She was so far off at first that one could not see her clearly. She came lingering and pausing, here straightening a rose, there lifting a pink to smell it, but she never stopped; and all the time she became larger and larger in the looking-glass, more and more completely the person into whose mind one had been trying to penetrate. One verified her by degrees — fitted the qualities one had discovered into this visible body. There were her grey-green dress, and her long shoes, her basket, and something sparkling at her throat. She came so gradually that she did not seem to derange the pattern in the glass, but only to bring in some new element which gently moved and altered the other objects as if asking them, courteously, to make room for her. And the letters and the table and the grass walk and the sunflowers which had been waiting in the looking-glass separated and opened out so that she might be received among them. At last there she was, in the hall. She stopped dead. She stood by the table. She stood perfectly still. At once the lookingglass began to pour over her a light that seemed to fix her; that seemed like some acid to bite off the unessential and superficial and to leave only the truth. It was an enthralling spectacle. Everything dropped from her — clouds, dress, basket, diamond — all that one had called the creeper and convolvulus. Here was the hard wall beneath. Here was the woman herself. She stood naked in that pitiless light. And there was nothing. Isabella was perfectly empty. She had no thoughts. She had no friends. She cared for nobody. As for her letters, they were all bills. Look, as she stood there, old and angular, veined and lined, with her high nose and her wrinkled neck, she did not even trouble to open them.
People should not leave looking-glasses hanging in their rooms.
THREE PICTURES
The First Picture It is impossible that one should not see pictures; because if my father was a blacksmith and yours was a peer of the realm, we must needs be pictures to each other. We cannot possibly break out of the frame of the picture by speaking natural words. You see me leaning against the door of the smithy with a horseshoe in my hand and you think as you go by: ‘How picturesque!’ I, seeing you sitting so much at your ease in the car, almost as if you were going to bow to the populace, think what a picture of old luxurious aristocratical England! We both are quite wrong in our judgments no doubt, but that is inevitable.
So now at the turn of the road I saw one of these pictures. It might have been called ‘The Sailor’s Homecoming’ or some such title. A fine young sailor carrying a bundle; a girl with her hand on his arm; neighbours gathering round; a cottage garden ablaze with flowers; as one passed one read at the bottom of that picture that the sailor was back from China, and there was a fine spread waiting for him in the parlor; and he had a present for his young wife in his bundle; and she was soon going to bear him their first child. Everything was right and good and as it should be, one felt about that picture. There was something wholesome and satisfactory in the sight of such happiness; life seemed sweeter and more enviable than before.
So thinking I passed them, filling in the picture as fully, as completely as I could, noticing the colour of her dress, of his eyes, seeing the sandy cat slinking round the cottage door.
For some time the picture floated in my eyes, making most things appear much brighter, warmer, and simpler than usual; and making some things appear foolish; and some things wrong and some things right, and more full of meaning than before. At odd moments during that day and the next the picture returned to one’s mind, and one thought with envy, but with kindness, of the happy sailor and his wife; one wondered what they were doing, what they were saying now. The imagination supplied other pictures springing from that first one, a picture of the sailor cutting firewood, drawing water; and they talked about China; and the girl set his present on the chimneypiece where everyone who came could see it; and she sewed at her baby clothes, and all the doors and windows were open into the garden so that the birds were flittering and the bees humming, and Rogers - that was his name — could not say how much to his liking all this was after the China seas. As he smoked his pipe, with his foot in the garden.
The Second Picture In the middle of the night a loud cry rang through the village. Then there was a sound of something scuffling; and then dead silence. All that could be seen out of the window was the branch of lilac tree hanging motionless and ponderous across the road. It was a hot still night. There was no moon. The cry made everything seem ominous. Who had cried? Why had she cried? It was a woman’s voice, made by some extremity of feeling almost sexless, almost expressionless. It was as if human nature had cried out against some iniquity, some inexpressible horror. There was dead silence. The stars shone perfectly steadily. The fields lay still. The trees were motionless. Yet all seemed guilty, convicted, ominous. One felt that something ought to be done. Some light ought to appear tossing, moving agitatedly. Someone ought to come running down the road. There should be lights in the cottage windows. And then perhaps another cry, but less sexless, less wordless, comforted, appeased. But no light came. No feet were heard. There was no second cry. The first had been swallowed up, and there was dead silence.
One lay in the dark listening intently. It had been merely a voice. There was nothing to connect it with. No picture of any sort came to interpret it, to make it intelligible to the mind. But as the dark arose at last all one saw was an obscure human form, almost without shape, raising a gigantic arm in vain against some overwhelming iniquity.
The Third Picture The fine weather remained unbroken. Had it not been for that single cry in the night one would have felt that the earth had put into harbour; that life had ceased to drive before the wind; that it had reached some quiet cove and there lay anchored, hardly moving, on the quiet waters. But the sound persisted. Wherever one went, it might be for a long walk up into the hills, something seemed to turn uneasily beneath the surface, making the peace, the stability all round one seem a little unreal. There were the sheep clustered on the side of the hill; the valley broke in long tapering waves like the fall of smooth waters. One came on solitary farmhouses. The puppy rolled in the yard. The butterflies gambolled over the gorse. All was as quiet, as safe [as] could be. Yet, one kept thinking, a cry had rent it; all this beauty had been an accomplice that night; had consented to remain calm, to be still beautiful; at any moment it might be sundered again. This goodness, this safety were only on the surface.
And then to cheer oneself out of this apprehensive mood one turned to the picture of the sailor’s homecoming. One saw it all over again producing various little details — the blue colour of her dress, the shadow that fell from the yellow flowering tree — that one had not used before. So they had stood at the cottage door, he with his bundle on his back, she just lightly touching his sleeve with her hand. And a sandy cat had slunk round the door. Thus gradually going over the picture in every detail, one persuaded oneself by degrees that it was far more likely that this calm and content and goodwill lay beneath the surface than anything treacherous, sinister. The sheep grazing, the waves of the valley, the farmhouse, the puppy, the dancing butterflies were in fact like that all through. And so one turned back home, with one’s mind fixed on the sailor and his wife, making up picture after picture of them so that one picture after another of happiness and satisfaction might be laid over that unrest, that hideous cry, until it was crushed and silenced by their pressure out of existence.
Here at last was the village, and the churchyard through which one must pass; and the usual thought came, as one entered it, of the peacefulness of the place, with its shady yews, its rubbed tombstones, its nameless graves. Death is cheerful here, one felt. Indeed, look at that picture! A man was digging a grave, and children were picnicking at the side of it while he worked. As the shovels of yellow earth were thrown up, the children were sprawling about eating bread and jam and drinking milk out of large mugs. The gravedigger’s wife, a fat fair woman, had propped herself against a tombstone and spread her apron on the grass by the open grave to serve as a tea-table. Some lumps of clay had fallen among the
tea things. Who was going to be buried, I asked. Had old Mr Dodson died at last? ‘Oh! no. It’s for young Rogers, the sailor,’ the woman answered, staring at me. ‘He died two nights ago, of some foreign fever. Didn’t you hear his wife? She rushed into the road and cried out... Here, Tommy, you’re all covered with earth!’ What a picture it made!
SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF A BRITISH NAVAL OFFICER
The rushed waters of the Red Sea dashed past the porthole; occasionally a dolphin leapt high into the air, or a flying fish exploded an arch of fire in mid air. Captain Brace sat in his cabin with a map spread on the vast equality of the table in front of him. His face had a carved look as if it had been cut by a negro from a well seasoned log, had been polished for fifty years, had been dried in a tropical sun; had stood out in the freezing cold; had been sluiced by tropical rains; had then been erected before grovelling multitudes as their idol. It had acquired the inscrutable expression of the idol to whom questions have been put for many centuries without eliciting an answer.
The cabin held no furniture save the vast table and the swivel chair. But on the wall behind the Captain’s back hung seven or eight white faced instruments whose dials were inscribed with figures and symbols to which very fine hands were moving, sometimes with so slow an advance as to be imperceptible, sometimes with a sudden decisive spring. Some invisible substance was being divided[,] measured, weighed and counted in seven or eight different ways simultaneously. And as the substance itself was invisible, so was the measuring, dividing[,] weighing and counting carried on inaudibly. Not a sound broke the silence. In the centre of the instruments hung the photograph of a lady’s head surmounted by three ostrich feathers.
Suddenly Captain Brace swung round in his chair so that he faced all the dials and the photograph. The idol had suddenly turned its back upon the suppliants. The back of Captain Brace was cased in a suit that fitted his bulk as tightly as a snake skin. [His back] was as inscrutable as his face. The suppliants might well address their prayers to back or front indifferently. Suddenly, after a long scrutiny of the wall, Captain Brace swung back. He took a pair of compasses, and began to draw on a large sheet neatly divided into squares a design of such immense elaboration and exactness that each stroke seemed to create an immortal object that would endure precisely so for ever. The silence was unbroken, since the rush of the sea and the throb of the engines was so regular and so much in the same key that they too seemed to be silence expressed in a different medium.
Suddenly — every movement, every sound was sudden in an atmosphere of such tension — a gong blared out. Tremors sharp as muscular contractions, twitched the air. Three times sound blared. Three times the atmosphere thus twitched was crisped into sharp muscular contractions. The last had lapsed for three seconds precisely when the Captain rose. With the sweep of an automatic action, he pressed a blotting paper over his design with one hand; with the other he placed his cap on his head. Then he marched to the door; then he marched down the three steps that led to the deck. Each distance seemed already cut up into so many stages; and his last step brought him exactly to a particular plank[,] to his station in front of five hundred blue jackets. Five hundred right hands flew exactly to their heads. Five seconds later the Captain’s right hand flew to his head. After waiting precisely two seconds it fell as the signal falls when an express train has passed. Captain Brace passed with the same measured stride through the ranks of the blue jackets and behind him at their proper distance marched a group of officers in their order too. But at the door of his dining room the Captain faced them, received their salute[,] acknowledged it by his own and withdrew to dine alone.
He sat alone at his dinner table as he had sat alone at his desk. Of the servants who put plates before him he had never seen more than the white hands, putting down plates, taking plates away. When the hands were not white, they were dismissed. His eyes never raised themselves above the hands and the plates. In orderly procession meat, bread[,] pastry[,] fruit were placed before the idol. The red fluid in the wine glass slowly sank, rose, sank[,] rose and sank again. All the meat disappeared, all the pastry, all the fruit. At last, taking a piece of crumb about the size of a billiard ball the Captain swept this round the plate[,] devoured it and rose. Now his eyes were raised until they looked at their own level straight ahead. Whatever came before them — wall, mirror, brass rod — they passed through as if nothing had any solidity to intercept them. So he marched as if he followed in the wake of the beam cast by his eyes up an iron ladder onto a platform[,] higher and higher up beyond these impediments until he had mounted onto an iron platform upon which stood a telescope. When he put his eye to the telescope the telescope became immediately an extension of his eyes as if it were a horn casing that had formed itself to enclose the penetration of his sight. When he moved the telescope up and down it seemed as if his own long horn covered eye were moving.
MISS PRYME
It was the determination to leave the world better than she found it - and she had found it, in Wimbledon very dull, very prosperous, very fond of tennis, very inconsiderate, inattentive, and disinclined to pay any sort of attention to what she said or wished — that made Miss Pryme[,] the third daughter of one of Wimbledon’s doctors[,] to settle at the age of thirty-five at Rusham.
It was a corrupt village - partly, it was said because there were no omnibuses; and the road to the town was impassable in winter; hence Rusham felt no pressure of opinion; Mr Pember, the Rector[,] never wore a clean collar; never took a bath; and had it not been for Mabel his old servant, would have been often too unpresentable to appear in church. Naturally there were no candles on the altar; the font was cracked; and Miss Pryme had caught him slipping out in the middle of the service and smoking a cigarette in the graveyard. She spent the first three years of her residence catching people doing what they should not do. The tips of Mr Bent’s elm tree’s branches swept the coffins as they passed up the lane; it should be trimmed; Mr Carr’s wall bulged; it must be rebuilt. Mrs Pye drank; Mrs Cole lived notoriously with the policeman. As Miss Pryme caught out all these people doing wrong she acquired a sour expression; she stooped; and she scowled askance at people she met; and she determined to buy the cottage which she rented; for she could certainly do good here.
First she took up the matter of the candles. She went without a servant; thus she saved enough to buy tall thick sacerdotal candles from an ecclesiastical shop in London. She earned the right to install them on the altar by scrubbing the church floor; by working a mat for the altar; and by getting a scene from Twelfth Night so as to pay for mending the font. Then she faced old Mr Pember with her candles. He lit another cigarette holding it between fingers that looked jaundiced with nicotine. His face, his body was like a bramble spray straying, bristling, red, unkempt. And he mumbled that he wanted no candle. Didn’t hold with popish ways - never had. And off he shambled to swing, smoking, on the farm yard gate, talking about Cropper’s pigs.
Miss Pryme waited. She held a bazaar to get up funds for reshingling the church. The Bishop was present. Once more she asked Mr Pember about the candles. She mentioned the Bishop[,] it is said[,] in her support — it is said; for there were now two parties in the village, both gave versions of what happened when Miss Pryme countered the Rector; some sided with Miss Pryme; others with Mr Pember. Some sided with candles; and strictness; others with the dear old man and ease[;] and Mr Pember said quite testily that he was Rector of the parish; he didn’t hold with candles; there was an end on’t. Miss Pryme retired to her cottage and wrapped the candles carefully in the long drawer. She never went to the rectory again.
But the Rector was a very old man; she had only to wait. Meanwhile Miss Pryme went on improving the world. For nothing gave her a quicker sense of the passage of time. At Wimbledon it flagged; here it raced. She washed up her breakfast and then filled up forms. Then she drew up reports. Then she nailed a notice to a board in her garden. Then she visited the cottages. She sat with old Malthouse night after night when he
was dying and saved his relations a lot of trouble. By degrees a new and most delicious sensation began to prick and stir in her veins. It was better than married love; better than children; it was power to improve the world; power over the infirm; the illiterate; the drunken. By degrees as she tripped up the village street with her basket, or went to church with her broom she was attended by a second Miss Pryme, who was larger, fairer, more radiant and remarkable than the first; indeed she was rather like Florence Nightingale to look at; and before five years were out these two ladies were one and identical.
ODE WRITTEN PARTLY IN PROSE ON SEEING THE NAME OF CUTBUSH ABOVE A BUTCHER’S SHOP IN PENTONVILLE
Oh Cutbush, little John, standing glum between
your father and mother, the day they decided what
to make of you, should you be florist or butcher,
hearing them decide your fate; shall you be florist
or butcher; while the long wave lies iridescent
on the shores of California; and the elephant in
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 281
