The Complete Novels - 9 Books in One Edition. Virginia Woolf

her to such flippancy as would shock her colleagues for ever. The thought of what she might say made her bite her lips, as if her lips would protect her.

      But all these suggestions were but flotsam and jetsam cast to the surface by a more profound disturbance, which, as she could not consider it at present, manifested its existence by these grotesque nods and beckonings. Consider it, she must, when the committee was over. Meanwhile, she was behaving scandalously; she was looking out of the window, and thinking of the color of the sky, and of the decorations on the Imperial Hotel, when she ought to have been shepherding her colleagues, and pinning them down to the matter in hand. She could not bring herself to attach more weight to one project than to another. Ralph had said—she could not stop to consider what he had said, but he had somehow divested the proceedings of all reality. And then, without conscious effort, by some trick of the brain, she found herself becoming interested in some scheme for organizing a newspaper campaign. Certain articles were to be written; certain editors approached. What line was it advisable to take? She found herself strongly disapproving of what Mr. Clacton was saying. She committed herself to the opinion that now was the time to strike hard. Directly she had said this, she felt that she had turned upon Ralph’s ghost; and she became more and more in earnest, and anxious to bring the others round to her point of view. Once more, she knew exactly and indisputably what is right and what is wrong. As if emerging from a mist, the old foes of the public good loomed ahead of her—capitalists, newspaper proprietors, anti-suffragists, and, in some ways most pernicious of all, the masses who take no interest one way or another—among whom, for the time being, she certainly discerned the features of Ralph Denham. Indeed, when Miss Markham asked her to suggest the names of a few friends of hers, she expressed herself with unusual bitterness:

      “My friends think all this kind of thing useless.” She felt that she was really saying that to Ralph himself.

      “Oh, they’re that sort, are they?” said Miss Markham, with a little laugh; and with renewed vigor their legions charged the foe.

      Mary’s spirits had been low when she entered the committee-room; but now they were considerably improved. She knew the ways of this world; it was a shapely, orderly place; she felt convinced of its right and its wrong; and the feeling that she was fit to deal a heavy blow against her enemies warmed her heart and kindled her eye. In one of those flights of fancy, not characteristic of her but tiresomely frequent this afternoon, she envisaged herself battered with rotten eggs upon a platform, from which Ralph vainly begged her to descend. But—

      “What do I matter compared with the cause?” she said, and so on. Much to her credit, however teased by foolish fancies, she kept the surface of her brain moderate and vigilant, and subdued Mrs. Seal very tactfully more than once when she demanded, “Action!—everywhere!—at once!” as became her father’s daughter.

      The other members of the committee, who were all rather elderly people, were a good deal impressed by Mary, and inclined to side with her and against each other, partly, perhaps, because of her youth. The feeling that she controlled them all filled Mary with a sense of power; and she felt that no work can equal in importance, or be so exciting as, the work of making other people do what you want them to do. Indeed, when she had won her point she felt a slight degree of contempt for the people who had yielded to her.

      The committee now rose, gathered together their papers, shook them straight, placed them in their attache-cases, snapped the locks firmly together, and hurried away, having, for the most part, to catch trains, in order to keep other appointments with other committees, for they were all busy people. Mary, Mrs. Seal, and Mr. Clacton were left alone; the room was hot and untidy, the pieces of pink blotting-paper were lying at different angles upon the table, and the tumbler was half full of water, which some one had poured out and forgotten to drink.

      Mrs. Seal began preparing the tea, while Mr. Clacton retired to his room to file the fresh accumulation of documents. Mary was too much excited even to help Mrs. Seal with the cups and saucers. She flung up the window and stood by it, looking out. The street lamps were already lit; and through the mist in the square one could see little figures hurrying across the road and along the pavement, on the farther side. In her absurd mood of lustful arrogance, Mary looked at the little figures and thought, “If I liked I could make you go in there or stop short; I could make you walk in single file or in double file; I could do what I liked with you.” Then Mrs. Seal came and stood by her.

      “Oughtn’t you to put something round your shoulders, Sally?” Mary asked, in rather a condescending tone of voice, feeling a sort of pity for the enthusiastic ineffective little woman. But Mrs. Seal paid no attention to the suggestion.

      “Well, did you enjoy yourself?” Mary asked, with a little laugh.

      Mrs. Seal drew a deep breath, restrained herself, and then burst out, looking out, too, upon Russell Square and Southampton Row, and at the passers-by, “Ah, if only one could get every one of those people into this room, and make them understand for five minutes! But they must see the truth some day…. If only one could make them see it….”

      Mary knew herself to be very much wiser than Mrs. Seal, and when Mrs. Seal said anything, even if it was what Mary herself was feeling, she automatically thought of all that there was to be said against it. On this occasion her arrogant feeling that she could direct everybody dwindled away.

      “Let’s have our tea,” she said, turning back from the window and pulling down the blind. “It was a good meeting—didn’t you think so, Sally?” she let fall, casually, as she sat down at the table. Surely Mrs. Seal must realize that Mary had been extraordinarily efficient?

      “But we go at such a snail’s pace,” said Sally, shaking her head impatiently.

      At this Mary burst out laughing, and all her arrogance was dissipated.

      “You can afford to laugh,” said Sally, with another shake of her head, “but I can’t. I’m fifty-five, and I dare say I shall be in my grave by the time we get it—if we ever do.”

      “Oh, no, you won’t be in your grave,” said Mary, kindly.

      “It’ll be such a great day,” said Mrs. Seal, with a toss of her locks. “A great day, not only for us, but for civilization. That’s what I feel, you know, about these meetings. Each one of them is a step onwards in the great march—humanity, you know. We do want the people after us to have a better time of it—and so many don’t see it. I wonder how it is that they don’t see it?”

      She was carrying plates and cups from the cupboard as she spoke, so that her sentences were more than usually broken apart. Mary could not help looking at the odd little priestess of humanity with something like admiration. While she had been thinking about herself, Mrs. Seal had thought of nothing but her vision.

      “You mustn’t wear yourself out, Sally, if you want to see the great day,” she said, rising and trying to take a plate of biscuits from Mrs. Seal’s hands.

      “My dear child, what else is my old body good for?” she exclaimed, clinging more tightly than before to her plate of biscuits. “Shouldn’t I be proud to give everything I have to the cause?—for I’m not an intelligence like you. There were domestic circumstances—I’d like to tell you one of these days—so I say foolish things. I lose my head, you know. You don’t. Mr. Clacton doesn’t. It’s a great mistake, to lose one’s head. But my heart’s in the right place. And I’m so glad Kit has a big dog, for I didn’t think her looking well.”

      They had their tea, and went over many of the points that had been raised in the committee rather more intimately than had been possible then; and they all felt an agreeable sense of being in some way behind the scenes; of having their hands upon strings which, when pulled, would completely change the pageant exhibited daily to those who read the newspapers. Although their views were very different, this sense united them and made them almost cordial in their manners to each other.

      Mary, however, left the tea-party rather early, desiring both to be alone, and then to hear some music at the Queen’s Hall. She fully intended to use her loneliness to think out her position with regard to Ralph; but although she walked back to the Strand with