Before leaving he made the following short statement:
Haw! how it all comes back to me, to be sure. That look! That weary watchful vacancy! The man arrives! The dark ways all behind, all within, the long dark ways, in his head, in his side, in his hands and feet, and he sits in the red gloom, picking his nose, waiting for the dawn to break. The dawn! The sun! The light! Haw! The long blue days, for his head, for his side, and the little paths for his feet, and all the brightness to touch and gather. Through the grass the little mosspaths, bony with old roots, and the trees sticking up, and the flowers sticking up, and the fruit hanging down, and the white exhausted butterflies, and the birds never the same darting all day into hiding. And all the sounds, meaning nothing. Then at night rest in the quiet house, there are no roads, no streets any more, you lie down by a window opening on refuge, the little sounds come that demand nothing, ordain nothing, explain nothing, propound nothing, and the short necessary night is soon ended, and the sky blue again over all the secret places where nobody ever comes, the secret places never the same, but always simple and indifferent, always mere places, sites of a stirring beyond coming and going, of a being so light and free that it is as the being of nothing. How I feel it all again, after so long, here, and here, and in my hands, and in my eyes, like a face raised, a face offered, all trust and innocence and candour, all the old soil and fear and weakness offered, to be sponged away and forgiven! Haw! Or did I never feel it till now? Now when there is no warrant? Wouldn’t surprise me. All forgiven and healed. For ever. In a moment. To-morrow. Six, five, four hours still, of the old dark, the old burden, lightening, lightening. For one is come, to stay. Haw! All the old ways led to this, all the old windings, the stairs with never a landing that you screw yourself up, clutching the rail, counting the steps, the fever of shortest ways under the long lids of sky, the wild country roads where your dead walk beside you, on the dark shingle the turning for the last time again to the lights of the little town, the appointments kept and the appointments broken, all the delights of urban and rural change of place, all the exitus and redditus, closed and ended. All led to this, to this gloaming where a middleaged man sits masturbating his snout, waiting for the first dawn to break. For of course he is not as yet familiar with the premises. Indeed it is a wonder to him, and will remain so, how having found the neighbourhood he found the gate, and how having found the gate he found the door, and how having found the door he passed beyond it. No matter, he is content. No. Let us not exaggerate. He is well pleased. For he knows he is in the right place, at last. And he knows he is the right man, at last. In another place he would be the wrong man still, and for another man, yes, for another man it would be the wrong place again. But he being what he has become, and the place being what it was made, the fit is perfect. And he knows this. No. Let us remain calm. He feels it. The sensations, the premonitions of harmony are irrefragable, of imminent harmony, when all outside him will be he, the flowers the flowers that he is among him, the sky the sky that he is above him, the earth trodden the earth treading, and all sound his echo. When in a word he will be in his midst at last, after so many tedious years spent clinging to the perimeter. These first impressions, so hardly won, are undoubtedly delicious. What a feeling of security! They are transports that few are spared, nature is so exceedingly accommodating, on the one hand, and man, on the other. With what sudden colours past trials and errors glow, seen in their new, their true perspective, mere stepping-stones to this! Haw! All is repaid, amply repaid. For he has arrived. He even ventures to remove his hat, and set down his bags, without misgiving. Think of that! He removes his hat without misgiving, he unbuttons his coat and sits down, proffered all pure and open to the long joys of being himself, like a basin to a vomit. Oh, not in idleness. For there is work to do. That is what is so exquisite. Having oscillated all his life between the torments of a superficial loitering and the horrors of disinterested endeavour, he finds himself at last in a situation where to do nothing exclusively would be an act of the highest value, and significance. And what happens? For the first time, since in anguish and disgust he relieved his mother of her milk, definite tasks of unquestionable utility are assigned to him. Is not that charming? But his regret, his indignation, are of short duration, disappearing as a rule at the end of the third or fourth month. Why is this? It is because of the nature of the work to be performed, because of its exceptional fruitfulness, because he comes to understand that he is working not merely for Mr Knott in person, and for Mr Knott’s establishment, but also, and indeed chiefly, for himself, that he may abide, as he is, where he is, and that where he is may abide about him, as it is. Unable to resist these intenerating considerations, his regrets, lively at first, melt at last, melt quite away and pass over, softly, into the celebrated conviction that all is well, or at least for the best. His indignation undergoes a similar reduction, and calm and glad at last he goes about his work, calm and glad he peels the potato and empties the nightstool, calm and glad he witnesses and is witnessed. For a time. For the day comes when he says, Am I not a little out of sorts, to-day? Not that he feels out of sorts, on the contrary, he feels if possible even better disposed than usual. Haw! He feels if possible even better disposed than usual and he asks himself if he is not perhaps a little seedy. The fool! He has learnt nothing. Nothing. Pardon my vehemence. But that is a terrible day (to look back on), the day when the horror of what has happened reduces him to the ignoble expedient of inspecting his tongue in a mirror, his tongue never so rosy, in a breath never so sweet. It was a Tuesday afternoon, in the month of October, a beautiful October afternoon. I was sitting on the step, in the yard, looking at the light, on the wall. I was in the sun, and the wall was in the sun. I was the sun, need I add, and the wall, and the step, and the yard, and the time of year, and the time of day, to mention only these. To be sitting, at so pleasant a conjuncture of one’s courses, in oneself, by oneself, that I think it will freely be admitted is a way no worse than another, and better than some, of whiling away an instant of leisure. Puffing away at the same time at my tobacco-pipe, which was as flat and broad that afternoon as an apothecary’s slice, I felt my breast swell, like a pelican’s I think it is. For joy? Well, no, perhaps not exactly for joy. For the change of which I speak had not yet taken place. Hymeneal still it lay, the thing so soon to be changed, between me and all the forgotten horrors of joy. But let us not linger on my breast. Look at it now — bugger these buttons! — as flat and — ow! — as hollow as a tambourine. You saw? You heard? No matter. Where was I? The change. In what did it consist? It is hard to say. Something slipped. There I was, warm and bright, smoking my tobacco-pipe, watching the warm bright wall, when suddenly somewhere some little thing slipped, some little tiny thing. Gliss — iss — iss — STOP! I trust I make myself clear. There is a great alp of sand, one hundred metres high, between the pines and the ocean, and there in the warm moonless night, when no one is looking, no one listening, in tiny packets of two or three millions the grains slip, all together, a little slip of one or two lines maybe, and then stop, all together, not one missing, and that is all, that is all for that night, and perhaps for ever that is all, for in the morning with the sun a little wind from the sea may come, and blow them one from another far apart, or a pedestrian scatter them with his foot, though that is less likely. It was a slip like that I felt, that Tuesday afternoon, millions of little things moving all together out of their old place, into a new one nearby, and furtively, as though it were forbidden. And I have little doubt that I was the only person living to discover them. To conclude from this that the incident was internal would, I think, be rash. For my — how shall I say? — my personal system was so distended at the period of which I speak that the distinction between what was inside it and what was outside it was not at all easy to draw. Everything that happened happened inside it, and at the same time everything that happened happened outside it. I trust I make myself plain. I did not, need I add, see the thing happen, nor hear it, but I perceived it
with a perception so sensuous that in comparison the impressions of a man buried alive in Lisbon on Lisbon’s great day seem a frigid and artificial construction of the understanding. The sun on the wall, since I was looking at the sun on the wall at the time, underwent an instantaneous and I venture to say radical change of appearance. It was the same sun and the same wall, or so little older that the difference may safely be disregarded, but so changed that I felt I had been transported, without my having remarked it, to some quite different yard, and to some quite different season, in an unfamiliar country. At the same time my tobacco-pipe, since I was not eating a banana, ceased so completely from the solace to which I was inured, that I took it out of my mouth to make sure it was not a thermometer, or an epileptic’s dental wedge. And my breast, on which I could almost feel the feathers stirring, in the charming way breast feathers have, relapsed into the void and bony concavity which my dear tutor used to say reminded him of Crécy. For my spine and sternum have always been concentric, ever since I was a little nipper. It was then in my distress that I had the baseness to call to my aid recent costiveness and want of stomach. But in what did the change consist? What was changed, and how? What was changed, if my information is correct, was the sentiment that a change, other than a change of degree, had taken place. What was changed was existence off the ladder. Do not come down the ladder, Ifor, I haf taken it away. This I am happy to inform you is the reversed metamorphosis. The Laurel into Daphne. The old thing where it always was, back again. As when a man, having found at last what he sought, a woman, for example, or a friend, loses it, or realises what it is. And yet it is useless not to seek, not to want, for when you cease to seek you start to find, and when you cease to want, then life begins to ram her fish and chips down your gullet until you puke, and then the puke down your gullet until you puke the puke, and then the puked puke until you begin to like it. The glutton castaway, the drunkard in the desert, the lecher in prison, they are the happy ones. To hunger, thirst, lust, every day afresh and every day in vain, after the old prog, the old booze, the old whores, that’s the nearest we’ll ever get to felicity, the new porch and the very latest garden. I pass on the tip for what it is worth. But how did this sentiment arise, that a change other than a change of degree had taken place? And to what if to any reality did it correspond? And to what forces is the credit for its removal to be attributed? These are questions from which, with patience, it would be an easy matter to extract the next in order, and so descend, so mount, rung by rung, until the night was over. Unfortunately I have information of a practical nature to impart, that is to say a debt to pay, or a score to settle, before I depart. So I shall merely state, without enquiring how it came, or how it went, that in my opinion it was not an illusion, as long as it lasted, that presence of what did not exist, that presence without, that presence within, that presence between, though I’ll be buggered if I can understand how it could have been anything else. But that and the rest, haw! the rest, you will decide for yourself, when your time comes, or rather you will leave undecided, to judge by the look of you. For do not imagine me to suggest that what has happened to me, what is happening to me, will ever happen to you, or that what is happening to you, what will happen to you, has ever happened to me, or rather, if it will, if it has, that there is any great chance of its being admitted. For in truth the same things happen to us all, especially to men in our situation, whatever that is, if only we chose to know it. But I am worse than Mr Ash, a man I once knew to nod to. One evening I ran into him on Westminster Bridge. It was blowing heavily. It was also snowing heavily. I nodded, heavily. In vain. Securing me with one hand, he removed from the other with his mouth two pairs of leather gauntlets, unwound his heavy woollen muffler, unbuttoned successively and flung aside his greatcoat, jerkin, coat, two waistcoats, shirt, outer and inner vests, coaxed from a washleather fob hanging in company with a crucifix I imagine from his neck a gunmetal half-hunter, sprang open its case, held it to his eyes (night was falling), recovered in a series of converse operations his original form, said, Seventeen minutes past five exactly, as God is my witness, remember me to your wife (I never had one), let go my arm, raised his hat and hastened away. A moment later Big Ben (is that the name?) struck six. This in my opinion is the type of all information whatsoever, be it voluntary or solicited. If you want a stone, ask a turnover. If you want a turnover, ask plumpudding. This Ash was what I believe is still called an Admiralty Clerk of the Second Class and with that a sterling fellow. Such vermin pullulate. He died of premature exhaustion, the following week, oiled and houseled, leaving his half-hunter to his house-plumber. Personally of course I regret everything. Not a word, not a deed, not a thought, not a need, not a grief, not a joy, not a girl, not a boy, not a doubt, not a trust, not a scorn, not a lust, not a hope, not a fear, not a smile, not a tear, not a name, not a face, no time, no place, that I do not regret, exceedingly. An ordure, from beginning to end. And yet, when I sat for Fellowship, but for the boil on my bottom—. The rest, an ordure. The Tuesday scowls, the Wednesday growls, the Thursday curses, the Friday howls, the Saturday snores, the Sunday yawns, the Monday morns, the Monday morns. The whacks, the moans, the cracks, the groans, the welts, the squeaks, the belts, the shrieks, the pricks, the prayers, the kicks, the tears, the skelps, and the yelps. And the poor old lousy old earth, my earth and my father’s and my mother’s and my father’s father’s and my mother’s mother’s and my father’s mother’s and my mother’s father’s and my father’s mother’s father’s and my mother’s father’s mother’s and my father’s mother’s mother’s and my mother’s father’s father’s and my father’s father’s mother’s and my mother’s mother’s father’s and my father’s father’s father’s and my mother’s mother’s mother’s and other people’s fathers’ and mothers’ and fathers’ fathers’ and mothers’ mothers’ and fathers’ mothers’ and mothers’ fathers’ and fathers’ mothers’ fathers’ and mothers’ fathers’ mothers’ and fathers’ mothers’ mothers’ and mothers’ fathers’ fathers’ and fathers’ fathers’ mothers’ and mothers’ mothers’ fathers’ and fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ and mothers’ mothers’ mothers’. An excrement. The crocuses and the larch turning green every year a week before the others and the pastures red with uneaten sheep’s placentas and the long summer days and the newmown hay and the wood-pigeon in the morning and the cuckoo in the afternoon and the corncrake in the evening and the wasps in the jam and the smell of the gorse and the look of the gorse and the apples falling and the children walking in the dead leaves and the larch turning brown a week before the others and the chestnuts falling and the howling winds and the sea breaking over the pier and the first fires and the hooves on the road and the consumptive postman whistling The Roses Are Blooming in Picardy and the standard oillamp and of course the snow and to be sure the sleet and bless your heart the slush and every fourth year the February débâcle and the endless April showers and the crocuses and then the whole bloody business starting all over again. A turd. And if I could begin it all over again, knowing what I know now, the result would be the same. And if I could begin again a third time, knowing what I would know then, the result would be the same. And if I could begin it all over again a hundred times, knowing each time a little more than the time before, the result would always be the same, and the hundredth life as the first, and the hundred lives as one. A cat’s flux. But at this rate we shall be here all night.
We shall be here all night,
Be here all night shall we,
All night we shall be here,
Here all night we shall be.
One dark, one still, one breath,
Night here, here we, we night,
One fleeing, fleeing to rest,
One resting on the flight.
Haw! You heard that one? A beauty. Haw! Hell! Haw! So. Haw! Haw! Haw! My laugh, Mr —? I beg your pardon. Like Tyler? Haw! My laugh, Mr Watt. Christian name, forgotten. Yes. Of all the laughs that strictly speaking are not laughs, but modes of ulu
lation, only three I think need detain us, I mean the bitter, the hollow and the mirthless. They correspond to successive, how shall I say successive … suc … successive excoriations of the understanding, and the passage from the one to the other is the passage from the lesser to the greater, from the lower to the higher, from the outer to the inner, from the gross to the fine, from the matter to the form. The laugh that now is mirthless once was hollow, the laugh that once was hollow once was bitter. And the laugh that once was bitter? Eyewater, Mr Watt, eyewater. But do not let us waste our time with that, do not let us waste any more time with that, Mr Watt. No. Where were we. The bitter, the hollow and — Haw! Haw! — the mirthless. The bitter laugh laughs at that which is not good, it is the ethical laugh. The hollow laugh laughs at that which is not true, it is the intellectual laugh. Not good! Not true! Well well. But the mirthless laugh is the dianoetic laugh, down the snout — Haw! — so. It is the laugh of laughs, the risus purus, the laugh laughing at the laugh, the beholding, the saluting of the highest joke, in a word the laugh that laughs — silence please — at that which is unhappy. Personally of course I regret all. All, all, all. Not a word, not a—. But have I not been over that already? I have? Then let me speak rather of my present feeling, which so closely resembles the feeling of sorrow, so closely that I can scarcely distinguish between them. Yes. When I think that this hour is my last on earth on Mr Knott’s premises, where I have spent so many hours, so many happy hours, so many unhappy hours, and — worst of all — so many hours that were neither happy nor unhappy, and that before the cock crows, or at very latest very little later, my weary little legs must be carrying me as best they may away, my trunk that is wearier still and my head that is weariest of all, away far away from this state or place on which my hopes so long were fixed, as fast as they can move in and out the weary little fat bottom and belly away, and the shrunk chest, and the poor little fat bald head feeling as though it were falling off, faster and faster through the grey air and further and further away, in any one no matter which of the three hundred and sixty directions open to a desperate man of average agility, and often I turn, tears blinding my eyes, Haw! without however pausing in my career (no easy matter), perhaps longing to be turned into a stone pillar or a cromlech in the middle of a field or on the mountain side for succeeding generations to admire, and for cows and horses and sheep and goats to come and scratch themselves against and for men and dogs to make their water against and for learned men to speculate regarding and for disappointed men to inscribe with party slogans and indelicate graffiti and for lovers to scratch their names on, in a heart, with the date, and for now and then a lonely man like myself to sit down with his back against and fall asleep, in the sun, if the sun happened to be shining. And consequently I feel a feeling that closely resembles in every particular the feeling of sorrow, sorrow for what has been, is and is to come, as far as I personally am concerned, for with the troubles and difficulties of other people I am in no fit state for the time being to trouble my head, which begins to feel as though it were falling off, than which I think it will be readily allowed that for the intellectual type of chap, Haw! like me few sensations can be more painful, just as for the luxurious type of fellow it would be the feeling of his private parts on the point of falling off that would very likely be the most worrying, and so on for the various other different types of men. Yes, these moments together have changed us, your moments and my moments, so that we are not only no longer the same now as when they began — ticktick! ticktick! — to elapse, but we know that we are no longer the same, and not only know that we are no longer the same, but know in what we are no longer the same, you wiser but not sadder, and I sadder but not wiser, for wiser I could hardly become without grave personal inconvenience, whereas sorrow is a thing you can keep on adding to all your life long, is it not, like a stamp or egg collection, without feeling very much the worse for it, is it not. Now when one man takes the place of another man, then it is perhaps of assistance to him who takes the place to know something of him whose place he takes, though to be sure at the same time on the other hand the inverse is not necessarily true, I mean that he whose place is taken can hardly be expected to feel any great curiosity about him who takes his place. This interesting relation is I regret often established by procuration. Consider for example the increeping and outbouncing house-and parlour-maids (I say house and parlour maids, but you know what I mean), the latter having bounced out before the former crept in, in such a way as to exclude all possibility of encounter whether on the drive or on the way to and from the tram-stop, bus-stop, railway-station, cab-rank, taxi-stand, bar-parlour or canal. Now let the name of the former of these two women be Mary, and that of the latter Ann, or, better still, that of the former Ann and that of the latter Mary, and let there exist a third person, the mistress, or the master, for without some such superior existence the existence of the house-and parlour-maid, whether on the way to the house and parlour, or on the way from the house and parlour, or motionless in the house and parlour, is hardly conceivable. Then this third person, on whose existence the existences of Ann and Mary depend, and whose existence also in a sense if you like depends on the existences of Ann and Mary, says to Mary, no, says to Ann, for by this time Mary is afar off, in the tram, the bus, the train, the cab, the taxi, the bar-parlour or canal, says to Ann, Jane, in the morning when Mary had finished doing this, if Mary may be said to have ever finished doing anything, then she began to do this, that is to say she settled herself firmly in a comfortable semi-upright posture before the task to be performed and remained there quietly eating onions and peppermints turn and turn about, I mean first an onion, then a peppermint, then another onion, then another peppermint, then another onion, then another peppermint, then another onion, then another peppermint, then another onion, then another peppermint, then another onion, then another peppermint, then another onion, then another peppermint, then another onion, then another peppermint, then another onion, then another peppermint, and so on, while little by little the reason for her presence in that place faded from her mind, as with the dawn the figments of the id, and the duster, whose burden up till now she had so bravely born, fell from her fingers, to the dust, where having at once assumed the colour (grey) of its surroundings it disappeared until the following Spring. An average of anything from twenty-six to twenty-seven splendid woollen dusters per mensem were lost in this way by our Mary during her last year of service in this unfortunate house. Now what, it may well be asked, can the fancies have been that so ravished Mary from a sense of her situation? Dreams of less work and higher wages? Erotic cravings? Recollections of childhood? Menopausal discomfort? Grief for a loved one defunct or departed for an unknown destination? Daltonic visualisations of the morning paper’s racing programme? Prayers for a soul? She was not a woman to confide. And indeed I think I am correct in saying that she was opposed to conversation on principle as such. Whole days, and even entire weeks, would glide away without Mary’s having opened her gob for any purpose other than the reception of her five fingers fastened firmly on a fragment of food, for to the spoon, the knife, and even the fork, considered as aids to ingestion, she had never been able to accustom herself, in spite of excellent references. Her appetite, on the other hand, was quite exceptional. Not that the food absorbed by Mary, over a given period, was greater in mass, or richer in vitamins, than the normal healthy person’s allowance for the same time. No. But her appetite was exceptional in this, that it knew no remission. The ordinary person eats a meal, then rests from eating for a space, then eats again, then rests again, then eats again, then rests again, then eats again, then rests again, then eats again, then rests again, then eats again, then rests again, then eats again, then rests again, and in this way, now eating, and now resting from eating, he deals with the difficult problem of hunger, and indeed I think I may add thirst, to the best of his ability and according to the state of his fortune. Let him be a small eater, a moderate eater, a heavy eater, a vegetarian, a naturist,
a cannibal, a coprophage, let him look forward to his eating with pleasure or back on it with regret or both, let him eliminate well or let him eliminate ill, let him eructate, vomit, break wind or in other ways fail or scorn to contain himself as a result of an ill-adapted diet, congenital affliction or faulty training during the impressionable years, let him, Jane, I say, be one or more or all or more than all of these, or let him on the other hand be none of these, but something quite different, as would be the case for example if he were on hunger strike or in a catatonic stupor or obliged for some reason best known to his medical advisers to turn for his sustenance to the clyster, the fact remains, and can hardly be denied, that he proceeds by what we call meals, whether taken voluntarily or involuntarily, with pleasure or pain, successfully or unsuccessfully, through the mouth, the nose, the pores, the feedtube or in an upward direction with the aid of a piston from behind is not of the slightest importance, and that between these acts of nutrition, without which life as it is generally understood would be hard set to continue, there intervene periods of rest or repose, during which no food is taken, unless it be every now and then from time to time an occasional snack, quick drink or light collation, rendered if not indispensable at least welcome by an unforeseen acceleration of the metabolic exchanges due to circumstances of an imprevisible kind, as for example the backing of a loser, the birth of a child, the payment of a debt, the recovery of a loan, the voice of conscience, or any other shock to the great sympathetic, causing a sudden rush of chyme, or chyle, or both, to the semidigested slowly surely earthward struggling mass of sherrywine, soup, beer, fish, stout, meat, beer, vegetables, sweet, fruit, cheese, stout, anchovy, beer, coffee and benedictine, for example, swallowed lightheartedly but a few short hours before to the strains as likely as not of a piano and cello. Whereas Mary ate all day long, that is to say from early dawn, or at least from the hour at which she woke, which to judge from the hour at which she rose, or rather at which she first appeared in the bowels of this unhappy home, was in no way premature, to late at night, for she retired to rest with great punctuality every evening at eight o’clock, leaving the dinner things on the table, and fell at once into an exhausted sleep, if her snores, of which as I have often been heard to remark I never heard the like, were not simulated, which I for my part will never believe, seeing as how they continued with undiminished sonority all night long, from which I may add I am inclined to suspect that Mary, like so many women, slept on the flat of her back, a dangerous and detestable practice in my opinion, though I know there are times when it is difficult, not to say impossible, to do otherwise. Ahem! Now when I say that Mary ate all day, from her opening her eyes in the morning to her closing them at night, in sleep, I mean that at no moment during this period was Mary’s mouth more than half empty, or, if you prefer, less than half full, for to the habit generally received of finishing one mouthful before initiating the next Mary had never, notwithstanding her remarkable papers, been able to adapt herself. Now when I say that at no moment of Mary’s waking hours was Mary’s mouth more than half empty, or less than half full, I do not mean that it was always so, for on close and even on casual inspection it would have been found, nine times out of ten, full to overflowing, which goes far towards explaining Mary’s indifference to the pleasures of conversation. Now when speaking of Mary’s mouth I make use of the expression full to overflowing, I do not merely mean to say that it was so full, nine tenths of the time, that it threatened to overflow, but in my thought I go further and I assert, without fear of contradiction, that it was so full, nine tenths of the time, that it did overflow, all over this ill-fated interior, and traces of this exuberance, in the form of partially masticated morcels of meat, fruit, bread, vegetables, nuts and pastry I have frequently found in places as remote in space, and distinct in purpose, as the coal-hole, the conservatory, the American Bar, the oratory, the cellar, the attic, the dairy and, I say it with shame, the servants’ W.C., where a greater part of Mary’s time was spent than seemed compatible with a satisfactory, or even tolerable, condition of the digestive apparatus, unless we are to suppose that she retired to that place in search of a little fresh air, rest and quiet, for a woman more attached to rest and quiet I have never, I say it without fear of exaggeration, known or even heard of. But to return to where we left her, I see her still, propped up in a kind of stupor against one of the walls in which this wretched edifice abounds, her long grey greasy hair framing in its cowl of scrofulous mats a face where pallor, languor, hunger, acne, recent dirt, immemorial chagrin and surplus hair seemed to dispute the mastery. Flitters of perforated starch entwine an ear. Under the rusty cotton frock, plentifully embossed with scabs of slobber, two cuplike depressions mark the place of the bosom and a conical protuberance that of the abdomen. Between on the one hand a large pouch or bag, containing the forenoon’s supplies, cunningly dissimulated in the tattered skirt, and on the other Mary’s mouth, Mary’s hands flash to and fro, with a regularity that I do not hesitate to compare with that of piston-rods. At the moment that the one hand presses, with open palm, between the indefatigable jaws, a cold potato, onion, tart or sandwich, the other darts into the pouch and there, unerringly, fastens on a sandwich, onion, tart or cold potato, as Mary wills. And the former, on its way down to be filled, meets the latter on its way up to be emptied, at a point equidistant from their points of departure, or arrival. And save for the flying arms, and champing mouth, and swallowing throat, not a muscle of Mary stirs, and over all the dreaming face, which may strike you, Jane, as strange, but, believe me, Jane, I invent nothing. Now with regard to Mary’s limbs, ahem, of which I think I am correct in saying that no mention has yet been made, winter and summer—. Winter and summer. And so on. Summer! When I lie dying, Mr Watt, behind the red screen, you know, perhaps that is the word that will sound, summer, and the words for summer things. Not that I ever much cared for them. But some call for the priest, and others for the long days when the sun was a burden. It was summer when I landed here. And now I shall finish and you will hear my voice no more, unless we meet again elsewhere, which considering the probable state of our health is not likely. For then I shall rise, no, I am not seated, then I shall go, just as I am, in the things I stand up in, if you can call this standing up, with not so much as a toothbrush in my pocket to brush my tooth with, morning and evening, or a penny in my purse to buy me a bun in the heat of noonday, without a hope, a friend, a plan, a prospect or a hat to my head to take off to the kind ladies and gentlemen, and make my way as best I may down the path to the gate, for the last time, in the grey of the morning, and pass out with a nod on the hard road and up on the hard path and so go, putting my better foot foremore to the best of my abilities, and the dusty uncut privet brushing my cheek, and so on, and on, hotter and hotter, weaker and weaker, until someone takes pity on me, or God has mercy on me, or better still both, or failing these I fall unable to rise by the way and am taken into custody black with flies by a passing man in blue, leaving you here in my place, with before you all I have behind me, and all I have before me, haw! all I have before me. It was summer. There were three men in the house: the master, whom as you well know we call Mr Knott; a senior retainer named Vincent, I believe; and a junior, only in the sense that he was of more recent acquisition, named, if I am not mistaken, Walter. The first is here, in his bed, or at least in his room. But the second, I mean Vincent, is not here any more, and the reason for that is this, that when I came in he went out. But the third, I mean Walter, is not here any more either, and the reason for that is this, that when Erskine came in he went out, just as Vincent went out when I came in. And I, I mean Arsene, am not here any more either, and the reason for that is this, that when you came in I went out, just as when I came in Vincent went out and as Walter went out when Erskine came in. But Erskine, I mean the second last to come and the next to go, Erskine is here still, sleeping and little dreaming what the new day holds in store, I mean promotion and a new face and the end in sight. But another evening shall come
and the light die away out of the sky and the colour from the earth—
Watt Page 6
