Complete Works of Virginia Woolf

by Virginia Woolf

  “It’s going to be another hot day tomorrow,” said Peggy. The sky was perfectly smooth; it seemed made of innumerable grey-blue atoms the colour of an Italian officer’s cloak; until it reached the horizon where there was a long bar of pure green. Everything looked very settled; very still; very pure. There was not a single cloud, and the stars were not yet showing.

  It was small; it was smug; it was petty after Spain, but still, now that the sun had sunk and the trees were massed together without separate leaves it had its beauty, Eleanor thought. The downs were becoming larger and simpler; they were becoming part of the sky.

  “How lovely it is!” she exclaimed, as if she were making amends to England after Spain.

  “If only Mr Robinson doesn’t build!” sighed Celia; and Eleanor remembered — they were the local scourge; rich people who threatened to build. “I did my best to be polite to them at the bazaar today,” Celia continued. “Some people won’t ask them; but I say one must be polite to neighbours in the country. . . .”

  Then she paused. “There are so many things I want to ask you,” she said. The bottle was tilted on its end again. Eleanor waited obediently.

  “Have you had an offer for Abercorn Terrace yet?” Celia demanded. Drop, drop, drop, out her questions came.

  “Not yet,” said Eleanor. “The agent wants me to cut it up into flats.”

  Celia pondered. Then she hopped on again.

  “And now about Maggie — when’s her baby going to be born?”

  “In November, I think,” said Eleanor. “In Paris,” she added.

  “I hope it’ll be all right,” said Celia. “But I do wish it could have been born in England.” She reflected again. “Her children will be French, I suppose?” she said.

  “Yes; French, I suppose,” said Eleanor. She was looking at the green bar; it was fading; it was turning blue. It was becoming night.

  “Everybody says he’s a very nice fellow,” said Celia. “But René — René,” her accent was bad, “ — it doesn’t sound like a man’s name.”

  “You can call him Renny,” said Peggy, pronouncing it in the English way.

  “But that reminds me of Ronny; and I don’t like Ronny. We had a stable-boy called Ronny.”

  “Who stole the hay,” said Peggy. They were silent again, “It’s such a pity—” Celia began. Then she stopped. The maid had come to clear away the coffee.

  “It’s a wonderful night, isn’t it?” said Celia, adapting her voice to the presence of servants. “It looks as if it would never rain again. In which case I don’t know. . . .” And she went on prattling about the drought; about the lack of water. The well always ran dry. Eleanor, looking at the hills, hardly listened. “Oh, but there’s quite enough for everybody at present,” she heard Celia saying. And for some reason she held the sentence suspended without a meaning in her mind’s ear, “ — quite enough for everybody at present,” she repeated. After all the foreign languages she had been hearing, it sounded to her pure English. What a lovely language, she thought, saying over to herself again the commonplace words, spoken by Celia quite simply, but with some indescribable burr in the r’s, for the Chinnerys had lived in Dorsetshire since the beginning of time.

  The maid had gone.

  “What was I saying?” Celia resumed. “I was saying, It’s such a pity. Yes. . . .” But there was a sound of voices; a scent of cigar smoke; the gentlemen were upon them. “Oh, here they are!” she broke off. And the chairs were pulled up and re-arranged.

  They sat in a semicircle looking across the meadows at the fading hills. The broad bar of green that lay across the horizon had vanished. Only a tinge was left in the sky. It had become peaceful and cool; in them too something seemed to be smoothed out. There was no need to talk. The owl flew down the meadow again; they could just see the white of his wing against the dark of the hedge.

  “There he goes,” said North, puffing at a cigar which was his first, Eleanor guessed, Sir William’s gift. The elm trees had become dead black against the sky. Their leaves hung in a fretted pattern like black lace with holes in it. Through a hole Eleanor saw the point of a star. She looked up. There was another.

  “It’s going to be a fine day tomorrow,” said Morris, knocking out his pipe against his shoe. Far away on a distant road there was a rattle of cart-wheels; then a chorus of voices singing — country people going home. This is England, Eleanor thought to herself; she felt as if she were slowly sinking into some fine mesh made of branches shaking, hills growing dark, and leaves hanging like black lace with stars among them. But a bat swooped low over their heads.

  “I hate bats!” Celia exclaimed, raising her hand to her head nervously.

  “Do you?” said Sir William. “I rather like them.” His voice was quiet and almost melancholy. Now Celia will say, They get into one’s hair, Eleanor thought.

  “They get into one’s hair,” Celia said.

  “But I haven’t any hair,” said Sir William. His bald head, his large face gleamed out in the darkness.

  The bat swooped again, skimming the ground at their feet. A little cool air stirred at their ankles. The trees had become part of the sky. There was no moon, but the stars were coming out. There’s another, Eleanor thought, gazing at a twinkling light ahead of her. But it was too low; too yellow; it was another house she realised, not a star. And then Celia began talking to Sir William, whom she wanted to settle near them; and Lady St. Austell had told her that the Grange was to let. Was that the Grange, Eleanor wondered, looking at a light, or a star? And they went on talking.

  Tired of her own company, old Mrs Chinnery had come down early. There she sat in the drawing-room waiting. She had made a formal entry, but there was nobody there. Arrayed in her old lady’s dress of black satin, with a lace cap on her head, she sat waiting. Her hawk-like nose was curved in her shrivelled cheeks; a little red rim showed on one of her drooping eyelids.

  “Why don’t they come in?” she said peevishly to Ellen, the discreet black maid who stood behind her. Ellen went to the window and tapped on the pane.

  Celia stopped talking and turned round. “That’s Mama,” she said. “We must go in.” She got up and pushed back her chair.

  After the dark, the drawing-room with its lamps lit had the effect of a stage. Old Mrs Chinnery sitting in her wheeled chair with her ear trumpet seemed to sit there awaiting homage. She looked exactly the same; not a day older; as vigorous as ever. As Eleanor bent to give her the customary kiss, life once more took on its familiar proportions. So she had bent, night after night, over her father. She was glad to stoop down; it made her feel younger herself. She knew the whole procedure by heart. They, the middle-aged, deferred to the very old; the very old were courteous to them; and then came the usual pause. They had nothing to say to her; she had nothing to say to them. What happened next? Eleanor saw the old lady’s eyes suddenly brighten. What made the eyes of an old woman of ninety turn blue? Cards? Yes. Celia had fetched the green baize table; Mrs Chinnery had a passion for whist. But she too had her ceremony; she too had her manners.

  “Not tonight,” she said, making a little gesture as if to push away the table. “I am sure it will bore Sir William?” She gave a nod in the direction of the large man who stood there seeming a little outside the family party.

  “Not at all. Not at all,” he said with alacrity. “Nothing would please me more,” he assured her.

  You’re a good fellow, Dubbin, Eleanor thought. And they drew up the chairs; and dealt the cards; and Morris chaffed his mother-in-law down her ear-trumpet and they played rubber after rubber. North read a book; Peggy strummed on the piano; and Celia, dozing over her embroidery, now and then gave a sudden start and put her hand over her mouth. At last the door opened stealthily. Ellen, the discreet black maid stood behind Mrs Chinnery’s chair, waiting. Mrs Chinnery pretended to ignore her, but the others were glad to stop. Ellen stepped forward and Mrs Chinnery, submitting, was wheeled off to the mysterious upper chamber of extreme old age. Her pleasure wa
s over.

  Celia yawned openly.

  “The bazaar,” she said, rolling up her embroidery. “I shall go to bed. Come, Peggy. Come, Eleanor.”

  North jumped up with alacrity to open the door. Celia lit the brass candlesticks and began, rather heavily, to climb the stairs. Eleanor followed after. But Peggy lagged behind. Eleanor heard her whispering with her brother in the hall.

  “Come along, Peggy,” Celia called back over the banister as she toiled upstairs. When she got to the landing at the top she stopped under the picture of the little Chinnerys and called back again rather sharply:

  “Come, Peggy.” There was a pause. Then Peggy came, reluctantly. She kissed her mother obediently; but she did not look in the least sleepy. She looked extremely pretty and rather flushed. She did not mean to go to bed, Eleanor felt sure.

  She went into her room and undressed. All the windows were open and she heard the trees rustling in the garden. It was so hot still that she lay in her nightgown on top of the bed with only the sheet over her. The candle burnt its little pear-shaped flame on the table by her side. She lay listening vaguely to the trees in the garden; and watched the shadow of a moth that dashed round and round the room. Either I must get up and shut the window or blow out the candle, she thought drowsily. She did not want to do either. She wanted to lie still. It was a relief to lie in the semi-darkness after the talk, after the cards. She could still see the cards falling; black, red and yellow; kings, queens and knaves; on a green baize table. She looked drowsily round her. A nice vase of flowers stood on the dressing-table; there was the polished wardrobe and a china box by her bedside. She lifted the lid. Yes; four biscuits and a pale piece of chocolate — in case she should be hungry in the night. Celia had provided books too, The Diary of a Nobody, Ruff’s Tour in Northumberland and an odd volume of Dante, in case she should wish to read in the night. She took one of the books and laid it on the counterpane beside her. Perhaps because she had been travelling, it seemed as if the ship were still padding softly through the sea; as if the train were still swinging from side to side as it rattled across France. She felt as if things were moving past her as she lay stretched on the bed under the single sheet. But it’s not the landscape any longer, she thought; it’s people’s lives, their changing lives.

  The door of the pink bedroom shut. William Whatney coughed next door. She heard him cross the room. Now he was standing by the window, smoking a last cigar. What’s he thinking, she wondered — about India? — how he stood under a peacock umbrella? Then he began moving about the room, undressing. She could hear him take up a brush and put it down again on his dressing-table. And it’s to him, she thought, remembering the wide sweep of his chin and the floating stains of pink and yellow that lay underneath it, that I owe that moment, which had been more than pleasure, when she hid her face behind the newspaper in the corner of the third-class railway carriage.

  Now there were three moths dashing round the ceiling. They made a little tapping noise as they dashed round and round from corner to corner. If she left the window open much longer the room would be full of moths. A board creaked in the passage outside. She listened. Peggy, was it, escaping, to join her brother? She felt sure there was some scheme on foot. But she could only hear the heavy-laden branches moving up and down in the garden; a cow lowing; a bird chirping, and then, to her delight, the liquid call of an owl going from tree to tree looping them with silver.

  She lay looking at the ceiling. A faint water mark appeared there. It was like a hill. It reminded her of one of the great desolate mountains in Greece or in Spain, which looked as if nobody had ever set foot there since the beginning of time.

  She opened the book that lay on the counterpane. She hoped it was Ruff’s Tour, or the Diary of a Nobody; but it was Dante, and she was too lazy to change it. She read a few lines, here and there. But her Italian was rusty; the meaning escaped her. There was a meaning however; a hook seemed to scratch the surface of her mind.

  chè per quanti si dice più lì nostro

  tanto possiede più di ben ciascuno.

  What did that mean? She read the English translation.

  For by so many more there are who say ‘ours’

  So much the more of good doth each possess.

  Brushed lightly by her mind that was watching the moths on the ceiling, and listening to the call of the owl as it looped from tree to tree with its liquid cry, the words did not give out their full meaning, but seemed to hold something furled up in the hard shell of the archaic Italian. I’ll read it one of these days, she thought, shutting the book. When I’ve pensioned Crosby off, when. . . . Should she take another house? Should she travel? Should she go to India, at last? Sir William was getting into bed next door, his life was over; hers was beginning. No, I don’t mean to take another house, not another house, she thought, looking at the stain on the ceiling. Again the sense came to her of a ship padding softly through the waves; of a train swinging from side to side down a railway-line. Things can’t go on for ever, she thought. Things pass, things change, she thought, looking up at the ceiling. And where are we going? Where? Where? . . . The moths were dashing round the ceiling; the book slipped on to the floor. Craster won the pig, but who was it won the silver salver? she mused; made an effort; turned round, and blew out the candle. Darkness reigned.

  1913

  It was January. Snow was falling; snow had fallen all day. The sky spread like a grey goose’s wing from which feathers were falling all over England. The sky was nothing but a flurry of falling flakes. Lanes were levelled; hollows filled; the snow clogged the streams; obscured windows, and lay wedged against doors. There was a faint murmur in the air, a slight crepitation, as if the air itself were turning to snow; otherwise all was silent, save when a sheep coughed, snow flopped from a branch, or slipped in an avalanche down some roof in London. Now and again a shaft of light spread slowly across the sky as a car drove through the muffled roads. But as the night wore on, snow covered the wheel ruts; softened to nothingness the marks of the traffic, and coated monuments, palaces and statues with a thick vestment of snow.

  It was still snowing when the young man came from the House Agents to see over Abercorn Terrace. The snow cast a hard white glare upon the walls of the bathroom, showed up the cracks on the enamel bath, and the stains on the wall. Eleanor stood looking out of the window. The trees in the back garden were heavily lined with snow; all the roofs were softly moulded with snow; it was still falling. She turned. The young man turned too. The light was unbecoming to them both, yet the snow — she saw it through the window at the end of the passage — was beautiful, falling.

  Mr Grice turned to her as they went downstairs,

  “The fact is, our clients expect more lavatory accommodation nowadays,” he said, stopping outside a bedroom door.

  Why can’t he say “baths” and have done with it, she thought. Slowly she went downstairs. Now she could see the snow falling through the panels of the hall door. As he went downstairs, she noticed the red ears which stood out over his high collar; and the neck which he had washed imperfectly in some sink at Wandsworth. She was annoyed; as he went round the house, sniffing and peering, he had indicted their cleanliness, their humanity; and he used absurd long words. He was hauling himself up into the class above him, she supposed, by means of long words. Now he stepped cautiously over the body of the sleeping dog; took his hat from the hall table, and went down the front door-steps in his business man’s buttoned boots, leaving yellow footprints in the thick white cushion of snow. A four-wheeler was waiting.

  Eleanor turned. There was Crosby, dodging about in her best bonnet and mantle. She had been following Eleanor about the house like a dog all the morning; the odious moment could no longer be put off. Her four-wheeler was at the door; they had to say good-bye.

  “Well, Crosby, it all looks very empty, doesn’t it?” said Eleanor, looking in at the empty drawing-room. The white light of the snow glared in on the walls. It showed up the marks on the wa
lls where the furniture had stood, where the pictures had hung.

  “It does, Miss Eleanor,” said Crosby. She stood looking too. Eleanor knew that she was going to cry. She did not want her to cry. She did not want to cry herself.

  “I can still see you all sitting round that table, Miss Eleanor,” said Crosby. But the table had gone. Morris had taken this; Delia had taken that; everything had been shared out and separated.

  “And the kettle that wouldn’t boil,” said Eleanor. “D’you remember that?” She tried to laugh.

  “Oh, Miss Eleanor,” said Crosby, shaking her head, “I remember everything!” The tears were forming; Eleanor looked away into the further room.

  There too were marks on the wall, where the bookcase had stood, where the writing-table had stood. She thought of herself sitting there, drawing a pattern on the blotting-paper; digging a hole, adding up tradesmen’s books. . . . Then she turned. There was Crosby. Crosby was crying. The mixture of emotions was positively painful; she was so glad to be quit of it all, but for Crosby it was the end of everything.

  She had known every cupboard, flagstone, chair and table in that large rambling house, not from five or six feet of distance as they had known it; but from her knees, as she scrubbed and polished; she had known every groove, stain, fork, knife, napkin and cupboard. They and their doings had made her entire world. And now she was going off, alone, to a single room at Richmond.

  “I should think you’d be glad to be out of that basement anyhow, Crosby,” said Eleanor, turning into the hall again. She had never realised how dark, how low it was, until, looking at it with “our Mr Grice,” she had felt ashamed.

  “It was my home for forty years, Miss,” said Crosby. The tears were running. For forty years! Eleanor thought with a start. She had been a little girl of thirteen or fourteen when Crosby came to them, looking so stiff and smart. Now her blue gnat’s eyes protruded and her cheeks were sunk.