gerald, Philip’s father, a few days before; he and Duncan had been there with him at the time. He had told Uncle Gerald that he needed it for—for what purpose? (Richard could not remember.) And for a moment he actually considered the possibility that.... But then he caught himself No; not that, though he was sure their father must be at least partially to blame.
Sitting on the dirt floor of the tool shed surrounded by dust motes settling in the early morning light, with his breath—white smoke—curling about his head, Richard looked again at his beloved brother. At his brother; at Duncan—lifeless. Hanging there. And again he began to sob, his body shuddering; wracked. No, he couldn’t believe it! Duncan was dead. What would he do? How would he go on? Life would stop; it had stopped. He tried to get up but he couldn’t. He would stay where he was, he thought, and Duncan where he was; and in that way they would be together. Yes, he would sit there. Sit for eternity. For what did it matter? Life had stopped.
Tears streamed down Richard Dalloway’s face now as he emerged from the terrible memory (disturbed by some sound in the house) and asked himself—yet again—why Duncan had done it; why he had killed himself. It was a question he had never been able to answer; that no one had answered or could answer (he believed now, a man of his age and experience)—for Duncan or for anyone. That Duncan must have been unhappy, miserable even, was obvious. But why? He, Richard, had not been unhappy, not generally speaking (though adolescence had had its share of troubles—largely because of their father). And he and Duncan had each other. Why hadn’t he known? Why hadn’t Duncan told him that he was unhappy; why hadn’t he sensed it himself, Duncan’s misery? Blame there was to be spread around (he thought)—on himself; on their father....
Oh, but it was no use, Richard thought now, wiping his eyes on his shirtsleeve. It was no use trying to understand, to second guess Duncan’s reason for suicide, or for any suicide (he thought of Elizabeth’s history tutor, that poor Doris Kilman: had she, too, been a suicide?). He looked at the time—9.00. He must rush; he must get ready. All right, he said, hearing himself (for he had actually said it aloud). “All right! Pull yourself together.” He must do it! First he must try to clear his mind of this horror. He would wash his face and pinch his cheeks (for he mustn’t let them see him in this state, particularly Clarissa). He would dress; comb his hair; and then it was down the stairs, first to check on Clarissa, then Elizabeth, and finally the servants, to see that everything was more or less in order. But shouldn’t doing something about Robbie also be a part of his preparations? (He paused to ask himself) Yes, well—he would try to telephone Robbie one last time before the party, if the opportunity presented itself
Now (he thought), examining himself in the looking-glass over t
he sink: to wash this horror off my face.
THE WATER DRIPPED from the tap as Robert Davies stood combing his hair in the looking-glass. Drip, drip, drip, just as a clock somewhere ticked off the seconds, the minutes, the hours, the days, and the years... (just as the hands descended, came down on and beat at the next mark on the clockface—nine, ten, eleven; and as the hands beat at him, handled him, picked at him like crows, picked him apart). And thinking of time, of the inevitable march of time (and of all time destroyed in its path), thinking about the crush of time (as he allowed the tap to continue dripping, to torture him), Robbie observed himself in the looking-glass, which now took him back to that pivotal moment in his life when, as a boy of six or seven, he had been halted, stopped, upon seeing his own reflection in a puddle of rain water. The moment of the puddle. He had stood; he had stared.
But he was not young anymore. He was forty-five, middle-aged. No, he was not a young man, and what he saw, at that moment, reflected in the looking glass, himself, appeared absolutely ridiculous.
And what was he doing? he asked himself now. What was he doing, dressing as he was, so conspicuously, so ludicrously, and planning to intrude—uninvited—on Richard’s and his wife’s anniversary party? It wasn’t as if Richard would be pleased to see him, or that his attending the party would somehow endear him to Richard and bring them closer. No! Quite the opposite. Oh, he must clear his mind; he must get his mind right. He should not go to the party. Instead, what he should do, was to call someone for help. But call whom? There was no one—other than Richard. Certainly none of the doctors he had seen in the past, for they, all of them, he was convinced, were quacks who simply wanted his money; he could at least see that. But what was the name of that doctor Richard had seen and thought well of? It started with a “B.” Not Bradshaw; it wasn’t Bradshaw, he knew, but B.... B....
“Bbbbbbbb. Bbbb.” Robbie laughed out loud now, thinking that he sounded like a bee, a bee swooping down on a honey-filled horn o’ plenty, or a hummingbird—such, he mused, was his insubstantiality. But this “Bbbb,” this doctor—or any of them, none of them would be the sweet answer he was looking for. No, he did not believe they could help him. Nor that they wanted to; not really. For theirs was a business after all (now he was seeing things clearly, he thought). And so, he supposed, he simply must face it: he was alone. He was alone in the world and he would have to help himself He was alone in the world and all he needed, he knew—it all came down to this, all he needed, was the love of one man: of Richard Dalloway. And so he would help himself. He would go to the party!
CLARISSA DALLOWAY STOOD at the open French windows in her bedroom for a moment before pulling them closed. And as she paused, turning her head this way and that to fasten her earrings, as she stood looking out into the small garden and at the city beyond, the cool night air came into the room and encircled her, caressing and beckoning her to revisit those long-ago summer nights at Bourton where she had stood, similarly, at windows. But there was something icy about this air, these memories, too, so that she felt suddenly old and chill. How many years ago those summers at Bourton were, she thought. And now here she stood, some forty years later, at a window in Westminster, dressed in white. But what had she been doing, she asked herself now, standing in the windows at Bourton? Indeed, what was she doing now, that same person (as if time itself had stood still)? She was waiting for something, expecting something; indeed, she saw now that she had been waiting all her life, either for something more, or for someone to tell her that there would be nothing more; that there was nothing else: This is it; this is life; this is all there is.
When suddenly some sound pulled her back into the room, drew her inside, through the windows, back from those many years ago and into the present moment—that room, her room; something reeled her in. There! It was a knocking. Someone was knocking at her bedroom door. “Clarissa?” It was Richard! Yes, Richard, for he was the answer.
She hurried to the door and opened it. And there he stood, Richard—so handsome in his penguin suit (as he liked to call it). He stood, he looked at her. And when she looked back at him now she could see herself in his eyes, as if he himself were a looking-glass. And she knew what her reflection was saying; what Richard would say. And then he said it: “You look beautiful, darling. Positively stunning.” And that was enough. So they embraced.
But had Clarissa been looking carefully as she stood at her open window, she would have seen Elizabeth walking about in the garden with Grizzle. She was throwing a red ball here and there as Grizzle fetched and then retrieved it, over and over again, just as she had taught him to do shortly after she first got him ten years ago. “There’s a good boy.” She bent down and petted his head, her green dress dragging through the wet grass and the moist earth.
A mere petting is not enough, Elizabeth thought, since they would be away at the party and Grizzle would be alone for quite some time. She would fetch some scrap from Lucy to give him. “Want a bone, Griz?” she asked him now, her voice rising on the word “bone,” so that he would understand her. He did understand, and he began wagging his tail vigorously and running about her feet panting, all the while looking up at her, looking into her face, looking for the bone.
“There’s Elizabeth,” Richard said as he and Clarissa stood together at the bottom of the stairs, glancing past the parlor, through the yellow curtains with the birds of Paradise, and out the open French doors, into the garden.
“What on earth are you doing, Elizabeth?” Clarissa asked, irritated, for she could see that her daughter’s hands were dirty.
“Just playing with Grizzle, Mother.”
It was just like Elizabeth to be so calm and relaxed about it all, Clarissa thought.
“Come in, please, and wash up,” she said. “We’re about to leave.” But why couldn’t Richard have said that? she asked herself now as he stood beside her. Why was it that she was the one always having to tell Elizabeth to do this or that? But she mustn’t let herself get upset; and there was Elizabeth. Oh, dear, she had dirt not only on her shoes but on the hem of her dress as well, Clarissa could see it, and she couldn’t allow any daughter of hers to go to a party looking like that. (Where was Elizabeth’s mind? she wondered. Had she lost her senses?—playing in the dirt in her best clothes before the party.)
She is terribly immature for twenty, Clarissa thought now, remembering herself at that age—how she had already lost her mother, and Sylvia, and how she then had to care for her father, to play hostess at Bourton and... attend balls. But perhaps the rigour of this veterinary program will help her mature (Clarissa mused, composing herself).
But Richard really must speak to Elizabeth; she would have him say something about the dirt on her shoes and dress as if he had just spotted it himself Yes, he, Elizabeth’s father, would have to tell her that she must wipe the dirt off her shoes and try to wash it out of the hem of her dress (for Lucy was busy); and if that proved unsuccessful, then she would have to change.
But here came the servants, she could hear them—banging about as they trudged up the stairs from the basement, then appeared, carrying baskets. Into the room walked Lucy, a happy girl—she always had a smile, and she told Mrs. Dalloway how perfectly lovely she looked, followed by Mrs. Walker (who reeked, Clarissa thought, of cigarette smoke), and then there were the three specially hired girls—Sophie, Flora, and Mary she thought their names were, yes; and Wilkins, who—resembling nothing less than a grey fox—took his place by the flowers as if he were guarding them.
“And doesn’t the master look handsome, girls?” Mrs. Walker asked, winking, to which Lucy nodded, and Sophie and Flora and Mary all giggled, not feeling as comfortable or as familiar as Mrs. Walker and Lucy did. Mr. Dalloway blushed, and—smiling—thanked Mrs. Walker, and then he turned to ask Wilkins if he had called for the taxi cabs? He thought they would need two.
No, he had not called, Wilkins answered, saying that he had been waiting for the word, which now—having had it—he would do; he would call.
And then, as if the party motor had been turned on, or turned up (for it had been idling for quite some time), everyone, it seemed, began moving and working in its current, towards that end. As soon as he had hung up the telephone, Wilkins began carrying out the flowers, he could see that it would take him several trips, while Lucy and Mrs. Walker and the three girls brought the baskets out through the front door and set them down (Mrs. Walker let out a sigh), and just as Clarissa had asked, with a touch of irritation in her voice, where was Elizabeth? there she came, rushing into the hall, flushed and proclaiming herself and her dress clean (Clarissa looked at the dress and saw no dirt, much to her relief, so she smiled at Elizabeth), and Grizzle circled Elizabeth’s feet, and Richard, feeling like the ringmaster at a circus, good-naturedly asked—“Are we ready? Is everyone ready for the party?” Then he took Clarissa’s arm and the two of them, with Elizabeth in tow (lingering and saying good-bye to Grizzle), exited the house and closed the front door behind them just as the taxi cabs were pulling up.
The night air was cool. It was not raining, but nor were the London skies clear; instead, they had that familiar, yellow-grey sulphurous look which often presented itself on overcast summer nights. And as they climbed into the taxi cab, Clarissa and Elizabeth and—no, Richard paused, for he could see that they would need a third car. (He told Wilkins to call for it.) He would ride with Clarissa and Elizabeth, of course; Wilkins and the flowers could occupy this other one (for Mulberry’s had used a van, after all); and then Lucy and Mrs. Walker, the three other girls and the baskets would all have to pile into the third when it arrived (poor planning, he thought, chastising himself).
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