Вирджиния Вулф
Дом с привидениями. Уровень 2 / A Haunted House
Дизайн обложки Анастасии Орловой
© Матвеев С. А., адаптация, комментарии, словарь, 2023
© ООО «Издательство АСТ», 2023
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A Haunted House
A ghostly couple went from room to room. They were lifting something here and opening something there.
“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 you didn’t wake us. Oh, no. “They’re looking for it. They’re drawing the curtain”, one may say and read on a page or two. “They found it”. You can be certain. And you may rise and see: the house is empty, the doors are open. Only the wood pigeons are bubbling. The hum of the threshing machine[1] is sounding from 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. The garden was still. Only the book slipped into the grass.
But they found it in the drawing-room. No one saw them. The window panes reflected apples, reflected roses. All the leaves were green in the glass. When they moved in the drawing-room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, when the door was opened, something spread about the floor. Something hung upon the walls—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 roof…” the pulse stopped. Oh, was that the buried treasure?
A moment later the light faded. Out in the garden then? So fine, so rare, the beam always burnt behind the glass. Death was the glass. Death was between us. It came to the woman first, hundreds of years ago. It left the house. It sealed all the windows. The rooms were darkened. He left it, left her. He went North, went East. He saw the stars in the Southern sky. He came back to the house beneath the Downs.
“Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat gladly. “The Treasure is yours.”
The wind moved the trees. 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. The ghostly couple is wandering through the house. They are opening the windows. They are whispering not to wake us. They seek their joy.
“Here we slept,” she says.
And he adds,
“And we kissed each other.”
“And woke in the morning…”
“Silver between the trees…”
“Upstairs.”
“In the garden.”
“When summer came…”
“In winter snowtime.”
The doors were shutting. The doors were gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.
They come nearer. They cease at the doorway. The wind falls. The silver rain slides down the glass. Our eyes darken. We hear no steps beside us. We see no lady who spreads her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern.
“Look,” he breathes. “They sleep. Love upon their lips.”
They are holding their silver lamp above us. They are watching us long and deeply. They are standing near us.
The wind drives straightly. The flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall. Then they meet and fall upon the faces. The faces are pondering. The faces search the sleepers. The faces 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, “we were sleeping. We were reading in the garden. We were laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure.”
Their light lifts the lids upon my eyes.
“Safe! safe! safe!” the pulse of the house beats wildly.
I wake up and cry:
“Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.”
Kew Gardens
From the oval flower-bed there rose perhaps a hundred stalks. They were spreading into the leaves. They were unfurling at the tip red or blue or yellow petals. The petals were marked with spots. From the red, blue or yellow gloom of the throat emerged a straight bar. The petals were voluminous enough to feel the summer breeze. When they moved, the red, blue and yellow lights passed one over the other[2]. 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. The breeze stirred briskly overhead. The colour was flashed into the air above, into the eyes of the men and women. These men and women walked in Kew Gardens in July.
The figures of these men and women walked past the flower-bed with a curiously irregular movement. The man was about six inches in front of the woman. He was strolling carelessly. She was turning her head to see that the children were not too far behind. The man walked in front of the woman purposely. 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. I begged her to marry me. It was hot. The dragonfly was circling round us. I remember the dragonfly and her shoe with the square silver buckle at the toe. All the time I spoke. I saw her shoe. It moved impatiently. I knew what she was going to say. She was in her shoe. And my love, my desire, were in the dragonfly. If the dragonfly settles there, on that leaf, she will say ‘Yes’ at once. But the dragonfly went round and round. It never settled anywhere. Of course not, happily not. And now I am walking here with Eleanor and the children.” Tell me, Eleanor, do you ever think of the past?”
“Why do you ask, Simon?”
“Because I think of the past. I think of Lily. I might have married her. Well, why are you silent?”
“Simon, doesn’t one always think of the past, in a garden with men and women? They are lying under the trees. Aren’t they one’s past, those men and women, those ghosts under the trees? One’s happiness, one’s reality?”
“For me, a silver shoe buckle and a dragonfly.”
“For me, a kiss. Imagine six little girls. They were sitting before their easels twenty years ago, down by the lake. They were painting the water-lilies, the first red water-lilies. And suddenly—a kiss. A kiss on the back of my neck. And my hand shook all the afternoon. So I couldn’t paint. It was so precious! The kiss of an old grey-haired woman with a wart on her nose. It was the mother of all my kisses all my life. Come, Caroline, come, Hubert.”
They walked on past the flower-bed. Soon they diminished in size among the trees. Soon they looked transparent.
In the oval flower-bed the snail appeared. It moved very slightly in its shell. Then it began to labour over the crumbs of earth. It had a definite goal in front of it. Brown cliffs with deep green lakes in the hollows, flat, blade-like trees, round boulders of grey stone. All these objects lay across the snail’s path. Before the snail decided to go further there came the feet of other people.
This time they were both men. The younger of the two was calm. He raised his eyes. He fixed them very steadily in front of him. His companion spoke. The elder man was walking curiously and shaky. He was jerking his hand forward. He was throwing up his head abruptly. These gestures were irresolute and pointless. He talked almost incessantly. He smiled to himself. He again began to talk. The smile was an answer. He was talking about spirits. He was talking about the spirits of the dead. The spirits, he said, were even now telling him odd things about their experiences in Heaven.
“The ancients knew Heaven as Thessaly, William. Now, after the war, the spirits are rolling between the hills like thunder.”
He paused, 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. The little machine stands by the head of the bed. It stands on a neat mahogany stand. All arrangements are properly fixed by workmen under my direction. The widow applies her ear. She summons the spirit. Women! Widows! Women in black…”
Here he saw a woman’s dress in the distance. In the shade, it looked a purple black. He took off his hat. He placed his hand upon his heart. He hurried towards her. He was muttering and gesticulating feverishly. But William caught him by the sleeve. William touched a flower with the tip of his walking-stick. The old man looked at it in some confusion. He bent his ear to it. Then he began to talk about the forests of Uruguay. He visited them hundreds of years ago in company with the most beautiful young woman in Europe. He was murmuring about forests of Uruguay, tropical roses, nightingales, sea beaches, mermaids, and women drowned at sea. William was moving him aside.
Then came two elderly women of the lower middle class. The first woman stout and ponderous. The other woman was nimble. They scrutinized the old man’s back in silence. After that they went on their very complicated dialogue:
“Nell, Bert, Lot, Cess, Phil, Pa, he says, I say, she says, I say, I say…”
“My Bert, Sis, Bill, Grandad, the old man, sugar,
Sugar, flour, kippers, greens,
Sugar, sugar, sugar.”
The ponderous woman looked at the flowers, with a curious expression. So the heavy woman came to a standstill opposite the flower bed. She ceased even to pretend to listen to what the other woman was saying. She stood there. She was swaying the top part of her body slowly backwards and forwards. She was looking at the flowers. Then she offered to have some tea.
The snail decided to creep beneath the leaf. There was a point where the leaf curved high enough from the ground.
Two other people came past outside on the turf. This time they were both young, a young man and a young woman.
“Lucky it isn’t Friday,” he observed.
“Why? Do you believe in luck?”
“They charge sixpence on Friday.”
“What’s sixpence anyway? Isn’t it worth sixpence?”
“What’s ‘it’—what do you mean by ‘it’?”
“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. They pressed the end of her parasol deep down into the soft earth. Who knows what precipices are concealed there? Who knows what slopes of ice don’t shine in the sun on the other side? Who knows? Who saw this before? She wondered what sort of tea they gave you at Kew. He pulled the parasol out of the earth with a jerk. He was impatient to find the place to have some tea, like other people.
“Come along, Trissie. It’s time to have our tea.”
“Wherever does one have one’s tea?” she asked.
There was the oddest thrill of excitement in her voice.
She was trailing her parasol, turning her head this way and that way. She was forgetting her tea. She was wishing to go down there and then down there. She was remembering orchids and cranes among wild flowers. She was remembering a Chinese pagoda and a crimson bird.
Thus one couple after another passed the flower-bed. Then this couple disappeared in green blue vapour. How hot it was! So hot that even the thrush hopped like a mechanical bird. It hopped, in the shadow of the flowers, with long pauses between one movement and the next.
Yellow and black, pink and white, men, women, and children appeared for a second upon the horizon. Then they wavered and sought shade beneath the trees. They were dissolving like drops of water in the yellow and green atmosphere. They were like thick waxen bodies of candles. Voices. Yes, voices. Wordless voices. They were breaking the silence suddenly with such depth of contentment, such passion of desire.
There was no silence. All the time the motor omnibuses were turning their wheels. They were changing their gear. They were like a vast nest of Chinese boxes. The voices cried aloud. The petals of myriads of flowers flashed their colours into the air.
Monday or Tuesday
Lazy and indifferent, the heron passes over the church beneath the sky. White and distant, the sky covers and uncovers. The sky moves and remains. A lake? A mountain? Oh, perfect—the sun! Ferns then, or white feathers, for ever and ever.
We are desiring truth. We are awaiting it. We are laboriously distilling a few words. A cry starts to the left. Another cry starts to the right. Wheels strike divergently. Ever desiring truth. The dome is red. Coins hang on the trees. Smoke trails from the chimneys; bark, shout, cry “Iron for sale”—and truth?
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 is darting. The firelight is making the room red. Black figures and their bright eyes. Outside a van discharges. Miss Thingummy drinks tea at her desk.
Leaves. Silver-splashed. Home or not home. Gathered, scattered, squandered, swept up, down, torn, sunk, assembled leaves—and truth?
Now to recollect by the fireside on the white square of marble. Words are rising from ivory depths. They shed their blackness, blossom and penetrate. The book fell down. In the flame, in the smoke, in the momentary sparks, the marble square pendant, minarets beneath and the Indian seas, stars glint—truth?
Lazy and indifferent the heron returns. The sky veils the stars; then bares them.
An Unwritten Novel
Such an expression of unhappiness—and one’s eyes were sliding above the paper’s edge to the poor woman’s face. It’s almost a symbol of human destiny. Life is what you see in people’s eyes. Life is what they learn, though they want to hide it,—what? Life is like that. 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 are shut. Eyes are shaded. Each one is trying to hide or stultify his knowledge. One smokes. Another reads. The third checks his pocket book. The fourth stares at the map. The fifth does nothing at all. That’s terrible. She looks at life. Ah, my poor, unfortunate woman, play the game!
She looked up. She shifted slightly in her seat and sighed. As if she apologizes and at the same time says to me,
“If you knew!”
Then she looked at life again.
“But I know,” I answered silently.
I was glancing at the Times.
“I know everything”.
‘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 that we don’t.”
My eyes crept over the paper’s rim. She shuddered. She twitched her arm queerly to the middle of her back. She shook her head. Again I dipped into my great reservoir of life.
“Take what you like,” I continued, “births, deaths, marriages. The habits of birds, Leonardo 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. Then it settled on her neck.
The Times was no protection against her sorrow. The best thing was to fold the paper. It made a perfect square, crisp, thick, impervious even to life. I glanced up quickly. She pierced through my shield. She gazed into my eyes. Her twitch denied all hope. Her twitch discounted all illusion.
So we rattled through Surrey and across the border into Sussex. The other travellers left. Apart from us, only one of them stayed. Soon we were alone together. Here was Three Bridges station. We drew slowly down the platform. We stopped.
Was he going to leave us? At that instant he roused himself. He crumpled his paper contemptuously. He burst open the door, and left us alone.
The unhappy woman addressed me, palely and colourlessly. She talked of stations and holidays. She talked of brothers at Eastbourne, and the time of year. It was, I forget now, early or late. But at last she breathed,
“To leave home—that’s the worst thing.”
Ah, now we approached the catastrophe,
“My sister-in-law,” the bitterness of her tone was like lemon on cold steel, “nonsense, she likes to say—that’s what they all say.”
While she spoke she fidgeted.
“Oh, that cow!” she said nervously.
Then she shuddered. Then she made the awkward movement. Then again she looked the most unhappy woman in the world.
“Sisters-in-law…” I began.
Her lips pursed. She took her glove. She rub hard at a spot on the window-pane. But the spot remained. She sank back. Something impelled me to take my glove and rub my window. There, too, was a little speck on the glass. But it remained. And then the spasm went through me. I crooked my arm. Then I plucked at the middle of my back. My skin felt like the damp chicken’s skin in the poulterer’s shop-window. One spot between the shoulders itched and irritated. Can I reach it?
Surreptitiously I tried. She saw me. A smile of infinite irony. Infinite sorrow, flitted and faded from her face. She shared her secret, passed her poison. She will speak no more. I read her message. I deciphered her secret.
Hilda is the sister-in-law. Hilda? Hilda? Hilda Marsh. Hilda stands at the door, Hilda holds a coin.
“Poor Minnie, so thin, this old cloak! Well, well, with two children. No, Minnie, I’ve got it. Here you are, cabby. Come in, Minnie. Oh, I can carry you. Give me your basket!”
So they go into the dining-room.
“Aunt Minnie, children.”
The knives and forks sink slowly. They get down. Bob and Barbara. But this we’ll skip. Ornaments, curtains, trefoil china plate, yellow oblongs of cheese, white squares of biscuit. Skip, oh, but wait! One of those shivers. Bob stares at her. He has a spoon in mouth.
“Eat your pudding, Bob”; but Hilda disapproves.
Skip, skip, till we reach the upper floor. We reach stairs; linoleum. Oh, yes! little bedroom. One can see the roofs of Eastbourne. One can see zigzagging roofs like the spines of caterpillars. This way, that way, red and yellow.
Now, Minnie, the door’s shut. Hilda heavily descends to the basement. You unstrap the straps of your basket. You lay on the bed a meagre nightgown. The looking-glass—no, you avoid the looking-glass. Some methodical disposition of hat-pins. Perhaps the shell box? You shake it. It’s the pearl, that’s all. And then the sniff and the sigh. Three o’clock on a December afternoon. One light in the skylight of a drapery emporium. Another high in a servant’s bedroom. Nothing to look at[3].
A moment’s blankness. What are you thinking? She’s asleep. What does she think about? At three o’clock in the afternoon? Health, money, hills, her God? Yes, Minnie Marsh is sitting on the edge of the chair. Minnie Marsh is looking over the roofs of Eastbourne. Minnie Marsh prays to God. That’s all very well. 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—to see Gods! More like President Kruger than Prince Albert. I see him on a chair. I see him in a black frock-coat, not so high. I can manage a cloud or two for him. And then his hand holds a rod, a truncheon. Black, thick, thorned, Minnie’s God! Did he send the itch and the patch and the twitch? Is that why she prays? She rubs the stain of sin on the window. Oh, she committed some crime!
The woods flit and fly. In summer there are bluebells. When spring comes, primroses. A parting, was it, twenty years ago? Broken vows? Not Minnie’s! She was faithful. How she nursed her mother! All her savings on the tombstone—wreaths under glass—daffodils in jars. But the crime… They may say she kept her sorrow. She suppressed her secret—her sex—the scientific people. But what flummery is it! No—more like this.
She was passing down the streets of Croydon twenty years ago. The violet loops of ribbon in the draper’s window caught her eye. She lingers. It was past six. She can reach home if she runs. She pushes through the glass door. It’s sale-time. Shallow trays brim with ribbons. She pauses. She pulls this. No need to choose. No need to buy. Each tray with its surprises.
“We don’t shut till seven”.
It is seven.
She runs. She rushes. She reaches home, but too late. Neighbours—the doctor—baby brother—the kettle—scalded—hospital—dead—or only the shock of it, the blame? Ah, but the detail matters nothing[4]! It’s what she carries with her. The spot, the crime, the thing to expiate are always there between her shoulders.
“Yes,” she nods to me, “it’s the thing I did.”
Whether you did, or what you did, I don’t mind[5]. It’s not the thing I want. The draper’s window—that is enough. A little cheap perhaps, a little commonplace. The crime. Let me peep across again. So many crimes aren’t your crime. Your crime was cheap, only the retribution solemn. Now the church door opens. The hard wooden pew receives her. She kneels on the brown tiles. She prays every day, winter, summer, dusk, dawn. 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 at lunch today.”
But elderly women are the worst.
Indeed now you can’t pray any longer. Kruger sank beneath the clouds. That’s what always happens! When you see him, feel him, someone interrupts. It’s Hilda now.
How you hate her! She’ll lock the bathroom door overnight. But you want cold water. And John at breakfast – the children—meals are the worst. Sometimes there are friends. Ferns don’t altogether hide them. So you go along the front. The waves are grey. The papers blow. The glass shelters are green and draughty. Ah, that’s a nigger! That’s a funny man. That’s a man with 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. If it’s blue the white clouds hide him. And the music—it’s military music. What are they fishing for? Do they catch them? How the children stare! Well, then home.
The words have meaning. An old man with whiskers can speak them. No, no, he didn’t really speak. But everything has meaning. Placards near 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. A sheep turns the other way and runs between my fingers like a flock of dream. Eggs are cheap now.
The crimes, sorrows, rhapsodies, or insanities for poor Minnie Marsh. Never late for luncheon. Never without a mackintosh. Never utterly unconscious of the cheapness of eggs. So she reaches home. She scrapes her boots.
Do I understand you? But the human face—the human face at the top of the paper holds more. It withholds more. Now she looks out. In the human eye there’s a break—a division. How do you define it? When you grasp the stem the butterfly is away. The moth that hangs in the evening over the yellow flower. It moved. I won’t raise my hand. Quiver, life, soul, spirit—I, too, on my flower—the hawk over the down—alone. To rise in the midday; over the down. The flicker of a hand. Alone, unseen. So still and so lovely. The eyes of others are our prisons. Their thoughts are our cages. Air above, air below. And the moon and immortality.
Oh, but I drop! Are you down too? You are in the corner. What’s your name—woman—Minnie Marsh? Some such name as that? There she is. She opens her hand-bag. She takes a hollow shell from—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. The old gentleman was opening his umbrella—or sneezing? Anyhow, Kruger went. You came home. You craped your boots. Yes. And now you lay across your knees a pocket-handkerchief. You drop little angular fragments of eggshell into it. Fragments of a map—a puzzle. I want to join them together! She moved her knees. Gold and silver. But to return…
To what, to where? She opened the door. She put her umbrella in the stand. The whiff of beef from the basement; dot, dot, dot. But what I cannot thus eliminate is what I must. With the courage of a battalion and the blindness of a bull. Indubitably, the figures behind the ferns, commercial travellers. There I was hiding them all this time. Rhododendrons will conceal him utterly. I starve. I strive for red and white. But 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 want to prick through the green fretwork and over the glacis of cut glass. I want to peer and peep at the man opposite. James Moggridge is it, whom the Marshes call Jimmy? Minnie, you must promise not to twitch. James Moggridge sells buttons. The big ones and the little ones on the long cards. Some buttons are peacock-eyed. Others are dull gold. Some are cairngorms. Others are coral sprays.
He travels. On Thursdays, his Eastbourne day, he takes his meals with the Marshes. His red face, his little steady eyes, his enormous appetite. This is primitive. I don’t like it. Let’s see the Moggridge household. Well, James himself mends the family boots on Sundays. He reads Truth. But his passion? Roses and his wife, a retired hospital nurse. Interesting. But she’s of the unborn children of the mind. She is illicit. Like my rhododendrons. How many die in every novel—the best, the dearest, while Moggridge lives. It’s life’s fault. Here’s Minnie. She is eating her egg at the bench. There must be Jimmy at the other end of the line.
There must be Moggridge—life’s fault. Life imposes its laws. Life blocks the way. Life is behind the fern. Life is the tyrant. I assure you I come willingly. Heaven knows what compulsion took me across ferns and cruets, table and bottles. I come irresistibly to lodge myself somewhere on the firm flesh, in the robust spine. Wherever I can penetrate, in the soul, of Moggridge the man. The enormous stability. The spine tough as whalebone, straight as oaktree. The ribs; the flesh; the red hollows. The suck and regurgitation of the heart. And meat and beer fall in brown cubes. 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”; the tablecloth now.
“Marsh will know what’s wrong with Morrises.”
Cheese. The plate again. Turn it round—the enormous fingers; now the woman opposite. “Marsh’s sister—not a bit like Marsh. She is a wretched, elderly female. You must feed your hens. Why is she twitching? Not what I said? Dear, dear, dear! these elderly women. Dear, dear!”
Yes, Minnie. I know you twitched. But one moment—James Moggridge.
“Dear, dear, dear!”
How beautiful the sound is! Like the knock of a mallet on a timber. Like the throb of the heart of an ancient whaler.
“Dear, dear!”
A bell for the souls of the fretful to soothe them and solace them. “So long. Good luck to you!” and then, “What’s your pleasure?” Though Moggridge will pluck his rose for her, that’s over[6]. Now what’s the next thing?
“Madam, you’ll miss your train”.
That’s the sound that reverberates. That’s St. Paul’s[7] and the motor-omnibuses[8]. Oh, Moggridge, you won’t stay? You must leave? Are you driving through Eastbourne this afternoon in one of those little carriages? Are you the man who is behind green cardboard boxes? Are you the man who sometimes sits so solemn like a sphinx? Please tell me. But the doors close. 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! James Moggridge is dead now. He is gone for ever. Well, Minnie,
“I can face it no longer”.
If she said that… Let me look at her. She is brushing the eggshell. She said it certainly. When the self speaks to the self, who is speaking? The entombed soul, the spirit. The self that took the veil and left the world. A coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful. 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! The spirit is wailing its destiny, on the carpets—meager footholds—all the vanishing universe. Love, life, faith, husband, children.
“Not for me—not for me.”
But then—the muffins, the bald elderly dog? Bead mats and the consolation of underlinen. If Minnie Marsh is in the hospital, nurses and doctors will exclaim… There’s the vista. There’s the vision. There’s the distance—the blue blot at the end of the avenue.
“Benny, to your basket, sir, and see what mother’s brought you!”
So, you take the glove with the worn thumb. You renew the fortifications, you thread the grey wool.
In and out, across and over. You are spinning a web through which God himself… Hush, don’t think of God! How firm the stitches are! You must be proud. Let nothing disturb her. Let the light fall gently. Let the clouds show an inner vest of the first green leaf. Let the sparrow perch on the twig and shake the raindrop. Why look up? Was it a sound, a thought? Oh, heavens!
Back again to the thing you did. Back again to the plate glass with the violet loops?
But Hilda will come. Ignominies, humiliations, oh! Close the breach.
Minnie Marsh mended her glove. She laid it in the drawer. She shuts the drawer with decision. I saw her face in the glass. Next she laces her shoes. Then she touches her throat. What’s your brooch? Mistletoe? And what is happening? The moment is 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![9]
“Oh, I beg your pardon! Yes, this is Eastbourne. I’ll reach it down for you. Let me try the handle.”
But Minnie, I know you—I’m with you now.
“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. Moggridge is driving at the far side of Eastbourne.
