Kitty leant back against the wall of the box; her face was shaded by the folds of the curtain. She was glad to be shaded. As they played the overture she looked at Edward. She could only see the outline of his face in the red glow; it was heavier than it used to be; but he looked intellectual, handsome and a little remote as he listened to the overture. It wouldn’t have done, she thought; I’m much too . . . she did not finish the sentence. He has never married, she thought; and she had. And I’ve three boys. I’ve been in Australia, I’ve been in India. . . . The music made her think of herself and her own life as she seldom did. It exalted her; it cast a flattering light over herself, her past. But why did Martin laugh at me for having a car? she thought. What’s the good of laughing? she asked.
Here the curtain went up. She leant forward and looked at the stage. The dwarf was hammering at the sword. Hammer, hammer, hammer, he went with little short, sharp strokes. She listened. The music had changed. He, she thought, looking at the handsome boy, knows exactly what the music means. He was already completely possessed by the music. She liked the look of complete absorption that had swum up on top of his immaculate respectability, making him seem almost stern. . . . But here was Siegfried. She leant forward. Dressed in leopard-skins, very fat, with nut-brown thighs, leading a bear — here he was. She liked the fat bouncing young man in his flaxen wig: his voice was magnificent. Hammer, hammer, hammer he went. She leant back again. What did that make her think of? A young man who came into a room with shavings in his hair . . . when she was very young. In Oxford? She had gone to tea with them; had sat on a hard chair; in a very light room; and there was a sound of hammering in the garden. And then a boy came in with shavings in his hair. And she had wanted him to kiss her. Or was it the farm hand up at Carter’s, when old Carter had loomed up suddenly leading a bull with a ring through its nose?
“That’s the sort of life I like,” she thought, taking up her opera-glasses. “That’s the sort of person I am. . . .” she finished her sentence.
Then she put the opera-glasses to her eyes. The scenery suddenly became bright and close; the grass seemed to be made of thick green wool; she could see Siegfried’s fat brown arms glistening with paint. His face was shiny. She put down the glasses and leant back in her corner.
And old Lucy Craddock — she saw Lucy sitting at a table; with her red nose, and her patient, kind eyes. “So you’ve done no work this week again, Kitty!” she said reproachfully. How I loved her! Kitty thought. And then she had gone back to the Lodge; and there was the tree, with a prop in the middle; and her mother sitting bolt upright. . . . I wish I hadn’t quarrelled so much with my mother, she thought, overcome with a sudden sense of the passage of time and its tragedy. Then the music changed.
She looked at the stage again. The Wanderer had come in. He was sitting on a bank in a long grey dressing-gown; and a patch wobbled uncomfortably over one of his eyes. On and on he went; on and on. Her attention flagged. She glanced round the dim red house; she could only see white elbows pointed on the ledges of boxes; here and there a sharp pinpoint of light showed as some one followed the score with a torch. Edward’s fine profile again caught her eye. He was listening, critically, intently. It wouldn’t have done, she thought, it wouldn’t have done at all.
At last the Wanderer had gone. And now? she asked herself, leaning forward. Siegfried burst in. Dressed in his leopard-skins, laughing and singing, here he was again. The music excited her. It was magnificent. Siegfried took the broken pieces of the sword and blew on the fire and hammered, hammered, hammered. The singing, the hammering and the fire leaping all went on at the same time. Quicker and quicker, more and more rhythmically, more and more triumphantly he hammered, until at last up he swung the sword high above his head and brought it down — crack! The anvil burst asunder. And then he brandished the sword over his head and shouted and sang; and the music rushed higher and higher; and the curtain fell.
The lights opened in the middle of the house. All the colour came back. The whole Opera House leapt into life again with its faces and its diamonds and its men and women. They were clapping and waving their programmes. The whole house seemed to be fluttering with white squares of paper. The curtains fell apart and were held back by tall footmen in knee-breeches. Kitty stood up and clapped. Again the curtains closed; again they parted. The footmen were almost pulled off their feet by the heavy folds that they had to hold back. Again and again they held the curtain back; and even when they had let it fall and the singers had disappeared and the orchestra were leaving their seats, the audience still stood clapping and waving their programmes.
Kitty turned to the young man in her box. He was leaning over the ledge. He was still clapping. He was shouting “Bravo! Bravo!” He had forgotten her. He had forgotten himself.
“Wasn’t that marvellous?” he said at last, turning round.
There was an odd look on his face as if he were in two worlds at once and had to draw them together.
“Marvellous!” she agreed. She looked at him with a pang of envy.
“And now,” she said, gathering her things together, “let us have dinner.”
At Hyams Place they had finished dinner. The table was cleared; only a few crumbs remained, and the pot of flowers stood in the middle of the table like a sentry. The only sound in the room was the stitching of a needle, pricking through silk, for Maggie was sewing. Sara sat hunched on the music stool, but she was not playing.
“Sing something,” said Maggie suddenly. Sara turned and struck the notes.
“Brandishing, flourishing my sword in my hand. . .” she sang. The words were the words of some pompous eighteenth century march, but her voice was reedy and thin. Her voice broke. She stopped singing.
She sat silent with her hands on the notes. “What’s the good of singing if one hasn’t any voice?” she murmured. Maggie went on sewing.
“What did you do today?” she said at length, looking up abruptly.
“Went out with Rose,” said Sara.
“And what did you do with Rose?” said Maggie. She spoke absent-mindedly. Sara turned and glanced at her. Then she began to play again. “Stood on the bridge and looked into the water,” she murmured.
“Stood on the bridge and looked into the water,” she hummed, in time to the music. “Running water; flowing water. May my bones turn to coral; and fish light their lanthorns; fish light their green lanthorns in my eyes.” She half turned and looked round at Maggie. But she was not attending. Sara was silent. She looked at the notes again. But she did not see the notes, she saw a garden; flowers; and her sister; and a young man with a big nose who stooped to pick a flower that was gleaming in the dark. And he held the flower out in his hand in the moonlight . . . Maggie interrupted her.
“You went out with Rose,” she said. “Where to?”
Sara left the piano and stood in front of the fireplace.
“We got into a bus and went to Holborn,” she said. “And we walked along a street,” she went on; “and suddenly,” she jerked her hand out, “I felt a clap on my shoulder.” “Damned liar!” said Rose, “and took me and flung me against a public house wall!”
Maggie stitched on in silence.
“You got into a bus and went to Holborn,” she repeated mechanically after a time. “And then?”
“Then we went in to a room,” Sara continued, “and there were people — multitudes of people. And I said to myself . . .” she paused.
“A meeting?” Maggie murmured. “Where?”
“In a room,” Sara answered. “A pale greenish light. A woman hanging clothes on a line in the back garden; and someone went by rattling a stick on the railings.”
“I see,” said Maggie. She stitched on quickly.
“I said to myself,” Sara resumed, “whose heads are those . . .” she paused.
“A meeting,” Maggie interrupted her. “What for? What about?”
“There were pigeons cooing,” Sara went on. “Take two coos, Taffy. Take two coos . . . Tak . .
. And then a wing darkened the air, and in came Kitty clothed in starlight; and sat on a chair.”
She paused. Maggie was silent. She went on stitching for a moment.
“Who came in?” she asked at length.
“Somebody very beautiful; clothed in starlight; with green in her hair,” said Sara. “Whereupon” — here she changed her voice and imitated the tones in which a middle-class man might be supposed to welcome a lady of fashion, “up jumps Mr Pickford, and says ‘Oh, Lady Lasswade, won’t you take this chair?’”
She pushed a chair in front of her.
“And then,” she went on, flourishing her hands, “Lady Lasswade sits down; puts her gloves on the table,” — she patted a cushion— “like that.”
Maggie looked up over her sewing. She had a general impression of a room full of people; sticks rattling on the railings; clothes hanging out to dry, and someone coming in with beetles’ wings in her hair.
“What happened then?” she asked.
“Then withered Rose, spiky Rose, tawny Rose, thorny Rose,” Sara burst out laughing, “shed a tear.”
“No, no,” said Maggie. There was something wrong with the story; something impossible. She looked up. The light of a passing car slid across the ceiling. It was growing too dark to see. The lamp from the public-house opposite made a yellow glare in the room; the ceiling trembled with a watery pattern of fluctuating light. There was a sound of brawling in the street outside; a scuffling and trampling as if the police were hauling someone along the street against his will. Voices jeered and shouted after him.
“Another row?” Maggie murmured, sticking her needle in the stuff.
Sara got up and went to the window. A crowd had gathered outside the public house. A man was being thrown out. There he came, staggering. He fell against a lamp-post to which he clung. The scene was lit up by the glare of the lamp over the public house door. Sara stood for a moment at the window watching them. Then she turned; her face in the mixed light looked cadaverous and worn, as if she were no longer a girl, but an old woman worn out by a life of childbirth, debauchery and crime. She stood there hunched up, with her hands clenched together.
“In time to come,” she said, looking at her sister, “people, looking into this room — this cave, this little antre, scooped out of mud and dung, will hold their fingers to their noses” — she held her fingers to her nose— “and say ‘Pah! They stink!’” She fell down into a chair.
Maggie looked at her. Curled round, with her hair falling over her face and her hands screwed together she looked like some great ape, crouching there in a little cave of mud and dung. “Pah!” Maggie repeated to herself, “They stink” . . . She drove her needle through the stuff in a spasm of disgust. It was true, she thought; they were nasty little creatures, driven by uncontrollable lusts. The night was full of roaring and cursing; of violence and unrest, also of beauty and joy. She got up, holding the dress in her hands. The folds of silk fell down to the floor and she ran her hand over them.
“That’s done. That’s finished,” she said, laying the dress on the table. There was nothing more she could do with her hands. She folded the dress up and put it away. Then the cat, which had been asleep, rose very slowly, arched its back and stretched itself to its full length.
“You want your supper, do you?” said Maggie. She went into the kitchen and came back with a saucer of milk. “There, poor puss,” she said, putting the saucer down on the floor. She stood watching the cat lap up its milk, mouthful by mouthful; then it stretched itself out again with extraordinary grace.
Sara, standing at a little distance, watched her. Then she imitated her.
“There, poor puss, there, poor puss,” she repeated. “As you rock the cradle, Maggie,” she added.
Maggie raised her arms as if to ward off some implacable destiny; then let them fall. Sara smiled as she watched her; then tears brimmed, fell and ran slowly down her cheeks. But as she put up her hand to wipe them there was a sound of knocking; somebody was hammering on the door of the next house. The hammering stopped. Then it began again — hammer, hammer, hammer.
They listened.
“Upcher’s come home drunk and wants to be let in,” said Maggie. The knocking ceased. Then it began again.
Sara dried her eyes, roughly, energetically.
“Bring up your children on a desert island where the ships only come when the moon’s full!” she exclaimed.
“Or have none?” said Maggie. A window was thrown open. A woman’s voice was heard shrieking abuse at the man. He bawled back in a thick drunken voice from the doorstep. Then the door slammed.
They listened.
“Now he’ll stagger against the wall and be sick,” said Maggie. They could hear heavy footsteps lurching up the stairs in the next house. Then there was silence.
Maggie crossed the room to shut the window. The great windows of the factory opposite were all lit up; it looked like a palace of glass with thin black bars across it. A glaze of yellow light lit up the lower halves of the houses opposite; the slate roofs shone blue, for the sky hung down in a heavy canopy of yellow light. Footsteps tapped on the pavement, for people were still walking in the street. Far off a voice was crying hoarsely. Maggie leant out. The night was windy and warm.
“What’s he crying?” she said.
The voice came nearer and nearer.
“Death . . . ?” she said.
“Death . . . ?” said Sara. They leant out. But they could not hear the rest of the sentence. Then a man who was wheeling a barrow along the street shouted up to them:
“The King’s dead!”
1911
The sun was rising. Very slowly it came up over the horizon shaking out light. But the sky was so vast, so cloudless, that to fill it with light took time. Very gradually the clouds turned blue; leaves on forest trees sparkled; down below a flower shone; eyes of beasts — tigers, monkeys, birds — sparkled. Slowly the world emerged from darkness. The sea became like the skin of an innumerable scaled fish, glittering gold. Here in the South of France the furrowed vineyards caught the light; the little vines turned purple and yellow; and the sun coming through the slats of the blinds striped the white walls. Maggie, standing at the window, looked down on the courtyard, and saw her husband’s book cracked across with shadow from the vine above; and the glass that stood beside him glowed yellow. Cries of peasants working came through the open window.
The sun, crossing the Channel, beat vainly on the blanket of thick sea mist. Light slowly permeated the haze over London; struck on the statues in Parliament Square, and on the Palace where the flag flew though the King, borne under a white and blue Union Jack, lay in the caverns at Frogmore. It was hotter than ever. Horses’ noses hissed as they drank from the troughs; their hoofs made ridges hard and brittle as plaster on the country roads. Fires tearing over the moors left charcoal twigs behind them. It was August, the holiday season. The glass roofs of the great railway stations were globes incandescent with light. Travellers watched the hands of the round yellow clocks as they followed porters, wheeling portmanteaus, with dogs on leashes. In all the stations trains were ready to bore their way through England; to the North, to the South, to the West. Now the guard standing with his hand raised dropped his flag and the tea-urn slid past. Off the trains swung through the public gardens with asphalt paths; past the factories; into open country. Men standing on bridges fishing looked up; horses cantered; women came to doors and shaded their eyes; the shadow of the smoke floated over the corn, looped down and caught a tree. And on they passed.
In the station yard at Wittering, Mrs Chinnery’s old victoria stood waiting. The train was late; it was very hot. William the gardener sat on the box in his buff-coloured coat with the plated buttons flicking the flies off. The flies were troublesome. They had gathered in little brown clusters on the horses’ ears. He flicked his whip; the old mare stamped her hoofs; and shook her ears, for the flies had settled again. It was very hot. The sun beat down on the station yard,
on the carts and flies and traps waiting for the train. At last the signal dropped; a puff of smoke blew over the hedge; and in a minute people came streaming out into the yard, and here was Miss Pargiter carrying her bag in her hand and a white umbrella. William touched his hat.
“Sorry to be so late,” said Eleanor, smiling up at him, for she knew him; she came every year.
She put her bag on the seat and sat back under the shade of her white umbrella. The leather of the carriage was hot behind her back; it was very hot — hotter even than Toledo. They turned into the High Street; the heat seemed to make everything drowsy and silent. The broad street was full of traps and carts with the reins hanging loose and the horses’ heads drooping. But after the din of the foreign market-places how quiet it seemed! Men in gaiters were leaning against the walls; the shops had their awnings out; the pavement was barred with shadow. They had parcels to fetch. At the fishmonger’s they stopped; and a damp white parcel was handed out to them. At the ironmonger’s they stopped; and William came back with a scythe. Then they stopped at the chemist’s; but there they had to wait, because the lotion was not yet ready.
Eleanor sat back under the shade of her white umbrella. The air seemed to hum with the heat. The air seemed to smell of soap and chemicals. How thoroughly people wash in England, she thought, looking at the yellow soap, the green soap, and the pink soap in the chemist’s window. In Spain she had hardly washed at all; she had dried herself with a pocket handkerchief standing among the white dry stones of the Guadalquivir. In Spain it was all parched and shrivelled. But here — she looked down the High Street — every shop was full of vegetables; of shining silver fish; of yellow-clawed, soft-breasted chickens; of buckets, rakes and wheel-barrows. And how friendly people were!
She noticed how often hats were touched; hands were grasped; people stopped, talking, in the middle of the road. But now the chemist came out with a large bottle wrapped in tissue paper. It was stowed away under the scythe.
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 220
