 An unwritten novel by Virginia Woolf. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. Recorded by Shona Bargdon-Sturble. An unwritten novel by Virginia Woolf. 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 learned 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 as knowledge. One smokes, another reads. A third checks entries in a pocketbook. 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, too, for all our sakes conceal it. As if she heard me, she looked up, shifted slightly in her seat and sighed. She seemed to apologize, 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 crept over the paper's rim. She shuddered, twitched her arm clearly 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, birds, deaths, marriages, court circular, the habits of birds, Leonardo da Vinci, the Sandhills murder, high wages and the cost of living. Ah, 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 spinning, it settled on her neck. 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 the 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. Her twitch alone denied all hope, discounted all illusion. So we rattled through Surrey and across the border into Sussex. But with my eyes upon life, I did not see that the other travelers had left one by one till, say for the man who read, we were alone together. Here was three bridges stationed. 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 contemptuously, like a thing done with, burst open the door and left us alone. The unhappy woman, leaning a little forward, pale and colorlessly addressed me, talked of stations and holidays, of brothers at Eastbourne, and the time of year, which was, I forget now, early or late. For 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 approach the catastrophe. My sister-in-law, the bitterness of her tongue 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 was a plucked files in a polteress shop window. Ah, 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'd 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. Sisters-in-law, I said. 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 window pane. She rubbed as if she would rub something out forever. 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 croaked my arm and plucked at the middle of my back. My skin, too, felt like the damp chicken skin in the polluter's shop window. One spot between the shoulders itched and irritated. Felt crummy, felt raw. Could I reach it? Scepticiously, 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. Past her poison, she would speak no more. Leaning back in my corner, shielding my eyes from her eyes, seeing only the slopes and hollows, grays and purples of the winter's landscape, I read her message, deciphered her secret, reading it beneath her gaze. Hilda's the sister-in-law. 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, Caby. None of your ways with me. Come in, Minnie. Oh, I could carry you, let alone your basket. So they go into the dining room. And Minnie, children. Slowly the knives and forks sink from the upright. Down they get, Bob and Barbara, hold out hand stiffly, back again to their chair, staring between the resumed mouthfuls. But this will 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 our spoon and mouth. Get on with your pudding, Bob, but Hilda disproves. Why should she twitch? Skip, skip, till we reach the landing on the upper floor. Stairs brass bound, linoleum worn. Oh, yes. Little bedroom looking out over the roofs of eastborn, zig-zagging roofs like the spines of caterpillars. This way, that way, striped red and yellow with blue-black 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 meager night down, stand side by side third felt slippers. The looking glass. Now, you avoid the looking glass. 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, bills, 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 paint, 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 God's. More like President Krueger than Prince Albert. That's the best I can do for him. And I see him on a chair in a black frock coat. 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 cloud holds a rod. A truncheon, is it? Black, thick, thorned. Brutal, old bully. Minnie's God. Did he send the itch and the patch and the twitch? Is that what she prays? What she rubs on the window is the stain of sin. She committed some crime. I have my choice of crimes. The woods flit and fly in some of their blue bells. In the opening there, when spring comes, primroses. A parting was it, twenty years ago? Thou's broken, not Minnie's. She was faithful. Hell, 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 Croydon, twenty years ago, the violet loops have 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-wing door at sail time. 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. Don't shut till seven, and then it is seven. She runs, she rushes, home she reaches, but too late. Neighbors. The doctor. Baby brother. The kettle. Scalded. Hospital. Dead. Or only the shock of it. The blame. But the detail matters. Nothing. It's what she carries with her. The spot. The crime. The thing to expiate. Always there between her shoulders. Yes, she seems to nod to me. It's the thing I did. 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 sleep. Light. Worn. The mouth closed. A touch of obstinacy. More than one would think. No hent of sex. So many crimes aren't your crime. Your crime was cheap. Only the retribution's 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. Praise. All her sins fall. Fall. Forever fall. The spot receives them. It's raised. It's red. It's burning. Next she twitches. Small boys point. Bob at lunch today. But elderly women are the worst. Indeed, now you can't sit praying any longer. Kruger's sunk beneath the clouds. Washed-overs with a painter's brush of liquid gray. 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. Sometimes when the night's been bad, it seems as if washing helped. And John at breakfast. The children. Meals are worse than. Sometimes they're friends. Ferns don't altogether hide them. They guess too. So out you go along the front where the waves are gray. The papers blow. And the glass shelters. Green and drafty. 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 red. But no. There's nothing but gray in the sky. Or if it's blue. The white clouds hide him. And the music. It's military music. What? They are 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. Plackers leaning against storeways. Names above shop windows. Red fruit in baskets. Women's heads in the hairdressers. All say, many marsh. But here's a jerk. Eggs are cheaper. That's what always happens. I was heading her over the waterfall. Straight from Agnes when like a flock of dream sheep. She turns the 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 will pour many marsh. Never late for luncheon. Never caught in a storm without a macintosh. Never utterly unconscious of the cheapness of eggs. So she reaches home, scrapes her boots. Have I read you right? But the human face. The human face at the top of the foolish sheet of print holds more. With holds more. Now, eyes a bunch looks out. And in the human eye. How do you define it? There's a break. A division. So that when you've grasped the stem, the butterflies 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 many marsh. I too run 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 the 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 are prisons. Their thoughts are cages. Air above, air below. And the moon and immortality. Ah, but I dropped to the turf. Are you down too? You in the corner. What's your name? Woman. Many 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? Ah, 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 her boots. Yes, and now you lay across your knees a pocket handkerchief into which dropped 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. Maps and 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 mule tears. With their convoy. Drinks booty. Gold and silver. But to return. 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, I shut. With the courage of a battalion and the blindness of a bull, charge and disperse are indudibly the figures behind the ferns, commercial travelers. There I've hidden them all this time and I hope that somehow they disappear or better still emerge as indeed they must. If the stories to go on gathering richness and rotundity, destiny and tragedy, as stories should, rolling along with it too, if not three, commercial travelers and a whole grove of Aspidestra. The fronds of the Aspidestra only partly conceal the commercial traveler. Rotten dendrons would conceal him utterly and into the bargain give me my fling of red and wine for which I starve and stive but loaded dendrons in his sporn in December. On the marshes table, no. No, I dare not. It's all a matter of crust and crickets, frills and ferns. Perhaps I'll be a moment later by the sea. Moreover, I feel, pleasantly freaking through the green setwork and over the glazes of cut glass, a desire to peer in peep at the man opposite, ones as much as I can manage. James Mawgridge, is it? When the marsh is called Jimmy? Many, you must promise not to twitch till I've got this straight. James Mawgridge travels in, shall we say, buttons, but the time's not come for bringing them in, the big and the little and the long carts, some pick our guide, others dull gold, caring on some and others call 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 many till the bread swamp the gravy dry. Napkin tucked diamond-wise, but this is primitive, and whatever it may do, the reader, don't take me in. Let's dodge to the Mawgridge 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, nonetheless loved, like my rhododendrons. How many die in every novel that's written, the best, the dearest, while Mawgridge lives. It's life's fault. Here's many, eating her egg at the moment opposite and at the other end of the line. Are we past lose? There must be Jimmy, or what's her twitch for? There must be Mawgridge. 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 rude by heaven knows what compulsion across ferns and cruits, tables splashed in bottle smeared. I come irresistibly to lodge myself somewhere on the fern flesh in the robust spine, wherever I can penetrate or find foothold on the person in the soul of Mawgridge, the man. The enormous stability of the fabric, the spine toughest whalebone, straight as oak tree, the ribs radiating branches, the flesh taut topolin, 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 aspen distor they see something, black, white, dismal. Now the plate again. Behind the aspen distor they see elderly woman. Marsh's sister, Hilda's more my sort. The tablecloth now. Marsh would know what's wrong with Morris's. Talk that over. Jesus 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 set her twitching. Not what I said. Dear, dear, these elderly women. Dear, dear. Yes, many, I know you've twitched. But one moment, James. Margridge. Dear, dear, dear. How beautiful the sound is. Like the knock of a mallet on season timber. Like the throb of the heart of an ancient whaler. When the seas pressed thick and the green is clouded. Dear, dear. What a passing bell for the souls of the fettful. To soothe them and solace them. Laugh them and linen saying, So long, good luck to you. And then, what's your pleasure? For though Margridge 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 motor omnibuses. But we're rushing the crumbs off. Oh, Margridge, you won't stay. You must be off. Are you driving through Eastbourne this afternoon in one of those little carriages? Are you man who's walled up in green cardboard boxes and sometimes has the blinds down and sometimes it's so solemn staring like a sphinx and always there's a look of the sepulchre, something of the undertaker, the coffin, and the dusk about horse and driver? Do tell me, but the door is slammed. We shall never meet again. Margridge, farewell. Yes, yes, I'm coming. Right up to the top of the house. One moment I'll linger. How the mud goes round of the mine. What a swirl these monsters leave, the waters walking, the weeds waving in 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 obsequity for the souls of those one nods to. The people one never meets again. James Margridge is dead now, gone forever. Well, many, I can face it no longer. If she said that, let me look at her. She's brushing the eggshell into deep declivities. She said it certainly, leaning against the wall of the bedroom and plucking the little balls, which edge the cleric-colored curtain. But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking? The entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, into 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, hither, launching on the diminishing carpets, meager footholes, shrunken shreds of all the vanishing universe, love, life, faith, husband, children. I know not what splendors and pageantries glimpsed in girlhood. Not for me, not for me. But then the muffins, the bald, elderly dog, be mad as I should fancy, and the consolation of underlinning. If many marshes 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, well, after all, the tea is rich, the muffin hut, and the dog, Benny, to your basket, sir, and see what mothers brought you. So, taking the glove of the worn thumb, defying once more the encroaching demon of what's called going in holes, you renew the fortifications, threading the gray wool, running it in and out, running it in and out across and over, spinning a web through which God himself hushed. 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. Wife, look up. Was it a sound? A thought? Ah, heavens, back again to the thing you did, the plate glass of the violet loops, but Hilda will come. Ignomines, humiliations, ah, close the breach. Having mended her glove, Minnie Marsh lays it in the drawer. She shuts the drawer with a 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 merry thought, and what is happening? Unless I'm much mistaken the pulse is quickened, the moment's coming, the threads are racing, thy aggro'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, pierce the door. I'm on your side, speak, confront her, confound her soul. Ah, I beg your pardon. Yes, this is he's born. I'll reach it down for you. Let me try the handle. Not many, though we keep up pretenses. I've read you right. I'm with you now. That's all your luggage? Much obliged, I'm sure. But why do you look about you? Hilda don't come to the station nor John, and Margridge is driving the far side of Eastbourne. 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. So they walk off together. Well, but I'm confounded. Surely many, you know better. A strange young man, stop. I'll tell it, many. 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? That's not many. There never was, Margridge. Who am I? Life's bare as bone. And yet, the last look of them. He's stepping from the curb and she following him round the edge where 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? How it whirls and surges. Floods me afresh. I start after them. People drive this way and that. White splutters and pores. Plate glass windows. Carnations, chrysanthemums. Ivy and 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 to see. The way is the landscape. Dimizaches. 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 my arms. It's you, I embrace. You, I draw to me. The adorable world. End of an unwritten novel by Virginia Woolf. This recording is in the public domain.