Complete Works of Virginia Woolf

by Virginia Woolf

  The train rushed her on. The sound had deepened; it had become a continuous roar. How could she sleep? How could she prevent herself from thinking? She turned away from the light. Now where are we? she said to herself. Where is the train at this moment? Now, she murmured, shutting her eyes, we are passing the white house on the hill; Now we are going through the tunnel; Now we are crossing the bridge over the river. . . . A blank intervened; her thoughts became spaced; they became muddled. Past and present became jumbled together. She saw Margaret Marrable pinching the dress in her fingers, but she was leading a bull with a ring through its nose. . . . This is sleep, she said to herself, half opening her eyes; thank goodness, she said to herself, shutting them again, this is sleep. And she resigned herself to the charge of the train, whose roar now became dulled and distant.

  There was a tap at her door. She lay for a moment, wondering why the room shook so; then the scene settled itself; she was in the train; she was in the country; they were nearing the station. She got up.

  She dressed rapidly and stood in the corridor. It was still early. She watched the fields galloping past. They were the bare fields, the angular fields of the north. The spring was late here; the trees were not fully out yet. The smoke looped down and caught a tree in its white cloud. When it lifted, she thought how fine the light was; clear and sharp, white and grey. The land had none of the softness, none of the greenness of the land in the south. But here was the junction; here was the gasometer; they were running into the station. The train slowed down, and all the lamp-posts on the platform gradually came to a standstill.

  She got out and drew in a deep breath of the cold raw air. The car was waiting for her; and directly she saw it she remembered — it was the new car; a birthday present from her husband. She had never driven in it yet. Cole touched his hat.

  “Let’s have it open, Cole,” she said, and he opened the stiff new hood, and she got in beside him. Very slowly, for the engine seemed to beat intermittently, starting and stopping and then starting again, they moved off. They drove through the town; all the shops were still shut; women were on their knees scrubbing doorsteps; blinds were still drawn in bedrooms and sitting-rooms; there was very little traffic about. Only milk-carts rattled past. Dogs roamed down the middle of the street on private errands of their own. Cole had to hoot again and again.

  “They’ll learn in time, m’lady,” he said as a great brindled cur slunk out of their way. In the town he drove carefully; but once they were outside he speeded up. Kitty watched the needle jump forward on the speedometer.

  “She does it easily?” she asked, listening to the soft purr of the engine.

  Cole lifted his foot to show how lightly it touched the accelerator. Then he touched it again and the car sped on. They were driving too fast, Kitty thought; but the road — she kept her eye on it — was still empty. Only two or three lumbering farm waggons passed them; the men went to the horses’ heads and held them as they went by. The road stretched pearl-white in front of them; the hedges were decked with the little pointed leaves of early spring.

  “Spring’s very late up here,” said Kitty; “cold winds I suppose?”

  Cole nodded. He had none of the servile ways of the London flunkey; she was at her ease with him; she could be silent. The air seemed to have different grades of warmth and chill in it; now sweet; now — they were passing a farmyard — strong-smelling, acrid from the sour smell of manure. She leant back, holding her hat to her head as they rushed a hill. “You won’t get her up this on top, Cole,” she said. The pace slackened a little; they were climbing the familiar Crabbs hill, with the yellow streaks where carters had put on their brakes. In the old days, when she drove horses, they used to get out here and walk. Cole said nothing. He was going to show off his engine, she suspected. The car swept up finely. But the hill was long; there was a level stretch; then the road mounted again. The car faltered. Cole coaxed her on. Kitty saw him jerk his body slightly backwards and forwards as if he were encouraging horses. She felt the tension of his muscles. They slowed — they almost stopped. No, now they were on the crest of the hill. She had done it on top!

  “Well done!” she exclaimed. He said nothing; but he was very proud, she knew.

  “We couldn’t have done that on the old car,” she said.

  “Ah, but it wasn’t her fault,” said Cole.

  He was a very humane man; the kind of man she liked, she reflected — silent, reserved. On they swept again. Now they were passing the grey stone house where the mad lady lived alone with her peacocks and her bloodhounds. They had passed it. Now the woods were on their right hand and the air came singing through them. It was like the sea, Kitty thought, looking, as they passed, down a dark green drive patched with yellow sunlight. On they went again. Now heaps of ruddy brown leaves lay by the roadside staining the puddles red.

  “It’s been raining?” she said. He nodded. They came out on the high ridge with woods beneath and there, in a clearing among the trees, was the grey tower of the Castle. She always looked for it and greeted it as if she were raising a hand to a friend. They were on their own land now. Gateposts were branded with their initials; their arms swung above the doorways of inns; their crest was mounted over cottage doors. Cole looked at the clock. The needle leapt again.

  Too fast, too fast! Kitty said to herself. But she liked the rush of the wind in her face. Now they reached the Lodge gate; Mrs Preedy was holding it open with a white-haired child on her arm. They rushed through the Park. The deer looked up and hopped away lightly through the fern.

  “Two minutes under the quarter, m’lady,” said Cole as they swept in a circle and drew up at the door. Kitty stood for a moment looking at the car. She laid her hand on the bonnet. It was hot. She gave it a little pat. “She did it beautifully, Cole,” she said. “I’ll tell his Lordship.” Cole smiled; he was happy.

  She went in. Nobody was about; they had arrived earlier than was expected. She crossed the great stone-flagged hall, with the armour and the busts, and went into the morning-room where breakfast was laid.

  The green light dazzled her as she went in. It was as if she stood in the hollow of an emerald. All was green outside. The statues of grey French ladies stood on the terrace, holding their baskets; but the baskets were empty. In summer flowers would burn there. Green turf fell down in broad swaths between clipped yews; dipped to the river; and then rose again to the hill that was crested with woods. There was a curl of mist on the woods now — the light mist of early morning. As she gazed a bee buzzed in her ear; she thought she heard the murmur of the river over the stones; pigeons crooned in the tree tops. It was the voice of early morning, the voice of summer. But the door opened. Here was breakfast.

  She breakfasted; she felt warm, stored, and comfortable as she lay back in her chair. And she had nothing to do — nothing whatever. The whole day was hers. It was fine too. The sunlight suddenly quickened in the room, and laid a broad bar of light across the floor. The sun was on the flowers outside. A tortoiseshell butterfly flaunted across the window; she saw it settle on a leaf, and there it sat, opening its wings and shutting them, opening and shutting them, as if it feasted on the sunlight. She watched it. The down was soft rust-red on its wings. Off it flaunted again. Then, admitted by an invisible hand, the chow stalked in; came straight up to her; sniffed at her skirt, and flung himself down in a bright patch of sunlight.

  Heartless brute! she thought, but his indifference pleased her. He asked nothing of her either. She stretched her hand for a cigarette. And what would Martin say, she wondered, as she took the enamel box that turned from green to blue, as she opened it. Hideous? Vulgar? Possibly — but what did it matter what people said? Criticism seemed light as smoke this morning. What did it matter what he said, what they said, what anybody said, since she had a whole day to herself? — since she was alone? And there they are, still asleep, in their houses, she thought, standing at the window, looking at the green-grey grass, after their dances, after their parties . . . T
he thought pleased her. She threw away her cigarette and went upstairs to change her clothes.

  The sun was much stronger when she came down again. The garden had already lost its look of purity; the mist was off the woods. She could hear the squeak of the lawn mower as she stepped out of the window. The rubber-shoed pony was pacing up and down the lawns leaving a pale wake in the grass behind him. The birds were singing in their scattered way. The starlings in their bright mail were feeding on the grass. Dew shone, red, violet, gold on the trembling tips of the grass blades. It was a perfect May morning.

  She sauntered slowly along the terrace. As she passed she glanced in at the long windows of the library. Everything was shrouded and shut up. But the long room looked more than usually stately, its proportions seemly; and the brown books in their long rows seemed to exist silently, with dignity, by themselves, for themselves. She left the terrace and strolled down the long grass path. The garden was still empty; only a man in his shirt sleeves was doing something to a tree; but she need speak to nobody. The chow stalked after her; he too was silent. She walked on past the flower-beds to the river. There she always stopped, on the bridge, with the cannon-balls at intervals. The water always fascinated her. The quick northern river came down from the moors; it was never smooth and green, never deep and placid like southern rivers. It raced; it hurried. It splayed itself, red, yellow and clear brown, over the pebbles on the bed. Resting her elbows on the balustrade, she watched it eddy round the arches; she watched it make diamonds and sharp arrow streaks over the stones. She listened. She knew the different sounds it made in summer and winter; now it hurried, it raced.

  But the chow was bored; he marched on. She followed him. She went up the green ride towards the snuffer-shaped monument on the crest of the hill. Every path through the woods had its name. There was Keepers’ Path, Lovers’ Walk, Ladies’ Mile, and here was the Earl’s Ride. But before she went into the woods, she stopped and looked back at the house. Times out of number she had stopped here; the Castle looked grey and stately; asleep this morning, with the blinds drawn, and no flag on the flagstaff. Very noble it looked, and ancient, and enduring. Then she went on into the woods.

  The wind seemed to rise as she walked under the trees. It sang in their tops, but it was silent beneath. The dead leaves crackled under foot; among them sprang up the pale spring flowers, the loveliest of the year — blue flowers and white flowers, trembling on cushions of green moss. Spring was sad always, she thought; it brought back memories. All passes, all changes, she thought, as she climbed up the little path between the trees. Nothing of this belonged to her; her son would inherit; his wife would walk here after her. She broke off a twig; she picked a flower and put it to her lips. But she was in the prime of life; she was vigorous. She strode on. The ground rose sharply; her muscles felt strong and flexible as she pressed her thick-soled shoes to the ground. She threw away her flower. The trees thinned as she strode higher and higher. Suddenly she saw the sky between two striped tree trunks extraordinarily blue. She came out on the top. The wind ceased; the country spread wide all round her. Her body seemed to shrink; her eyes to widen. She threw herself on the ground, and looked over the billowing land that went rising and falling, away and away, until somewhere far off it reached the sea. Uncultivated, uninhabited, existing by itself, for itself, without towns or houses it looked from this height. Dark wedges of shadow, bright breadths of light lay side by side. Then, as she watched, light moved and dark moved; light and shadow went travelling over the hills and over the valleys. A deep murmur sang in her ears — the land itself, singing to itself, a chorus, alone. She lay there listening. She was happy, completely. Time had ceased.

  1917

  A very cold winter’s night, so silent that the air seemed frozen, and, since there was no moon, congealed to the stillness of glass spread over England. Ponds and ditches were frozen; the puddles made glazed eyes in the roads, and on the pavement the frost had raised slippery knobs. Darkness pressed on the windows; towns had merged themselves in open country. No light shone, save when a searchlight rayed round the sky, and stopped, here and there, as if to ponder some fleecy patch.

  “If that is the river,” said Eleanor, pausing in the dark street outside the station, “Westminster must be there.” The omnibus in which she had come, with its silent passengers looking cadaverous in the blue light, had already vanished. She turned.

  She was dining with Renny and Maggie, who lived in one of the obscure little streets under the shadow of the Abbey. She walked on. The further side of the street was almost invisible. The lamps were shrouded in blue. She flashed her torch onto a name on a street corner. Again she flashed her torch. Here it lit up a brick wall; there a dark green tuft of ivy. At last the number thirty, the number she was looking for, shone out. She knocked and rang at the same moment, for the darkness seemed to muffle sound as well as sight. Silence weighed on her as she stood there waiting. Then the door opened and a man’s voice said, “Come in!”

  He shut the door behind him, quickly, as if to shut out the light. It looked strange after the streets — the perambulator in the hall; the umbrellas in the stand; the carpet, the pictures: they all seemed intensified.

  “Come in!” said Renny again, and led her into the sitting-room ablaze with light. Another man was standing in the room, and she was surprised because she had expected to find them alone. But the man was somebody whom she did not know.

  For a moment they stared at each other; then Renny said, “You know Nicholas . . .” but he did not speak the surname distinctly, and it was so long that she could not catch it. A foreign name, she thought. A foreigner. He was clearly not English. He shook hands with a bow like a foreigner, and he went on talking, as if he were in the middle of a sentence that he wished to finish . . . “we are talking about Napoleon—” he said, turning to her.

  “I see,” she said. But she had no notion what he was saying. They were in the middle of an argument, she supposed. But it came to an end without her understanding a word of it, except that it had to do with Napoleon. She took off her coat and laid it down. They stopped talking.

  “I will go and tell Maggie,” said Renny. He left them abruptly.

  “You were talking about Napoleon?” Eleanor said. She looked at the man whose surname she had not heard. He was very dark; he had a rounded head and dark eyes. Did she like him or not? She did not know.

  I’ve interrupted them, she felt, and I’ve nothing whatever to say. She felt dazed and cold. She spread her hands over the fire. It was a real fire; wood blocks were blazing; the flame ran along the streaks of shiny tar. A little trickle of feeble gas was all that was left her at home.

  “Napoleon,” she said, warming her hands. She spoke without any meaning.

  “We were considering the psychology of great men,” he said, “by the light of modern science,” he added with a little laugh. She wished the argument had been more within her reach.

  “That’s very interesting,” she said shyly.

  “Yes — if we knew anything about it,” he said.

  “If we knew anything about it . . .” she repeated. There was a pause. She felt numb all over — not only her hands, but her brain.

  “The psychology of great men—” she said, for she did not wish him to think her a fool, “. . . was that what you were discussing?”

  “We were saying—” He paused. She guessed that he found it difficult to sum up their argument — they had evidently been talking for some time, judging by the newspapers lying about and the cigarette-ends on the table.

  “I was saying,” he went on, “I was saying we do not know ourselves, ordinary people; and if we do not know ourselves, how then can we make religions, laws, that—” he used his hands as people do who find language obdurate, “that—”

  “That fit — that fit,” she said, supplying him with a word that was shorter, she felt sure, than the dictionary word that foreigners always used.

  “ — that fit, that fit,” he said, ta
king the word and repeating it as if he were grateful for her help.

  “. . . that fit,” she repeated. She had no idea what they were talking about. Then suddenly, as she bent to warm her hands over the fire words floated together in her mind and made one intelligible sentence. It seemed to her that what he had said was, “We cannot make laws and religions that fit because we do not know ourselves.”

  “How odd that you should say that!” she said, smiling at him, “because I’ve so often thought it myself!”

  “Why is that odd?” he said. “We all think the same things; only we do not say them.”

  “Coming along in the omnibus tonight,” she began, “I was thinking about this war — I don’t feel this, but other people do . . .” She stopped. He looked puzzled; probably she had misunderstood what he had said; she had not made her own meaning plain.

  “I mean,” she began again, “I was thinking as I came along in the bus—”

  But here Renny came in.

  He was carrying a tray with bottles and glasses.

  “It is a great thing,” said Nicholas, “being the son of a wine merchant.”

  It sounded like a quotation from the French grammar.

  The son of the wine merchant, Eleanor repeated to herself, looking at his red cheeks, dark eyes and large nose. The other man must be Russian, she thought. Russian, Polish, Jewish? — she had no idea what he was, who he was.

  She drank; the wine seemed to caress a knob in her spine. Here Maggie came in.

  “Good evening,” she said, disregarding the foreigner’s bow as if she knew him too well to greet him.

  “Papers,” she protested, looking at the litter on the floor, “papers, papers.” The floor was strewn with papers.

  “We dine in the basement,” she continued, turning to Eleanor, “because we’ve no servants.” She led the way down the steep little stairs.