Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf

Author:Virginia Woolf [Woolf, Virginia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Literature
Publisher: The University of Adelaide Library
Published: 2012-03-08T07:23:25+00:00

Virginia Woolf

Between the Acts

The path was narrow. Isa went ahead. And she was broad; she fairly filled the path, swaying slightly as she walked, and plucking a leaf here and there from the hedge.

“Fly then, follow,” she hummed, “the dappled herds in the cedar grove, who, sporting, play, the red with the roe, the stag with the doe. Fly, away. I grieving stay. Alone I linger, I pluck the bitter herb by the ruined wall, the churchyard wall, and press its sour, its sweet, its sour, long grey leaf, so, twixt thumb and finger. . . .”

She threw away the shred of Old Man’s Beard that she had picked in passing and kicked open the greenhouse door. Dodge had lagged behind. She waited. She picked up a knife from the plank. He saw her standing against the green glass, the fig tree, and the blue hydrangea, knife in hand.

“She spake,” Isa murmured. “And from her bosom’s snowy antre drew the gleaming blade. ‘Plunge blade!’ she said. And struck. ‘Faithless!’ she cried. Knife, too! It broke. So too my heart,” she said.

She was smiling ironically as he came up.

“I wish the play didn’t run in my head,” she said. Then she sat down on a plank under the vine. And he sat beside her. The little grapes above them were green buds; the leaves thin and yellow as the web between birds’ claws.

“Still the play?” he asked. She nodded. “That was your son,” he said, “in the Barn?”

She had a daughter too, she told him, in the cradle.

“And you — married?” she asked. From her tone he knew she guessed, as women always guessed, everything. They knew at once they had nothing to fear, nothing to hope. At first they resented — serving as statues in a greenhouse. Then they liked it. For then they could say — as she did — whatever came into their heads. And hand him, as she handed him, a flower.

“There’s something for your buttonhole, Mr. . . .” she said, handing him a sprig of scented geranium.

“I’m William,” he said, taking the furry leaf and pressing it between thumb and finger.

“I’m Isa,” she answered. Then they talked as if they had known each other all their lives; which was odd, she said, as they always did, considering she’d known him perhaps one hour. Weren’t they, though, conspirators, seekers after hidden faces? That confessed, she paused and wondered, as they always did, why they could speak so plainly to each other. And added: “Perhaps because we’ve never met before, and never shall again.”

“The doom of sudden death hanging over us,” he said. “There’s no retreating and advancing”— he was thinking of the old lady showing him the house —“for us as for them.”

The future shadowed their present, like the sun coming through the many-veined transparent vine leaf; a criss-cross of lines making no pattern.

They had left the greenhouse door open, and now music came through it. A.B.C., A.B.C., A.B.C.— someone was practising scales. C.A.T. C.A.T. C.A.T. .

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.