Remember my party, remember my party, said Peter Walsh as he
stepped down the street, speaking to himself rhythmically, in time
with the flow
of the sound, the direct downright sound of Big Ben striking the
half-hour. (The leaden circles dissolved in the air.) Oh these
parties, he thought; Clarissa’s parties. Why does she give these
parties, he thought. Not that he blamed her or this effigy of a man
in a tail-coat with a carnation in his buttonhole coming towards him.
Only one person in the world could be as he was, in love. And there
he was, this fortunate man, himself, reflected in the plate-glass
window of a motor-car manufacturer in Victoria Street. All India lay
behind him; plains, mountains; epidemics of cholera; a district twice
as big as Ireland; decisions he had come to alone- he, Peter Walsh;
who was now really for the first time in his life, in love. Clarissa
had grown hard, he thought; and a trifle sentimental into the
bargain, he suspected, looking at the great motor-cars capable of
doing-how many miles on how many gallons? For he had a turn for
mechanics; had invented a plough in his district, had ordered
wheel-barrows from England, but the coolies wouldn’t use them, all of
which Clarissa knew nothing whatever
about.
As a cloud crosses the sun, silence falls on London; and falls on the mind. Effort ceases. Time flaps on the mast. There we stop; there we stand. Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame. Where there is nothing, Peter Walsh said to himself; feeling hollowed out, utterly empty within. Clarissa refused me, he thought. He stood there thinking, Clarissa refused me.
Ah, said St. Margaret’s, like a hostess who comes into her drawing-room on the very stroke of the hour and finds her guests there already. I am not late. No, it is precisely half-past eleven, she says.