(But superimposing itself and taking precedence over her curiosity about what the “flash spectrum” might be was Elizabeth’s question to herself as to whether or not now was the time to introduce Miss Kilman’s name into the conversation.)
Having made his announcement and received Clarissa’s (and the crowd’s) approval, Richard Dalloway found his way over to the servants’ table and sat down by it for a moment to rest, hoping to avoid, at least briefly, all conversation. For he wanted time, time to revel in his achievement, yes, but also, time to ponder this question of how people changed over the years; he was thinking specifically of Sally Seton. (It amazed him how—with all of the experience he had garnered during his years in the House—he felt as though he knew very little about the human character, for he had not studied it.) But this matter of how people—Sally—changed. It was as if Sally Seton (those thirty-some years ago at Bourton) and Lady Rosseter (now) were two completely separate and different people. They looked different, he thought—Sally Seton had shone, had been dark and beautiful; whereas Lady Rosseter was dull, grey, and matronly. (But was this simply age, and was he being unfair?) He thought not, because the two Sallys acted so differently as well. Where Sally Seton was passionate and daring, Lady Rosseter seemed stale and staid; and there was no trace whatsoever of the former Sally, or none that he could see. And then (now looking out the window into the dark night), he remembered one of the questions he had asked himself that very afternoon—if Duncan would have stayed the same had he lived. He supposed he had to admit that if such a dramatic change could happen to Sally, then it could happen to anyone, that it was possible. He would ask Clarissa’s opinion, for it was a character question, about which she was an expert. (And it also occurred to him now that perhaps it had been wrong of him, wrong-headed certainly, and possibly even immoral, to still be clinging to Duncan like he was, and to have allowed Duncan’s death, perhaps unconsciously, to cast such a long shadow over his own life.)
But Clarissa hasn’t much changed since Bourton, he thought (upon hearing her voice); which caused him to wonder which Sally John Rosseter had married, and if he had been, over time, disappointed? Nor have I changed much—at least not that I recognise, he reasoned. But then the thought occurred to him that perhaps Sally was standing over there (he looked in her direction, she was still talking with Clarissa and Lady Hosford), perhaps she was standing there and thinking the very same things about him.
And there, now, more immediately, was Mrs. Walker directly in front of him, waving her finger and saying that she had a bone to pick with someone, with whom she wasn’t quite sure—should she speak with him?—it was his party after all—or Mrs. Dalloway?—for really, she was the one who ran everything—or Lady Hosford? Or should she go directly to the offending party herself, that Miss Atkins. For she was quite put out, Mrs. Walker told him now (again red in the face), having to stand there all night working her fingers to the bone while this Miss Atkins, this servant (“for that’s what she is, sir”) dressed in street clothes, went around drinking wine and eating—eating food she had made, and talking with the guests and putting on airs “as if she were one of them!” Mrs. Walker said that it was the same as if she, herself were to take offher apron right then and there and walk into the crowd. And how would he like that? It was not right, she said. Not fair to herself, to Lucy and Wilkins, nor to the three specially hired girls.
Yes, I see, Mr. Dalloway said to Mrs. Walker, saying, too, that he understood. But this is a bind, he thought, remembering how—not long ago—Clarissa had commented that the role of servants had changed considerably since the War. And she had been right. But this was a matter he could handle, he resolved; one with which he had a good deal of experience—diplomacy; compromise. He would—what? He would talk to Lady Hosford. Surely she would understand and then deal with Miss Atkins herself, directly.
“I’ll have it in hand momentarily,” he said to Mrs. Walker, who smiled and thanked him.
But should he speak with Clarissa about it first? he wondered, looking in the direction where his wife had stood with Sally and Lady Hosford just moments ago. But she was no longer there. Where was she? His eyes searched the crowd until, there, standing by an open window, he saw her—a shimmering, white silhouette. She, too, he thought, needed a moment to herself; he would not interrupt her. He would go directly to Lady Hosford.
Clarissa had had to withdraw for a moment, which, she felt, was awkward—for there was nowhere to go, really, no place to hide, no “other room” as she had at home (and there she was, once again, standing at an open window). Awkward, yes, but she hoped it was not rude; for she needed a brief respite, because—because Sally had mentioned Aunt Helena. Aunt Helena, she thought, sighing, breathing in the night air and exhaling a fathomless longing that had stayed with her throughout her life; Aunt Helena, who—well into her eighties—had always come into town for their parties; she hadn’t missed a one. She had been at the last party they’d had, in Westminster, obviously failing; she had no sooner been placed in a chair when she fell asleep, poor thing, but she had come; and then she had died—the previous September. (Yes, she thought, Big Ben beat on and on, sparing no one.)
And she had had a rather miserable life, Clarissa supposed; had seemingly turned bitter early on. Was it losing her mother, her sister-in-law, and best friend, so young? Clarissa wondered, as she herself had lost Sylvia. And then she immediately thought how odd it was that people reacted to similar situations so differently. But then each of us is different (she went on thinking), which was one of the things that made something like this (she looked around)—a party—so fascinating (if it worked). But how Aunt Helena, in her white Cashmere shawl at Bourton, always going on about her book on the orchids of Burma and how it went into three editions before 1870, how Aunt Helena had taken a dislike to Sally (she thought, now looking over in Sally’s direction and thinking she should be getting back)—it was as if Aunt Helena, for reasons known only to her (or perhaps unknown), it was as if she were taking out all of her bitter feelings on Sally.
“Most astronomers are interested in the corona,” Hugh Whitbread, having put on his spectacles, now read aloud. It was a clipping from that morning’s Times which he had brought along—folded up in his coat pocket. Professor Brierly nodded and brushed a few crumbs from Hugh Whitbread’s lapels, who then, though slightly taken aback by this impertinence on the professor’s part, continued. “And in consequence they must take up their stations on the central line of totality or as near to it as possible.” (And here Hugh Whitbread looked up at Professor Brierly to make sure that he still had his attention, which he did, and then he traced his finger along the page and mumbled to himself to indicate that he was skimming, searching, for—there it was.
“Here it is,” he said to Brierly. “Here is the exercise I told you about. ‘Pass a half-crown centrally over a florin,’” Hugh Whitbread read instructionally, and the professor dutifully reached into his trouser pocket, pulled out some coins and fingered through them until he found a half crown and a florin. “‘The rim of the florin,’” Whitbread continued, “‘unaccompanied by any other part, will only appear for two moments, just before the whole florin is covered and just after it is uncovered.’” He looked down his spectacles and over the top of the clipping to be sure that Brierly was following him. “‘But if the half-crown is allowed to project over the top edge of the florin, while it does not quite reach the bottom edge,’” he read, “‘some part of the rim of the florin can be made to persist at the bottom for quite an appreciable time.’” Now Hugh Whitbread looked up from the clipping and, satisfied that Brierly was suitably impressed, continued. “‘It will be noted that the florin is never totally eclipsed....’”
“I’ve heard,” Prickett Ellis said to Sasha Richardson (yet another friend of her ambassador father’s), “that the experts advise one to choose an open space with a fairly distant easterly horizon.”
Whereas a large circle of people had gathered around the handsome a
nd charismatic Ralph Johnson, who was saying he had read that the staff of the Astronomer Royal had arrived in Giggleswick two weeks hence—“Imagine that”—on June 14, and that they were now in position, at a Giggleswick school, with a forty-five-foot-long camera with a six-millimeter lens.
“A camera made in America no less,” Herbert Ainsty added, for he, too, read his morning Times.
“Oh, this all sounds terribly military and war-like,” cried Lady Lovejoy, who had lost a son in the War and did not—on principle, she said—read the papers, for they were full of nothing but bad news.
But just as Richard Dalloway had begun to think about Robbie, to long for him—if only he could have seen Robbie earlier that day, and to muse on and, yes, admit the fact that Robbie was the now of life, the present (and the future? he wondered), Lady Bruton snared him, took him off into a corner and immediately began discussing not the subject of the moment—the eclipse—nor her host’s thirtieth wedding anniversary, but her uncle, the General Sir Talbot Moore, and Richard’s biography of her family. She said, with a mortal urgency, that she had something new to tell him.
“Some papers were delivered to me recently,” she went on breathlessly, “from the estate of a deceased cousin; an estate which has long been tied up in legalities.” Her voice was low and conspiratorial. “Frankly, I’d forgotten all about it,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “But I do think that I’ve uncovered one piece of news which will be of great interest to you.” She looked around and thought that she best keep this short, get right to the point. “And it is this” (now she was whispering): “It is that my uncle, General Sir Talbot Moore, took a bullet in the War!”
She watched Richard Dalloway’s expression as she said the word—“bullet,” and she thought that, indeed, he did look surprised. The General had tried to keep it a secret, Lady Bruton added, saying he had recorded it only in his diary as far as anyone knew, of which these papers she had recently been given contained some of the missing pages. But what’s more, she said, he extracted the bullet himself!—writing that he could not, nor would he, let his men see him wounded.
“Imagine the strength of mind that took, never mind the physical resilience,” she added, “to do that—to take a wound and then extract the bullet oneself And all the while not letting on, keeping it a secret—what character!” But such was the stock from which she came, Millicent Bruton thought now, fanning her familial tail feathers and stepping back from the corner into which she had pressed Richard Dalloway with the strength of her personality.
Poor Dick, Clarissa thought, looking about the car so as to observe the progress of the party and noticing that Lady Bruton had seemingly backed him into a corner. Though she knew he liked and admired Millicent Bruton—he was writing the biography of her family after all—she thought her husband looked uncomfortable and that he might be in need of rescue. For this was a party, Clarissa reasoned, a party for which he was the host; and Lady Bruton could not talk business to him all night; she could not monopolise him. It was unfair.
“Chagall is in the air,” Elizabeth Dalloway thought she overheard someone say. Chagall!—that was the name of the painter whose work she’d seen in Paris, that her dream resembled, the painter of cows flying over moons.
Now she leaned her head out the window of the car, remembering the other long train ride she had taken that very same morning—in the opposite direction. Oh, she was tired. But just a little air would help wake her up; keep her awake, she thought, licking a finger and then running it along the rims of both of her eyes. And then she saw herself with her head out the window, her hair flying, and she was reminded of Grizzle and how whenever they took him in the motor car, which was more often than not when they were on their way to Fellstree for a weekend, or for the summer, how Grizzle would stick his head out the window, and how his fur would then stand on end and his little pink tongue flap in the wind. What was her poor Grizzle doing that very moment? she wondered—at home alone. Probably sleeping, she thought; dreaming animal dreams.
“What time is it, darling?” Clarissa Dalloway asked Richard, excusing herself to Lady Bruton. And as she did so, Clarissa also sent her husband a signal with her eyes, one only he could have read which said, Am I right to interrupt? Do you need me?
And Richard Dalloway stepped out of the corner a bit, in the direction of his wife, looked at his watch and said, “Almost three,” and then returned that private look of hers, that signal, with an expression of his own which said, Yes, thank you darling;save me.
How she hated such interruptions, Lady Bruton thought, trying to maintain her composure, particularly from the likes of a personage as frivolous and inconsequential as Clarissa Dalloway.
And so Clarissa wrapped her arm about her husband’s as she took his hand (for he was hers) and asked Lady Bruton if she was enjoying the party. And Lady Bruton (secretly miffed) said that indeed she was, that Richard’s idea for the party had been positively grand. “Typically so,” she said she might add. And Richard smiled and thanked her, and then, excusing himself, pointed down the car and said that he had to talk to... (but here his voice trailed off).
So, as in the best choreography, Clarissa stepped in and said how glad she was that Lady Bruton was enjoying the party, for look, there!—the Brunners obviously were not: they had fallen asleep (she laughed).
And there they were—the Brunners, sitting alone together, their faces blank, primeval, as if they were submerged in some other world or some other time; and all the while their heads bounced about as the train continued on its path to North Yorkshire.
(Life is much too short to fall asleep at parties, Clarissa mused.)
Having escaped Millicent Bruton’s fierce grasp, Richard Dalloway now sought out John Rosseter, while, at the other end of the car, Mrs. Walker stood at an open window smoking. And noticing the slightly odd (she thought) fellow to her left, dressed all in white but with a green carnation which looked much the worse for wear, she turned to him and asked if he were Irish and if that was what the green carnation was for? And he replied that yes, actually, he was Irish, or rather that he was descended from the Irish—his paternal grandfather had been born in Dublin. “Black Irish,” he added. And then Mrs. Walker, offering him a cigarette (which he declined), said that she had not seen him before, at which point he stuck out his hand and said, “Frank Faber,” which Mrs. Walker found odd indeed—that one of her master’s guests should introduce himself and offer his hand to her, a mere servant. He must be from out in the country somewhere, she thought with a laugh.
“And your youngest, what was his name; how old is he?” Richard Dalloway asked John Rosseter, now that the proud father was boasting about his sons, all but the youngest, that was (for Richard was certain there were five).
“That’s Rupert,” Rosseter said cagily, looking down. “He’s seventeen.”
Rupert Rosseter, Richard thought, asking what this Rupert was like, sensing a reluctance on Rosseter’s part which he couldn’t help but want to push against.
“Oh, he’s still in school, you know,” John Rosseter said, looking about the car; looking—most likely, Richard thought, for Sally to come to his rescue (but why?). “He’s young still; unformed.”
And Richard responded that the boy must have some interests, for when he was that age....
At which point Rosseter seemingly lost himself, whispered in a full-blown hiss, “He’s a Mama’s boy, all right? He’s Sally’s.”
Richard Dalloway looked away from John Rosseter now, feeling sorry that he had pushed; sorry, too, for this Rupert—who brought Robbie to mind, for whom he now felt sorry as well, and for whom he longed. So he apologised, but John Rosseter merely shook his head and waved him away, saying that he needn’t be sorry, but that he must go and find Sally.
But it seemed to Robbie that Richard had been talking to that same toweringly handsome man all night long, for every time he had looked down the car and seen Richard, which he had just done, there he was, standing ri
ght next to and addressing that great, sheltering oak.
He’s forgotten me, Robbie thought now, after two more glasses of wine, still in the dark as to where they were all heading (towards their death?). I am but a mere bush, he went on, some delicate, Oriental thing—a Japanese maple, perhaps, compared to that sturdy (if leafless) oak. But what was he to do? He was not a sturdy oak nor could he ever be. Perhaps I should transplant myself, he thought, continuing the botanical metaphor; remove myself to some other garden; to better soil. And then he noticed, standing not two feet away from him, quite the handsome specimen, he thought, one who might even be a fellow traveller, for he looked something like a younger version of Richard. Robbie immediately stood up and introduced himself (thinking pseudonym be damned), “Robert Davies,” to which the young man responded “Ralph Johnson.”
Clarissa now stood with Katherine Truelock and her Eleanor. “Finally!” Katherine said, embracing Clarissa—as the three of them looked over at poor Elizabeth, who had curled up on one of the seats and fallen asleep. “I’ve been trying to get to you all night,” Katherine said.
“And I, you,” Clarissa responded.
And so the two old friends began catching up, for they hadn’t seen one another in—had it really been three years? Clarissa exclaimed. And then on and on about how the time had flown by, and Clarissa politely trying to include Eleanor in the conversation (though she’d rather not, as Eleanor had always been entirely too hard for her taste), and Katherine saying that their place in Sussex really was not so far from London by train, and that Clarissa had no excuse and that she and Elizabeth must visit that very summer; and just look at how Elizabeth had changed in those three years. “She’s a handsome young woman now,” Katherine said. “And studying to be a veterinarian no less—Clarissa, you hadn’t told us. I’m so proud of her.”
Yes, Clarissa said, Elizabeth had blossomed, hadn’t she?; she had turned out well. And veterinary school was what she had said she wanted—wanted with all her heart, for she dearly loved animals; so she and Dick had discussed it, and though they knew it would be a long and arduous tenure, they also knew that it would be an experience which would most likely help Elizabeth mature (which, Clarissa said, Elizabeth did need, didn’t Katherine think?); and so they had agreed to let her pursue her dream, and in Liverpool no less, for Dick had taken, she said, what he called “the long view,” realising that they would have been unable to live with themselves had they knowingly stood in her way, as Dick’s father (he had pointed out) had stood in his way—for all Dick had wanted (she said) was to run a farm, but his father had pushed him into law.
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