Monday or Tuesday
By
VIRGINIA WOOLF
NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
1921
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
RAHWAY, N. J.
CONTENTS
[Pg 1]
MONDAY OR TUESDAY
[Pg 2]
[Pg 3]
A HAUNTED HOUSE
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they
went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple.
"Here we left it," she said. And he added, "Oh, but here too!" "It's
upstairs," she murmured. "And in the garden," he whispered. "Quietly,"
they said, "or we shall wake them."
But it wasn't that you woke us. Oh, no. "They're looking for it; they're
drawing the curtain," one might say, and so read on a page or two. "Now
they've found it," one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the
margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself,
the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons
bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from
[Pg 4]the farm. "What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?" My
hands were empty. "Perhaps it's upstairs then?" The apples were in the
loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had
slipped into the grass.
But they had found it in the drawing room. Not that one could ever see
them. The window panes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves
were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the apple
only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was
opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the
ceiling—what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the
carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its
bubble of sound. "Safe, safe, safe," the pulse of the house beat softly.
"The treasure buried; the room ..." the pulse stopped short. Oh, was
that the buried treasure?
A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the
[Pg 5]trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare,
coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burnt behind
the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us; coming to the
woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the
windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went
East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found
it dropped beneath the Downs. "Safe, safe, safe," the pulse of the house
beat gladly. "The Treasure yours."
The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that.
Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp
falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still.
Wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake
us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.
"Here we slept," she says. And he adds, "Kisses without number." "Waking
in the morning—" "Silver between the trees—" "Upstairs—" "In the
garden—" "When[Pg 6] summer came—" "In winter snowtime—" The doors go
shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.
Nearer they come; cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides
silver down the glass. Our eyes darken; we hear no steps beside us; we
see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern.
"Look," he breathes. "Sound asleep. Love upon their lips."
Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and deeply.
Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops slightly.
Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain
the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers
and seek their hidden joy.
"Safe, safe, safe," the heart of the house beats proudly. "Long years—"
he sighs. "Again you found me." "Here," she murmurs, "sleeping; in the
garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our
treasure—" Stooping, their light lifts the lids[Pg 7] upon my eyes. "Safe!
safe! safe!" the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry "Oh, is
this your buried treasure? The light in the heart."
[Pg 8]
[Pg 9]
A SOCIETY
This is how it all came about. Six or seven of us were sitting one day
after tea. Some were gazing across the street into the windows of a
milliner's shop where the light still shone brightly upon scarlet
feathers and golden slippers. Others were idly occupied in building
little towers of sugar upon the edge of the tea tray. After a time, so
far as I can remember, we drew round the fire and began as usual to
praise men—how strong, how noble, how brilliant, how courageous, how
beautiful they were—how we envied those who by hook or by crook managed
to get attached to one for life—when Poll, who had said nothing, burst
into tears. Poll, I must tell you, has always been queer. For one thing
her father was a strange man. He left her a fortune in his will, but on
condition that she read all the books in the London [Pg 10]Library. We
comforted her as best we could; but we knew in our hearts how vain it
was. For though we like her, Poll is no beauty; leaves her shoe laces
untied; and must have been thinking, while we praised men, that not one
of them would ever wish to marry her. At last she dried her tears. For
some time we could make nothing of what she said. Strange enough it was
in all conscience. She told us that, as we knew, she spent most of her
time in the London Library, reading. She had begun, she said, with
English literature on the top floor; and was steadily working her way
down to the Times on the bottom. And now half, or perhaps only a
quarter, way through a terrible thing had happened. She could read no
more. Books were not what we thought them. "Books," she cried, rising to
her feet and speaking with an intensity of desolation which I shall
never forget, "are for the most part unutterably bad!"
Of course we cried out that Shakespeare wrote books, and Milton and Shelley.
[Pg 11]
"Oh, yes," she interrupted us. "You've been well taught, I can see. But
you are not members of the London Library." Here her sobs broke forth
anew. At length, recovering a little, she opened one of the pile of
books which she always carried about with her—"From a Window" or "In a
Garden," or some such name as that it was called, and it was written by
a man called Benton or Henson, or something of that kind. She read the
first few pages. We listened in silence. "But that's not a book,"
someone said. So she chose another. This time it was a history, but I
have forgotten the writer's name. Our trepidation increased as she went
on. Not a word of it seemed to be true, and the style in which it was
written was execrable.
"Poetry! Poetry!" we cried, impatiently. "Read us poetry!" I cannot
describe the desolation which fell upon us as she opened a little volume
and mouthed out the verbose, sentimental foolery which it contained.
[Pg 12]
"It must have been written by a woman," one of us urged. But no. She
told us that it was written by a young man, one of the most famous poets
of the day. I leave you to imagine what the shock of the discovery was.
Though we all cried and begged her to read no more, she persisted and
read us extracts from the Lives of the Lord Chancellors. When she had
finished, Jane, the eldest and wisest of us, rose to her feet and said
that she for one was not convinced.
"Why," she asked, "if men write such rubbish as this, should our mothers
have wasted their youth in bringing them into the world?"
We were all silent; and, in the silence, poor Poll could be heard
sobbing out, "Why, why did my father teach me to read?"
Clorinda was the first to come to her senses. "It's all our fault," she
said. "Every one of us knows how to read. But no one, save Poll, has
ever taken the trouble to do it. I, for one, have taken it for granted
that it was a woman's[Pg 13] duty to spend her youth in bearing children. I
venerated my mother for bearing ten; still more my grandmother for
bearing fifteen; it was, I confess, my own ambition to bear twenty. We
have gone on all these ages supposing that men were equally industrious,
and that their works were of equal merit. While we have borne the
children, they, we supposed, have borne the books and the pictures. We
have populated the world. They have civilized it. But now that we can
read, what prevents us from judging the results? Before we bring another
child into the world we must swear that we will find out what the world is like."
So we made ourselves into a society for asking questions. One of us was
to visit a man-of-war; another was to hide herself in a scholar's study;
another was to attend a meeting of business men; while all were to read
books, look at pictures, go to concerts, keep our eyes open in the
streets, and ask questions perpetually. We were very young. You can
judge of our [Pg 14]simplicity when I tell you that before parting that night
we agreed that the objects of life were to produce good people and good
books. Our questions were to be directed to finding out how far these
objects were now attained by men. We vowed solemnly that we would not
bear a single child until we were satisfied.
Off we went then, some to the British Museum; others to the King's Navy;
some to Oxford; others to Cambridge; we visited the Royal Academy and
the Tate; heard modern music in concert rooms, went to the Law Courts,
and saw new plays. No one dined out without asking her partner certain
questions and carefully noting his replies. At intervals we met together
and compared our observations. Oh, those were merry meetings! Never have
I laughed so much as I did when Rose read her notes upon "Honour" and
described how she had dressed herself as an Æthiopian Prince and gone
aboard one of His Majesty's ships. Discovering the hoax, the Captain
visited her (now[Pg 15] disguised as a private gentleman) and demanded that
honour should be satisfied. "But how?" she asked. "How?" he bellowed.
"With the cane of course!" Seeing that he was beside himself with rage
and expecting that her last moment had come, she bent over and received,
to her amazement, six light taps upon the behind. "The honour of the
British Navy is avenged!" he cried, and, raising herself, she saw him
with the sweat pouring down his face holding out a trembling right hand.
"Away!" she exclaimed, striking an attitude and imitating the ferocity
of his own expression, "My honour has still to be satisfied!" "Spoken
like a gentleman!" he returned, and fell into profound thought. "If six
strokes avenge the honour of the King's Navy," he mused, "how many
avenge the honour of a private gentleman?" He said he would prefer to
lay the case before his brother officers. She replied haughtily that she
could not wait. He praised her sensibility. "Let me see,"[Pg 16] he cried
suddenly, "did your father keep a carriage?" "No," she said. "Or a
riding horse!" "We had a donkey," she bethought her, "which drew the
mowing machine." At this his face lighted. "My mother's name——" she
added. "For God's sake, man, don't mention your mother's name!" he
shrieked, trembling like an aspen and flushing to the roots of his hair,
and it was ten minutes at least before she could induce him to proceed.
At length he decreed that if she gave him four strokes and a half in the
small of the back at a spot indicated by himself (the half conceded, he
said, in recognition of the fact that her great grandmother's uncle was
killed at Trafalgar) it was his opinion that her honour would be as good
as new. This was done; they retired to a restaurant; drank two bottles
of wine for which he insisted upon paying; and parted with protestations
of eternal friendship.
Then we had Fanny's account of her visit to the Law Courts. At her first
visit she had come[Pg 17] to the conclusion that the Judges were either made
of wood or were impersonated by large animals resembling man who had
been trained to move with extreme dignity, mumble and nod their heads.
To test her theory she had liberated a handkerchief of bluebottles at
the critical moment of a trial, but was unable to judge whether the
creatures gave signs of humanity for the buzzing of the flies induced so
sound a sleep that she only woke in time to see the prisoners led into
the cells below. But from the evidence she brought we voted that it is
unfair to suppose that the Judges are men.
Helen went to the Royal Academy, but when asked to deliver her report
upon the pictures she began to recite from a pale blue volume, "O! for
the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still.
Home is the hunter, home from the hill. He gave his bridle reins a
shake. Love is sweet, love is brief. Spring, the fair spring, is the
year's pleasant King. O! to be in England now that April's there. Men[Pg 18]
must work and women must weep. The path of duty is the way to glory—"
We could listen to no more of this gibberish.
"We want no more poetry!" we cried.
"Daughters of England!" she began, but here we pulled her down, a vase
of water getting spilt over her in the scuffle.
"Thank God!" she exclaimed, shaking herself like a dog. "Now I'll roll
on the carpet and see if I can't brush off what remains of the Union
Jack. Then perhaps—" here she rolled energetically. Getting up she
began to explain to us what modern pictures are like when Castalia stopped her.
"What is the average size of a picture?" she asked. "Perhaps two feet by
two and a half," she said. Castalia made notes while Helen spoke, and
when she had done, and we were trying not to meet each other's eyes,
rose and said, "At your wish I spent last week at Oxbridge, disguised as
a charwoman. I thus had access to the rooms of several Professors and
will now[Pg 19] attempt to give you some idea—only," she broke off, "I can't
think how to do it. It's all so queer. These Professors," she went on,
"live in large houses built round grass plots each in a kind of cell by
himself. Yet they have every convenience and comfort. You have only to
press a button or light a little lamp. Their papers are beautifully
filed. Books abound. There are no children or animals, save half a dozen
stray cats and one aged bullfinch—a cock. I remember," she broke off,
"an Aunt of mine who lived at Dulwich and kept cactuses. You reached the
conservatory through the double drawing-room, and there, on the hot
pipes, were dozens of them, ugly, squat, bristly little plants each in a
separate pot. Once in a hundred years the Aloe flowered, so my Aunt
said. But she died before that happened—" We told her to keep to the
point. "Well," she resumed, "when Professor Hobkin was out, I examined
his life work, an edition of Sappho. It's a queer looking book, six or
seven inches thick, not all[Pg 20] by Sappho. Oh, no. Most of it is a defence
of Sappho's chastity, which some German had denied, and I can assure you
the passion with which these two gentlemen argued, the learning they
displayed, the prodigious ingenuity with which they disputed the use of
some implement which looked to me for all the world like a hairpin
astounded me; especially when the door opened and Professor Hobkin
himself appeared. A very nice, mild, old gentleman, but what could he
know about chastity?" We misunderstood her.
"No, no," she protested, "he's the soul of honour I'm sure—not that he
resembles Rose's sea captain in the least. I was thinking rather of my
Aunt's cactuses. What could they know about chastity?"
Again we told her not to wander from the point,—did the Oxbridge
professors help to produce good people and good books?—the objects of life.
"There!" she exclaimed. "It never struck[Pg 21] me to ask. It never occurred
to me that they could possibly produce anything."
"I believe," said Sue, "that you made some mistake. Probably Professor
Hobkin was a gynæcologist. A scholar is a very different sort of man. A
scholar is overflowing with humour and invention—perhaps addicted to
wine, but what of that?—a delightful companion, generous, subtle,
imaginative—as stands to reason. For he spends his life in company with
the finest human beings that have ever existed."
"Hum," said Castalia. "Perhaps I'd better go back and try again."
Some three months later it happened that I was sitting alone when
Castalia entered. I don't know what it was in the look of her that so
moved me; but I could not restrain myself, and, dashing across the room,
I clasped her in my arms. Not only was she very beautiful; she seemed
also in the highest spirits. "How happy you look!" I exclaimed, as she sat down.
"I've been at Oxbridge," she said.
[Pg 22]
"Asking questions?"
"Answering them," she replied.
"You have not broken our vow?" I said anxiously, noticing something
about her figure.
"Oh, the vow," she said casually. "I'm going to have a baby, if that's
what you mean. You can't imagine," she burst out, "how exciting, how
beautiful, how satisfying—"
"What is?" I asked.
"To—to—answer questions," she replied in some confusion. Whereupon she
told me the whole of her story. But in the middle of an account which
interested and excited me more than anything I had ever heard, she gave
the strangest cry, half whoop, half holloa—
"Chastity! Chastity! Where's my chastity!" she cried. "Help Ho! The scent bottle!"
There was nothing in the room but a cruet containing mustard, which I
was about to administer when she recovered her composure.
"You should have thought of that three months ago," I said severely.
[Pg 23]
"True," she replied. "There's not much good in thinking of it now. It
was unfortunate, by the way, that my mother had me called Castalia."
"Oh, Castalia, your mother—" I was beginning when she reached for the mustard pot.
"No, no, no," she said, shaking her head. "If you'd been a chaste woman
yourself you would have screamed at the sight of me—instead of which
you rushed across the room and took me in your arms. No, Cassandra. We
are neither of us chaste." So we went on talking.
Meanwhile the room was filling up, for it was the day appointed to
discuss the results of our observations. Everyone, I thought, felt as I
did about Castalia. They kissed her and said how glad they were to see
her again. At length, when we were all assembled, Jane rose and said
that it was time to begin. She began by saying that we had now asked
questions for over five years, and that though the results were bound to
be inconclusive—here Castalia nudged me[Pg 24] and whispered that she was not
so sure about that. Then she got up, and, interrupting Jane in the
middle of a sentence, said:
"Before you say any more, I want to know—am I to stay in the room?
Because," she added, "I have to confess that I am an impure woman."
Everyone looked at her in astonishment.
"You are going to have a baby?" asked Jane.
She nodded her head.
It was extraordinary to see the different expressions on their faces. A
sort of hum went through the room, in which I could catch the words
"impure," "baby," "Castalia," and so on. Jane, who was herself
considerably moved, put it to us:
"Shall she go? Is she impure?"
Such a roar filled the room as might have been heard in the street outside.
"No! No! No! Let her stay! Impure? Fiddlesticks!" Yet I fancied that
some of the youngest, girls of nineteen or twenty, held back[Pg 25] as if
overcome with shyness. Then we all came about her and began asking
questions, and at last I saw one of the youngest, who had kept in the
background, approach shyly and say to her:
"What is chastity then? I mean is it good, or is it bad, or is it
nothing at all?" She replied so low that I could not catch what she said.
"You know I was shocked," said another, "for at least ten minutes."
"In my opinion," said Poll, who was growing crusty from always reading
in the London Library, "chastity is nothing but ignorance—a most
discreditable state of mind. We should admit only the unchaste to our
society. I vote that Castalia shall be our President."
This was violently disputed.
"It is as unfair to brand women with chastity as with unchastity," said
Poll. "Some of us haven't the opportunity either. Moreover, I don't
believe Cassy herself maintains that she acted as she did from a pure
love of knowledge."
[Pg 26]
"He is only twenty-one and divinely beautiful," said Cassy, with a
ravishing gesture.
"I move," said Helen, "that no one be allowed to talk of chastity or
unchastity save those who are in love."
"Oh, bother," said Judith, who had been enquiring into scientific
matters, "I'm not in love and I'm longing to explain my measures for
dispensing with prostitutes and fertilizing virgins by Act of Parliament."
She went on to tell us of an invention of hers to be erected at Tube
stations and other public resorts, which, upon payment of a small fee,
would safeguard the nation's health, accommodate its sons, and relieve
its daughters. Then she had contrived a method of preserving in sealed
tubes the germs of future Lord Chancellors "or poets or painters or
musicians," she went on, "supposing, that is to say, that these breeds
are not extinct, and that women still wish to bear children——"
"Of course we wish to bear children!" cried[Pg 27] Castalia, impatiently. Jane
rapped the table.
"That is the very point we are met to consider," she said. "For five
years we have been trying to find out whether we are justified in
continuing the human race. Castalia has anticipated our decision. But it
remains for the rest of us to make up our minds."
Here one after another of our messengers rose and delivered their
reports. The marvels of civilisation far exceeded our expectations, and,
as we learnt for the first time how man flies in the air, talks across
space, penetrates to the heart of an atom, and embraces the universe in
his speculations, a murmur of admiration burst from our lips.
"We are proud," we cried, "that our mothers sacrificed their youth in
such a cause as this!" Castalia, who had been listening intently, looked
prouder than all the rest. Then Jane reminded us that we had still much
to learn, and Castalia begged us to make haste. On we went through a
vast tangle of statistics. We learnt that [Pg 28]England has a population of
so many millions, and that such and such a proportion of them is
constantly hungry and in prison; that the average size of a working
man's family is such, and that so great a percentage of women die from
maladies incident to childbirth. Reports were read of visits to
factories, shops, slums, and dockyards. Descriptions were given of the
Stock Exchange, of a gigantic house of business in the City, and of a
Government Office. The British Colonies were now discussed, and some
account was given of our rule in India, Africa and Ireland. I was
sitting by Castalia and I noticed her uneasiness.
"We shall never come to any conclusion at all at this rate," she said.
"As it appears that civilisation is so much more complex than we had any
notion, would it not be better to confine ourselves to our original
enquiry? We agreed that it was the object of life to produce good people
and good books. All this time we have been talking of aeroplanes,
factories, and[Pg 29] money. Let us talk about men themselves and their arts,
for that is the heart of the matter."
So the diners out stepped forward with long slips of paper containing
answers to their questions. These had been framed after much
consideration. A good man, we had agreed, must at any rate be honest,
passionate, and unworldly. But whether or not a particular man possessed
those qualities could only be discovered by asking questions, often
beginning at a remote distance from the centre. Is Kensington a nice
place to live in? Where is your son being educated—and your daughter?
Now please tell me, what do you pay for your cigars? By the way, is Sir
Joseph a baronet or only a knight? Often it seemed that we learnt more
from trivial questions of this kind than from more direct ones. "I
accepted my peerage," said Lord Bunkum, "because my wife wished it." I
forget how many titles were accepted for the same reason. "Working
fifteen hours out[Pg 30] of the twenty-four, as I do——" ten thousand
professional men began.
"No, no, of course you can neither read nor write. But why do you work
so hard?" "My dear lady, with a growing family——" "But why does your
family grow?" Their wives wished that too, or perhaps it was the British
Empire. But more significant than the answers were the refusals to
answer. Very few would reply at all to questions about morality and
religion, and such answers as were given were not serious. Questions as
to the value of money and power were almost invariably brushed aside, or
pressed at extreme risk to the asker. "I'm sure," said Jill, "that if
Sir Harley Tightboots hadn't been carving the mutton when I asked him
about the capitalist system he would have cut my throat. The only reason
why we escaped with our lives over and over again is that men are at
once so hungry and so chivalrous. They despise us too much to mind what we say."
"Of course they despise us," said Eleanor.[Pg 31] "At the same time how do you
account for this—I made enquiries among the artists. Now, no woman has
ever been an artist, has she, Poll?"
"Jane-Austen-Charlotte-Brontë-George-Eliot," cried Poll, like a man
crying muffins in a back street.
"Damn the woman!" someone exclaimed. "What a bore she is!"
"Since Sappho there has been no female of first rate——" Eleanor began,
quoting from a weekly newspaper.
"It's now well known that Sappho was the somewhat lewd invention of
Professor Hobkin," Ruth interrupted.
"Anyhow, there is no reason to suppose that any woman ever has been able
to write or ever will be able to write," Eleanor continued. "And yet,
whenever I go among authors they never cease to talk to me about their
books. Masterly! I say, or Shakespeare himself! (for one must say
something) and I assure you, they believe me."
[Pg 32]
"That proves nothing," said Jane. "They all do it. Only," she sighed,
"it doesn't seem to help us much. Perhaps we had better examine modern
literature next. Liz, it's your turn."
Elizabeth rose and said that in order to prosecute her enquiry she had
dressed as a man and been taken for a reviewer.
"I have read new books pretty steadily for the past five years," said
she. "Mr. Wells is the most popular living writer; then comes Mr. Arnold
Bennett; then Mr. Compton Mackenzie; Mr. McKenna and Mr. Walpole may be
bracketed together." She sat down.
"But you've told us nothing!" we expostulated. "Or do you mean that
these gentlemen have greatly surpassed Jane-Elliot and that English
fiction is——where's that review of yours? Oh, yes, 'safe in their hands.'"
"Safe, quite safe," she said, shifting uneasily from foot to foot. "And
I'm sure that they give away even more than they receive."
[Pg 33]
We were all sure of that. "But," we pressed her, "do they write good
books?"
"Good books?" she said, looking at the ceiling. "You must remember," she
began, speaking with extreme rapidity, "that fiction is the mirror of
life. And you can't deny that education is of the highest importance,
and that it would be extremely annoying, if you found yourself alone at
Brighton late at night, not to know which was the best boarding house to
stay at, and suppose it was a dripping Sunday evening—wouldn't it be
nice to go to the Movies?"
"But what has that got to do with it?" we asked.
"Nothing—nothing—nothing whatever," she replied.
"Well, tell us the truth," we bade her.
"The truth? But isn't it wonderful," she broke off—"Mr. Chitter has
written a weekly article for the past thirty years upon love or hot
buttered toast and has sent all his sons to Eton——"
[Pg 34]
"The truth!" we demanded.
"Oh, the truth," she stammered, "the truth has nothing to do with
literature," and sitting down she refused to say another word.
It all seemed to us very inconclusive.
"Ladies, we must try to sum up the results," Jane was beginning, when a
hum, which had been heard for some time through the open window, drowned her voice.
"War! War! War! Declaration of War!" men were shouting in the street below.
We looked at each other in horror.
"What war?" we cried. "What war?" We remembered, too late, that we had
never thought of sending anyone to the House of Commons. We had
forgotten all about it. We turned to Poll, who had reached the history
shelves in the London Library, and asked her to enlighten us.
"Why," we cried, "do men go to war?"
"Sometimes for one reason, sometimes for another," she replied calmly.
"In 1760, for example——" The shouts outside drowned[Pg 35] her words. "Again
in 1797—in 1804—It was the Austrians in 1866—1870 was the
Franco-Prussian—In 1900 on the other hand——"
"But it's now 1914!" we cut her short.
"Ah, I don't know what they're going to war for now," she admitted.
* * * * *
The war was over and peace was in process of being signed, when I once
more found myself with Castalia in the room where our meetings used to
be held. We began idly turning over the pages of our old minute books.
"Queer," I mused, "to see what we were thinking five years ago." "We are
agreed," Castalia quoted, reading over my shoulder, "that it is the
object of life to produce good people and good books." We made no
comment upon that. "A good man is at any rate honest, passionate and
unworldly." "What a woman's language!" I observed. "Oh, dear," cried
Castalia, pushing the book away from her, "what fools we were! It was
all Poll's father's fault," she went on. "I[Pg 36] believe he did it on
purpose—that ridiculous will, I mean, forcing Poll to read all the
books in the London Library. If we hadn't learnt to read," she said
bitterly, "we might still have been bearing children in ignorance and
that I believe was the happiest life after all. I know what you're going
to say about war," she checked me, "and the horror of bearing children
to see them killed, but our mothers did it, and their mothers, and their
mothers before them. And they didn't complain. They couldn't read.
I've done my best," she sighed, "to prevent my little girl from learning
to read, but what's the use? I caught Ann only yesterday with a
newspaper in her hand and she was beginning to ask me if it was 'true.'
Next she'll ask me whether Mr. Lloyd George is a good man, then whether
Mr. Arnold Bennett is a good novelist, and finally whether I believe in
God. How can I bring my daughter up to believe in nothing?" she demanded.
"Surely you could teach her to believe that a[Pg 37] man's intellect is, and
always will be, fundamentally superior to a woman's?" I suggested. She
brightened at this and began to turn over our old minutes again. "Yes,"
she said, "think of their discoveries, their mathematics, their science,
their philosophy, their scholarship——" and then she began to laugh, "I
shall never forget old Hobkin and the hairpin," she said, and went on
reading and laughing and I thought she was quite happy, when suddenly
she drew the book from her and burst out, "Oh, Cassandra, why do you
torment me? Don't you know that our belief in man's intellect is the
greatest fallacy of them all?" "What?" I exclaimed. "Ask any journalist,
schoolmaster, politician or public house keeper in the land and they
will all tell you that men are much cleverer than women." "As if I
doubted it," she said scornfully. "How could they help it? Haven't we
bred them and fed and kept them in comfort since the beginning of time
so that they may be clever even if they're[Pg 38] nothing else? It's all our
doing!" she cried. "We insisted upon having intellect and now we've got
it. And it's intellect," she continued, "that's at the bottom of it.
What could be more charming than a boy before he has begun to cultivate
his intellect? He is beautiful to look at; he gives himself no airs; he
understands the meaning of art and literature instinctively; he goes
about enjoying his life and making other people enjoy theirs. Then they
teach him to cultivate his intellect. He becomes a barrister, a civil
servant, a general, an author, a professor. Every day he goes to an
office. Every year he produces a book. He maintains a whole family by
the products of his brain—poor devil! Soon he cannot come into a room
without making us all feel uncomfortable; he condescends to every woman
he meets, and dares not tell the truth even to his own wife; instead of
rejoicing our eyes we have to shut them if we are to take him in our
arms. True, they console[Pg 39] themselves with stars of all shapes, ribbons
of all shades, and incomes of all sizes—but what is to console us? That
we shall be able in ten years' time to spend a week-end at Lahore? Or
that the least insect in Japan has a name twice the length of its body?
Oh, Cassandra, for Heaven's sake let us devise a method by which men may
bear children! It is our only chance. For unless we provide them with
some innocent occupation we shall get neither good people nor good
books; we shall perish beneath the fruits of their unbridled activity;
and not a human being will survive to know that there once was Shakespeare!"
"It is too late," I replied. "We cannot provide even for the children that we have."
"And then you ask me to believe in intellect," she said.
While we spoke, men were crying hoarsely and wearily in the street, and,
listening, we heard that the Treaty of Peace had just been[Pg 40] signed. The
voices died away. The rain was falling and interfered no doubt with the
proper explosion of the fireworks.
"My cook will have bought the Evening News," said Castalia, "and Ann
will be spelling it out over her tea. I must go home."
"It's no good—not a bit of good," I said. "Once she knows how to read
there's only one thing you can teach her to believe in—and that is herself."
"Well, that would be a change," sighed Castalia.
So we swept up the papers of our Society, and, though Ann was playing
with her doll very happily, we solemnly made her a present of the lot
and told her we had chosen her to be President of the Society of the
future—upon which she burst into tears, poor little girl.
[Pg 41]
MONDAY OR TUESDAY
Lazy and indifferent, shaking space easily from his wings, knowing his
way, the heron passes over the church beneath the sky. White and
distant, absorbed in itself, endlessly the sky covers and uncovers,
moves and remains. A lake? Blot the shores of it out! A mountain? Oh,
perfect—the sun gold on its slopes. Down that falls. Ferns then, or
white feathers, for ever and ever——
Desiring truth, awaiting it, laboriously distilling a few words, for
ever desiring—(a cry starts to the left, another to the right. Wheels
strike divergently. Omnibuses conglomerate in conflict)—for ever
desiring—(the clock asseverates with twelve distinct strokes that it is
midday; light sheds gold scales; children swarm)—for ever desiring
truth. Red is the dome; coins hang on the trees; smoke trails from the
[Pg 42]chimneys; bark, shout, cry "Iron for sale"—and truth?
Radiating to a point men's feet and women's feet, black or
gold-encrusted—(This foggy weather—Sugar? No, thank you—The
commonwealth of the future)—the firelight darting and making the room
red, save for the black figures and their bright eyes, while outside a
van discharges, Miss Thingummy drinks tea at her desk, and plate-glass
preserves fur coats——
Flaunted, leaf-light, drifting at corners, blown across the wheels,
silver-splashed, home or not home, gathered, scattered, squandered in
separate scales, swept up, down, torn, sunk, assembled—and truth?
Now to recollect by the fireside on the white square of marble. From
ivory depths words rising shed their blackness, blossom and penetrate.
Fallen the book; in the flame, in the smoke, in the momentary sparks—or
now voyaging, the marble square pendant, minarets [Pg 43]beneath and the
Indian seas, while space rushes blue and stars glint—truth? or now,
content with closeness?
Lazy and indifferent the heron returns; the sky veils her stars; then bares them.
[Pg 44]
[Pg 45]
AN UNWRITTEN NOVEL
Such an expression of unhappiness was enough by itself to make one's
eyes slide above the paper's edge to the poor woman's
face—insignificant without that look, almost a symbol of human destiny
with it. Life's what you see in people's eyes; life's what they learn,
and, having learnt it, never, though they seek to hide it, cease to be
aware of—what? That life's like that, it seems. Five faces
opposite—five mature faces—and the knowledge in each face. Strange,
though, how people want to conceal it! Marks of reticence are on all
those faces: lips shut, eyes shaded, each one of the five doing
something to hide or stultify his knowledge. One smokes; another reads;
a third checks entries in a pocket book; a fourth stares at the map of
the line framed opposite; and the fifth—the terrible thing about the
fifth is that she does[Pg 46] nothing at all. She looks at life. Ah, but my
poor, unfortunate woman, do play the game—do, for all our sakes, conceal it!
As if she heard me, she looked up, shifted slightly in her seat and
sighed. She seemed to apologise and at the same time to say to me, "If
only you knew!" Then she looked at life again. "But I do know," I
answered silently, glancing at the Times for manners' sake. "I know
the whole business. 'Peace between Germany and the Allied Powers was
yesterday officially ushered in at Paris—Signor Nitti, the Italian
Prime Minister—a passenger train at Doncaster was in collision with a
goods train....' We all know—the Times knows—but we pretend we
don't." My eyes had once more crept over the paper's rim. She shuddered,
twitched her arm queerly to the middle of her back and shook her head.
Again I dipped into my great reservoir of life. "Take what you like," I
continued, "births, deaths, marriages, Court Circular, the habits of
birds, Leonardo[Pg 47] da Vinci, the Sandhills murder, high wages and the cost
of living—oh, take what you like," I repeated, "it's all in the
Times!" Again with infinite weariness she moved her head from side to
side until, like a top exhausted with spinning, it settled on her neck.
The Times was no protection against such sorrow as hers. But other
human beings forbade intercourse. The best thing to do against life was
to fold the paper so that it made a perfect square, crisp, thick,
impervious even to life. This done, I glanced up quickly, armed with a
shield of my own. She pierced through my shield; she gazed into my eyes
as if searching any sediment of courage at the depths of them and
damping it to clay. Her twitch alone denied all hope, discounted all illusion.
So we rattled through Surrey and across the border into Sussex. But with
my eyes upon life I did not see that the other travellers had left, one
by one, till, save for the man who read, we were alone together. Here
was Three Bridges[Pg 48] station. We drew slowly down the platform and
stopped. Was he going to leave us? I prayed both ways—I prayed last
that he might stay. At that instant he roused himself, crumpled his
paper contemptuously, like a thing done with, burst open the door, and left us alone.
The unhappy woman, leaning a little forward, palely and colourlessly
addressed me—talked of stations and holidays, of brothers at
Eastbourne, and the time of year, which was, I forget now, early or
late. But at last looking from the window and seeing, I knew, only life,
she breathed, "Staying away—that's the drawback of it——" Ah, now we
approached the catastrophe, "My sister-in-law"—the bitterness of her
tone was like lemon on cold steel, and speaking, not to me, but to
herself, she muttered, "nonsense, she would say—that's what they all
say," and while she spoke she fidgeted as though the skin on her back
were as a plucked fowl's in a poulterer's shop-window.
"Oh, that cow!" she broke off nervously, as[Pg 49] though the great wooden cow
in the meadow had shocked her and saved her from some indiscretion. Then
she shuddered, and then she made the awkward angular movement that I had
seen before, as if, after the spasm, some spot between the shoulders
burnt or itched. Then again she looked the most unhappy woman in the
world, and I once more reproached her, though not with the same
conviction, for if there were a reason, and if I knew the reason, the
stigma was removed from life.
"Sisters-in-law," I said—
Her lips pursed as if to spit venom at the word; pursed they remained.
All she did was to take her glove and rub hard at a spot on the
window-pane. She rubbed as if she would rub something out for ever—some
stain, some indelible contamination. Indeed, the spot remained for all
her rubbing, and back she sank with the shudder and the clutch of the
arm I had come to expect. Something impelled me to take my glove and rub
my window. There, too,[Pg 50] was a little speck on the glass. For all my
rubbing it remained. And then the spasm went through me; I crooked my
arm and plucked at the middle of my back. My skin, too, felt like the
damp chicken's skin in the poulterer's shop-window; one spot between the
shoulders itched and irritated, felt clammy, felt raw. Could I reach it?
Surreptitiously I tried. She saw me. A smile of infinite irony, infinite
sorrow, flitted and faded from her face. But she had communicated,
shared her secret, passed her poison; she would speak no more. Leaning
back in my corner, shielding my eyes from her eyes, seeing only the
slopes and hollows, greys and purples, of the winter's landscape, I read
her message, deciphered her secret, reading it beneath her gaze.
Hilda's the sister-in-law. Hilda? Hilda? Hilda Marsh—Hilda the
blooming, the full bosomed, the matronly. Hilda stands at the door as
the cab draws up, holding a coin. "Poor Minnie, more of a grasshopper
than ever—old[Pg 51] cloak she had last year. Well, well, with two children
these days one can't do more. No, Minnie, I've got it; here you are,
cabby—none of your ways with me. Come in, Minnie. Oh, I could carry
you, let alone your basket!" So they go into the dining-room. "Aunt Minnie, children."
Slowly the knives and forks sink from the upright. Down they get (Bob
and Barbara), hold out hands stiffly; back again to their chairs,
staring between the resumed mouthfuls. [But this we'll skip; ornaments,
curtains, trefoil china plate, yellow oblongs of cheese, white squares
of biscuit—skip—oh, but wait! Halfway through luncheon one of those
shivers; Bob stares at her, spoon in mouth. "Get on with your pudding,
Bob;" but Hilda disapproves. "Why should she twitch?" Skip, skip, till
we reach the landing on the upper floor; stairs brass-bound; linoleum
worn; oh, yes! little bedroom looking out over the roofs of
Eastbourne—zigzagging roofs like the spines of [Pg 52]caterpillars, this way,
that way, striped red and yellow, with blue-black slating]. Now, Minnie,
the door's shut; Hilda heavily descends to the basement; you unstrap the
straps of your basket, lay on the bed a meagre nightgown, stand side by
side furred felt slippers. The looking-glass—no, you avoid the
looking-glass. Some methodical disposition of hat-pins. Perhaps the
shell box has something in it? You shake it; it's the pearl stud there
was last year—that's all. And then the sniff, the sigh, the sitting by
the window. Three o'clock on a December afternoon; the rain drizzling;
one light low in the skylight of a drapery emporium; another high in a
servant's bedroom—this one goes out. That gives her nothing to look at.
A moment's blankness—then, what are you thinking? (Let me peep across
at her opposite; she's asleep or pretending it; so what would she think
about sitting at the window at three o'clock in the afternoon? Health,
money, hills, her God?) Yes, sitting on the very edge of the chair
looking over the roofs[Pg 53] of Eastbourne, Minnie Marsh prays to God. That's
all very well; and she may rub the pane too, as though to see God
better; but what God does she see? Who's the God of Minnie Marsh, the
God of the back streets of Eastbourne, the God of three o'clock in the
afternoon? I, too, see roofs, I see sky; but, oh, dear—this seeing of
Gods! More like President Kruger than Prince Albert—that's the best I
can do for him; and I see him on a chair, in a black frock-coat, not so
very high up either; I can manage a cloud or two for him to sit on; and
then his hand trailing in the cloud holds a rod, a truncheon is
it?—black, thick, thorned—a brutal old bully—Minnie's God! Did he
send the itch and the patch and the twitch? Is that why she prays? What
she rubs on the window is the stain of sin. Oh, she committed some crime!
I have my choice of crimes. The woods flit and fly—in summer there are
bluebells; in the opening there, when Spring comes, primroses. A
parting, was it, twenty years ago? Vows[Pg 54] broken? Not Minnie's!... She
was faithful. How she nursed her mother! All her savings on the
tombstone—wreaths under glass—daffodils in jars. But I'm off the
track. A crime.... They would say she kept her sorrow, suppressed her
secret—her sex, they'd say—the scientific people. But what flummery to
saddle her with sex! No—more like this. Passing down the streets of
Croydon twenty years ago, the violet loops of ribbon in the draper's
window spangled in the electric light catch her eye. She lingers—past
six. Still by running she can reach home. She pushes through the glass
swing door. It's sale-time. Shallow trays brim with ribbons. She pauses,
pulls this, fingers that with the raised roses on it—no need to choose,
no need to buy, and each tray with its surprises. "We don't shut till
seven," and then it is seven. She runs, she rushes, home she reaches,
but too late. Neighbours—the doctor—baby brother—the
kettle—scalded—hospital—dead—or only the shock of it, the blame?
Ah,[Pg 55] but the detail matters nothing! It's what she carries with her; the
spot, the crime, the thing to expiate, always there between her
shoulders. "Yes," she seems to nod to me, "it's the thing I did."
Whether you did, or what you did, I don't mind; it's not the thing I
want. The draper's window looped with violet—that'll do; a little cheap
perhaps, a little commonplace—since one has a choice of crimes, but
then so many (let me peep across again—still sleeping, or pretending
sleep! white, worn, the mouth closed—a touch of obstinacy, more than
one would think—no hint of sex)—so many crimes aren't your crime;
your crime was cheap; only the retribution solemn; for now the church
door opens, the hard wooden pew receives her; on the brown tiles she
kneels; every day, winter, summer, dusk, dawn (here she's at it) prays.
All her sins fall, fall, for ever fall. The spot receives them. It's
raised, it's red, it's burning. Next she twitches. Small boys point.
"Bob[Pg 56] at lunch to-day"—But elderly women are the worst.
Indeed now you can't sit praying any longer. Kruger's sunk beneath the
clouds—washed over as with a painter's brush of liquid grey, to which
he adds a tinge of black—even the tip of the truncheon gone now. That's
what always happens! Just as you've seen him, felt him, someone
interrupts. It's Hilda now.
How you hate her! She'll even lock the bathroom door overnight, too,
though it's only cold water you want, and sometimes when the night's
been bad it seems as if washing helped. And John at breakfast—the
children—meals are worst, and sometimes there are friends—ferns don't
altogether hide 'em—they guess, too; so out you go along the front,
where the waves are grey, and the papers blow, and the glass shelters
green and draughty, and the chairs cost tuppence—too much—for there
must be preachers along the sands. Ah, that's a nigger—that's a funny
man—that's a man with[Pg 57] parakeets—poor little creatures! Is there no
one here who thinks of God?—just up there, over the pier, with his
rod—but no—there's nothing but grey in the sky or if it's blue the
white clouds hide him, and the music—it's military music—and what they
are fishing for? Do they catch them? How the children stare! Well, then
home a back way—"Home a back way!" The words have meaning; might have
been spoken by the old man with whiskers—no, no, he didn't really
speak; but everything has meaning—placards leaning against
doorways—names above shop-windows—red fruit in baskets—women's heads
in the hairdresser's—all say "Minnie Marsh!" But here's a jerk. "Eggs
are cheaper!" That's what always happens! I was heading her over the
waterfall, straight for madness, when, like a flock of dream sheep, she
turns t'other way and runs between my fingers. Eggs are cheaper.
Tethered to the shores of the world, none of the crimes, sorrows,
rhapsodies, or insanities for poor [Pg 58]Minnie Marsh; never late for
luncheon; never caught in a storm without a mackintosh; never utterly
unconscious of the cheapness of eggs. So she reaches home—scrapes her boots.
Have I read you right? But the human face—the human face at the top of
the fullest sheet of print holds more, withholds more. Now, eyes open,
she looks out; and in the human eye—how d'you define it?—there's a
break—a division—so that when you've grasped the stem the butterfly's
off—the moth that hangs in the evening over the yellow flower—move,
raise your hand, off, high, away. I won't raise my hand. Hang still,
then, quiver, life, soul, spirit, whatever you are of Minnie Marsh—I,
too, on my flower—the hawk over the down—alone, or what were the worth
of life? To rise; hang still in the evening, in the midday; hang still
over the down. The flicker of a hand—off, up! then poised again. Alone,
unseen; seeing all so still down there, all so lovely. None seeing, none
caring. The eyes of others our prisons; their[Pg 59] thoughts our cages. Air
above, air below. And the moon and immortality.... Oh, but I drop to the
turf! Are you down too, you in the corner, what's your
name—woman—Minnie Marsh; some such name as that? There she is, tight
to her blossom; opening her hand-bag, from which she takes a hollow
shell—an egg—who was saying that eggs were cheaper? You or I? Oh, it
was you who said it on the way home, you remember, when the old
gentleman, suddenly opening his umbrella—or sneezing was it? Anyhow,
Kruger went, and you came "home a back way," and scraped your boots.
Yes. And now you lay across your knees a pocket-handkerchief into which
drop little angular fragments of eggshell—fragments of a map—a puzzle.
I wish I could piece them together! If you would only sit still. She's
moved her knees—the map's in bits again. Down the slopes of the Andes
the white blocks of marble go bounding and hurtling, crushing to death a
whole troop of Spanish muleteers, with their[Pg 60] convoy—Drake's booty,
gold and silver. But to return——
To what, to where? She opened the door, and, putting her umbrella in the
stand—that goes without saying; so, too, the whiff of beef from the
basement; dot, dot, dot. But what I cannot thus eliminate, what I must,
head down, eyes shut, with the courage of a battalion and the blindness
of a bull, charge and disperse are, indubitably, the figures behind the
ferns, commercial travellers. There I've hidden them all this time in
the hope that somehow they'd disappear, or better still emerge, as
indeed they must, if the story's to go on gathering richness and
rotundity, destiny and tragedy, as stories should, rolling along with it
two, if not three, commercial travellers and a whole grove of
aspidistra. "The fronds of the aspidistra only partly concealed the
commercial traveller—" Rhododendrons would conceal him utterly, and
into the bargain give me my fling of red and white, for which I starve
and strive; but [Pg 61]rhododendrons in Eastbourne—in December—on the
Marshes' table—no, no, I dare not; it's all a matter of crusts and
cruets, frills and ferns. Perhaps there'll be a moment later by the sea.
Moreover, I feel, pleasantly pricking through the green fretwork and
over the glacis of cut glass, a desire to peer and peep at the man
opposite—one's as much as I can manage. James Moggridge is it, whom the
Marshes call Jimmy? [Minnie, you must promise not to twitch till I've
got this straight]. James Moggridge travels in—shall we say
buttons?—but the time's not come for bringing them in—the big and
the little on the long cards, some peacock-eyed, others dull gold;
cairngorms some, and others coral sprays—but I say the time's not come.
He travels, and on Thursdays, his Eastbourne day, takes his meals with
the Marshes. His red face, his little steady eyes—by no means
altogether commonplace—his enormous appetite (that's safe; he won't
look at Minnie till the bread's swamped the gravy dry), napkin tucked[Pg 62]
diamond-wise—but this is primitive, and, whatever it may do the reader,
don't take me in. Let's dodge to the Moggridge household, set that in
motion. Well, the family boots are mended on Sundays by James himself.
He reads Truth. But his passion? Roses—and his wife a retired
hospital nurse—interesting—for God's sake let me have one woman with a
name I like! But no; she's of the unborn children of the mind, illicit,
none the less loved, like my rhododendrons. How many die in every novel
that's written—the best, the dearest, while Moggridge lives. It's
life's fault. Here's Minnie eating her egg at the moment opposite and at
t'other end of the line—are we past Lewes?—there must be Jimmy—or
what's her twitch for?
There must be Moggridge—life's fault. Life imposes her laws; life
blocks the way; life's behind the fern; life's the tyrant; oh, but not
the bully! No, for I assure you I come willingly; I come wooed by Heaven
knows what compulsion[Pg 63] across ferns and cruets, table splashed and
bottles smeared. I come irresistibly to lodge myself somewhere on the
firm flesh, in the robust spine, wherever I can penetrate or find
foothold on the person, in the soul, of Moggridge the man. The enormous
stability of the fabric; the spine tough as whalebone, straight as
oak-tree; the ribs radiating branches; the flesh taut tarpaulin; the red
hollows; the suck and regurgitation of the heart; while from above meat
falls in brown cubes and beer gushes to be churned to blood again—and
so we reach the eyes. Behind the aspidistra they see something: black,
white, dismal; now the plate again; behind the aspidistra they see
elderly woman; "Marsh's sister, Hilda's more my sort;" the tablecloth
now. "Marsh would know what's wrong with Morrises ..." talk that over;
cheese has come; the plate again; turn it round—the enormous fingers;
now the woman opposite. "Marsh's sister—not a bit like Marsh; wretched,
elderly female.... You[Pg 64] should feed your hens.... God's truth, what's
set her twitching? Not what I said? Dear, dear, dear! these elderly women. Dear, dear!"
[Yes, Minnie; I know you've twitched, but one moment—James Moggridge].
"Dear, dear, dear!" How beautiful the sound is! like the knock of a
mallet on seasoned timber, like the throb of the heart of an ancient
whaler when the seas press thick and the green is clouded. "Dear, dear!"
what a passing bell for the souls of the fretful to soothe them and
solace them, lap them in linen, saying, "So long. Good luck to you!" and
then, "What's your pleasure?" for though Moggridge would pluck his rose
for her, that's done, that's over. Now what's the next thing? "Madam,
you'll miss your train," for they don't linger.
That's the man's way; that's the sound that reverberates; that's St.
Paul's and the motor-omnibuses. But we're brushing the crumbs off. Oh,
Moggridge, you won't stay? You must be off? Are you driving through
Eastbourne this[Pg 65] afternoon in one of those little carriages? Are you the
man who's walled up in green cardboard boxes, and sometimes has the
blinds down, and sometimes sits so solemn staring like a sphinx, and
always there's a look of the sepulchral, something of the undertaker,
the coffin, and the dusk about horse and driver? Do tell me—but the
doors slammed. We shall never meet again. Moggridge, farewell!
Yes, yes, I'm coming. Right up to the top of the house. One moment I'll
linger. How the mud goes round in the mind—what a swirl these monsters
leave, the waters rocking, the weeds waving and green here, black there,
striking to the sand, till by degrees the atoms reassemble, the deposit
sifts itself, and again through the eyes one sees clear and still, and
there comes to the lips some prayer for the departed, some obsequy for
the souls of those one nods to, the people one never meets again.
James Moggridge is dead now, gone for ever. Well, Minnie—"I can face it
no longer." If she[Pg 66] said that—(Let me look at her. She is brushing the
eggshell into deep declivities). She said it certainly, leaning against
the wall of the bedroom, and plucking at the little balls which edge the
claret-coloured curtain. But when the self speaks to the self, who is
speaking?—the entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the
central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world—a
coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern
restlessly up and down the dark corridors. "I can bear it no longer,"
her spirit says. "That man at lunch—Hilda—the children." Oh, heavens,
her sob! It's the spirit wailing its destiny, the spirit driven hither,
thither, lodging on the diminishing carpets—meagre footholds—shrunken
shreds of all the vanishing universe—love, life, faith, husband,
children, I know not what splendours and pageantries glimpsed in
girlhood. "Not for me—not for me."
But then—the muffins, the bald elderly dog? Bead mats I should fancy
and the consolation[Pg 67] of underlinen. If Minnie Marsh were run over and
taken to hospital, nurses and doctors themselves would exclaim....
There's the vista and the vision—there's the distance—the blue blot at
the end of the avenue, while, after all, the tea is rich, the muffin
hot, and the dog—"Benny, to your basket, sir, and see what mother's
brought you!" So, taking the glove with the worn thumb, defying once
more the encroaching demon of what's called going in holes, you renew
the fortifications, threading the grey wool, running it in and out.
Running it in and out, across and over, spinning a web through which God
himself—hush, don't think of God! How firm the stitches are! You must
be proud of your darning. Let nothing disturb her. Let the light fall
gently, and the clouds show an inner vest of the first green leaf. Let
the sparrow perch on the twig and shake the raindrop hanging to the
twig's elbow.... Why look up? Was it a sound, a thought? Oh, heavens!
Back again to the thing you did,[Pg 68] the plate glass with the violet loops?
But Hilda will come. Ignominies, humiliations, oh! Close the breach.
Having mended her glove, Minnie Marsh lays it in the drawer. She shuts
the drawer with decision. I catch sight of her face in the glass. Lips
are pursed. Chin held high. Next she laces her shoes. Then she touches
her throat. What's your brooch? Mistletoe or merry-thought? And what is
happening? Unless I'm much mistaken, the pulse's quickened, the moment's
coming, the threads are racing, Niagara's ahead. Here's the crisis!
Heaven be with you! Down she goes. Courage, courage! Face it, be it! For
God's sake don't wait on the mat now! There's the door! I'm on your
side. Speak! Confront her, confound her soul!
"Oh, I beg your pardon! Yes, this is Eastbourne. I'll reach it down for
you. Let me try the handle." [But, Minnie, though we keep up pretences,
I've read you right—I'm with you now].
[Pg 69]
"That's all your luggage?"
"Much obliged, I'm sure."
(But why do you look about you? Hilda won't come to the station, nor
John; and Moggridge is driving at the far side of Eastbourne).
"I'll wait by my bag, ma'am, that's safest. He said he'd meet me.... Oh,
there he is! That's my son."
So they walk off together.
Well, but I'm confounded.... Surely, Minnie, you know better! A strange
young man.... Stop! I'll tell him—Minnie!—Miss Marsh!—I don't know
though. There's something queer in her cloak as it blows. Oh, but it's
untrue, it's indecent.... Look how he bends as they reach the gateway.
She finds her ticket. What's the joke? Off they go, down the road, side
by side.... Well, my world's done for! What do I stand on? What do I
know? That's not Minnie. There never was Moggridge. Who am I? Life's bare as bone.
And yet the last look of them—he stepping[Pg 70] from the kerb and she
following him round the edge of the big building brims me with
wonder—floods me anew. Mysterious figures! Mother and son. Who are you?
Why do you walk down the street? Where to-night will you sleep, and
then, to-morrow? Oh, how it whirls and surges—floats me afresh! I start
after them. People drive this way and that. The white light splutters
and pours. Plate-glass windows. Carnations; chrysanthemums. Ivy in dark
gardens. Milk carts at the door. Wherever I go, mysterious figures, I
see you, turning the corner, mothers and sons; you, you, you. I hasten,
I follow. This, I fancy, must be the sea. Grey is the landscape; dim as
ashes; the water murmurs and moves. If I fall on my knees, if I go
through the ritual, the ancient antics, it's you, unknown figures, you I
adore; if I open my arms, it's you I embrace, you I draw to me—adorable world!
[Pg 71]
THE STRING QUARTET
Well, here we are, and if you cast your eye over the room you will see
that Tubes and trams and omnibuses, private carriages not a few, even, I
venture to believe, landaus with bays in them, have been busy at it,
weaving threads from one end of London to the other. Yet I begin to have my doubts—
If indeed it's true, as they're saying, that Regent Street is up, and
the Treaty signed, and the weather not cold for the time of year, and
even at that rent not a flat to be had, and the worst of influenza its
after effects; if I bethink me of having forgotten to write about the
leak in the larder, and left my glove in the train; if the ties of blood
require me, leaning forward, to accept cordially the hand which is
perhaps offered hesitatingly—
"Seven years since we met!"
[Pg 72]
"The last time in Venice."
"And where are you living now?"
"Well, the late afternoon suits me the best, though, if it weren't
asking too much——"
"But I knew you at once!"
"Still, the war made a break——"
If the mind's shot through by such little arrows, and—for human society
compels it—no sooner is one launched than another presses forward; if
this engenders heat and in addition they've turned on the electric
light; if saying one thing does, in so many cases, leave behind it a
need to improve and revise, stirring besides regrets, pleasures,
vanities, and desires—if it's all the facts I mean, and the hats, the
fur boas, the gentlemen's swallow-tail coats, and pearl tie-pins that
come to the surface—what chance is there?
Of what? It becomes every minute more difficult to say why, in spite of
everything, I sit here believing I can't now say what, or even remember
the last time it happened.
[Pg 73]
"Did you see the procession?"
"The King looked cold."
"No, no, no. But what was it?"
"She's bought a house at Malmesbury."
"How lucky to find one!"
On the contrary, it seems to me pretty sure that she, whoever she may
be, is damned, since it's all a matter of flats and hats and sea gulls,
or so it seems to be for a hundred people sitting here well dressed,
walled in, furred, replete. Not that I can boast, since I too sit
passive on a gilt chair, only turning the earth above a buried memory,
as we all do, for there are signs, if I'm not mistaken, that we're all
recalling something, furtively seeking something. Why fidget? Why so
anxious about the sit of cloaks; and gloves—whether to button or
unbutton? Then watch that elderly face against the dark canvas, a moment
ago urbane and flushed; now taciturn and sad, as if in shadow. Was it
the sound of the second violin tuning in the ante-room? Here they come;
four black figures, carrying [Pg 74]instruments, and seat themselves facing
the white squares under the downpour of light; rest the tips of their
bows on the music stand; with a simultaneous movement lift them; lightly
poise them, and, looking across at the player opposite, the first violin
counts one, two, three——
Flourish, spring, burgeon, burst! The pear tree on the top of the
mountain. Fountains jet; drops descend. But the waters of the Rhone flow
swift and deep, race under the arches, and sweep the trailing water
leaves, washing shadows over the silver fish, the spotted fish rushed
down by the swift waters, now swept into an eddy where—it's difficult
this—conglomeration of fish all in a pool; leaping, splashing, scraping
sharp fins; and such a boil of current that the yellow pebbles are
churned round and round, round and round—free now, rushing downwards,
or even somehow ascending in exquisite spirals into the air; curled like
thin shavings from under a plane; up and up.... How lovely goodness is
in those who, stepping[Pg 75] lightly, go smiling through the world! Also in
jolly old fishwives, squatted under arches, obscene old women, how
deeply they laugh and shake and rollick, when they walk, from side to side, hum, hah!
"That's an early Mozart, of course——"
"But the tune, like all his tunes, makes one despair—I mean hope. What
do I mean? That's the worst of music! I want to dance, laugh, eat pink
cakes, yellow cakes, drink thin, sharp wine. Or an indecent story,
now—I could relish that. The older one grows the more one likes
indecency. Hah, hah! I'm laughing. What at? You said nothing, nor did
the old gentleman opposite.... But suppose—suppose—Hush!"
The melancholy river bears us on. When the moon comes through the
trailing willow boughs, I see your face, I hear your voice and the bird
singing as we pass the osier bed. What are you whispering? Sorrow,
sorrow. Joy, joy. Woven together, like reeds in moonlight.[Pg 76] Woven
together, inextricably commingled, bound in pain and strewn in sorrow—crash!
The boat sinks. Rising, the figures ascend, but now leaf thin, tapering
to a dusky wraith, which, fiery tipped, draws its twofold passion from
my heart. For me it sings, unseals my sorrow, thaws compassion, floods
with love the sunless world, nor, ceasing, abates its tenderness but
deftly, subtly, weaves in and out until in this pattern, this
consummation, the cleft ones unify; soar, sob, sink to rest, sorrow and joy.
Why then grieve? Ask what? Remain unsatisfied? I say all's been settled;
yes; laid to rest under a coverlet of rose leaves, falling. Falling. Ah,
but they cease. One rose leaf, falling from an enormous height, like a
little parachute dropped from an invisible balloon, turns, flutters
waveringly. It won't reach us.
"No, no. I noticed nothing. That's the worst of music—these silly
dreams. The second violin was late, you say?"
[Pg 77]
"There's old Mrs. Munro, feeling her way out—blinder each year, poor
woman—on this slippery floor."
Eyeless old age, grey-headed Sphinx.... There she stands on the
pavement, beckoning, so sternly, the red omnibus.
"How lovely! How well they play! How—how—how!"
The tongue is but a clapper. Simplicity itself. The feathers in the hat
next me are bright and pleasing as a child's rattle. The leaf on the
plane-tree flashes green through the chink in the curtain. Very strange, very exciting.
"How—how—how!" Hush!
These are the lovers on the grass.
"If, madam, you will take my hand——"
"Sir, I would trust you with my heart. Moreover, we have left our bodies
in the banqueting hall. Those on the turf are the shadows of our souls."
"Then these are the embraces of our souls." The lemons nod assent. The
swan pushes from[Pg 78] the bank and floats dreaming into mid stream.
"But to return. He followed me down the corridor, and, as we turned the
corner, trod on the lace of my petticoat. What could I do but cry 'Ah!'
and stop to finger it? At which he drew his sword, made passes as if he
were stabbing something to death, and cried, 'Mad! Mad! Mad!' Whereupon
I screamed, and the Prince, who was writing in the large vellum book in
the oriel window, came out in his velvet skull-cap and furred slippers,
snatched a rapier from the wall—the King of Spain's gift, you know—on
which I escaped, flinging on this cloak to hide the ravages to my
skirt—to hide.... But listen! the horns!"
The gentleman replies so fast to the lady, and she runs up the scale
with such witty exchange of compliment now culminating in a sob of
passion, that the words are indistinguishable though the meaning is
plain enough—love, laughter, flight, pursuit, celestial bliss—all[Pg 79]
floated out on the gayest ripple of tender endearment—until the sound
of the silver horns, at first far distant, gradually sounds more and
more distinctly, as if seneschals were saluting the dawn or proclaiming
ominously the escape of the lovers.... The green garden, moonlit pool,
lemons, lovers, and fish are all dissolved in the opal sky, across
which, as the horns are joined by trumpets and supported by clarions
there rise white arches firmly planted on marble pillars.... Tramp and
trumpeting. Clang and clangour. Firm establishment. Fast foundations.
March of myriads. Confusion and chaos trod to earth. But this city to
which we travel has neither stone nor marble; hangs enduring; stands
unshakable; nor does a face, nor does a flag greet or welcome. Leave
then to perish your hope; droop in the desert my joy; naked advance.
Bare are the pillars; auspicious to none; casting no shade; resplendent;
severe. Back then I fall, eager no more, desiring only to go, find the
street, mark the [Pg 80]buildings, greet the applewoman, say to the maid who
opens the door: A starry night.
"Good night, good night. You go this way?"
"Alas. I go that."
[Pg 81]
BLUE & GREEN
GREEN
The pointed fingers of glass hang downwards. The light slides down the
glass, and drops a pool of green. All day long the ten fingers of the
lustre drop green upon the marble. The feathers of parakeets—their
harsh cries—sharp blades of palm trees—green, too; green needles
glittering in the sun. But the hard glass drips on to the marble; the
pools hover above the dessert sand; the camels lurch through them; the
pools settle on the marble; rushes edge them; weeds clog them; here and
there a white blossom; the frog flops over; at night the stars are set
there unbroken. Evening comes, and the shadow sweeps the green over the
mantelpiece; the ruffled surface of ocean. No ships come; the aimless
waves sway beneath the empty sky. It's night; the needles drip blots of
blue. The green's out.
[Pg 82]
BLUE
The snub-nosed monster rises to the surface and spouts through his blunt
nostrils two columns of water, which, fiery-white in the centre, spray
off into a fringe of blue beads. Strokes of blue line the black
tarpaulin of his hide. Slushing the water through mouth and nostrils he
sings, heavy with water, and the blue closes over him dowsing the
polished pebbles of his eyes. Thrown upon the beach he lies, blunt,
obtuse, shedding dry blue scales. Their metallic blue stains the rusty
iron on the beach. Blue are the ribs of the wrecked rowing boat. A wave
rolls beneath the blue bells. But the cathedral's different, cold,
incense laden, faint blue with the veils of madonnas.
[Pg 83]
KEW GARDENS
From the oval-shaped flower-bed there rose perhaps a hundred stalks
spreading into heart-shaped or tongue-shaped leaves half way up and
unfurling at the tip red or blue or yellow petals marked with spots of
colour raised upon the surface; and from the red, blue or yellow gloom
of the throat emerged a straight bar, rough with gold dust and slightly
clubbed at the end. The petals were voluminous enough to be stirred by
the summer breeze, and when they moved, the red, blue and yellow lights
passed one over the other, staining an inch of the brown earth beneath
with a spot of the most intricate colour. The light fell either upon the
smooth, grey back of a pebble, or, the shell of a snail with its brown,
circular veins, or falling into a raindrop, it expanded with such
intensity of red, blue and [Pg 84]yellow the thin walls of water that one
expected them to burst and disappear. Instead, the drop was left in a
second silver grey once more, and the light now settled upon the flesh
of a leaf, revealing the branching thread of fibre beneath the surface,
and again it moved on and spread its illumination in the vast green
spaces beneath the dome of the heart-shaped and tongue-shaped leaves.
Then the breeze stirred rather more briskly overhead and the colour was
flashed into the air above, into the eyes of the men and women who walk
in Kew Gardens in July.
The figures of these men and women straggled past the flower-bed with a
curiously irregular movement not unlike that of the white and blue
butterflies who crossed the turf in zig-zag flights from bed to bed. The
man was about six inches in front of the woman, strolling carelessly,
while she bore on with greater purpose, only turning her head now and
then to see that the children were not too far behind. The man kept this
distance in front of the woman [Pg 85]purposely, though perhaps unconsciously,
for he wished to go on with his thoughts.
"Fifteen years ago I came here with Lily," he thought. "We sat somewhere
over there by a lake and I begged her to marry me all through the hot
afternoon. How the dragonfly kept circling round us: how clearly I see
the dragonfly and her shoe with the square silver buckle at the toe. All
the time I spoke I saw her shoe and when it moved impatiently I knew
without looking up what she was going to say: the whole of her seemed to
be in her shoe. And my love, my desire, were in the dragonfly; for some
reason I thought that if it settled there, on that leaf, the broad one
with the red flower in the middle of it, if the dragonfly settled on the
leaf she would say "Yes" at once. But the dragonfly went round and
round: it never settled anywhere—of course not, happily not, or I
shouldn't be walking here with Eleanor and the children—Tell me,
Eleanor. D'you ever think of the past?"
"Why do you ask, Simon?"
[Pg 86]
"Because I've been thinking of the past. I've been thinking of Lily,
the woman I might have married.... Well, why are you silent? Do you mind
my thinking of the past?"
"Why should I mind, Simon? Doesn't one always think of the past, in a
garden with men and women lying under the trees? Aren't they one's past,
all that remains of it, those men and women, those ghosts lying under
the trees, ... one's happiness, one's reality?"
"For me, a square silver shoe buckle and a dragonfly—"
"For me, a kiss. Imagine six little girls sitting before their easels
twenty years ago, down by the side of a lake, painting the water-lilies,
the first red water-lilies I'd ever seen. And suddenly a kiss, there on
the back of my neck. And my hand shook all the afternoon so that I
couldn't paint. I took out my watch and marked the hour when I would
allow myself to think of the kiss for five minutes only—it was so
precious—the kiss of an old grey-haired[Pg 87] woman with a wart on her nose,
the mother of all my kisses all my life. Come, Caroline, come, Hubert."
They walked on past the flower-bed, now walking four abreast, and
soon diminished in size among the trees and looked half transparent as
the sunlight and shade swam over their backs in large trembling irregular patches.
In the oval flower bed the snail, whose shell had been stained red,
blue, and yellow for the space of two minutes or so, now appeared to be
moving very slightly in its shell, and next began to labour over the
crumbs of loose earth which broke away and rolled down as it passed over
them. It appeared to have a definite goal in front of it, differing in
this respect from the singular high stepping angular green insect who
attempted to cross in front of it, and waited for a second with its
antennæ trembling as if in deliberation, and then stepped off as rapidly
and strangely in the opposite direction. Brown cliffs with deep green
lakes in the hollows, flat,[Pg 88] blade-like trees that waved from root to
tip, round boulders of grey stone, vast crumpled surfaces of a thin
crackling texture—all these objects lay across the snail's progress
between one stalk and another to his goal. Before he had decided whether
to circumvent the arched tent of a dead leaf or to breast it there came
past the bed the feet of other human beings.
This time they were both men. The younger of the two wore an expression
of perhaps unnatural calm; he raised his eyes and fixed them very
steadily in front of him while his companion spoke, and directly his
companion had done speaking he looked on the ground again and sometimes
opened his lips only after a long pause and sometimes did not open them
at all. The elder man had a curiously uneven and shaky method of
walking, jerking his hand forward and throwing up his head abruptly,
rather in the manner of an impatient carriage horse tired of waiting
outside a house; but in the man these gestures were irresolute and
pointless.[Pg 89] He talked almost incessantly; he smiled to himself and again
began to talk, as if the smile had been an answer. He was talking about
spirits—the spirits of the dead, who, according to him, were even now
telling him all sorts of odd things about their experiences in Heaven.
"Heaven was known to the ancients as Thessaly, William, and now, with
this war, the spirit matter is rolling between the hills like thunder."
He paused, seemed to listen, smiled, jerked his head and continued:—
"You have a small electric battery and a piece of rubber to insulate the
wire—isolate?—insulate?—well, we'll skip the details, no good going
into details that wouldn't be understood—and in short the little
machine stands in any convenient position by the head of the bed, we
will say, on a neat mahogany stand. All arrangements being properly
fixed by workmen under my direction, the widow applies her ear and
summons the spirit by sign as agreed. Women! Widows! Women in black——"
[Pg 90]
Here he seemed to have caught sight of a woman's dress in the distance,
which in the shade looked a purple black. He took off his hat, placed
his hand upon his heart, and hurried towards her muttering and
gesticulating feverishly. But William caught him by the sleeve and
touched a flower with the tip of his walking-stick in order to divert
the old man's attention. After looking at it for a moment in some
confusion the old man bent his ear to it and seemed to answer a voice
speaking from it, for he began talking about the forests of Uruguay
which he had visited hundreds of years ago in company with the most
beautiful young woman in Europe. He could be heard murmuring about
forests of Uruguay blanketed with the wax petals of tropical roses,
nightingales, sea beaches, mermaids, and women drowned at sea, as he
suffered himself to be moved on by William, upon whose face the look of
stoical patience grew slowly deeper and deeper.
Following his steps so closely as to be slightly[Pg 91] puzzled by his
gestures came two elderly women of the lower middle class, one stout and
ponderous, the other rosy cheeked and nimble. Like most people of their
station they were frankly fascinated by any signs of eccentricity
betokening a disordered brain, especially in the well-to-do; but they
were too far off to be certain whether the gestures were merely
eccentric or genuinely mad. After they had scrutinised the old man's
back in silence for a moment and given each other a queer, sly look,
they went on energetically piecing together their very complicated dialogue:
"Nell, Bert, Lot, Cess, Phil, Pa, he says, I says, she says, I says, I
says, I says——"
"My Bert, Sis, Bill, Grandad, the old man, sugar,
Sugar, flour, kippers, greens,
Sugar, sugar, sugar."
The ponderous woman looked through the pattern of falling words at the
flowers standing cool, firm, and upright in the earth, with a [Pg 92]curious
expression. She saw them as a sleeper waking from a heavy sleep sees a
brass candlestick reflecting the light in an unfamiliar way, and closes
his eyes and opens them, and seeing the brass candlestick again, finally
starts broad awake and stares at the candlestick with all his powers. So
the heavy woman came to a standstill opposite the oval-shaped flower
bed, and ceased even to pretend to listen to what the other woman was
saying. She stood there letting the words fall over her, swaying the top
part of her body slowly backwards and forwards, looking at the flowers.
Then she suggested that they should find a seat and have their tea.
The snail had now considered every possible method of reaching his goal
without going round the dead leaf or climbing over it. Let alone the
effort needed for climbing a leaf, he was doubtful whether the thin
texture which vibrated with such an alarming crackle when touched even
by the tip of his horns would bear[Pg 93] his weight; and this determined him
finally to creep beneath it, for there was a point where the leaf curved
high enough from the ground to admit him. He had just inserted his head
in the opening and was taking stock of the high brown roof and was
getting used to the cool brown light when two other people came past
outside on the turf. This time they were both young, a young man and a
young woman. They were both in the prime of youth, or even in that
season which precedes the prime of youth, the season before the smooth
pink folds of the flower have burst their gummy case, when the wings of
the butterfly, though fully grown, are motionless in the sun.
"Lucky it isn't Friday," he observed.
"Why? D'you believe in luck?"
"They make you pay sixpence on Friday."
"What's sixpence anyway? Isn't it worth sixpence?"
"What's 'it'—what do you mean by 'it'?"
[Pg 94]
"O, anything—I mean—you know what I mean."
Long pauses came between each of these remarks; they were uttered in
toneless and monotonous voices. The couple stood still on the edge of
the flower bed, and together pressed the end of her parasol deep down
into the soft earth. The action and the fact that his hand rested on the
top of hers expressed their feelings in a strange way, as these short
insignificant words also expressed something, words with short wings for
their heavy body of meaning, inadequate to carry them far and thus
alighting awkwardly upon the very common objects that surrounded them,
and were to their inexperienced touch so massive; but who knows (so they
thought as they pressed the parasol into the earth) what precipices
aren't concealed in them, or what slopes of ice don't shine in the sun
on the other side? Who knows? Who has ever seen this before? Even when
she wondered what sort of tea they gave you at Kew, he[Pg 95] felt that
something loomed up behind her words, and stood vast and solid behind
them; and the mist very slowly rose and uncovered—O, Heavens, what were
those shapes?—little white tables, and waitresses who looked first at
her and then at him; and there was a bill that he would pay with a real
two shilling piece, and it was real, all real, he assured himself,
fingering the coin in his pocket, real to everyone except to him and to
her; even to him it began to seem real; and then—but it was too
exciting to stand and think any longer, and he pulled the parasol out of
the earth with a jerk and was impatient to find the place where one had
tea with other people, like other people.
"Come along, Trissie; it's time we had our tea."
"Wherever does one have one's tea?" she asked with the oddest thrill
of excitement in her voice, looking vaguely round and letting herself be
drawn on down the grass path, trailing her parasol, turning her head
this way and that[Pg 96] way, forgetting her tea, wishing to go down there and
then down there, remembering orchids and cranes among wild flowers, a
Chinese pagoda and a crimson crested bird; but he bore her on.
Thus one couple after another with much the same irregular and aimless
movement passed the flower-bed and were enveloped in layer after layer
of green blue vapour, in which at first their bodies had substance and a
dash of colour, but later both substance and colour dissolved in the
green-blue atmosphere. How hot it was! So hot that even the thrush chose
to hop, like a mechanical bird, in the shadow of the flowers, with long
pauses between one movement and the next; instead of rambling vaguely
the white butterflies danced one above another, making with their white
shifting flakes the outline of a shattered marble column above the
tallest flowers; the glass roofs of the palm house shone as if a whole
market full of shiny green umbrellas had opened in the sun; and in the
drone of the [Pg 97]aeroplane the voice of the summer sky murmured its fierce
soul. Yellow and black, pink and snow white, shapes of all these
colours, men, women, and children were spotted for a second upon the
horizon, and then, seeing the breadth of yellow that lay upon the grass,
they wavered and sought shade beneath the trees, dissolving like drops
of water in the yellow and green atmosphere, staining it faintly with
red and blue. It seemed as if all gross and heavy bodies had sunk down
in the heat motionless and lay huddled upon the ground, but their voices
went wavering from them as if they were flames lolling from the thick
waxen bodies of candles. Voices. Yes, voices. Wordless voices, breaking
the silence suddenly with such depth of contentment, such passion of
desire, or, in the voices of children, such freshness of surprise;
breaking the silence? But there was no silence; all the time the motor
omnibuses were turning their wheels and changing their gear; like a vast
nest of Chinese boxes all of wrought steel [Pg 98]turning ceaselessly one
within another the city murmured; on the top of which the voices cried
aloud and the petals of myriads of flowers flashed their colours into the air.
[Pg 99]
THE MARK ON THE WALL
Perhaps it was the middle of January in the present year that I first
looked up and saw the mark on the wall. In order to fix a date it is
necessary to remember what one saw. So now I think of the fire; the
steady film of yellow light upon the page of my book; the three
chrysanthemums in the round glass bowl on the mantelpiece. Yes, it must
have been the winter time, and we had just finished our tea, for I
remember that I was smoking a cigarette when I looked up and saw the
mark on the wall for the first time. I looked up through the smoke of my
cigarette and my eye lodged for a moment upon the burning coals, and
that old fancy of the crimson flag flapping from the castle tower came
into my mind, and I thought of the cavalcade of red knights riding up
the side of the black rock. Rather to my relief the sight of the mark
[Pg 100]interrupted the fancy, for it is an old fancy, an automatic fancy, made
as a child perhaps. The mark was a small round mark, black upon the
white wall, about six or seven inches above the mantelpiece.
How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new object, lifting it a little
way, as ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it....
If that mark was made by a nail, it can't have been for a picture, it
must have been for a miniature—the miniature of a lady with white
powdered curls, powder-dusted cheeks, and lips like red carnations. A
fraud of course, for the people who had this house before us would have
chosen pictures in that way—an old picture for an old room. That is the
sort of people they were—very interesting people, and I think of them
so often, in such queer places, because one will never see them again,
never know what happened next. They wanted to leave this house because
they wanted to change their style of[Pg 101] furniture, so he said, and he was
in process of saying that in his opinion art should have ideas behind it
when we were torn asunder, as one is torn from the old lady about to
pour out tea and the young man about to hit the tennis ball in the back
garden of the suburban villa as one rushes past in the train.
But as for that mark, I'm not sure about it; I don't believe it was made
by a nail after all; it's too big, too round, for that. I might get up,
but if I got up and looked at it, ten to one I shouldn't be able to say
for certain; because once a thing's done, no one ever knows how it
happened. Oh! dear me, the mystery of life; The inaccuracy of thought!
The ignorance of humanity! To show how very little control of our
possessions we have—what an accidental affair this living is after all
our civilization—let me just count over a few of the things lost in one
lifetime, beginning, for that seems always the most mysterious of
losses—what cat[Pg 102] would gnaw, what rat would nibble—three pale blue
canisters of book-binding tools? Then there were the bird cages, the
iron hoops, the steel skates, the Queen Anne coal-scuttle, the bagatelle
board, the hand organ—all gone, and jewels, too. Opals and emeralds,
they lie about the roots of turnips. What a scraping paring affair it is
to be sure! The wonder is that I've any clothes on my back, that I sit
surrounded by solid furniture at this moment. Why, if one wants to
compare life to anything, one must liken it to being blown through the
Tube at fifty miles an hour—landing at the other end without a single
hairpin in one's hair! Shot out at the feet of God entirely naked!
Tumbling head over heels in the asphodel meadows like brown paper
parcels pitched down a shoot in the post office! With one's hair flying
back like the tail of a race-horse. Yes, that seems to express the
rapidity of life, the perpetual waste and repair; all so casual, all so haphazard....
But after life. The slow pulling down of[Pg 103] thick green stalks so that the
cup of the flower, as it turns over, deluges one with purple and red
light. Why, after all, should one not be born there as one is born here,
helpless, speechless, unable to focus one's eyesight, groping at the
roots of the grass, at the toes of the Giants? As for saying which are
trees, and which are men and women, or whether there are such things,
that one won't be in a condition to do for fifty years or so. There will
be nothing but spaces of light and dark, intersected by thick stalks,
and rather higher up perhaps, rose-shaped blots of an indistinct
colour—dim pinks and blues—which will, as time goes on, become more
definite, become—I don't know what....
And yet that mark on the wall is not a hole at all. It may even be
caused by some round black substance, such as a small rose leaf, left
over from the summer, and I, not being a very vigilant housekeeper—look
at the dust on the mantelpiece, for example, the dust which, so they
say, buried Troy three times over, only[Pg 104] fragments of pots utterly
refusing annihilation, as one can believe.
The tree outside the window taps very gently on the pane.... I want to
think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to
have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another,
without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and
deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts. To steady
myself, let me catch hold of the first idea that passes....
Shakespeare.... Well, he will do as well as another. A man who sat
himself solidly in an arm-chair, and looked into the fire, so—A shower
of ideas fell perpetually from some very high Heaven down through his
mind. He leant his forehead on his hand, and people, looking in through
the open door,—for this scene is supposed to take place on a summer's
evening—But how dull this is, this historical fiction! It doesn't
interest me at all. I wish I could hit upon a pleasant track of thought,
a track [Pg 105]indirectly reflecting credit upon myself, for those are the
pleasantest thoughts, and very frequent even in the minds of modest
mouse-coloured people, who believe genuinely that they dislike to hear
their own praises. They are not thoughts directly praising oneself; that
is the beauty of them; they are thoughts like this:
"And then I came into the room. They were discussing botany. I said how
I'd seen a flower growing on a dust heap on the site of an old house in
Kingsway. The seed, I said, must have been sown in the reign of Charles
the First. What flowers grew in the reign of Charles the First?" I
asked—(but I don't remember the answer). Tall flowers with purple
tassels to them perhaps. And so it goes on. All the time I'm dressing up
the figure of myself in my own mind, lovingly, stealthily, not openly
adoring it, for if I did that, I should catch myself out, and stretch my
hand at once for a book in self-protection. Indeed, it is curious how
instinctively one protects the image of oneself from[Pg 106] idolatry or any
other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original
to be believed in any longer. Or is it not so very curious after all? It
is a matter of great importance. Suppose the looking glass smashes, the
image disappears, and the romantic figure with the green of forest
depths all about it is there no longer, but only that shell of a person
which is seen by other people—what an airless, shallow, bald, prominent
world it becomes! A world not to be lived in. As we face each other in
omnibuses and underground railways we are looking into the mirror; that
accounts for the vagueness, the gleam of glassiness, in our eyes. And
the novelists in future will realize more and more the importance of
these reflections, for of course there is not one reflection but an
almost infinite number; those are the depths they will explore, those
the phantoms they will pursue, leaving the description of reality more
and more out of their stories, taking a knowledge of it for granted, as
the Greeks did and [Pg 107]Shakespeare perhaps—but these generalizations are
very worthless. The military sound of the word is enough. It recalls
leading articles, cabinet ministers—a whole class of things indeed
which as a child one thought the thing itself, the standard thing, the
real thing, from which one could not depart save at the risk of nameless
damnation. Generalizations bring back somehow Sunday in London, Sunday
afternoon walks, Sunday luncheons, and also ways of speaking of the
dead, clothes, and habits—like the habit of sitting all together in one
room until a certain hour, although nobody liked it. There was a rule
for everything. The rule for tablecloths at that particular period was
that they should be made of tapestry with little yellow compartments
marked upon them, such as you may see in photographs of the carpets in
the corridors of the royal palaces. Tablecloths of a different kind were
not real tablecloths. How shocking, and yet how wonderful it was to
discover that these real things, Sunday [Pg 108]luncheons, Sunday walks,
country houses, and tablecloths were not entirely real, were indeed half
phantoms, and the damnation which visited the disbeliever in them was
only a sense of illegitimate freedom. What now takes the place of those
things I wonder, those real standard things? Men perhaps, should you be
a woman; the masculine point of view which governs our lives, which sets
the standard, which establishes Whitaker's Table of Precedency, which
has become, I suppose, since the war half a phantom to many men and
women, which soon, one may hope, will be laughed into the dustbin where
the phantoms go, the mahogany sideboards and the Landseer prints, Gods
and Devils, Hell and so forth, leaving us all with an intoxicating sense
of illegitimate freedom—if freedom exists....
In certain lights that mark on the wall seems actually to project from
the wall. Nor is it entirely circular. I cannot be sure, but it seems to
cast a perceptible shadow, suggesting that if I[Pg 109] ran my finger down that
strip of the wall it would, at a certain point, mount and descend a
small tumulus, a smooth tumulus like those barrows on the South Downs
which are, they say, either tombs or camps. Of the two I should prefer
them to be tombs, desiring melancholy like most English people, and
finding it natural at the end of a walk to think of the bones stretched
beneath the turf.... There must be some book about it. Some antiquary
must have dug up those bones and given them a name.... What sort of a
man is an antiquary, I wonder? Retired Colonels for the most part, I
daresay, leading parties of aged labourers to the top here, examining
clods of earth and stone, and getting into correspondence with the
neighbouring clergy, which, being opened at breakfast time, gives them a
feeling of importance, and the comparison of arrow-heads necessitates
cross-country journeys to the county towns, an agreeable necessity both
to them and to their elderly wives, who wish to make plum[Pg 110] jam or to
clean out the study, and have every reason for keeping that great
question of the camp or the tomb in perpetual suspension, while the
Colonel himself feels agreeably philosophic in accumulating evidence on
both sides of the question. It is true that he does finally incline to
believe in the camp; and, being opposed, indites a pamphlet which he is
about to read at the quarterly meeting of the local society when a
stroke lays him low, and his last conscious thoughts are not of wife or
child, but of the camp and that arrowhead there, which is now in the
case at the local museum, together with the foot of a Chinese murderess,
a handful of Elizabethan nails, a great many Tudor clay pipes, a piece
of Roman pottery, and the wine-glass that Nelson drank out of—proving I
really don't know what.
No, no, nothing is proved, nothing is known. And if I were to get up at
this very moment and ascertain that the mark on the wall is really—what
shall we say?—the head of a gigantic old[Pg 111] nail, driven in two hundred
years ago, which has now, owing to the patient attrition of many
generations of housemaids, revealed its head above the coat of paint,
and is taking its first view of modern life in the sight of a
white-walled fire-lit room, what should I gain?—Knowledge? Matter for
further speculation? I can think sitting still as well as standing up.
And what is knowledge? What are our learned men save the descendants of
witches and hermits who crouched in caves and in woods brewing herbs,
interrogating shrew-mice and writing down the language of the stars? And
the less we honour them as our superstitions dwindle and our respect for
beauty and health of mind increases.... Yes, one could imagine a very
pleasant world. A quiet, spacious world, with the flowers so red and
blue in the open fields. A world without professors or specialists or
house-keepers with the profiles of policemen, a world which one could
slice with one's thought as a fish slices the water with his fin,
grazing the[Pg 112] stems of the water-lilies, hanging suspended over nests of
white sea eggs.... How peaceful it is down here, rooted in the centre of
the world and gazing up through the grey waters, with their sudden
gleams of light, and their reflections—if it were not for Whitaker's
Almanack—if it were not for the Table of Precedency!
I must jump up and see for myself what that mark on the wall really
is—a nail, a rose-leaf, a crack in the wood?
Here is nature once more at her old game of self-preservation. This
train of thought, she perceives, is threatening mere waste of energy,
even some collision with reality, for who will ever be able to lift a
finger against Whitaker's Table of Precedency? The Archbishop of
Canterbury is followed by the Lord High Chancellor; the Lord High
Chancellor is followed by the Archbishop of York. Everybody follows
somebody, such is the philosophy of Whitaker; and the great thing is to
know who follows[Pg 113] whom. Whitaker knows, and let that, so Nature
counsels, comfort you, instead of enraging you; and if you can't be
comforted, if you must shatter this hour of peace, think of the mark on the wall.
I understand Nature's game—her prompting to take action as a way of
ending any thought that threatens to excite or to pain. Hence, I
suppose, comes our slight contempt for men of action—men, we assume,
who don't think. Still, there's no harm in putting a full stop to one's
disagreeable thoughts by looking at a mark on the wall.
Indeed, now that I have fixed my eyes upon it, I feel that I have
grasped a plank in the sea; I feel a satisfying sense of reality which
at once turns the two Archbishops and the Lord High Chancellor to the
shadows of shades. Here is something definite, something real. Thus,
waking from a midnight dream of horror, one hastily turns on the light
and lies quiescent, worshipping the chest of drawers, worshipping[Pg 114]
solidity, worshipping reality, worshipping the impersonal world which is
a proof of some existence other than ours. That is what one wants to be
sure of.... Wood is a pleasant thing to think about. It comes from a
tree; and trees grow, and we don't know how they grow. For years and
years they grow, without paying any attention to us, in meadows, in
forests, and by the side of rivers—all things one likes to think about.
The cows swish their tails beneath them on hot afternoons; they paint
rivers so green that when a moorhen dives one expects to see its
feathers all green when it comes up again. I like to think of the fish
balanced against the stream like flags blown out; and of water-beetles
slowly raising domes of mud upon the bed of the river. I like to think
of the tree itself: first the close dry sensation of being wood; then
the grinding of the storm; then the slow, delicious ooze of sap. I like
to think of it, too, on winter's nights standing in the empty field with
all leaves close-furled, nothing tender exposed[Pg 115] to the iron bullets of
the moon, a naked mast upon an earth that goes tumbling, tumbling, all
night long. The song of birds must sound very loud and strange in June;
and how cold the feet of insects must feel upon it, as they make
laborious progresses up the creases of the bark, or sun themselves upon
the thin green awning of the leaves, and look straight in front of them
with diamond-cut red eyes.... One by one the fibres snap beneath the
immense cold pressure of the earth, then the last storm comes and,
falling, the highest branches drive deep into the ground again. Even so,
life isn't done with; there are a million patient, watchful lives still
for a tree, all over the world, in bedrooms, in ships, on the pavement,
lining rooms, where men and women sit after tea, smoking cigarettes. It
is full of peaceful thoughts, happy thoughts, this tree. I should like
to take each one separately—but something is getting in the way....
Where was I? What has it all been about? A tree? A river? The Downs?
[Pg 116]Whitaker's Almanack? The fields of asphodel? I can't remember a thing.
Everything's moving, falling, slipping, vanishing.... There is a vast
upheaval of matter. Someone is standing over me and saying—
"I'm going out to buy a newspaper."
"Yes?"
"Though it's no good buying newspapers.... Nothing ever happens. Curse
this war; God damn this war!... All the same, I don't see why we should
have a snail on our wall."
Ah, the mark on the wall! It was a snail.
About the Author
Adeline Virginia Woolf (/wʊlf/;
née Stephen; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer,
considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a
pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Wikipedia
Notable works: Mrs Dalloway (1925); To the Lighthouse (1927); Orlando (1928); A R...
Died: 28 March 1941 (aged 59); Lewes, England
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