to Minta. She was responsible to Minta’s parents – the Owl and the Poker. She remembered her nicknames for them. The Owl and the Poker – yes.
Dear, dear, Mrs. Ramsay said to herself, how did they produce this incongruous daughter? this tomboy Minta, with a hole in her stocking?
How did she exist in that portentous atmosphere? Naturally, one must ask her to lunch, tea, dinner, finally to stay with them. That resulted in some friction with the Owl, her mother. However, Minta came… Yes, she came, Mrs. Ramsay thought. Mrs. Doyle accused her. Wishing to dominate, wishing to interfere, making people do what she wished – that was the charge against her. She thought it most unjust.
She was often ashamed of her own shabbiness. Nor was she domineering, nor was she tyrannical.
She never wanted James to grow older! or Cam either. When she read just now to James, “and there were numbers of soldiers with kettledrums and trumpets,” and his eyes darkened, she thought, why should they grow up and lose all that?
He was the most gifted, the most sensitive of her children. But all, she thought, were full of promise. Prue, a perfect angel, a real beauty. Andrew – even her husband admitted that his gift for mathematics was extraordinary. And Nancy and Roger, they were both wild creatures now. They were scampering about over the country all day long. As for Rose, her mouth was too big, but she had a wonderful gift with her hands. If they had charades, Rose made the dresses. She made everything.
Why should they go to school? She always wanted to have a baby. She liked to carry one in her arms. Then people say she was tyrannical, domineering, masterful. They are happier now than they will ever be again. They all had their little treasures…
And so she went down and said to her husband, Why must they grow up and lose it all? Never will they be so happy again.
And he was angry. Why take such a gloomy view of life? he said. It is not sensible. For it was odd. She believed it to be true. He had always his work. Not that she herself was “pessimistic”. She thought of her life, her fifty years. There it was before her – life. The life is terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you give it a chance. There were eternal problems: suffering; death; the poor. There was always a woman dying of cancer even here.
She knew what was before them – love and ambition. Why must they grow up and lose it all? And then she said to herself, Nonsense. They will be perfectly happy.
She was making Minta marry Paul Rayley. People must marry; people must have children.
Was she wrong in this? she asked herself. She was uneasy.
“Then he put on his trousers and ran away like a madman,” she read. “But outside a great storm was raging and blowing so hard that he could scarcely keep his feet. Houses and trees toppled over, the mountains trembled, rocks rolled into the sea. The sky was black, and it thundered and lightened. The sea came in with black waves as high as church towers and mountains, and all with white foam at the top.”
She turned the page; there were only a few lines more. She will finish the story. It was getting late. The light in the garden told her that. Then she remembered; Paul and Minta and Andrew had not come back. Andrew had his net and basket. That meant he was going to catch crabs. It was growing quite dark.
She looked into James’s eyes:
“And there they are living still at this very time[11].”
“And that’s the end,” she said.
She saw in his eyes that the interest of the story died away in them. Something else took its place. She turned and looked across the bay. She saw the light of the Lighthouse.
In a moment he will ask her,
“Are we going to the Lighthouse?”
And she will say,
“No: not tomorrow; your father says not.”
Happily, Mildred came in. The bustle distracted them. As Mildred carried him out, she was certain that he was thinking, we are not going to the Lighthouse tomorrow. He will remember that all his life.
11
No, she thought, putting together the pictures – a refrigerator, a mowing machine[12], a gentleman in evening dress – children never forget. For this reason, it was so important what one said, and what one did. It was a relief when they went to bed. For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. To be silent; to be alone. Although she continued to knit, and sat upright, it was thus that she felt herself. When life sank down, the range of experience seemed limitless.
And to everybody there was always this sense of unlimited resources, she supposed. She, Lily, Augustus Carmichael, must feel: our apparitions are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is unfathomably deep. Her horizon seemed to her limitless. They could not stop her, she thought. There was freedom, there was peace, there was a platform of stability.
No one finds rest ever, in her experience, but as a wedge of darkness. One lost the fret, the hurry, the stir. There rose to her lips always some exclamation of triumph over life when things came together in this peace, this rest, this eternity.
She looked out to meet that stroke of the Lighthouse, the long steady stroke, the last of the three, which was her stroke. That light lifted up some little phrase like that – “Children don’t forget, children don’t forget”. She could repeat it. It will end, it will end, she said. It will come, it will come, when suddenly she added, “We are in the hands of the Lord”.
But instantly she was annoyed with herself. Who had said it? Not she. She looked up over her knitting and met the third stroke. It seemed to her like her own eyes meeting her own eyes[13]. They searched into her mind and her heart, they purified out of existence that lie, any lie. She was stern, she was searching, she was beautiful like that light. It was odd, she thought. She looked and looked; a mist rose from the lake. A bride to meet her lover.
Why did she say that: “We are in the hands of the Lord?” she wondered. The insincerity annoyed her. She returned to her knitting again. How could any Lord make this world? she asked. With her mind she had always seized the fact that there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor. She knew that. No happiness lasted; she knew that. She knitted with firm composure.
Her husband passed. He noted the sternness at the heart of her beauty. It saddened him, and her remoteness pained him. He felt, as he passed, that he could not protect her. When he reached the hedge, he was sad. He could do nothing to help her. He must stand by and watch her. Indeed, the infernal truth was, he made things worse for her. He was irritable – he was touchy. He had lost his temper over the Lighthouse. He looked into the hedge, into its intricacy, its darkness.
Mrs. Ramsay listened, but it was all very still. Cricket was over; the children were in their baths; there was only the sound of the sea. She stopped knitting. She held the long reddish-brown stocking in her hands. She saw the light again. With some irony, she was watching it with fascination, hypnotized. Anyway, she had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness. It silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded. The blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach. The ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!
He
And there they are living still at this very time. – Так они и живут до сих пор.
mowing machine – косилка
like her own eyes meeting her own eyes – как будто её собственные глаза встретились с её же глазами
