Le temps passe by Virginia Woolf

Author:Virginia Woolf [Woolf, Virginia]
Language: fra
Format: epub
Tags: Nouvelle, Littérature anglaise
ISBN: 9782358730167
Amazon: 2358730165
Publisher: Le Bruit du temps
Published: 2010-02-24T17:18:52+00:00

IV

As she lurched (for she rolled like a ship at sea) and leered (for her eyes fell on nothing directly, but with a sidelong glance that deprecated the scorn and anger of the world – she was witless, she knew it), as she clutched the bannisters and hauled herself upstairs and rolled from room to room, she sang. Rubbing the glass of the long looking glass and leering sideways at her swinging figure a sound issued from her lips – something that had been gay twenty years before on the stage perhaps, had been hummed and danced to, but now coming from the toothless, bonneted, care-taking woman was rubbed of meaning, was like the voice of witlessness, humour, persistency itself trodden down but springing up again, so that as she lurched, dusting, wiping, she seemed to say how it was one long sorrow and trouble, how it was getting up and going to bed again, and bringing things out and putting them away again. It was not easy or snug this world she had known for close on eighty years. Bowed down she was with weariness. How long, she asked, creaking and groaning on her knees under the bed dusting the boards, how long shall it endure ? but hobbled to her feet again, pulled herself up and again, with her sidelong leer which slipped and turned aside even from her own face, and her own sorrows, stood and gaped in the glass, actually smiling, and began again the old amble and hobble (taking up mats, putting down china) granting, as she stood the chair straight by the dressing table, her forgiveness of it all leaning her bony breast on the hard thorn.

Was it then that she had her consolations, when, with the breeze in the west and the clouds white in the sun she stood at her cottage door ? For what reason did there twine about her dirge this incorrigible hope ? and why, with no gift to bestow and no gift to take did she yet prefer to live ; singing, dusting ? Were there then for Mrs. McNab who had been trampled into the mud for generations, had been a mat for King and Kaiser, moments of illumination, visions of joy, at the wash tub, say, with her children ? (Yet two had been base born and one had deserted her.) At the public house, drinking ? Turning over scraps in her drawers ? Some cleavage of the dark there must have been, some channel in the depths of obscurity through which light enough issued to twist her face, smiling in the glass, and make her, turning to her job again, mumble out the old Music hall song.

Walking the beach the mystic, the visionary, were possessed of intervals of comprehension perhaps ; suddenly, unexpectedly, looking at a stone, stirring a pebble with a stick, heard an absolute answer, so that they were warm in the frost and had comfort in the desert. The truth had been made known to them.

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