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.If the feather had fallen, if it had tipped the scale downwards, the whole house wouldhave plunged to the depths to lie upon the sands of oblivion.But there was a forceworking; something not highly conscious; something that leered, something that lurched;something not inspired to go about its work with dignified ritual or solemn chanting.MrsMcNab groaned; Mrs Bast creaked.They were old; they were stiff; their legs ached.Theycame with their brooms and pails at last; they got to work.All of a sudden, would MrsMcNab see that the house was ready, one of the young ladies wrote: would she get thisdone; would she get that done; all in a hurry.They might be coming for the summer; hadleft everything to the last; expected to find things as they had left them.Slowly andpainfully, with broom and pail, mopping, scouring, Mrs McNab, Mrs Bast, stayed thecorruption and the rot; rescued from the pool of Time that was fast closing over them nowa basin, now a cupboard; fetched up from oblivion all the Waverley novels and a tea-set onemorning; in the afternoon restored to sun and air a brass fender and a set of steel fire-irons.George, Mrs Bast s son, caught the rats, and cut the grass.They had the builders.Attendedwith the creaking of hinges and the screeching of bolts, the slamming and banging of damp-swollen woodwork, some rusty laborious birth seemed to be taking place, as the women,stooping, rising, groaning, singing, slapped and slammed, upstairs now, now down in thecellars.Oh, they said, the work!They drank their tea in the bedroom sometimes, or in the study; breaking off work atmid-day with the smudge on their faces, and their old hands clasped and cramped with thebroom handles.Flopped on chairs, they contemplated now the magnificent conquest overtaps and bath; now the more arduous, more partial triumph over long rows of books, blackas ravens once, now white-stained, breeding pale mushrooms and secreting furtive spiders.Once more, as she felt the tea warm in her, the telescope fitted itself to Mrs McNab s eyes,and in a ring of light she saw the old gentleman, lean as a rake, wagging his head, as shecame up with the washing, talking to himself, she supposed, on the lawn.He never noticedher.Some said he was dead; some said she was dead.Which was it? Mrs Bast didn t knowfor certain either.The young gentleman was dead.That she was sure.She had read his namein the papers.There was the cook now, Mildred, Marian, some such name as that a red-headedwoman, quick-tempered like all her sort, but kind, too, if you knew the way with her.Many a laugh they had had together.She saved a plate of soup for Maggie; a bite of ham,sometimes; whatever was over.They lived well in those days.They had everything theywanted (glibly, jovially, with the tea hot in her, she unwound her ball of memories, sittingin the wicker arm-chair by the nursery fender).There was always plenty doing, people inthe house, twenty staying sometimes, and washing up till long past midnight.Mrs Bast (she had never known them; had lived in Glasgow at that time) wondered,putting her cup down, whatever they hung that beast s skull there for? Shot in foreign partsno doubt.It might well be, said Mrs McNab, wantoning on with her memories; they had friends ineastern countries; gentlemen staying there, ladies in evening dress; she had seen them oncethrough the dining-room door all sitting at dinner.Twenty she dared say all in theirjewellery, and she asked to stay help wash up, might be till after midnight.Ah, said Mrs Bast, they d find it changed.She leant out of the window.She watched herson George scything the grass.They might well ask, what had been done to it? seeing howold Kennedy was supposed to have charge of it, and then his leg got so bad after he fellfrom the cart; and perhaps then no one for a year, or the better part of one; and then Davie58Macdonald, and seeds might be sent, but who should say if they were ever planted? They dfind it changed.She watched her son scything.He was a great one for work one of those quiet ones.Well they must be getting along with the cupboards, she supposed.They hauled themselvesup.At last, after days of labour within, of cutting and digging without, dusters were flickedfrom the windows, the windows were shut to, keys were turned all over the house; thefront door was banged; it was finished.And now as if the cleaning and the scrubbing and the scything and the mowing haddrowned it there rose that half-heard melody, that intermittent music which the ear halfcatches but lets fall; a bark, a bleat; irregular, intermittent, yet somehow related; the hum ofan insect, the tremor of cut grass, dissevered yet somehow belonging; the jar of a dorbeetle,the squeak of a wheel, loud, low, but mysteriously related; which the ear strains to bringtogether and is always on the verge of harmonising, but they are never quite heard, neverfully harmonised, and at last, in the evening, one after another silence falls.With the sunsetsharpness was lost, and like mist rising, quiet rose, quiet spread, the wind settled; looselythe world shook itself down to sleep, darkly here without a light to it, save what camegreen suffused through leaves, or pale on the white flowers in the bed by the window.[Lily Briscoe had her bag carried up to the house late one evening in September.MrCarmichael came by the same train.]10Then indeed peace had come.Messages of peace breathed from the sea to the shore.Neverto break its sleep any more, to lull it rather more deeply to rest, and whatever the dreamersdreamt holily, dreamt wisely, to confirm what else was it murmuring as Lily Briscoe laidher head on the pillow in the clean still room and heard the sea.Through the open windowthe voice of the beauty of the world came murmuring, too softly to hear exactly what itsaid but what mattered if the meaning were plain? entreating the sleepers (the house wasfull again; Mrs Beckwith was staying there, also Mr Carmichael), if they would not actuallycome down to the beach itself at least to lift the blind and look out.They would see thennight flowing down in purple; his head crowned; his sceptre jewelled; and how in his eyes achild might look.And if they still faltered (Lily was tired out with travelling and sleptalmost at once; but Mr Carmichael read a book by candlelight), if they still said no, that itwas vapour, this splendour of his, and the dew had more power than he, and they preferredsleeping; gently then without complaint, or argument, the voice would sing its song [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]