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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
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 ***, 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 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 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. 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 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 contemptuously,
like a thing done with, burst open the door, and left us alone.
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 sister-in-law"--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 poulterer's shop-window. "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. "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 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 shop-window; 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 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, cabby--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. "Aunt Minnie,
children." 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!
Half-way 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 brass-bound; 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 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 meagre nightgown, stand side by side furred felt slippers. The looking-glass--no,
you avoid the looking-glass. Some methodical disposition of hat-pins. 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 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 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 stain of sin. Oh, she committed some crime!
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 sale-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. "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 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 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. "Bob at lunch to-day"--But elderly women are the worst.
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 ***--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 shop-windows--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 boots. 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 hand-bag, 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 pocket-handkerchief 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 ***, 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, 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
peacock-eyed, 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 diamond-wise--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 Lewes?--there must be Jimmy--or what's
her twitch for? 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 oak-tree; 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! These elderly women. Dear, dear!" [Yes, Minnie; I know you've twitched, but
one moment--James Moggridge]. "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 motor-omnibuses.
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 souls of those one nods to, the people one never meets again.
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 claret-coloured 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 me--not for me." 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, you renew the fortifications,
threading the grey wool, running it in and out.
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, humiliations,
oh! Close the breach. 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 merry-thought? 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! There's the door! I'm on your side. Speak! Confront her,
confound her soul! "Oh, I beg your pardon! Yes, this is Eastbourne.
I'll reach it down for you. Let me try the handle." [But, Minnie, though we keep up pretences,
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 won't
come to the station, nor John; and Moggridge is driving at 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 walked off together.
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 *** 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
Minnie. There never was Moggridge. Who am I? Life's bare as bone.
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 to-night will you sleep,
and then, to-morrow? 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. Plate-glass 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 my arms, it's you I embrace, you I draw to
me--adorable world!