Вирджиния Вулф
Дом с привидениями. Уровень 2 / A Haunted House

Дизайн обложки Анастасии Орловой

© Матвеев С. А., адаптация, комментарии, словарь, 2023

© ООО «Издательство АСТ», 2023

* * *

A Haunted House

A ghostly couple went from room to room. They were lifting something here and opening something there.

“Here we left it,” she said.

And he added,

“Oh, but here too!”

“It’s upstairs,” she murmured.

“And in the garden,” he whispered.

“Quietly,” they said, “or we shall wake them.”

But you didn’t wake us. Oh, no. “They’re looking for it. They’re drawing the curtain”, one may say and read on a page or two. “They found it”. You can be certain. And you may rise and see: the house is empty, the doors are open. Only the wood pigeons are bubbling. The hum of the threshing machine[1] is sounding from the farm.

“What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?” My hands were empty. “Perhaps it’s upstairs then?”

The apples were in the loft. The garden was still. Only the book slipped into the grass.

But they found it in the drawing-room. No one saw them. The window panes reflected apples, reflected roses. All the leaves were green in the glass. When they moved in the drawing-room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, when the door was opened, something spread about the floor. Something hung upon the walls—what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet. From the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound.

“Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat softly. “The treasure buried; the roof…” the pulse stopped. Oh, was that the buried treasure?

A moment later the light faded. Out in the garden then? So fine, so rare, the beam always burnt behind the glass. Death was the glass. Death was between us. It came to the woman first, hundreds of years ago. It left the house. It sealed all the windows. The rooms were darkened. He left it, left her. He went North, went East. He saw the stars in the Southern sky. He came back to the house beneath the Downs.

“Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat gladly. “The Treasure is yours.”

The wind moved the trees. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still. The ghostly couple is wandering through the house. They are opening the windows. They are whispering not to wake us. They seek their joy.

“Here we slept,” she says.

And he adds,

“And we kissed each other.”

“And woke in the morning…”

“Silver between the trees…”

“Upstairs.”

“In the garden.”

“When summer came…”

“In winter snowtime.”

The doors were shutting. The doors were gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.

They come nearer. They cease at the doorway. The wind falls. The silver rain slides down the glass. Our eyes darken. We hear no steps beside us. We see no lady who spreads her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern.

“Look,” he breathes. “They sleep. Love upon their lips.”

They are holding their silver lamp above us. They are watching us long and deeply. They are standing near us.

The wind drives straightly. The flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall. Then they meet and fall upon the faces. The faces are pondering. The faces search the sleepers. The faces seek their hidden joy.

“Safe, safe, safe,” the heart of the house beats proudly.

“Long years…” he sighs.

“Again you found me.”

“Here,” she murmurs, “we were sleeping. We were reading in the garden. We were laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure.”

Their light lifts the lids upon my eyes.

“Safe! safe! safe!” the pulse of the house beats wildly.

I wake up and cry:

“Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.”

Kew Gardens

From the oval flower-bed there rose perhaps a hundred stalks. They were spreading into the leaves. They were unfurling at the tip red or blue or yellow petals. The petals were marked with spots. From the red, blue or yellow gloom of the throat emerged a straight bar. The petals were voluminous enough to feel the summer breeze. When they moved, the red, blue and yellow lights passed one over the other[2]. The light fell either upon the smooth, grey back of a pebble, or, the shell of a snail with its brown, circular veins, or falling into a raindrop. The breeze stirred briskly overhead. The colour was flashed into the air above, into the eyes of the men and women. These men and women walked in Kew Gardens in July.

The figures of these men and women walked past the flower-bed with a curiously irregular movement. The man was about six inches in front of the woman. He was strolling carelessly. She was turning her head to see that the children were not too far behind. The man walked in front of the woman purposely. He wished to go on with his thoughts.

“Fifteen years ago I came here with Lily,” he thought. “We sat somewhere over there by a lake. I begged her to marry me. It was hot. The dragonfly was circling round us. I remember the dragonfly and her shoe with the square silver buckle at the toe. All the time I spoke. I saw her shoe. It moved impatiently. I knew what she was going to say. She was in her shoe. And my love, my desire, were in the dragonfly. If the dragonfly settles there, on that leaf, she will say ‘Yes’ at once. But the dragonfly went round and round. It never settled anywhere. Of course not, happily not. And now I am walking here with Eleanor and the children.” Tell me, Eleanor, do you ever think of the past?”

“Why do you ask, Simon?”

“Because I think of the past. I think of Lily. I might have married her. Well, why are you silent?”

“Simon, doesn’t one always think of the past, in a garden with men and women? They are lying under the trees. Aren’t they one’s past, those men and women, those ghosts under the trees? One’s happiness, one’s reality?”

“For me, a silver shoe buckle and a dragonfly.”

“For me, a kiss. Imagine six little girls. They were sitting before their easels twenty years ago, down by the lake. They were painting the water-lilies, the first red water-lilies. And suddenly—a kiss. A kiss on the back of my neck. And my hand shook all the afternoon. So I couldn’t paint. It was so precious! The kiss of an old grey-haired woman with a wart on her nose. It was the mother of all my kisses all my life. Come, Caroline, come, Hubert.”

They walked on past the flower-bed. Soon they diminished in size among the trees. Soon they looked transparent.

In the oval flower-bed the snail appeared. It moved very slightly in its shell. Then it began to labour over the crumbs of earth. It had a definite goal in front of it. Brown cliffs with deep green lakes in the hollows, flat, blade-like trees, round boulders of grey stone. All these objects lay across the snail’s path. Before the snail decided to go further there came the feet of other people.

This time they were both men. The younger of the two was calm. He raised his eyes. He fixed them very steadily in front of him. His companion spoke. The elder man was walking curiously and shaky. He was jerking his hand forward. He was throwing up his head abruptly. These gestures were irresolute and pointless. He talked almost incessantly. He smiled to himself. He again began to talk. The smile was an answer. He was talking about spirits. He was talking about the spirits of the dead. The spirits, he said, were even now telling him odd things about their experiences in Heaven.

“The ancients knew Heaven as Thessaly, William. Now, after the war, the spirits are rolling between the hills like thunder.”

He paused, smiled, jerked his head and continued:

“You have a small electric battery and a piece of rubber to insulate the wire. Isolate? Insulate? Well, we’ll skip the details. The little machine stands by the head of the bed. It stands on a neat mahogany stand. All arrangements are properly fixed by workmen under my direction. The widow applies her ear. She summons the spirit. Women! Widows! Women in black…”

Here he saw a woman’s dress in the distance. In the shade, it looked a purple black. He took off his hat. He placed his hand upon his heart. He hurried towards her. He was muttering and gesticulating feverishly. But William caught him by the sleeve. William touched a flower with the tip of his walking-stick. The old man looked at it in some confusion. He bent his ear to it. Then he began to talk about the forests of Uruguay. He visited them hundreds of years ago in company with the most beautiful young woman in Europe. He was murmuring about forests of Uruguay, tropical roses, nightingales, sea beaches, mermaids, and women drowned at sea. William was moving him aside.

Then came two elderly women of the lower middle class. The first woman stout and ponderous. The other woman was nimble. They scrutinized the old man’s back in silence. After that they went on their very complicated dialogue:

“Nell, Bert, Lot, Cess, Phil, Pa, he says, I say, she says, I say, I say…”

“My Bert, Sis, Bill, Grandad, the old man, sugar,

Sugar, flour, kippers, greens,

Sugar, sugar, sugar.”

The ponderous woman looked at the flowers, with a curious expression. So the heavy woman came to a standstill opposite the flower bed. She ceased even to pretend to listen to what the other woman was saying. She stood there. She was swaying the top part of her body slowly backwards and forwards. She was looking at the flowers. Then she offered to have some tea.

The snail decided to creep beneath the leaf. There was a point where the leaf curved high enough from the ground.

Two other people came past outside on the turf. This time they were both young, a young man and a young woman.

“Lucky it isn’t Friday,” he observed.

“Why? Do you believe in luck?”

“They charge sixpence on Friday.”

“What’s sixpence anyway? Isn’t it worth sixpence?”

“What’s ‘it’—what do you mean by ‘it’?”

“O, anything—I mean—you know what I mean.”

Long pauses came between each of these remarks. They were uttered in toneless and monotonous voices. The couple stood still on the edge of the flower bed. They pressed the end of her parasol deep down into the soft earth. Who knows what precipices are concealed there? Who knows what slopes of ice don’t shine in the sun on the other side? Who knows? Who saw this before? She wondered what sort of tea they gave you at Kew. He pulled the parasol out of the earth with a jerk. He was impatient to find the place to have some tea, like other people.

“Come along, Trissie. It’s time to have our tea.”

“Wherever does one have one’s tea?” she asked.

There was the oddest thrill of excitement in her voice.

She was trailing her parasol, turning her head this way and that way. She was forgetting her tea. She was wishing to go down there and then down there. She was remembering orchids and cranes among wild flowers. She was remembering a Chinese pagoda and a crimson bird.

Thus one couple after another passed the flower-bed. Then this couple disappeared in green blue vapour. How hot it was! So hot that even the thrush hopped like a mechanical bird. It hopped, in the shadow of the flowers, with long pauses between one movement and the next.

Yellow and black, pink and white, men, women, and children appeared for a second upon the horizon. Then they wavered and sought shade beneath the trees. They were dissolving like drops of water in the yellow and green atmosphere. They were like thick waxen bodies of candles. Voices. Yes, voices. Wordless voices. They were breaking the silence suddenly with such depth of contentment, such passion of desire.

There was no silence. All the time the motor omnibuses were turning their wheels. They were changing their gear. They were like a vast nest of Chinese boxes. The voices cried aloud. The petals of myriads of flowers flashed their colours into the air.

Monday or Tuesday

Lazy and indifferent, the heron passes over the church beneath the sky. White and distant, the sky covers and uncovers. The sky moves and remains. A lake? A mountain? Oh, perfect—the sun! Ferns then, or white feathers, for ever and ever.

We are desiring truth. We are awaiting it. We are laboriously distilling a few words. A cry starts to the left. Another cry starts to the right. Wheels strike divergently. Ever desiring truth. The dome is red. Coins hang on the trees. Smoke trails from the chimneys; bark, shout, cry “Iron for sale”—and truth?

Men’s feet and women’s feet, black or gold-encrusted. This foggy weather, sugar? No, thank you. The commonwealth of the future. The firelight is darting. The firelight is making the room red. Black figures and their bright eyes. Outside a van discharges. Miss Thingummy drinks tea at her desk.

Leaves. Silver-splashed. Home or not home. Gathered, scattered, squandered, swept up, down, torn, sunk, assembled leaves—and truth?

Now to recollect by the fireside on the white square of marble. Words are rising from ivory depths. They shed their blackness, blossom and penetrate. The book fell down. In the flame, in the smoke, in the momentary sparks, the marble square pendant, minarets beneath and the Indian seas, stars glint—truth?

Lazy and indifferent the heron returns. The sky veils the stars; then bares them.

An Unwritten Novel

Such an expression of unhappiness—and one’s eyes were sliding above the paper’s edge to the poor woman’s face. It’s almost a symbol of human destiny. Life is what you see in people’s eyes. Life is what they learn, though they want to hide it,—what? Life is like that. Five faces opposite—five mature faces—and the knowledge in each face. Strange, though, how people want to conceal it! Marks of reticence are on all those faces. Lips are shut. Eyes are shaded. Each one is trying to hide or stultify his knowledge. One smokes. Another reads. The third checks his pocket book. The fourth stares at the map. The fifth does nothing at all. That’s terrible. She looks at life. Ah, my poor, unfortunate woman, play the game!

She looked up. She shifted slightly in her seat and sighed. As if she apologizes and at the same time says to me,

“If you knew!”

Then she looked at life again.

“But I know,” I answered silently.

I was glancing at the Times.

“I know everything”.

‘Peace between Germany and the Allied Powers was yesterday officially ushered in at Paris—Signor Nitti, the Italian Prime Minister.

A passenger train at Doncaster was in collision with a goods train.’

We all know—the Times knows—but we pretend that we don’t.”

My eyes crept over the paper’s rim. She shuddered. She twitched her arm queerly to the middle of her back. She shook her head. Again I dipped into my great reservoir of life.

“Take what you like,” I continued, “births, deaths, marriages. The habits of birds, Leonardo da Vinci, the Sandhills murder, high wages and the cost of living. Oh, take what you like,” I repeated, “it’s all in the Times!”

Again with infinite weariness she moved her head from side to side. Then it settled on her neck.

The Times was no protection against her sorrow. The best thing was to fold the paper. It made a perfect square, crisp, thick, impervious even to life. I glanced up quickly. She pierced through my shield. She gazed into my eyes. Her twitch denied all hope. Her twitch discounted all illusion.

So we rattled through Surrey and across the border into Sussex. The other travellers left. Apart from us, only one of them stayed. Soon we were alone together. Here was Three Bridges station. We drew slowly down the platform. We stopped.

Was he going to leave us? At that instant he roused himself. He crumpled his paper contemptuously. He burst open the door, and left us alone.

The unhappy woman addressed me, palely and colourlessly. She talked of stations and holidays. She talked of brothers at Eastbourne, and the time of year. It was, I forget now, early or late. But at last she breathed,

“To leave home—that’s the worst thing.”

Ah, now we approached the catastrophe,

“My sister-in-law,” the bitterness of her tone was like lemon on cold steel, “nonsense, she likes to say—that’s what they all say.”

While she spoke she fidgeted.

“Oh, that cow!” she said nervously.

Then she shuddered. Then she made the awkward movement. Then again she looked the most unhappy woman in the world.

“Sisters-in-law…” I began.

Her lips pursed. She took her glove. She rub hard at a spot on the window-pane. But the spot remained. She sank back. Something impelled me to take my glove and rub my window. There, too, was a little speck on the glass. But it remained. And then the spasm went through me. I crooked my arm. Then I plucked at the middle of my back. My skin felt like the damp chicken’s skin in the poulterer’s shop-window. One spot between the shoulders itched and irritated. Can I reach it?

Surreptitiously I tried. She saw me. A smile of infinite irony. Infinite sorrow, flitted and faded from her face. She shared her secret, passed her poison. She will speak no more. I read her message. I deciphered her secret.

Hilda is the sister-in-law. Hilda? Hilda? Hilda Marsh. Hilda stands at the door, Hilda holds a coin.

“Poor Minnie, so thin, this old cloak! Well, well, with two children. No, Minnie, I’ve got it. Here you are, cabby. Come in, Minnie. Oh, I can carry you. Give me your basket!”

So they go into the dining-room.

“Aunt Minnie, children.”

The knives and forks sink slowly. They get down. Bob and Barbara. But this we’ll skip. Ornaments, curtains, trefoil china plate, yellow oblongs of cheese, white squares of biscuit. Skip, oh, but wait! One of those shivers. Bob stares at her. He has a spoon in mouth.

“Eat your pudding, Bob”; but Hilda disapproves.

Skip, skip, till we reach the upper floor. We reach stairs; linoleum. Oh, yes! little bedroom. One can see the roofs of Eastbourne. One can see zigzagging roofs like the spines of caterpillars. This way, that way, red and yellow.

Now, Minnie, the door’s shut. Hilda heavily descends to the basement. You unstrap the straps of your basket. You lay on the bed a meagre nightgown. The looking-glass—no, you avoid the looking-glass. Some methodical disposition of hat-pins. Perhaps the shell box? You shake it. It’s the pearl, that’s all. And then the sniff and the sigh. Three o’clock on a December afternoon. One light in the skylight of a drapery emporium. Another high in a servant’s bedroom. Nothing to look at[3].

A moment’s blankness. What are you thinking? She’s asleep. What does she think about? At three o’clock in the afternoon? Health, money, hills, her God? Yes, Minnie Marsh is sitting on the edge of the chair. Minnie Marsh is looking over the roofs of Eastbourne. Minnie Marsh prays to God. That’s all very well. She may rub the pane too, as though to see God better. But what God does she see? Who’s the God of Minnie Marsh? The God of the back streets of Eastbourne? The God of three o’clock in the afternoon? I, too, see roofs. I see sky. But, oh, dear—to see Gods! More like President Kruger than Prince Albert. I see him on a chair. I see him in a black frock-coat, not so high. I can manage a cloud or two for him. And then his hand holds a rod, a truncheon. Black, thick, thorned, Minnie’s God! Did he send the itch and the patch and the twitch? Is that why she prays? She rubs the stain of sin on the window. Oh, she committed some crime!

The woods flit and fly. In summer there are bluebells. When spring comes, primroses. A parting, was it, twenty years ago? Broken vows? Not Minnie’s! She was faithful. How she nursed her mother! All her savings on the tombstone—wreaths under glass—daffodils in jars. But the crime… They may say she kept her sorrow. She suppressed her secret—her sex—the scientific people. But what flummery is it! No—more like this.

She was passing down the streets of Croydon twenty years ago. The violet loops of ribbon in the draper’s window caught her eye. She lingers. It was past six. She can reach home if she runs. She pushes through the glass door. It’s sale-time. Shallow trays brim with ribbons. She pauses. She pulls this. No need to choose. No need to buy. Each tray with its surprises.

“We don’t shut till seven”.

It is seven.

She runs. She rushes. She reaches home, but too late. Neighbours—the doctor—baby brother—the kettle—scalded—hospital—dead—or only the shock of it, the blame? Ah, but the detail matters nothing[4]! It’s what she carries with her. The spot, the crime, the thing to expiate are always there between her shoulders.

“Yes,” she nods to me, “it’s the thing I did.”

Whether you did, or what you did, I don’t mind[5]. It’s not the thing I want. The draper’s window—that is enough. A little cheap perhaps, a little commonplace. The crime. Let me peep across again. So many crimes aren’t your crime. Your crime was cheap, only the retribution solemn. Now the church door opens. The hard wooden pew receives her. She kneels on the brown tiles. She prays every day, winter, summer, dusk, dawn. All her sins fall, fall, for ever fall. The spot receives them. It’s raised. It’s red. It’s burning. Next she twitches. Small boys point.

“Bob at lunch today.”

But elderly women are the worst.

Indeed now you can’t pray any longer. Kruger sank beneath the clouds. That’s what always happens! When you see him, feel him, someone interrupts. It’s Hilda now.

How you hate her! She’ll lock the bathroom door overnight. But you want cold water. And John at breakfast – the children—meals are the worst. Sometimes there are friends. Ferns don’t altogether hide them. So you go along the front. The waves are grey. The papers blow. The glass shelters are green and draughty. Ah, that’s a nigger! That’s a funny man. That’s a man with parakeets—poor little creatures! Is there no one here who thinks of God? Just up there, over the pier, with his rod. But no—there’s nothing but grey in the sky. If it’s blue the white clouds hide him. And the music—it’s military music. What are they fishing for? Do they catch them? How the children stare! Well, then home.

The words have meaning. An old man with whiskers can speak them. No, no, he didn’t really speak. But everything has meaning. Placards near doorways—names above shop-windows—red fruit in baskets—women’s heads in the hairdresser’s. All say “Minnie Marsh!” But here’s a jerk.

“Eggs are cheaper!” That’s what always happens!

I was heading her over the waterfall. A sheep turns the other way and runs between my fingers like a flock of dream. Eggs are cheap now.

The crimes, sorrows, rhapsodies, or insanities for poor Minnie Marsh. Never late for luncheon. Never without a mackintosh. Never utterly unconscious of the cheapness of eggs. So she reaches home. She scrapes her boots.

Do I understand you? But the human face—the human face at the top of the paper holds more. It withholds more. Now she looks out. In the human eye there’s a break—a division. How do you define it? When you grasp the stem the butterfly is away. The moth that hangs in the evening over the yellow flower. It moved. I won’t raise my hand. Quiver, life, soul, spirit—I, too, on my flower—the hawk over the down—alone. To rise in the midday; over the down. The flicker of a hand. Alone, unseen. So still and so lovely. The eyes of others are our prisons. Their thoughts are our cages. Air above, air below. And the moon and immortality.

Oh, but I drop! Are you down too? You are in the corner. What’s your name—woman—Minnie Marsh? Some such name as that? There she is. She opens her hand-bag. She takes a hollow shell from—an egg. Who was saying that eggs were cheaper? You or I? Oh, it was you who said it on the way home. You remember. The old gentleman was opening his umbrella—or sneezing? Anyhow, Kruger went. You came home. You craped your boots. Yes. And now you lay across your knees a pocket-handkerchief. You drop little angular fragments of eggshell into it. Fragments of a map—a puzzle. I want to join them together! She moved her knees. Gold and silver. But to return…

To what, to where? She opened the door. She put her umbrella in the stand. The whiff of beef from the basement; dot, dot, dot. But what I cannot thus eliminate is what I must. With the courage of a battalion and the blindness of a bull. Indubitably, the figures behind the ferns, commercial travellers. There I was hiding them all this time. Rhododendrons will conceal him utterly. I starve. I strive for red and white. But rhododendrons in Eastbourne—in December—on the Marshes’ table—no, no, I dare not. It’s all a matter of crusts and cruets, frills and ferns. Perhaps there’ll be a moment later by the sea.

Moreover, I want to prick through the green fretwork and over the glacis of cut glass. I want to peer and peep at the man opposite. James Moggridge is it, whom the Marshes call Jimmy? Minnie, you must promise not to twitch. James Moggridge sells buttons. The big ones and the little ones on the long cards. Some buttons are peacock-eyed. Others are dull gold. Some are cairngorms. Others are coral sprays.

He travels. On Thursdays, his Eastbourne day, he takes his meals with the Marshes. His red face, his little steady eyes, his enormous appetite. This is primitive. I don’t like it. Let’s see the Moggridge household. Well, James himself mends the family boots on Sundays. He reads Truth. But his passion? Roses and his wife, a retired hospital nurse. Interesting. But she’s of the unborn children of the mind. She is illicit. Like my rhododendrons. How many die in every novel—the best, the dearest, while Moggridge lives. It’s life’s fault. Here’s Minnie. She is eating her egg at the bench. There must be Jimmy at the other end of the line.

There must be Moggridge—life’s fault. Life imposes its laws. Life blocks the way. Life is behind the fern. Life is the tyrant. I assure you I come willingly. Heaven knows what compulsion took me across ferns and cruets, table and bottles. I come irresistibly to lodge myself somewhere on the firm flesh, in the robust spine. Wherever I can penetrate, in the soul, of Moggridge the man. The enormous stability. The spine tough as whalebone, straight as oaktree. The ribs; the flesh; the red hollows. The suck and regurgitation of the heart. And meat and beer fall in brown cubes. So we reach the eyes. Behind the aspidistra they see something: black, white, dismal. Now the plate again. Behind the aspidistra they see elderly woman; “Marsh’s sister”; the tablecloth now.

“Marsh will know what’s wrong with Morrises.”

Cheese. The plate again. Turn it round—the enormous fingers; now the woman opposite. “Marsh’s sister—not a bit like Marsh. She is a wretched, elderly female. You must feed your hens. Why is she twitching? Not what I said? Dear, dear, dear! these elderly women. Dear, dear!”

Yes, Minnie. I know you twitched. But one moment—James Moggridge.

“Dear, dear, dear!”

How beautiful the sound is! Like the knock of a mallet on a timber. Like the throb of the heart of an ancient whaler.

“Dear, dear!”

A bell for the souls of the fretful to soothe them and solace them. “So long. Good luck to you!” and then, “What’s your pleasure?” Though Moggridge will pluck his rose for her, that’s over[6]. Now what’s the next thing?

“Madam, you’ll miss your train”.

That’s the sound that reverberates. That’s St. Paul’s[7] and the motor-omnibuses[8]. Oh, Moggridge, you won’t stay? You must leave? Are you driving through Eastbourne this afternoon in one of those little carriages? Are you the man who is behind green cardboard boxes? Are you the man who sometimes sits so solemn like a sphinx? Please tell me. But the doors close. We shall never meet again. Moggridge, farewell!

Yes, yes, I’m coming. Right up to the top of the house. One moment I’ll linger. How the mud goes round in the mind! What a swirl these monsters leave! James Moggridge is dead now. He is gone for ever. Well, Minnie,

“I can face it no longer”.

If she said that… Let me look at her. She is brushing the eggshell. She said it certainly. When the self speaks to the self, who is speaking? The entombed soul, the spirit. The self that took the veil and left the world. A coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful. It flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors.

“I can bear it no longer,” her spirit says. “That man at lunch—Hilda—the children”.

Oh, heavens, her sob! The spirit is wailing its destiny, on the carpets—meager footholds—all the vanishing universe. Love, life, faith, husband, children.

“Not for me—not for me.”

But then—the muffins, the bald elderly dog? Bead mats and the consolation of underlinen. If Minnie Marsh is in the hospital, nurses and doctors will exclaim… There’s the vista. There’s the vision. There’s the distance—the blue blot at the end of the avenue.

“Benny, to your basket, sir, and see what mother’s brought you!”

So, you take the glove with the worn thumb. You renew the fortifications, you thread the grey wool.

In and out, across and over. You are spinning a web through which God himself… Hush, don’t think of God! How firm the stitches are! You must be proud. Let nothing disturb her. Let the light fall gently. Let the clouds show an inner vest of the first green leaf. Let the sparrow perch on the twig and shake the raindrop. Why look up? Was it a sound, a thought? Oh, heavens!

Back again to the thing you did. Back again to the plate glass with the violet loops?

But Hilda will come. Ignominies, humiliations, oh! Close the breach.

Minnie Marsh mended her glove. She laid it in the drawer. She shuts the drawer with decision. I saw her face in the glass. Next she laces her shoes. Then she touches her throat. What’s your brooch? Mistletoe? And what is happening? The moment is coming. The threads are racing. Niagara’s ahead. Here’s the crisis!

Heaven be with you! Down she goes. Courage, courage! Face it, be it! For God’s sake don’t wait on the mat now! There’s the door! I’m on your side. Speak! Confront her. Confound her soul![9]

“Oh, I beg your pardon! Yes, this is Eastbourne. I’ll reach it down for you. Let me try the handle.”

But Minnie, I know you—I’m with you now.

“That’s all your luggage?”

“Much obliged, I’m sure.”

But why do you look about you? Hilda won’t come to the station, nor John. Moggridge is driving at the far side of Eastbourne.

“I’ll wait by my bag, ma’am. That’s safe. He will meet me. Oh, there he is! That’s my son.”

So they walk off together.

Well, but I’m confounded. Surely, Minnie, you know better! A strange young man. Stop! I’ll tell him—Minnie! Miss Marsh! I don’t know though. There’s something queer in her cloak as it blows. Oh, but it’s untrue, it’s indecent. . Look how he bends as they reach the gateway. She finds her ticket. What’s the joke? Off they go[10], down the road, side by side. Well, my world is ruined. What do I stand on? What do I know? That’s not Minnie. There never was Moggridge. Who am I? Life is bare.

The last look of them. He is stepping from the kerb and she is following him. Mysterious figures! Mother and son. Who are you? Why do you walk down the street? Where will you sleep tonight? Where will you sleep tomorrow? Oh, how it whirls and surges! I start after them. People drive this way and that. The white light splutters and pours. Plate-glass windows. Carnations; chrysanthemums. Ivy in dark gardens. Milk carts at the door. Wherever I go, mysterious figures, I see you. Mothers and sons; you, you, you. I hasten. I follow. This must be the sea. The landscape is grey; dim as ashes. The water murmurs and moves. I fall on my knees. I go through the ritual. I adore you, unknown figures. I open my arms. I embrace you. I’ll draw you to me—adorable world!

The String Quartet

Well, here we are. Cast your eye over the room. You will see that Tubes[11] and trams and omnibuses, private carriages, landaus with bays in them, are weaving threads from one end of London to the other. Yet I begin to doubt…

If indeed it’s true, as they say, that Regent Street is closed, and the weather not cold for the time of year… If I forgot to write about the leak in the larder… If I left my glove in the train… If the ties of blood require to accept cordially the hand which is offered…

“Seven years since we met!”

“The last time in Venice.”

“And where are you living now?”

“Well, the late afternoon suits me the best[12].”

“But I knew you at once!”

“Still, the war is the war.”

Such little arrows. One is launched. Another presses forward. What chance is there?

Of what? It becomes every minute more difficult to say why, in spite of everything, I sit here. I believe I can’t now say what happened. I can’t now say when it happened.

“Did you see the procession?”

“The King looked cold.”

“No, no, no. But what was it?”

“She bought a house at Malmesbury.”

“How lucky to find one!”

On the contrary, it is sure that she is damned. Whoever she may be. Why fidget? Why so anxious about the cloaks and gloves, whether to button or unbutton? Was it the sound of the second violin the ante-room? Here they come. Four black figures. They are carrying instruments. They seat themselves under the downpour of light. They rest the tips of their bows on the music stand. They lift them with a simultaneous movement. They poise them lightly. The first violin counts one, two, three…

Flourish, spring, burgeon, burst! The pear tree on the top of the mountain. Fountains jet. Drops descend. But the waters of the Rhone flow swift and deep. They race under the arches. The fish rushed down by the swift waters. Now the fish swept into an eddy where. It’s difficult. Conglomeration of fish all in a pool. Jolly old fishwives, obscene old women. How deeply they laugh and shake and rollick, when they walk, from side to side, hum, hah!

“That’s an early Mozart, of course.”

“But the tune, like all his tunes, makes one despair[13]. I mean hope. What do I mean? That’s the worst of music! I want to dance. I want to laugh. I want to eat pink cakes, yellow cakes. I want to drink thin, sharp wine. Or an indecent story, now—I can relish that. The older ones like indecency. Hah, hah! I’m laughing. What at? You said nothing. Nor did the old gentleman opposite. But suppose—suppose… Hush!”

The moon comes through the willow boughs. I see your face. I hear your voice. The bird is singing. We pass the osier bed. What are you whispering? Sorrow, sorrow. Joy, joy. Together, like reeds in moonlight. Crash!

The boat sinks. The figures ascend. But they taper to a dusky wraith which draws its twofold passion from my heart. For me it sings. It unseals my sorrow. It thaws compassion. It floods with love the sunless world. Soar, sob, sink to rest, sorrow and joy.

Why then grieve? Ask what? Remain unsatisfied? Rose leaves are falling. Falling. Ah, but they cease. One rose leaf is falling from an enormous height. It is like a little parachute from an invisible balloon. It won’t reach us.

“No, no. I noticed nothing. That’s the worst of music—these silly dreams. The second violin was late, you say?”

“There’s old Mrs. Munro, she goes out on this slippery floor. Poor woman. Blinder each year”

Eyeless old age, grey-headed Sphinx. There she stands on the pavement. She is beckoning, so sternly, the red omnibus.

“How lovely! How well they play! How-how-how!”

Simplicity itself. The feathers in the hat are bright. They are pleasing as a child’s rattle. Very strange, very exciting.

“How-how-how!” Hush!

These are the lovers on the grass.

“If, madam, you take my hand…”

“Sir, I can trust you with my heart. Moreover, we left our bodies in the banqueting hall. Those on the turf are the shadows of our souls.”

“Then these are the embraces of our souls.”

The lemons nod assent. The swan pushes from the bank. The swan floats into mid stream.

“But to return. He followed me down the corridor. We turned the corner. He trod on the lace of my petticoat. I cried ‘Ah!’ I stopped. He drew his sword. He cried, ‘Mad! Mad! Mad!’ I screamed. The Prince came out in his velvet skull-cap and furred slippers. He snatched a rapier from the wall. The King of Spain’s gift, you know. I escaped. But listen! The horns!”

The gentleman replies fast to the lady. She runs up the scale with witty exchange of compliment. The words are indistinguishable though the meaning is plain enough. Love, laughter, flight, pursuit, celestial bliss. The green garden, the pool, lemons, lovers, and fish are all dissolved in the opal sky. Tramp and trumpets. Clang and clangour. March of myriads.

But this city to which we travel has neither stone nor marble. It stands unshakable. The pillars are bare. The pillars are auspicious to none. They cast no shade. They are resplendent and severe. I fall back. I eager no more. I desire to go. I desire to find the street. I desire to mark the buildings. I desire to greet the applewoman. I desire to say to the maid who opens the door:

“A starry night.”

“Good night, good night. You go this way?”

“Alas. I go that.”

The Mark on the Wall

Perhaps it was the middle of January in the present year. I looked up and saw the mark on the wall. In order to fix a date it is necessary to remember what one saw. So now I think of the fire. The steady film of yellow light upon the page of my book. Three chrysanthemums in the round glass bowl on the mantelpiece. Yes, it was the winter time. We finished our tea. I remember that I was smoking a cigarette. I looked up. I saw the mark on the wall. I looked up through the smoke of my cigarette. My eye lodged for a moment upon the burning coals. That old fancy of the crimson flag on the castle tower came into my mind. I thought of the cavalcade of red knights. The sight of the mark interrupted the fancy. It is an old fancy, an automatic fancy. The mark was a small round mark. It was black upon the white wall, about six or seven inches above the mantelpiece.

Our thoughts swarm upon a new object. As ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it. Was that mark made by a nail? It must be for a miniature. The miniature of a lady with white powdered curls, powder-dusted cheeks, and lips like red carnations. Some people had this house before us. They chose an old picture for an old room. They were very interesting people. I think of them so often, in such queer places. I will never see them again. I will never know what happened next. They wanted to leave this house. They wanted to change their style of furniture, so he said.

But for that mark, I’m not sure about it. I don’t believe it was made by a nail. It’s too big. It is too round for that. I may get up. But if I get up and look at it, I won’t be able to say for certain[14]. No one knows how it happened.

Oh! dear me! The mystery of life! The inaccuracy of thought! The ignorance of humanity! To show how very little control of our possessions we have. What an accidental affair is this life?

What an accidental affair is our civilization? Let me take some things. Where are they? Did the cat gnaw them? Did the rat nibble them? Three pale blue canisters of book-binding tools[15]. Then there were the bird cages. Then the iron hoops. Then the steel skates, the Queen Anne coal-scuttle. Then the bagatelle board, the hand organ. All gone, and jewels, too. Opals and emeralds lie about the roots of turnips. The wonder is that I have any clothes on my back. Why, if one wants to compare life to anything, one must liken it to the Tube. Fifty miles an hour! At the feet of God entirely naked! Yes, that can express the rapidity of life. Than can express the perpetual waste and repair. All is so casual. All is so haphazard.

But after life. Thick green stalks are pulling down slowly. The cup of the flower turns over. It deluges one with purple and red light. Why, after all, will one be born there? One is born helpless, speechless, unable to focus one’s eyesight. One is born at the toes of the Giants. The trees are like men and women. There will be nothing but spaces of light and dark. And they are intersected by thick stalks, rose-shaped blots of an indistinct colour—dim pinks and blues. They will, as time goes on, become more definite. They will become…—I don’t know what.

And yet that mark on the wall is not a hole at all. It may even be caused by some round black substance. Such as a small rose leaf. I am not a very vigilant housekeeper. Look at the dust on the mantelpiece, for example. The dust which, so they say, buried Troy. Only fragments of pots utterly refuse annihilation, as one can believe.

The tree outside the window taps very gently on the pane. I want to think quietly. I want to think calmly. I want to think spaciously. I want to slip easily from one thing to another. I want to slip without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface. To steady myself, let me catch the first idea.

Shakespeare. Well, he will do[16] as well as another. A man in an arm-chair who looked into the fire, so. A shower of ideas fell perpetually from some very high Heaven down. Through his mind. He leant his forehead on his hand. People were looking in through the open door. It was a summer’s evening. But how dull this is, this historical fiction! It doesn’t interest me at all.

“And then I came into the room. They were discussing botany. I said I saw a flower on a dust heap on the site of an old house in Kingsway. The seed saw the reign of Charles the First. What flowers grew in the reign of Charles the First?” I asked.

But I don’t remember the answer. Tall flowers with purple tassels. And so on. All the time I create the figure of myself in my own mind. It was lovingly, stealthily. It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry. It is very important.

The looking-glass smashes. The image disappears. The romantic figure with the green of forest depths disappears. We see only that shell of a person. It is an airless, shallow, bald, prominent shell. We face each other in omnibuses and underground railways. We are looking into the mirror. The novelists in future will realize more and more the importance of these reflections. Of course there is not one reflection. There is an almost infinite number. They will explore the depths. They will pursue the phantoms. Let us follow the example of the Greeks did and Shakespeare. But these generalizations are very worthless. The military sound of the word is enough. It recalls articles and cabinet ministers.

Generalizations bring back somehow Sunday in London, Sunday afternoon walks, Sunday luncheons. People sat all together in one room until a certain hour,. And nobody liked it. There was a rule for everything. The rule for tablecloths at that particular period was like this: they were made of tapestry with little yellow compartments upon them. Like the carpets in the corridors of the royal palaces. Tablecloths of a different kind were not real tablecloths. How shocking! How wonderful it was to discover that these real things were not entirely real. Sunday luncheons, Sunday walks, country houses, and tablecloths. They were indeed half phantoms. The damnation which visited the disbeliever in them was only a sense of illegitimate freedom. What now takes the place of those things I wonder? Men perhaps. The masculine point of view governs our lives. It sets the standard. It established Whitaker’s Table of Precedency[17], the mahogany sideboards and the Landseer prints[18], Gods and Devils, Hell and so forth. They leave us all with a sense of illegitimate freedom. If freedom exists, of course.

In certain lights that mark on the wall seems volumetric. Nor is it entirely circular. I cannot be sure, but it cast a perceptible shadow. I run my finger down that strip of the wall. It will mount and descend. A smooth tumulus like those barrows on the South Downs which are either tombs or camps. Of the two I prefer the tombs, like most English people. There must be some book about it. Some antiquary dug up those bones. He gave them a name.

What sort of a man is an antiquary, I wonder? Retired Colonels for the most part[19], I daresay. They examine clods of earth and stone. They get into correspondence with the clergy. The Colonel himself feels philosophic. He accumulates evidence. He finally believes in the camp. Suddenly a stroke kills him. His last conscious thoughts are not of wife or child. His last conscious thoughts are of the camp and that arrow-head there. It is now at the local museum, together with the foot of a Chinese murderess, a handful of Elizabethan nails, Tudor clay pipes, a piece of Roman pottery, and Nelson’s wineglass.

No, no, nothing is proved. Nothing is known. I get up at this very moment. I ascertain that the mark on the wall is really the head of a gigantic old nail. But what shall I gain? Knowledge?

And what is knowledge? Our learned men are the descendants of witches and hermits. They crouched in caves. They interrogated shrew-mice. They wrote down the language of the stars.

Yes, we can imagine a very pleasant world. A quiet, spacious world, with the flowers so red and blue in the open fields. A world without professors or specialists or house-keepers. How peaceful it is down here! How peaceful it is in the centre of the world!

I must jump up and see for myself what that mark on the wall really is. A nail, a rose-leaf, a crack in the wood?

This thought is threatening mere waste of energy, even some collision with reality. Who will ever be able to lift a finger against Whitaker’s Table of Precedency? The Lord High Chancellor[20] follows the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Archbishop of York follows the Lord High Chancellor. Everybody follows somebody. Such is the philosophy of Whitaker. The great thing is to know who follows whom. Whitaker knows. Let that comfort you.

I understand Nature’s game. I take action to end any thought that threatens to excite or to pain. Hence, I suppose, our slight contempt for men of action comes. Men, we assume, who don’t think. Still, I want to stop the disagreeable thoughts.

I feel a satisfying sense of reality. It turns the two Archbishops and the Lord High Chancellor to the shadows of shades. Here is something definite. Here is something real. Thus, one wakes from a midnight dream of horror. One hastily turns on the light. One lies quiescent. One worships the chest of drawers[21]. One worships solidity. One worships reality. One worships the impersonal world. The world is a proof of some existence other than ours. That is what one wants to be sure of[22].

Wood is a pleasant thing to think about. It comes from a tree. Trees grow. We don’t know how they grow. For years and years they grow. They grow in meadows, in forests. They grow by the side of rivers.

The cows swish their tails beneath them on hot afternoons. They paint rivers green. I like to think of the fish. I like to think of water-beetles. I like to think of the tree itself. The slow, delicious ooze of sap. I like to think of it, too, on winter’s nights. The song of birds must sound very loud and strange in June.

One by one the fibres snap beneath the immense cold pressure of the earth. Then the last storm comes. The high branches drive deep into the ground. Even so, life isn’t done with[23]. There are a million patient, watchful lives still for a tree. They are all over the world, in bedrooms, in ships, on the pavement. They are in lining rooms, where men and women sit after tea. This tree is full of peaceful thoughts, happy thoughts. I want to take each one separately.

Where was I? What was it? A tree? A river? The Downs? Whitaker’s Almanack? The fields of asphodel? I can’t remember anything.

Everything is moving. Everything is falling. Everything is slipping. Everything is vanishing. Someone is standing over me. Someone is saying:

“I’m going out to buy a newspaper.”

“Yes?”

“Though why buy newspapers? Nothing ever happens. Curse this war; God damn this war! I don’t see why we have a snail on our wall.”

Ah, the mark on the wall! It was a snail.

The New Dress

Mrs. Barnet handed her the mirror. Mabel took her cloak off. She had her first serious suspicion that something was wrong. Thus she confirmed the suspicion. It was not right, not quite right. She went upstairs. She greeted Clarissa Dalloway. She went straight to the far end of the room, to the corner. There a looking-glass hung. She looked. No! It was not right. And at once the misery, the profound dissatisfaction met her, relentlessly. She always tried to hide it.

When she woke at night at home, when she was reading Borrow or Scott; these men, these women were thinking “What’s Mabel wearing? What a fright she looks! What a hideous new dress!” Her own cowardice, her mean blood depressed her. And at once the room seemed sordid. It was repulsive. Her own drawing-room seemed shabby. She touched the letters on the hall table. She said: “How dull!” All this now seemed unutterably silly, paltry, and provincial. She came into Mrs. Dalloway’s drawing-room. All this was absolutely destroyed.

That evening she was sitting over the teacups. Mrs. Dalloway’s invitation came. She decided not to be fashionable. It was absurd to pretend it even. Fashion meant style. Fashion meant thirty guineas at least. Why not be original? Why not be herself, anyhow? And she took her mother’s old fashion book[24]. It was a Paris fashion book of the time of the Empire.

But she dared not look in the glass. She did not face the whole horror—the pale yellow, idiotically old-fashioned silk dress. This dress was with its long skirt and its high sleeves and its waist. All these things looked so charming in the fashion book, but not on her, not among all these ordinary people. She felt like a dressmaker’s dummy.

“But, my dear, it’s perfectly charming!” Rose Shaw said.

We are all like flies which are trying to crawl over the edge of the saucer. Mabel repeated this phrase. She was trying to find some spell to annul this pain. She was trying to make this agony endurable. Tags of Shakespeare, lines from books suddenly came to her. She was in agony. She repeated them over and over again. “Flies which are trying to crawl,” she repeated. Now she saw flies which were crawling slowly out of a saucer of milk. The other people there are like flies. They are trying to hoist themselves out of something, or into something, meagre, insignificant, toiling flies. She saw them like that, not other people. She saw herself like that. She was a fly. The others were dragonflies, butterflies, beautiful insects. They were dancing, fluttering, skimming. She alone dragged herself up out of the saucer.

“I feel like some dowdy, decrepit, horribly dingy old fly,” she said to Robert Haydon.

She wanted to reassure herself. And, of course, Robert Haydon answered something quite polite, quite insincere. And she said to herself (again from some book), “Lies, lies, lies!”

She saw the bottom of Robert Haydon’s heart. She saw through everything. She saw the truth. This was true, this drawing-room, this self, and the other false. Miss Milan’s little workroom was really terribly hot, stuffy, sordid. It smelt of clothes and cabbage. Miss Milan put the glass in her hand. Then she looked at herself with the dress on. An extraordinary bliss shot through her heart.

She became a beautiful woman. Just for a second, a grey-white, mysterious, charming girl looked at her. It was the core of herself. It was the soul of herself. And she felt, suddenly, honestly, full of love for Miss Milan. She felt much fonder of Miss Milan than of anyone in the whole world.

And then everything vanished. The dress, the room, the love, the pity, the looking-glass, and the canary’s cage—all vanished. Here she was in a corner of Mrs. Dalloway’s drawing-room.

But it was all so paltry to care so much at her age with two children, to be so dependent on people’s opinions. It was all so paltry not to have principles or convictions. It was all so paltry not to be able to say as other people did, “There’s Shakespeare! There’s death! We’re all weevils in a captain’s biscuit.”

She came into the room. But she looked foolish and self-conscious. She simpered like a schoolgirl. She slouched across the room, like a mongrel.

“Now the fly’s in the saucer,” she said to herself, “right in the middle. It can’t get out. The milk is sticking its wings together.”

“It’s so old-fashioned,” she said to Charles Burt.

He stopped on his way to talk to someone else.

She meant the picture and not her dress, that was old-fashioned. And one word of praise, one word of affection from Charles can change everything. “Mabel, you’re looking charming tonight!”

Charles said nothing of the kind, of course. He was malice itself.

“Mabel’s got a new dress!” he said.

The poor fly was absolutely shoved into the middle of the saucer. Really, he had no heart. He had no kindness, only a veneer of friendliness. Miss Milan was much more real. Miss Milan was much kinder.

“Why,” she asked herself, “can’t I feel one thing always? Why can’t I feel quite sure that Miss Milan is right? Why can’t I feel Charles wrong and stick to it? Why can’t I feel sure about the canary? Why can’t I feel pity and love in a room full of people?”

It was her odious, weak character again. She can’t be seriously interested in conchology, etymology, botany and archeology, like Mary Dennis, like Violet Searle.

Then Mrs. Holman saw her. Of course a thing like a dress was beneath Mrs. Holman’s notice. Not to have value, that was it, she thought. All the time she saw little bits of her yellow dress in the round looking-glass. It was amazing to think how much humiliation and agony and effort and passion were contained in this thing. Ah, this greed was tragic. It was like a row of cormorants. It was tragic!

In her yellow dress tonight she knew that she was condemned. She was despised. It seemed to her that the yellow dress was a penance. She deserved this penance. But it was not her fault, after all. They were ten in the family. They never had enough money. Her mother carried great cans. She was just like her aunts. She wanted to live in India. She wanted to marry to some hero like Sir Henry Lawrence. She wanted to marry some builder in a turban.

She married Hubert, with his job in the Law Courts. They live in a small house. They live without proper maids. She is a fretful, weak, unsatisfactory mother and a wobbly wife, like all her brothers and sisters. Except perhaps Herbert. That wretched fly—where did she read the story about the fly and the saucer? Yes, she had those moments. But now she is forty. By degrees she will cease to struggle anymore. But that is deplorable!

She will go to the London Library tomorrow. She will find some wonderful, helpful, astonishing book. A book by a clergyman, by an American. Or she will walk down the Strand. She will enter a hall. A miner will tell about the life in the pit. Suddenly she will become a new person. She will be absolutely transformed. She will wear a uniform. She will be called Sister Somebody. She will never think about clothes again.

She got up from the blue sofa. The yellow button in the looking-glass got up too. She waved her hand to Charles and Rose. She did not depend on them. The yellow button moved out of the looking-glass. She walked towards Mrs. Dalloway and said,

“Good night.”

“But it’s too early to go,” said Mrs. Dalloway. She was always charming.

“I’m afraid I must,” said Mabel Waring. “But,” she added in her weak, wobbly voice. It sounded ridiculous when she tried to strengthen it, “I enjoyed myself enormously.”

“I enjoyed myself,” she said to Mr. Dalloway. She met him on the stairs.

“Lies, lies, lies!” she said to herself. “Right in the saucer!” she said to herself as she thanked Mrs. Barnet.

The Shooting Party

She got in. She put her suit case in the rack, and the brace of pheasants on top of it. Then she sat down in the corner. The train was rattling through the midlands. The fog came in. She opened the door. She enlarged the carriage. M. M.—those were the initials on the suit case. M. M. was staying the week-end with a shooting party. She was telling over the story now. She was lying back in her corner. She did not shut her eyes. But clearly she did not see the man opposite. She did not see the coloured photograph of York Minster. But she heard them. For as she gazed, her lips moved. Now and then she smiled. And she was handsome; tawny; but scarred on the jaw. The scar lengthened when she smiled. She was dressed out of fashion as women dressed, years ago, in pictures. She did not seem exactly a guest, nor yet a maid. She had only a suitcase and the pheasants. She listened to what they were saying. She said “Chk.” Then she smiled.

“Chk,” said Miss Antonia.

Then she pinched her glasses on her nose. The damp leaves fell across the long windows of the gallery. Then the trees in the Park shivered.

“Chk,” Miss Antonia sniffed again.

The wind sighed. The room was draughty. Now and then a ripple, like a reptile, ran under the carpet. On the carpet lay panels of green and yellow. The sun rested there. Then the sun moved. Miss Antonia looked up as the light strengthened. Her forefathers—the Rashleighs—owned vast lands, so they said. Over there. Up the Amazons. Freebooter. Voyagers. Captives. Maidens. Miss Antonia grinned. The finger of the sun rested on a silver frame. Then on a photograph; on an egg-shaped baldish head; on a lip; and the name “Edward”.

“The King,” Miss Antonia muttered, “had the Blue Room.”

They were driving the pheasants out in the King’s Ride, across the noses of the guns. The birds spurted up from the underwood like heavy rockets. Reddish purple rockets. Then they faded. They dispersed gently.

In the road, a cart stood. Soft warm bodies, with limp claws, and still lustrous eyes. The birds seemed alive. They looked relaxed and comfortable. Then the Squire cursed and raised his gun.

Miss Antonia stitched on. Now and then a tongue of flame reached the grey log. Miss Antonia looked up for a moment, as a dog stares at a flame. Then the flame sank. She stitched again.

Then, silently, the enormously high door opened. Two lean men came in. They drew a table over the hole in the carpet. They went out. They came in. They laid a cloth upon the table. They went out. They came in. They brought a green baize basket of knives and forks; and glasses. They brought sugar casters; and salt cellars; and bread. They brought a silver vase with three chrysanthemums in it. Miss Antonia stitched on.

Again the door opened. A little dog trotted in, a spaniel. It paused. And then old Miss Rashleigh entered. A white shawl clouded her baldness. She hobbled. She crossed the room. She hunched herself in the high-backed chair by the fireside. Miss Antonia stitched on.

“They are shooting,” she said at last.

Old Miss Rashleigh nodded. She gripped her stick. They were waiting.

The shooters moved from the King’s Ride to the Home Woods. They stood in the field outside. Now and then a twig snapped. But above the mist and the smoke was an island of blue—faint blue, pure blue—alone in the sky. And in the innocent air, a bell gamboled. Then it faded. Then again up shot the rockets, the reddish purple pheasants. Up and up they went. Again the guns barked. The smoke balls formed; loosened, dispersed. And the busy little dogs ran over the fields. The men bunched warm damp bodies together.

“There!” grunted Milly Masters, the house-keeper.

She was stitching, too, in the small dark room. The jersey, the rough woollen jersey, for her son, was finished. This boy cleaned the Church.

“The end!” she muttered.

Then she heard the cart. She got up. She stood in the yard, in the wind.

“They are coming!” she laughed.

The scar on her cheek lengthened.

She unbolted the door. Wing, the gamekeeper, drove the cart over the cobbles. The birds were dead now. The leathery eyelids were creased over their eyes. Mrs. Masters the housekeeper, Wing the gamekeeper, took bunches of dead birds by the neck. Then they flung them down on the floor. The floor became smeared and spotted with blood. The pheasants looked smaller now.

“The last,” Milly Masters grinned.

The cart drove off.

“Luncheon is served, ma’am,” said the butler.

He pointed at the table. He directed the footman. They waited, the butler and the footman.

Miss Antonia put away her silk and her thimble. She hung her glasses on a hook upon her breast. Then she rose.

“Luncheon!” she barked in old Miss Rashleigh’s ear.

One second later old Miss Rashleigh stretched her leg out. She gripped her stick. Then she rose. Both old women advanced slowly to the table. And there was the pheasant, featherless, gleaming.

Miss Antonia drew the knife across the pheasant’s breast firmly. She cut two slices. She laid them on a plate. Deftly the footman whipped it from her. Old Miss Rashleigh raised her knife. Shots rang out in the wood under the window.

“Coming?” said old Miss Rashleigh.

She took a mouthful of pheasant.

“The Home Woods, now,” said Miss Antonia. “Hugh is shooting.”

She drew her knife down the other side of the breast. She added potatoes and gravy, sprouts and bread sauce. Methodically in a circle round the slices on her plate. The butler and the footman were watching. They were like servers at a feast. The old ladies ate quietly, silently. They cleaned the bird methodically. The butler drew the decanter towards Miss Antonia. Then he paused for a moment.

“Give it here, Griffiths,” said Miss Antonia.

She took the carcase in her fingers. Then she tossed it to the spaniel beneath the table.

The butler and the footman bowed and went out. The wind was rising. A brown shudder shook the air. The glass rattled in the windows.

Old Miss Rashleigh filled her glass. As they sipped their eyes became lustrous like half precious stones. Miss Rashleigh’s eyes were blue. Miss Antonia’s eyes were red. Their laces quivered as they drank.

“It was a day like this, do you remember?” said old Miss Rashleigh. “They brought him home—a bullet through his heart. A bramble, so they said. Tripped. Caught his foot.”

She chuckled as she sipped her wine.

“And John…” said Miss Antonia. “The mare, they said, put her foot in a hole. Died in the field. The hunt rode over him. He came home, too, on a shutter.”

They sipped again.

“Do you remember Lily?” said old Miss Rashleigh. “A bad girl. With a scarlet tassel on her cane.”

She shook her head.

“Rotten at the heart!” cried Miss Antonia.

“Do you remember the Colonel’s letter? Your son rode like twenty devils. Then one white devil—ah hah!”

She sipped again.

“The men of our house[25],” began Miss Rashleigh.

She raised her glass. She held it high. She paused. The guns were barking. Something cracked in the woodwork. Or was it a rat behind the plaster?

“Always women,” Miss Antonia nodded. “The men of our house. Pink and white Lucy at the Mill—do you remember?”

“Ellen’s daughter at the Goat and Sickle,” Miss Rashleigh added.

“And the girl at the tailor’s,” Miss Antonia murmured, “where Hugh bought his breeches, the little dark shop on the right…”

“…that was flooded every winter. It’s his boy,” Miss Antonia chuckled, “that cleans the Church.”

There was a crash. The great log snapped in two. Flakes of plaster fell from the shield above the fireplace.

“Falling,” old Miss Rashleigh chuckled. “Falling.”

“And who will pay?” said Miss Antonia.

They laughed like old babies. They were indifferent, reckless. They sipped the sherry by the wood ashes and the plaster. They fingered their glasses. They sat by the ashes. But they never raised their glasses to their lips.

“Milly Masters,” began old Miss Rashleigh. “She’s our brother’s…”

A shot barked beneath the window. The rain began. Light faded from the carpet. Light faded in their eyes, too. Their eyes became like pebbles. Their eyes became like grey stones. And their hands gripped their hands like the claws of dead birds.

Then Miss Antonia raised her glass to the mermaid. It was the last drop.

“Coming!” she croaked.

A door opened. Then another. Then another.

“Closer! Closer!” grinned Miss Rashleigh.

Three great hounds rushed in. Then the Squire himself entered, in shabby gaiters. The dogs were tossing their heads. The dogs were snuffling at his pockets. They smelt the meat. They snuffed the table. They pawed the cloth. Then they flung themselves upon the little yellow spaniel. The spaniel was gnawing the carcass under the table.

“Curse you, curse you!” howled the Squire.

But his voice was weak.

“Curse you, curse you!” he shouted.

Miss Antonia and Miss Rashleigh rose to their feet. The great dogs seized the spaniel. They mauled him with their great yellow teeth. The Squire was cursing the dogs. The Squire was cursing his sisters. With one lash he curled to the ground the vase of chrysanthemums. Another caught old Miss Rashleigh on the cheek. The old woman staggered backwards. She fell against the mantelpiece. Her stick struck the shield above the fireplace. She fell with a thud upon the ashes. The shield of the Rashleighs crashed from the wall. And then King Edward, in the silver frame, slid, toppled, and fell too.

The grey mist thickened in the carriage. It put the four travellers in the corners at a great distance from each other. The effect was strange. The handsome woman lost her shape. Her body became all mist. Only her eyes gleamed. Eyes without a body. In the misty air they shone out. They moved. An absurd idea? But memory is a light that dances in the mind. The ghost of a family, of an age, of a civilization dances over the grave.

The train slid into the station. The lights blazed. And the eyes in the corner? They were shut. Perhaps the light was too strong. And of course it was plain—she was quite an ordinary, rather elderly, woman. She took her suitcase. She rose. She took the pheasants from the rack. She murmured “Chk., Chk” as she passed.

Lappin and Lapinova

They were married. The pigeons fluttered. Small boys in Eton jackets threw rice. A fox terrier sauntered across the path. Ernest Thorburn led his bride to the car through the crowd of strangers. The strangers are always in London to enjoy other people’s happiness or unhappiness. Certainly he looked handsome. She looked shy. The car moved off.

That was on Tuesday. Now it was Saturday. Rosalind became Mrs. Ernest Thorburn. Ernest was a difficult name. She didn’t like that name. She preferred Timothy, Antony, or Peter. He did not look like Ernest either. The name suggested the Albert Memorial.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «Литрес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на Литрес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

Примечания

1

threshing machine – молотилка

Back

2

one over the other – друг на друга

Back

3

Nothing to look at – Не на что смотреть.

Back

4

the detail matters nothing – детали ничего не значат

Back

5

I don’t mind – мне всё равно

Back

6

that’s over – всё кончено

Back

7

St. Paul’s – собор св. Павла

Back

8

motor-omnibuses – автомобили

Back

9

confound her soul! – чтоб ей пусто было!

Back

10

off they go – они уходят

Back

11

Tubes – метро

Back

12

suits me the best – мне вполне удобно

Back

13

makes one despair – приводит в отчаяние

Back

14

for certain – наверняка

Back

15

book-binding tools – инструменты для переплёта книг

Back

16

he will do – он сгодится

Back

17

Whitaker’s Table of Precedency – ежегодные справочники общей информации, иерархические таблицы

Back

18

Landseer prints – гравюры Ландсира

Back

19

for the most part – большей частью

Back

20

Lord High Chancellor – лорд-канцлер

Back

21

chest of drawers – комод

Back

22

That is what one wants to be sure of. – Вот в чём хочется быть уверенным.

Back

23

life isn’t done with – жизнь не кончена

Back

24

fashion book – модный журнал

Back

25

the men of our house – мужчины в нашем роду

Back