A Society .................................................................................................................................................2

Monday or Tuesday..............................................................................................................................10

An Unwritten Novel ..............................................................................................................................11

The String Quartet .................................................................................................................................17

Blue Green............................................................................................................................................19

Kew Gardens .........................................................................................................................................20

The Mark on the Wall ...........................................................................................................................23

WHATEVER HOUR you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand,

"Here we left it," she said. And he added, "Oh, but here too!" "It's upstairs," she murmured. "And in the

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 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

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

A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the 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 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 summer came?" "In winter snowtime?" "The doors go

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.

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 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."

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 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!"

"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

"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.

"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

"Why," she asked, "if men write such rubbish as this, should our mothers have wasted their youth in bringing

We were all silent; and, in the silence, poor Poll could be heard sobbing out, "Why, why did my father teach

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 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 manofwar; 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 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

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 �thiopian Prince and gone aboad one of His Majesty's ships. Discovering

the hoax, the Captain visited her (now 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 hounour

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," 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 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

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 must work and women

must weep. The path of duty is the way to glory?" We could listen to no more of this gibberish.

"Daughters of England!" she began, but here we pulled her down, a vase of water getting spilt over her in the

"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

"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 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 keep cactuses. You reached the conservatory through the double

drawingroom, 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 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

"There!" she exclaimed. "It never struck me to ask. It never occurred to me that they could possibly produce

"I believe," said Sue, "that you made some mistake. Probably Professor Hobkin was a gyn�cologist. 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

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

"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

"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

"Chastity! Chastity! Where's my chastity!" she cried. "Help Ho! The scent bottle!"

There was nothing in the room but a cruet contained mustard, which I was about to administer when she

"True," she replied. "There's not much good in thinking of it now. It was unfortunate, by the way, that my

"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

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 and whispered that she was not so sure about that. Then she got up,

"Before you say any more, I want to know? am I to stay in the room? Because," she added, "I have to confess

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," and "baby," "Castalia," and so on. Jane, who was herself

"No! No! No! Let her stay! Impure? Fiddlesticks!" Yet I fancied that some of the youngest, girls of nineteen

or twenty, held back 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

"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.

"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

"He is only twentyone 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

"Of course we wish to bear children!" cried 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

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

"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

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 to our rule in

India, Africa and Ireland. I was sitting by Castalia and I noticed her uneasiness.

"We shall never come by 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 money. Let us talk about men themselves and their arts, for

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 of

"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. "As the same time how do you account for this? I made enquiries

"JaneAustenCharlotteBront�GeorgeEliot," cried Poll, like a man crying muffins in a back street.

"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

"That proves nothing," said Jane. "They all do it. Only," she signed, "it doesn't seem to help us much. Perhaps

Elizabeth rose and said that in order to prosecute her enquiry she had dressed as a man and been taken for a

"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

"But you've told us nothing!" we expostulated. "Or do you mean that these gentlemen have greatly surpassed

JaneEliot 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

"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

"The truth? But isn't it wonderful," she broke off?"Mr. Chitter has written a weekly article for the past thirty

"Oh, the truth," she stammered, "the truth has nothing to do with literature," and sitting down she refused to

"Ladies, we must try to sum up the results," Jane was beginning, when a hum, which had been heard for some

"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

"Sometimes for one reason, sometimes for another," she replied calmly. "In 1760, for example?" The shouts

outside drowned her words. "Again in 1797? in 1804? It was the Austrians in 1866? 1870 was the

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 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

"Surely you could teach her to believe that a 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 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 understand 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 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

weekend 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

"It is too late," I replied. "We cannot provide even for the children that we have."

While we spoke, men were crying hoarsely and wearily in the street, and, listening, we heard that the Treaty

of Peace had just been signed. The voices died away. The rain was falling and interfered no doubt with the

"My cook will have bought the Evening News," said Castalia, "and Ann will be spelling it out over her tea. I

"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

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

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.

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 chimneys; bark, shout, cry

Radiating to a point men's feet and women's feet, black or goldencrusted? (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,

Flaunted, leaflight, drifting at corners, blown across the wheels, silversplashed, 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 beneath and the Indian seas, while space rushes blue and

Lazy and indifferent the heron returns; the sky veils her stars; then bares them.

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 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, death, marriages, Court Circular, 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 until, like a top exhausted with

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.

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 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

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 the 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 sisterinlaw"? 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

"Oh, that cow!" she broke off nervously, as 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.

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 windowpane. 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, 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 shopwindow; 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

Hilda's the sisterinlaw. 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 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

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

brassbound; linoleum worn; oh, yes! little bedroom looking out over the roofs of Eastbourne? zigzagging

roofs like the spines of caterpillars, this way, that way, striped red and yellow, with blueblack 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 lookingglass? no, you avoid the

lookingglass. Some methodical disposition of hatpins. 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 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

frockcoat, 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 clouds holds a rod, a truncheon is it? ? black, thick, horned? 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

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 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 Croyden 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 saletime. 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, but the detail

matters nothing! It's what she carries with her; the spot, the crime, the thing to expiate, always there between

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 to 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.

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 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 are they 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 shopwindows? 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 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

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 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 handbag,

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 pockethandkerchief 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 convoy? Drake's booty, gold and

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 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 peacockeyed, 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 diamondwise? 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

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 across ferns and cruets, tables 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 oaktree; 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 should feed your hens....God's truth, what's set her twitching? Not what I said? Dear,

"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 motoromnibuses. But we're

brushing the crumbs off. Oh, Moggridge, you won't stay? You must be off? Are you driving through

Eastbourne this 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

James Moggridge is dead now, 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 into deep declivities). She said it certainly, leaning against the

wall of the bedroom, and plucking at the little balls which edge the claretcoloured 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

But then? the muffins, the bald elderly dog? Bead mats I should fancy and the consolation 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,

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, the plate glass with the violet loops? But Hilda will come. Ignominies,

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 merrythought? 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!

"Oh, I beg your pardon! Yes, this is Eastbourne. I'll reach it down for you. Let me try the handle." [But,

(But why do you look about you? Hilda won't come to the station, nor John; and Moggridge is driving at the

"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."

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?

And yet the last look of them? he stepping 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 tonight will you sleep, and then, tomorrow? 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. Plateglass 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

"The String Quartet." by Virginia Woolf (18821941) From: Monday or Tuesday. by Virginia Woolf. New

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?

"Well, the late afternoon suits me the best, though, if it weren't asking too much?"

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

swallowtail coats, and pearl tiepins 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

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 anteroom? Here

they come; four black figures, carrying 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 lightly, go smiling through

the world! Also in jolly old fishwives, squatted under arches, obscene old women, how deeply they laugh and

"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. Woven together, inextricably commingled, bound in pain

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

"There's old Mrs. Munro, feeling her way out? blinder each year, poor woman? on this slippery floor."

Eyeless old age, greyheaded Sphinx....There she stands on the pavement, beckoning, so sternly, the red

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 planetree flashes green through the chink in the curtain. Very strange, very

"Sir, I would trust you with my heart. Moreover, we have left our bodies in the banqueting hall. Those on the

"Then these are the embraces of our souls." The lemons nod assent. The swan pushes from the bank and

"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 skullcap and furred

slippers, snatched a rapier from the wall? the King of Spain's gift, you know? on which I escaped, flinging on

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 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 buildings, greet the applewoman,

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 desert 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 mantlepiece;

the ruffled surface of ocean. No ships come; the aimless waves sway beneath the empty sky. It's night; the

The snubnosed monster rises to the surface and spouts through his blunt nostrils two columns of water,

which, fierywhite 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

FROM THE OVALSHAPED flowerbed there rose perhaps a hundred stalks spreading into heartshaped

or tongueshaped 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 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 heartshaped and tongueshaped leaves.

Then the breeze stirred rather more briskly overhead and the colour was flashed into the air above, into the

The figures of these men and women straggled past the flowerbed with a curiously irregular movement not

unlike that of the white and blue butterflies who crossed the turf in zigzag 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 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

"Because I've been thinking of the past. I've been thinking of Lily, the woman I might have married.... Well,

"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

"For me, a kiss. Imagine six little girls sitting before their easels twenty years ago, down by the side of a lake,

painting the waterlilies, the first red waterlilies 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

greyhaired woman with a wart on her nose, the mother of all my kisses all my life. Come, Caroline, come,

They walked on the past the flowerbed, 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

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 antenn� 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,

bladelike 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

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. 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

"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

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 walkingstick 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 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

welltodo; 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?"

The ponderous woman looked through the pattern of falling words at the flowers standing cool, firm, and

upright in the earth, with a 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 ovalshaped 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

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 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

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 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.

"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 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 flowerbed

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 greenblue 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 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 turning

ceaselessly one within another the city murmured; on the top of which the voices cried aloud and the petals of

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 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

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, powderdusted 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 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

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 would

gnaw, what rat would nibble? three pale blue canisters of bookbinding tools? Then there were the bird

cages, the iron hoops, the steel skates, the Queen Anne coalscuttle, 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 racehorse. 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 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, roseshaped 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 fragments of

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 armchair, 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 indirectly reflecting credit upon myself, for those are the pleasantest

thoughts, and very frequent even in the minds of modest mousecoloured people, who believe genuinely that

they dislike to hear their own praises. They are not thoughts directly praising oneself; that is the beauty of

"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 selfprotection. Indeed, it is curious how instinctively one protects

the image of oneself from 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 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 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

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 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 arrowheads necessitates crosscountry journeys to the

county towns, an agreeable necessity both to them and to their elderly wives, who wish to make plum 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 wineglass that Nelson

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 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 whitewalled firelit 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 shrewmice 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 housekeepers 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 stems of the waterlilies, 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 roseleaf, a crack in the

Here is nature once more at her old game of selfpreservation. 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 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

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

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 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 waterbeetles 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

closefurled, nothing tender exposed 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 diamondcut 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? Whitaker's Almanack? The fields of

asphodel? I can't remember a thing. Everything's moving, falling, slipping, vanishing.... There is a vast

"Though it's no good buying newspapers.... Nothing ever happens. Curse this war; God damn this war!... All