thought. She was astonishingly beautiful. Her beauty seemed to him,
if that were possible, to increase
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play,
she finished.
"Well?" she said, echoing his smile dreamily, looking up from her book.
As with your shadow I with these did play,
she murmured, putting the book on the table.
What had happened, she wondered, as she took up her knitting, since she
had seen him alone? She remembered dressing, and seeing the moon;
Andrew holding his plate too high at dinner; being depressed by
something William had said; the birds in the trees; the sofa on the
landing; the children being awake; Charles Tansley waking them with his
books falling--oh, no, that she had invented; and Paul having a wash-
leather case for his watch. Which should she tell him about?
"They're engaged," she said, beginning to knit, "Paul and Minta."
"So I guessed," he said. There was nothing very much to be said about
it. Her mind was still going up and down, up and down with the poetry;
he was still feeling very vigorous, very forthright, after reading
about Steenie's funeral. So they sat silent. Then she became aware
that she wanted him to say something.
Anything, anything, she thought, going on with her knitting. Anything
will do.
"How nice it would be to marry a man with a wash-leather bag for his
watch," she said, for that was the sort of joke they had together.
He snorted. He felt about this engagement as he always felt about any
engagement; the girl is much too good for that young man. Slowly it
came into her head, why is it then that one wants people to marry?
What was the value, the meaning of things? (Every word they said now
would be true.) Do say something, she thought, wishing only to hear his
voice. For the shadow, the thing folding them in was beginning, she
felt, to close round her again. Say anything, she begged, looking at
him, as if for help.
He was silent, swinging the compass on his watch-chain to and fro, and
thinking of Scott's novels and Balzac's novels. But through the
crepuscular walls of their intimacy, for they were drawing together,
involuntarily, coming side by side, quite close, she could feel his
mind like a raised hand shadowing her mind; and he was beginning, now
that her thoughts took a turn he disliked--towards this "pessimism" as
he called it--to fidget, though he said nothing, raising his hand to
his forehead, twisting a lock of hair, letting it fall again.
"You won't finish that stocking tonight," he said, pointing to her
stocking. That was what she wanted--the asperity in his voice
reproving her. If he says it's wrong to be pessimistic probably it is
wrong, she thought; the marriage will turn out all right.
"No," she said, flattening the stocking out upon her knee, "I shan't
finish it."
And what then? For she felt that he was still looking at her, but that
his look had changed. He wanted something--wanted the thing she always
found it so difficult to give him; wanted her to tell him that she
loved him. And that, no, she could not do. He found talking so much
easier than she did. He could say things--she never could. So
naturally it was always he that said the things, and then for some
reason he would mind this suddenly, and would reproach her. A
heartless woman he called her; she never told him that she loved him.
But it was not so--it was not so. It was only that she never could say
what she felt. Was there no crumb on his coat? Nothing she could do
for him? Getting up, she stood at the window with the reddish-brown
stocking in her hands, partly to turn away from him, partly because she
remembered how beautiful it often is--the sea at night. But she knew
that he had turned his head as she turned; he was watching her. She
knew that he was thinking, You are more beautiful than ever. And she
felt herself very beautiful. Will you not tell me just for once that
you love me? He was thinking that, for he was roused, what with Minta
and his book, and its being the end of the day and their having
quarrelled about going to the Lighthouse. But she could not do it; she
could not say it. Then, knowing that he was watching her, instead of
saying anything she turned, holding her stocking, and looked at him.
And as she looked at him she began to smile, for though she had not
said a word, he knew, of course he knew, that she loved him. He could
not deny it. And smiling she looked out of the window and said
(thinking to herself, Nothing on earth can equal this happiness)--
"Yes, you were right. It's going to be wet tomorrow. You won't be able
to go." And she looked at him smiling. For she had triumphed again.
She had not said it: yet he knew.
TIME PASSES
1
"Well, we must wait for the future to show," said Mr Bankes, coming in
from the terrace.
"It's almost too dark to see," said Andrew, coming up from the beach.
"One can hardly tell which is the sea and which is the land," said
Prue.
"Do we leave that light burning?" said Lily as they took their coats
off indoors.
"No," said Prue, "not if every one's in."
"Andrew," she called back, "just put out the light in the hall."
One by one the lamps were all extinguished, except that Mr Carmichael,
who liked to lie awake a little reading Virgil, kept his candle burning
rather longer than the rest.
2
So with the lamps all put out, the moon sunk, and a thin rain drumming
on the roof a downpouring of immense darkness began. Nothing, it
seemed, could survive the flood, the profusion of darkness which,
creeping in at keyholes and crevices, stole round window blinds, came
into bedrooms, swallowed up here a jug and basin, there a bowl of red
and yellow dahlias, there the sharp edges and firm bulk of a chest of
drawers. Not only was furniture confounded; there was scarcely
anything left of body or mind by which one could say, "This is he" or
"This is she." Sometimes a hand was raised as if to clutch something or
ward off something, or somebody groaned, or somebody laughed aloud as
if sharing a joke with nothingness.
Nothing stirred in the drawing-room or in the dining-room or on the
staircase. Only through the rusty hinges and swollen sea-moistened
woodwork certain airs, detached from the body of the wind (the house
was ramshackle after all) crept round corners and ventured indoors.
Almost one might imagine them, as they entered the drawing-room
questioning and wondering, toying with the flap of hanging wall-paper,
asking, would it hang much longer, when would it fall? Then smoothly
brushing the walls, they passed on musingly as if asking the red and
yellow roses on the wall-paper whether they time at their disposal) the
torn letters in the wastepaper basket, the flowers, the books, all of
which were now open to them and asking, Were they allies? Were they
enemies? How long would they endure?
So some random light directing them w
ith its pale footfall upon stair
and mat, from some uncovered star, or wandering ship, or the Lighthouse
even, with its pale footfall upon stair and mat, the little airs
mounted the staircase and nosed round bedroom doors. But here surely,
they must cease. Whatever else may perish and disappear, what lies here
is steadfast. Here one might say to those sliding lights, those
fumbling airs that breathe and bend over the bed itself, here you can
neither touch nor destroy. Upon which, wearily, ghostlily, as if they
had feather-light fingers and the light persistency of feathers, they
would look, once, on the shut eyes, and the loosely clasping fingers,
and fold their garments wearily and disappear. And so, nosing,
rubbing, they went to the window on the staircase, to the servants'
bedrooms, to the boxes in the attics; descending, blanched the apples
on the dining-room table, fumbled the petals of roses, tried the
picture on the easel, brushed the mat and blew a little sand along the
floor. At length, desisting, all ceased together, gathered together,
all sighed together; all together gave off an aimless gust of
lamentation to which some door in the kitchen replied; swung wide;
admitted nothing; and slammed to.
[Here Mr Carmichael, who was reading Virgil, blew out his candle. It
was past midnight.]
3
But what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the
darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a
faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of the wave.
Night, however, succeeds to night. The winter holds a pack of them in
store and deals them equally, they darken. Some of them hold aloft
clear planets, plates of brightness. The autumn trees, ravaged as they
are, take on the flash of tattered flags kindling in the gloom of cool
cathedral caves where gold letters on marble pages describe death in
battle and how bones bleach and burn far away in Indian sands. The
autumn trees gleam in the yellow moonlight, in the light of harvest
moons, the light which mellows the energy of labour, and smooths the
stubble, and brings the wave lapping blue to the shore.
It seemed now as if, touched by human penitence and all its toil,
divine goodness had parted the curtain and displayed behind it, single,
distinct, the hare erect; the wave falling; the boat rocking; which,
did we deserve them, should be ours always. But alas, divine goodness,
twitching the cord, draws the curtain; it does not please him; he
covers his treasures in a drench of hail, and so breaks them, so
confuses them that it seems impossible that their calm should ever
return or that we should ever compose from their fragments a perfect
whole or read in the littered pieces the clear words of truth. For our
penitence deserves a glimpse only; our toil respite only.
The nights now are full of wind and destruction; the trees plunge and
bend and their leaves fly helter skelter until the lawn is plastered
with them and they lie packed in gutters and choke rain pipes and
scatter damp paths. Also the sea tosses itself and breaks itself, and
should any sleeper fancying that he might find on the beach an answer
to his doubts, a sharer of his solitude, throw off his bedclothes and
go down by himself to walk on the sand, no image with semblance of
serving and divine promptitude comes readily to hand bringing the night
to order and making the world reflect the compass of the soul. The
hand dwindles in his hand; the voice bellows in his ear. Almost it
would appear that it is useless in such confusion to ask the night
those questions as to what, and why, and wherefore, which tempt the
sleeper from his bed to seek an answer.
[Mr Ramsay, stumbling along a passage one dark morning, stretched his
arms out, but Mrs Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before,
his arms, though stretched out, remained empty.]]
4
So with the house empty and the doors locked and the mattresses rolled
round, those stray airs, advance guards of great armies, blustered in,
brushed bare boards, nibbled and fanned, met nothing in bedroom or
drawing-room that wholly resisted them but only hangings that flapped,
wood that creaked, the bare legs of tables, saucepans and china already
furred, tarnished, cracked. What people had shed and left--a pair of
shoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in wardrobes--those
alone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how once they
were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with hooks and
buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world
hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened,
in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again. Now, day
after day, light turned, like a flower reflected in water, its sharp
image on the wall opposite. Only the shadows of the trees, flourishing
in the wind, made obeisance on the wall, and for a moment darkened the
pool in which light reflected itself; or birds, flying, made a soft
spot flutter slowly across the bedroom floor.
So loveliness reigned and stillness, and together made the shape of
loveliness itself, a form from which life had parted; solitary like a
pool at evening, far distant, seen from a train window, vanishing so
quickly that the pool, pale in the evening, is scarcely robbed of its
solitude, though once seen. Loveliness and stillness clasped hands in
the bedroom, and among the shrouded jugs and sheeted chairs even the
prying of the wind, and the soft nose of the clammy sea airs, rubbing,
snuffling, iterating, and reiterating their questions--"Will you fade?
Will you perish?"--scarcely disturbed the peace, the indifference, the
air of pure integrity, as if the question they asked scarcely needed
that they should answer: we remain.
Nothing it seemed could break that image, corrupt that innocence, or
disturb the swaying mantle of silence which, week after week, in the
empty room, wove into itself the falling cries of birds, ships hooting,
the drone and hum of the fields, a dog's bark, a man's shout, and
folded them round the house in silence. Once only a board sprang on
the landing; once in the middle of the night with a roar, with a
rupture, as after centuries of quiescence, a rock rends itself from the
mountain and hurtles crashing into the valley, one fold of the shawl
loosened and swung to and fro. Then again peace descended; and the
shadow wavered; light bent to its own image in adoration on the bedroom
wall; and Mrs McNab, tearing the veil of silence with hands that had
stood in the wash-tub, grinding it with boots that had crunched the
shingle, came as directed to open all windows, and dust the bedrooms.
5
As she lurched (for she rolled like a ship at sea) and leered (for her
eyes fell on nothing directly, but with a sidelong glance that
deprecated the scorn and anger of the world--she was witless, she knew
it), as she clutched the banisters and hauled herself upstairs and
rolled from room to room, she sang. R
ubbing the glass of the long
looking-glass and leering sideways at her swinging figure a sound
issued from her lips--something that had been gay twenty years before
on the stage perhaps, had been toothless, bonneted, care-taking woman,
was robbed of meaning, was like the voice of witlessness, humour,
persistency itself, trodden down but springing up again, so that as she
lurched, dusting, wiping, she seemed to say how it was one long sorrow
and trouble, how it was getting up and going to bed again, and bringing
things out and putting them away again. It was not easy or snug this
world she had known for close on seventy years. Bowed down she was
with weariness. How long, she asked, creaking and groaning on her
knees under the bed, dusting the boards, how long shall it endure? but
hobbled to her feet again, pulled herself up, and again with her
sidelong leer which slipped and turned aside even from her own face,
and her own sorrows, stood and gaped in the glass, aimlessly smiling,
and began again the old amble and hobble, taking up mats, putting down
china, looking sideways in the glass, as if, after all, she had her
consolations, as if indeed there twined about her dirge some
incorrigible hope. Visions of joy there must have been at the wash-
tub, say with her children (yet two had been base-born and one had
deserted her), at the public-house, drinking; turning over scraps in
her drawers. Some cleavage of the dark there must have been, some
channel in the depths of obscurity through which light enough issued to
twist her face grinning in the glass and make her, turning to her job
again, mumble out the old music hall song. The mystic, the visionary,
walking the beach on a fine night, stirring a puddle, looking at a
stone, asking themselves "What am I," "What is this?" had suddenly an
answer vouchsafed them: (they could not say what it was) so that they
were warm in the frost and had comfort in the desert. But Mrs McNab
continued to drink and gossip as before.
6
The Spring without a leaf to toss, bare and bright like a virgin fierce
in her chastity, scornful in her purity, was laid out on fields wide-
eyed and watchful and entirely careless of what was done or thought by
the beholders. [Prue Ramsay, leaning on her father's arm, was given in
marriage. What, people said, could have been more fitting? And, they
added, how beautiful she looked!]
As summer neared, as the evenings lengthened, there came to the
wakeful, the hopeful, walking the beach, stirring the pool,
imaginations of the strangest kind--of flesh turned to atoms which
drove before the wind, of stars flashing in their hearts, of cliff,
sea, cloud, and sky brought purposely together to assemble outwardly
the scattered parts of the vision within. In those mirrors, the minds
of men, in those pools of uneasy water, in which clouds for ever turn
and shadows form, dreams persisted, and it was impossible to resist the
strange intimation which every gull, flower, tree, man and woman, and
the white earth itself seemed to declare (but if questioned at once to
withdraw) that good triumphs, happiness prevails, order rules; or to
resist the extraordinary stimulus to range hither and thither in search
of some absolute good, some crystal of intensity, remote from the known
pleasures and familiar virtues, something alien to the processes of
domestic life, single, hard, bright, like a diamond in the sand, which
would render the possessor secure. Moreover, softened and acquiescent,
the spring with her bees humming and gnats dancing threw her cloak
about her, veiled her eyes, averted her head, and among passing shadows
and flights of small rain seemed to have taken upon her a knowledge of
the sorrows of mankind.
[Prue Ramsay died that summer in some illness connected with
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