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A Violent explosion in motor car and Mrs. Dalloway looks at of Septimus Warren Smith.
Musing thus over diverse thoughts Mrs. Dalloway reaches the shop of the florist, Mrs. Mulberry. She is greeted by Miss Pym, a sales woman, whose hands look always red. “as if they had stood in cold water with the flowers”. As she moves from flower-jar to flower-jar Mr. Dalloway’s heart jumps in fear and terror due to the sudden backfiring of a motor-car engine that was standing on the opposite of Mulberry’s shop-window. A large gathering of people is seen there next moment and everybody is thinking that the car must belong to some royal personages. Mrs. Dalloway, while looking at the car, sees Mr. Septimus Warren Smith with his wife Lucrezia, a little woman with large eyes. Here, the sub-plot of the novel, the story of Septimus-Rezia, is introduced. (Rezia is the short name of Lucrezia). It is four years after the marriage of Septimus and Rezia, Rezia is twenty-four years old. She has no friends in England. She had left Italy for the sake of Septimus and come to England. He has become a mere piece of bone, a nervous-wreck who does not talk with her, often jumps and startles at trifles, and frighten Lucrezia by saying, “I will kill myself’, whenever she addresses him and breaks his reveries.
Septimus is a tormented soul. The world seems to him very painful. He does not know where to descend. He does not want others to see him, notice him. One of his friends was killed in the war. This and general effect of war, has made him a neurotic. Dr. Holmes, under whose treatment Septimus is, told Rezia to make Septimus take interest in things outside. According to doctor there is no disease in Septimus. Rezia urges Septimus to move on and go to Dr. Bradshaw.
The car moves along Piccadilly and from there to Mall. The car is given passage by the traffic police in spite of excessive traffic.
There must be some royal person in the car that is going to Buckingham Palace where the Queen lives. In spite of the dreadful aftermath of the war the loyalty of the British men to their rulers has remained as it was. They have forgotten their own misery while looking at the car. In this way there is created a scene of the common humanity.