На маяк. Уровень 3 / To the Lighthouse

Odious little man, thought Mrs. Ramsay.

3

“Perhaps you will wake up and find the sun and the birds,” she said compassionately.

She was smoothing the little boy’s hair.

“Perhaps it will be fine tomorrow,” she said.

All she could do now was to admire the refrigerator, and turn the pages of the catalogue. All these young men parodied her husband, she reflected.

They ceased to talk; that was the explanation. She concluded that poor Charles Tansley was shed. That was none of her business. If her husband required sacrifices (and indeed he did) she cheerfully offered up to him Charles Tansley. Charles snubbed her little boy.

One moment more, she listened; and then she heard something rhythmical. Suddenly a loud cry, as of a sleep-walker[5 - sleep-walker – сомнамбула], sung out with the utmost intensity in her ear:

“Stormed at with shot and shell!”

Mrs. Ramsay turned her head to see if anyone had heard him. Only Lily Briscoe, she was glad to find; and that did not matter. But the sight of the girl standing on the edge of the lawn painting reminded her; she was supposed to be keeping her head as much in the same position as possible for Lily’s picture. Lily’s picture! Mrs. Ramsay smiled and, remembering her promise, she bent her head.

4

Indeed, he almost knocked her easel over. He came down upon her, “Boldly we rode and well!” Never was anybody at once so ridiculous and so alarming.

Someone came out of the house. He came towards her. It was William Bankes; her brush quivered. William Bankes stood beside her.

They had rooms in the village. When they were walking in, walking out, parting late on door-mats, they said little things about the soup, about the children, about one thing and another which made them allies. When he stood beside her now (he was old enough to be her father too, a botanist, a widower, very scrupulous and clean) she just stood there. He just stood there. Her shoes were excellent, he observed. He was lodging in the same house with her.

Mr. Ramsay glared at them. That did make them both vaguely uncomfortable. It was with difficulty that she took her eyes off her picture.

She laid her brushes neatly in the box, side by side, and said to William Bankes:

“It suddenly gets cold. The sun gives less heat,” she said.

It was bright enough, the house starred in its greenery with purple passion flowers. But something moved, flashed, turned a silver wing in the air. It was September after all, the middle of September, and past six in the evening. So off they strolled down the garden in the usual direction, past the tennis lawn, past the pampas grass, to that break in the thick hedge.

They came there regularly every evening. The pulse of colour flooded the bay with blue, and the heart expanded with it.

They both smiled, standing there. They both felt a common hilarity. William Bankes was looking at the far sand hills. He thought of Ramsay, he thought of a road in Westmorland. William Bankes remembered a hen with its little chicks. It seemed to him that their friendship had ceased, there, on that stretch of road. After that, Ramsay married and something important went out of their friendship. Whose fault it was he could not say. But in this dumb colloquy with the sand dunes he maintained his affection for Ramsay.

He was anxious to clear himself in his own mind from the imputation of dryness. Ramsay lived in a welter of children, whereas Bankes was childless and a widower.

Yes. That was it. He turned from the view. And Mr. Bankes felt aged and saddened. He has dried indeed.

The Ramsays were not rich. It was a wonder how they managed to contrive it all[6 - to contrive it all – со всем этим справляться]. Eight children! To feed eight children! And the education was very expensive (true, Mrs. Ramsay had something of her own perhaps). And those fellows, angular, ruthless youngsters, required clothes. He called them after the Kings and Queens of England; Cam the Wicked, James the Ruthless, Andrew the Just, Prue the Fair. Prue must be beautiful, he thought, and Andrew must have brains.

While he walked up the drive and Lily Briscoe said yes and no and capped his comments (for she was in love with them all), he commiserated Ramsay, envied him. But what, for example, did this Lily Briscoe think?

“Oh, but,” said Lily, “think of his work!”

Whenever she “thought of his work” she always saw clearly before her a large kitchen table. It was Andrew’s. She asked him what his father’s books were about.

“Subject and object and the nature of reality,” Andrew said.

She said,

“Oh, I don’t understand what that means”.

“Think of a kitchen table then,” he told her, “when you’re not there.”

So now she always saw, when she thought of Mr. Ramsay’s work, a scrubbed kitchen table.

Mr. Bankes was glad that she had asked him “to think of his work.” He had thought of it, often and often.

“Ramsay is one of those men who do their best work before they are forty.”

He had made a definite contribution to philosophy in one little book when he was only five and twenty. But the number of men who make a definite contribution to anything whatsoever is very small, he said.

How to judge people, how to think of them? She was standing by the pear tree. You have greatness, but Mr. Ramsay has none of it. He is petty, selfish, vain, egotistical. He is spoilt; he is a tyrant. But he has what you (she addressed Mr. Bankes) have not; a fiery unworldliness; he knows nothing about trifles. He loves dogs and his children. He has eight. Mr. Bankes has none.

5

“And even if it isn’t fine tomorrow,” said Mrs. Ramsay, glancing at William Bankes and Lily Briscoe as they passed, “it will be another day. And now, James, stand up, and let me measure your leg,”

William and Lily must marry – she took the stocking, and measured it against James’s leg.

“My dear, stand still,” she said.

She looked up and saw the room, saw the chairs. They were fearfully shabby. But what was the point, she asked, of buying good chairs? The rent was low; the children loved the house. It is very good for her husband to be three hundred miles from his libraries and his lectures and his disciples; and there was room for visitors. Mats, camp beds, crazy ghosts of chairs and tables; and a photograph or two, and books. She never had time to read them. Alas! She sighed and saw the whole room from floor to ceiling, as she held the stocking against James’s leg. Things got shabbier and shabbier summer after summer. The mat was fading; the wall-paper was flapping. You can’t tell anymore that those were roses on it.

But it was the doors that annoyed her; every door was left open. She listened. The drawing-room door was open; the hall door was open. It sounded as if the bedroom doors were open. Certainly the window was open. That windows must be open, and doors shut – it’s simple. Can’t they remember it?

She had a spasm of irritation, and spoke sharply to James:

“Stand still. Don’t be tiresome.”

He knew instantly that her severity was real. He straightened his leg and she measured it.

The stocking was too short. It was the stocking for Sorley’s little boy, and he was less well grown than James.

“It’s too short,” she said.

Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black. A tear formed; a tear fell. Never did anybody look so sad.

Mrs. Ramsay smoothed out her harsh manner, raised his head, and kissed her little boy on the forehead.

“Let us find another picture to cut out,” she said.

6