Complete works of virgin.., p.229
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf, page 229
“But Magdalena,” said Nicholas, as they stood in the little low-ceilinged room in which dinner was laid, “Sara said, ‘We shall meet tomorrow night at Maggie’s . . .’ She is not here.”
He stood; the others had sat down.
“She will come in time,” said Maggie.
“I shall ring her up,” said Nicholas. He left the room.
“Isn’t it much nicer,” said Eleanor, taking her plate, “not having servants . . .”
“We have a woman to do the washing-up,” said Maggie.
“And we are extremely dirty,” said Renny.
He took up a fork and examined it between the prongs.
“No, this fork, as it happens, is clean,” he said, and put it down again.
Nicholas came back into the room. He looked perturbed. “She is not there,” he said to Maggie. “I rang her up, but I could get no answer.”
“Probably she’s coming,” said Maggie. “Or she may have forgotten. . . .”
She handed him his soup. But he sat looking at his plate without moving. Wrinkles had come on his forehead; he made no attempt to hide his anxiety. He was without self-consciousness. “There!” he suddenly exclaimed, interrupting them as they talked. “She is coming!” he added. He put down his spoon and waited. Someone was coming slowly down the steep stairs.
The door opened and Sara came in. She looked pinched with the cold. Her cheeks were white here and red there, and she blinked as if she were still dazed from her walk through the blue-shrouded streets. She gave her hand to Nicholas and he kissed it. But she wore no engagement ring, Eleanor observed.
“Yes, we are dirty,” said Maggie, looking at her; she was in her day clothes. “In rags,” she added, for a loop of gold thread hung down from her own sleeve as she helped the soup.
“I was thinking how beautiful . . .” said Eleanor, for her eyes had been resting on the silver dress with gold threads in it. “Where did you get it?”
“In Constantinople, from a Turk,” said Maggie.
“A turbaned and fantastic Turk,” Sara murmured, stroking the sleeve as she took her plate. She still seemed dazed.
“And the plates,” said Eleanor, looking at the purple birds on her plate, “Don’t I remember them?” she asked.
“In the cabinet in the drawing-room at home,” said Maggie. “But it seemed silly — keeping them in a cabinet.”
“We break one every week,” said Renny.
“They’ll last the war,” said Maggie.
Eleanor observed a curious mask-like expression come down over Renny’s face as she said “the war.” Like all the French, she thought, he cares passionately for his country. But contradictorily, she felt, looking at him. He was silent. His silence oppressed her. There was something formidable about his silence.
“And why were you so late?” said Nicholas, turning to Sara. He spoke gently, reproachfully, rather as if she were a child. He poured her out a glass of wine.
Take care, Eleanor felt inclined to say to her; the wine goes to one’s head. She had not drunk wine for months. She was feeling already a little blurred; a little light-headed. It was the light after the dark; talk after silence; the war, perhaps, removing barriers.
But Sara drank. Then she burst out:
“Because of that damned fool.”
“Damned fool?” said Maggie. “Which?”
“Eleanor’s nephew,” said Sara. “North. Eleanor’s nephew, North.” She held her glass towards Eleanor, as if she were addressing her. “North . . .” Then she smiled. “There I was, sitting alone. The bell rang. ‘That’s the wash,’ I said. Footsteps came up the stairs. There was North — North,” she raised her hand to her head as if in salute, “cutting a figure like this— ‘What the devil’s that for?’ I asked. ‘I leave for the Front tonight,’ he said, clicking his heels together. ‘I’m a lieutenant in—’ whatever it was — Royal Regiment of Rat-catchers or something. . . . And he hung his cap on the bust of our grandfather. And I poured out tea. ‘How many lumps of sugar does a lieutenant in the Royal Rat-catchers require?’ I asked. ‘One. Two. Three. Four. . . .’”
She dropped pellets of bread on to the table. As each fell, it seemed to emphasise her bitterness. She looked older, more worn; though she laughed, she was bitter.
“Who is North?” Nicholas asked. He pronounced the word “North” as if it were a point on the compass.
“My nephew. My brother Morris’s son,” Eleanor explained.
“There he sat,” Sara resumed, “in his mud-coloured uniform, with his switch between his legs, and his ears sticking out on either side of his pink, foolish face, and whatever I said, ‘Good,’ he said, ‘Good,’ ‘Good,’ until I took up the poker and tongs” — she took up her knife and fork— “and played ‘God save the King, Happy and Glorious, Long to reign over us—’” She held her knife and fork as if they were weapons.
I’m sorry he’s gone, Eleanor thought. A picture came before her eyes — the picture of a nice cricketing boy smoking a cigar on a terrace. I’m sorry. . . . Then another picture formed. She was sitting on the same terrace; but now the sun was setting; a maid came out and said, “The soldiers are guarding the line with fixed bayonets!” That was how she had heard of the war — three years ago. And she had thought, putting down her coffee-cup on a little table, Not if I can help it! overcome by an absurd but vehement desire to protect those hills; she had looked at the hills across the meadow. . . . Now she looked at the foreigner opposite.
“How unfair you are,” Nicholas was saying to Sara. “Prejudiced; narrow; unfair,” he repeated, tapping her hand with his finger.
He was saying what Eleanor felt herself.
“Yes. Isn’t it natural . . .” she began. “Could you allow the Germans to invade England and do nothing?” she said, turning to Renny. She was sorry she had spoken; and the words were not the ones she had meant to use. There was an expression of suffering, or was it anger? on his face.
“I?” he said. “I help them to make shells.”
Maggie stood behind him. She had brought in the meat. “Carve,” she said. He was staring at the meat which she had put down in front of him. He took up the knife and began to carve mechanically.
“Now, Nurse,” she reminded him. He cut another helping.
“Yes,” said Eleanor awkwardly as Maggie took away the plate. She did not know what to say. She spoke without thinking. “Let’s end it as quickly as possible and then . . .” She looked at him. He was silent. He turned away. He had turned to listen to what the others were saying, as if to take refuge from speaking himself.
“Poppycock, poppycock . . . don’t talk such damned poppycock — that’s what you really said,” Nicholas was saying. His hands were large and clean and the finger-nails were trimmed very close, Eleanor noticed. He might be a doctor, she thought.
“What’s ‘poppy-cock’?” she asked, turning to Renny. For she did not know the word.
“American,” said Renny. “He’s an American,” he said, nodding at Nicholas.
“No,” said Nicholas, turning round, “I am a Pole.”
“His mother was a Princess,” said Maggie as if she were teasing him. That explains the seal on his chain, Eleanor thought. He wore a large old seal on his chain.
“She was,” he said quite seriously. “One of the noblest families in Poland. But my father was an ordinary man — a man of the people. . . . You should have had more self-control,” he added, turning again to Sara.
“So I should,” she sighed. “But then he gave his bridle reins a shake and said, ‘Adieu for evermore, adieu for evermore!’” She stretched out her hand and poured herself another glass of wine.
“You shall have no more to drink,” said Nicholas, moving away the bottle. “She saw herself,” he explained, turning to Eleanor, “on top of a tower, waving a white handkerchief to a knight in armour.”
“And the moon was rising over a dark moor,” Sara murmured, touching a pepper-pot.
The pepper-pot’s a dark moor, Eleanor thought, looking at it. A little blur had come round the edges of things. It was the wine; it was the war. Things seemed to have lost their skins; to be freed from some surface hardness; even the chair with gilt claws, at which she was looking, seemed porous; it seemed to radiate out some warmth, some glamour, as she looked at it.
“I remember that chair,” she said to Maggie. “And your mother . . .” she added. But she always saw Eugénie not sitting but in movement.
“. . . dancing,” she added.
“Dancing . . .” Sara repeated. She began drumming on the table with her fork.
“When I was young, I used to dance,” she hummed.
“All men loved me when I was young. . . . Roses and syringas hung, when I was young, when I was young. D’you remember, Maggie?” She looked at her sister as if they both remembered the same thing.
Maggie nodded. “In the bedroom. A waltz,” she said.
“A waltz . . .” said Eleanor. Sara was drumming a waltz rhythm on the table. Eleanor began to hum in time to it: “Hoity te, toity te, hoity te. . . .”
A long-drawn hollow sound wailed out.
“No, no!” she protested, as if somebody had given her the wrong note. But the sound wailed again.
“A fog-horn?” she said. “On the river?”
But as she said it she knew what it was.
The siren wailed again.
“The Germans!” said Renny. “Those damned Germans!” He put down his knife and fork with an exaggerated gesture of boredom.
“Another raid,” said Maggie, getting up. She left the room; Renny followed her.
“The Germans . . .” said Eleanor as the door shut. She felt as if some dull bore had interrupted an interesting conversation. The colours began to fade. She had been looking at the red chair. It lost its radiance as she looked at it, as if a light had been extinguished underneath.
They heard the rush of wheels in the street. Everything seemed to be going past very quickly. There was the round of feet tapping on the pavement. Eleanor got up and drew the curtains slightly apart. The basement was sunk beneath the pavement, so that she only saw people’s legs and skirts as they went past the area railings. Two men came by walking very quickly; then an old woman, with her skirt swinging from side to side, walked past.
“Oughtn’t we to ask people in?” she said, turning round. But when she looked back the old woman had disappeared. So had the men. The street was now quite empty. The houses opposite were completely curtained. She drew their own curtain carefully. The table, with the gay china and the lamp, seemed ringed in a circle of bright light as she turned back.
She sat down again. “D’you mind air raids?” Nicholas asked, looking at her with his inquisitive expression. “People differ so much.”
“Not at all,” she said. She would have crumbled a piece of bread to show him that she was at her ease; but as she was not afraid, the action seemed to her unnecessary.
“The chances of being hit oneself are so small,” she said. “What were we saying?” she added.
It seemed to her that they had been saying something extremely interesting; but she could not remember what. They sat silent for a moment. Then they heard a shuffling on the stairs.
“The children . . .” said Sara. They heard the dull boom of a gun in the distance.
Here Renny came in.
“Bring your plates,” he said.
“In here.” He led them into the cellar. It was a large cellar. With its crypt-like ceiling and stone walls it had a damp ecclesiastical look. It was used partly for coal, partly for wine. The light in the centre shone on glittering heaps of coal; bottles of wine wrapped in straw lay on their sides on stone shelves. There was a mouldy smell of wine, straw and damp. It was chilly after the dining-room. Sara came in carrying quilts and dressing-gowns which she had fetched from upstairs. Eleanor was glad to wrap herself in a blue dressing-gown; she wrapped it round her and sat holding her plate on her knees. It was cold.
“And now?” said Sara, holding her spoon erect.
They all looked as if they were waiting for something to happen. Maggie came in carrying a plum pudding.
“We may as well finish our dinner,” she said. But she spoke too sensibly; she was anxious about the children, Eleanor guessed. They were in the kitchen. She had seen them as she passed.
“Are they asleep?” she asked.
“Yes. But if the guns . . .” she began, helping the pudding. Another gun boomed out. This time it was distinctly louder.
“They’ve got through the defences,” said Nicholas.
They began to eat their pudding.
A gun boomed again. This time there was a bark in its boom.
“Hampstead,” said Nicholas. He took out his watch. The silence was profound. Nothing happened. Eleanor looked at the blocks of stone arched over their heads. She noticed a spider’s web in one corner. Another gun boomed. A sigh of air rushed up with it. It was right on top of them this time.
“The Embankment,” said Nicholas. Maggie put down her plate and went into the kitchen.
There was profound silence. Nothing happened. Nicholas looked at his watch as if he were timing the guns. There was something queer about him, Eleanor thought; medical, priestly? He wore a seal that hung down from his watch-chain. The number on the box opposite was 1397. She noticed everything. The Germans must be overhead now. She felt a curious heaviness on top of her head. One, two, three, four, she counted, looking up at the greenish-grey stone. Then there was a violent crack of sound, like the split of lightning in the sky. The spider’s web oscillated.
“On top of us,” said Nicholas, looking up. They all looked up. At any moment a bomb might fall. There was dead silence. In the silence they heard Maggie’s voice in the kitchen.
“That was nothing. Turn round and go to sleep.” She spoke very calmly and soothingly.
One, two, three four, Eleanor counted. The spider’s web was swaying. That stone may fall, she thought, fixing a certain stone with her eyes. Then a gun boomed again. It was fainter — further away.
“That’s over,” said Nicholas. He shut his watch with a click. And they all turned and shifted on their hard chairs as if they had been cramped.
Maggie came in.
“Well, that’s over,” she said. (“He woke for a moment, but he went off to sleep again,” she said in an undertone to Renny, “but the baby slept right through.”) She sat down and took the plate that Renny was holding for her.
“Now let’s finish our pudding,” she said, speaking in her natural voice.
“Now we will have some wine,” said Renny. He examined one bottle; then another; finally he took a third and wiped it carefully with the tail of his dressing-gown. He placed the bottle on a wooden case and they sat round in a circle.
“It didn’t come to much, did it?” said Sara. She was tilting back her chair as she held out her glass.
“Ah, but we were frightened,” said Nicholas. “Look — how pale we all are.”
They looked at each other. Draped in their quilts and dressing-gowns, against the grey-green walls, they all looked whitish, greenish.
“It’s partly the light,” said Maggie. “Eleanor,” she said, looking at her, “looks like an abbess.”
The deep-blue dressing-gown which hid the foolish little ornaments, the tabs of velvet and lace on her dress, had improved her appearance. Her middle-aged face was crinkled like an old glove that has been creased into a multitude of fine lines by the gestures of a hand.
“Untidy, am I?” she said, putting her hand to her hair.
“No. Don’t touch it,” said Maggie.
“And what were we talking about before the raid?” Eleanor asked. Again she felt that they had been in the middle of saying something very interesting when they were interrupted. But there had been a complete break; none of them could remember what they had been saying.
“Well, it’s over now,” said Sara. “So let’s drink a health — Here’s to the New World!” she exclaimed. She raised her glass with a flourish. They all felt a sudden desire to talk and laugh.
“Here’s to the New World!” they all cried, raising their glasses, and clinking them together.
The five glasses filled with yellow liquid came together in a bunch.
“To the New World!” they cried and drank. The yellow liquid swayed up and down in their glasses.
“Now, Nicholas,” said Sara, setting her glass down with a tap on the box, “a speech! A speech!”
“Ladies and gentlemen!” he began, flinging his hand out like an orator. “Ladies and gentlemen . . .”
“We don’t want speeches,” Renny interrupted him.
Eleanor was disappointed. She would have liked a speech. But he seemed to take the interruption good-humouredly; he sat there nodding and smiling.
“Let’s go upstairs,” said Renny, pushing away the box.
“And leave this cellar,” said Sara, stretching her arms out, “this cave of mud and dung. . . .”
“Listen!” Maggie interrupted. She held up her hand. “I thought I heard the guns again. . . .”
They listened. The guns were still firing, but far away in the distance. There was a sound like the breaking of waves on a shore far away.
“They’re only killing other people,” said Renny savagely. He kicked the wooden box.
“But you must let us think of something else,” Eleanor protested. The mask had come down over his face.
“And what nonsense, what nonsense Renny talks,” said Nicholas, turning to her privately. “Only children letting off fireworks in the back garden,” he muttered as he helped her out of her dressing-gown. They went upstairs.
Eleanor came into the drawing-room. It looked larger than she remembered it, and very spacious and comfortable. Papers were strewn on the floor; the fire was burning brightly; it was warm; it was cheerful. She felt very tired. She sank down into an armchair. Sara and Nicholas had lagged behind. The others were helping the nurse to carry the children up to bed, she supposed. She lay back in the chair. Everything seemed to become quiet and natural again. A feeling of great calm possessed her. It was as if another space of time had been issued to her, but, robbed by the presence of death of something personal, she felt — she hesitated for a word; “immune?” Was that what she meant? Immune, she said, looking at a picture without seeing it. Immune, she repeated. It was a picture of a hill and a village perhaps in the South of France; perhaps in Italy. There were olive trees; and white roofs grouped against a hillside. Immune, she repeated, looking at the picture.
