No one answered.
“Look!” Lucy exclaimed.
“The birds?” said Mrs. Manresa, looking up.
There was a bird with a straw in its beak; and the straw dropped.
Lucy clapped her hands. Giles turned away. She was mocking him as usual, laughing.
“Going?” said Bartholomew. “Time for the next act?”
And he heaved himself up from his chair. Regardless of Mrs. Manresa and of Lucy, off he strolled too.
“Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow,” he muttered, feeling for his cigar case, following his son.
Mrs. Manresa was nettled. What for had she squatted on the floor then? Were her charms fading? Both were gone. But, woman of action as she was, deserted by the male sex, she was not going to suffer tortures of boredom from the refeened old lady. Up she scrambled, putting her hands to hair as if it were high time that she went too, though it was nothing of the kind and her hair was perfectly tidy. Cobbet in his corner saw through her little game. He had known human nature in the East. It was the same in the West. Plants remained — the carnation, the zinnia, and the geranium. Automatically he consulted his watch; noted time to water at seven; and observed the little game of the woman following the man to the table in the West as in the East.
William at the table, now attached to Mrs. Parker and Isa, watched him approach. Armed and valiant, bold and blatant, firm elatant — the popular march tune rang in his head. And the fingers of William’s left hand closed firmly, surreptitiously, as the hero approached.
Mrs. Parker was deploring to Isa in a low voice the village idiot.
“Oh that idiot!” she was saying. But Isa was immobile, watching her husband. She could feel the Manresa in his wake. She could hear in the dusk in their bedroom the usual explanation. It made no difference; his infidelity — but hers did.
“The idiot?” William answered Mrs. Parker for her. “He’s in the tradition.”
“But surely,” said Mrs. Parker, and told Giles how creepy the idiot— “We have one in our village” — had made her feel. “Surely, Mr. Oliver, we’re more civilized?”
“We?” said Giles. “We?” He looked, once, at William. He knew not his name; but what his left hand was doing. It was a bit of luck — that he could despise him, not himself. Also Mrs. Parker. But not Isa — not his wife. She had not spoken to him, not one word. Nor looked at him either.
“Surely,” said Mrs. Parker, looking from one to the other. “Surely we are?”
Giles then did what to Isa was his little trick; shut his lips; frowned; and took up the pose of one who bears the burden of the world’s woe, making money for her to spend.
“No,” said Isa, as plainly as words could say it. “I don’t admire you,” and looked, not at his face, but at his feet. “Silly little boy, with blood on his boots.”
Giles shifted his feet. Whom then did she admire? Not Dodge. That he could take for certain. Who else? Some man he knew. Some man, he was sure, in the Barn. Which man? He looked round him.
Then Mr. Streatfield, the clergyman, interrupted. He was carrying cups.
“So I shake hands with my heart!” he exclaimed, nodding his handsome, grizzled head and depositing his burden safely.
Mrs. Parker took the tribute to herself.
“Mr. Streatfield!” she exclaimed. “Doing all the work! While we stand gossiping!”
“Like to see the greenhouse?” said Isa suddenly, turning to William Dodge.
O not now, he could have cried. But had to follow, leaving Giles to welcome the approaching Manresa, who had him in thrall.
The path was narrow. Isa went ahead. And she was broad; she fairly filled the path, swaying slightly as she walked, and plucking a leaf here and there from the hedge.
“Fly then, follow,” she hummed, “the dappled herds in the cedar grove, who, sporting, play, the red with the roe, the stag with the doe. Fly, away. I grieving stay. Alone I linger, I pluck the bitter herb by the ruined wall, the churchyard wall, and press its sour, its sweet, its sour, long grey leaf, so, twixt thumb and finger. . . .”
She threw away the shred of Old Man’s Beard that she had picked in passing and kicked open the greenhouse door. Dodge had lagged behind. She waited. She picked up a knife from the plank. He saw her standing against the green glass, the fig tree, and the blue hydrangea, knife in hand.
“She spake,” Isa murmured. “And from her bosom’s snowy antre drew the gleaming blade. ‘Plunge blade!’ she said. And struck. ‘Faithless!’ she cried. Knife, too! It broke. So too my heart,” she said.
She was smiling ironically as he came up.
“I wish the play didn’t run in my head,” she said. Then she sat down on a plank under the vine. And he sat beside her. The little grapes above them were green buds; the leaves thin and yellow as the web between birds’ claws.
“Still the play?” he asked. She nodded. “That was your son,” he said, “in the Barn?”
She had a daughter too, she told him, in the cradle.
“And you — married?” she asked. From her tone he knew she guessed, as women always guessed, everything. They knew at once they had nothing to fear, nothing to hope. At first they resented — serving as statues in a greenhouse. Then they liked it. For then they could say — as she did — whatever came into their heads. And hand him, as she handed him, a flower.
“There’s something for your buttonhole, Mr. . . .” she said, handing him a sprig of scented geranium.
“I’m William,” he said, taking the furry leaf and pressing it between thumb and finger.
“I’m Isa,” she answered. Then they talked as if they had known each other all their lives; which was odd, she said, as they always did, considering she’d known him perhaps one hour. Weren’t they, though, conspirators, seekers after hidden faces? That confessed, she paused and wondered, as they always did, why they could speak so plainly to each other. And added: “Perhaps because we’ve never met before, and never shall again.”
“The doom of sudden death hanging over us,” he said. “There’s no retreating and advancing” — he was thinking of the old lady showing him the house— “for us as for them.”
The future shadowed their present, like the sun coming through the many-veined transparent vine leaf; a criss-cross of lines making no pattern.
They had left the greenhouse door open, and now music came through it. A.B.C., A.B.C., A.B.C. — someone was practising scales. C.A.T. C.A.T. C.A.T. . . . Then the separate letters made one word “Cat.” Other words followed. It was a simple tune, like a nursery rhyme —
The King is in his counting house,
Counting out his money,
The Queen is in her parlour
Eating bread and honey.
They listened. Another voice, a third voice, was saying something simple. And they sat on in the greenhouse, on the plank with the vine over them, listening to Miss La Trobe or whoever it was, practising her scales.
He could not find his son. He had lost him in the crowd. So old Bartholomew left the Barn, and went to his own room, holding his cheroot and murmuring:
“O sister swallow, O sister swallow,
How can thy heart be full of the spring?”
“How can my heart be full of the spring?” he said aloud, standing in front of the book case. Books: the treasured life-blood of immortal spirits. Poets; the legislators of mankind. Doubtless, it was so. But Giles was unhappy. “How can my heart, how can my heart,” he repeated, puffing at his cheroot. “Condemned in life’s infernal mine, condemned in solitude to pine . . .” Arms akimbo, he stood in front of his country gentleman’s library. Garibaldi; Wellington; Irrigation Officers’ Reports; and Hibbert on the Diseases of the Horse. A great harvest the mind had reaped; but for all this, compared with his son, he did not care one damn.
“What’s the use, what’s the use,” he sank down into his chair muttering, “O sister swallow, O sister swallow, of singing your song?” The dog, who had followed him, flopped down on to the
floor at his feet. Flanks sucked in and out, the long nose resting on his paws, a fleck of foam on the nostril, there he was, his familiar spirit, his Afghan hound.
The door trembled and stood half open. That was Lucy’s way of coming in — as if she did not know what she would find. Really! It was her brother! And his dog! She seemed to see them for the first time. Was it that she had no body? Up in the clouds, like an air ball, her mind touched ground now and then with a shock of surprise. There was nothing in her to weight a man like Giles to the earth.
She perched on the edge of a chair like a bird on a telegraph wire before starting for Africa.
“Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow . . .” he murmured.
From the garden — the window was open — came the sound of someone practising scales. A.B.C. A.B.C. A.B.C. Then the separate letters formed one word “Dog.” Then a phrase. It was a simple tune, another voice speaking.
“Hark hark, the dogs do bark
The beggars are coming to town . . .”
Then it languished and lengthened, and became a waltz. As they listened and looked — out into the garden — the trees tossing and the birds swirling seemed called out of their private lives, out of their separate avocations, and made to take part.
The lamp of love burns high, over the dark cedar groves,
The lamp of love shines clear, clear as a star in the sky. . . .
Old Bartholomew tapped his fingers on his knee in time to the tune.
Leave your casement and come, lady, I love till I die,
He looked sardonically at Lucy, perched on her chair. How, he wondered, had she ever borne children?
For all are dancing, retreating and advancing,
The moth and the dragon fly. . . .
She was thinking, he supposed, God is peace. God is love. For she belonged to the unifiers; he to the separatists.
Then the tune with its feet always on the same spot, became sugared, insipid; bored a hole with its perpetual invocation to perpetual adoration. Had it — he was ignorant of musical terms — gone into the minor key?
For this day and this dance and this merry, merry May
Will be over (he tapped his forefinger on his knee)
With the cutting of the clover this retreating and advancing — the swifts seemed to have shot beyond their orbits —
Will be over, over, over,
And the ice will dart its splinter, and the winter,
O the winter, will fill the grate with ashes,
And there’ll be no glow, no glow on the log.
He knocked the ash off his cheroot and rose.
“So we must,” said Lucy; as if he had said aloud, “It’s time to go.”
The audience was assembling. The music was summoning them. Down the paths, across the lawns they were streaming again. There was Mrs. Manresa, with Giles at her side, heading the procession. In taut plump curves her scarf blew round her shoulders. The breeze was rising. She looked, as she crossed the lawn to the strains of the gramophone, goddess-like, buoyant, abundant, her cornucopia running over. Bartholomew, following, blessed the power of the human body to make the earth fruitful. Giles would keep his orbit so long as she weighted him to the earth. She stirred the stagnant pool of his old heart even — where bones lay buried, but the dragon flies shot and the grass trembled as Mrs. Manresa advanced across the lawn to the strains of the gramophone.
Feet crunched the gravel. Voices chattered. The inner voice, the other voice was saying: How can we deny that this brave music, wafted from the bushes, is expressive of some inner harmony? “When we wake” (some were thinking) “the day breaks us with its hard mallet blows.” “The office” (some were thinking) “compels disparity. Scattered, shattered, hither thither summoned by the bell. ‘Ping-ping-ping’ that’s the phone. ‘Forward!’ ‘Serving!’ — that’s the shop.” So we answer to the infernal, agelong and eternal order issued from on high. And obey. “Working, serving, pushing, striving, earning wages — to be spent — here? Oh dear no. Now? No, by and by. When ears are deaf and the heart is dry.”
Here Cobbet of Cobbs Corner who had stooped — there was a flower — was pressed on by people pushing from behind.
For I hear music, they were saying. Music wakes us. Music makes us see the hidden, join the broken. Look and listen. See the flowers, how they ray their redness, whiteness, silverness and blue. And the trees with their many-tongued much syllabling, their green and yellow leaves hustle us and shuffle us, and bid us, like the starlings, and the rooks, come together, crowd together, to chatter and make merry while the red cow moves forward and the black cow stands still.
The audience had reached their seats. Some sat down; others stood a moment, turned, and looked at the view. The stage was empty; the actors were still dressing up among the bushes. The audience turned to one another and began to talk. Scraps and fragments reached Miss La Trobe where she stood, script in hand, behind the tree.
“They’re not ready . . . I hear ’em laughing” (they were saying.) “. . . Dressing up. That’s the great thing, dressing up. And it’s pleasant now, the sun’s not so hot . . . That’s one good the war brought us — longer days . . . Where did we leave off? D’you remember? The Elizabethans . . . Perhaps she’ll reach the present, if she skips. . . . D’you think people change? Their clothes, of course. . . . But I meant ourselves . . . Clearing out a cupboard, I found my father’s old top hat. . . . But ourselves — do we change?”
“No, I don’t go by politicians. I’ve a friend who’s been to Russia. He says . . . And my daughter, just back from Rome, she says the common people, in the café’s, hate Dictators. . . . Well, different people say different things. . . .”
“Did you see it in the papers — the case about the dog? D’you believe dogs can’t have puppies? . . . And Queen Mary and the Duke of Windsor on the south coast? . . . D’you believe what’s in the papers? I ask the butcher or the grocer . . . That’s Mr. Streatfield, carrying a hurdle. . . . The good clergyman, I say, does more work for less pay than all the lot . . . It’s the wives that make the trouble. . . .”
“And what about the Jews? The refugees . . . the Jews . . . People like ourselves, beginning life again . . . But it’s always been the same. . . . My old mother, who’s over eighty, can remember . . . Yes, she still reads without glasses. . . . How amazing! Well, don’t they say, after eighty . . . Now they’re coming . . . No, that’s nothing. . . . I’d make it penal, leaving litter. But then, who’s, my husband says, to collect the fines? . . . Ah there she is, Miss La Trobe, over there, behind that tree . . .”
Over there behind the tree Miss La Trobe gnashed her teeth. She crushed her manuscript. The actors delayed. Every moment the audience slipped the noose; split up into scraps and fragments.
“Music!” she signalled. “Music!”
“What’s the origin,” said a voice, “of the expression ‘with a flea in his ear’?”
Down came her hand peremptorily. “Music, music,” she signalled.
And the gramophone began A.B.C., A.B.C.
The King is in his counting house
Counting out his money,
The Queen is in her parlour
Eating bread and honey. . . .
Miss La Trobe watched them sink down peacefully into the nursery rhyme. She watched them fold their hands and compose their faces. Then she beckoned. And at last, with a final touch to her head dress, which had been giving trouble, Mabel Hopkins strode from the bushes, and took her place on the raised ground facing the audience.
Eyes fed on her as fish rise to a crumb of bread on the water. Who was she? What did she represent? She was beautiful — very. Her cheeks had been powdered; her colour glowed smooth and clear underneath. Her grey satin robe (a bedspread), pinned in stone-like folds, gave her the majesty of a statue. She carried a sceptre and a little round orb. England was she? Queen Anne was she? Who was she? She spoke too low at first; all they heard was
. . . reason holds sway.
Old Bartholome
w applauded.
“Hear! Hear!” he cried.” Bravo! Bravo!”
Thus encouraged Reason spoke out.
Time, leaning on his sickle, stands amazed. While commerce from her Cornucopia pours the mingled tribute of her different ores. In distant mines the savage sweats; and from the reluctant earth the painted pot is shaped. At my behest, the armed warrior lays his shield aside; the heathen leaves the Altar steaming with unholy sacrifice. The violet and the eglantine over the riven earth their flowers entwine. No longer fears the unwary wanderer the poisoned snake. And in the helmet, yellow bees their honey make.
She paused. A long line of villagers in sacking were passing in and out of the trees behind her.
Digging and delving, ploughing and sowing they were singing, but the wind blew their words away.
Beneath the shelter of my flowing robe (she resumed, extending her arms) the arts arise. Music for me unfolds her heavenly harmony. At my behest the miser leaves his hoard untouched; at peace the mother sees her children play. . . . Her children play . . . she repeated, and, waving her sceptre, figures advanced from the bushes.
Let swains and nymphs lead on the play, while Zephyr sleeps, and the unruly tribes of Heaven confess my sway.
A merry little old tune was played on the gramophone. Old Bartholomew joined his finger tips; Mrs. Manresa smoothed her skirts about her knees.
Young Damon said to Cynthia
Come out now with the dawn
And don your azure tippet
And cast your cares adown
For peace has come to England,
And reason now holds sway.
What pleasure lies in dreaming
When blue and green’s the day?
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 250
