На маяк. Уровень 3 / To the Lighthouse

Insoluble questions, it seemed to her. He had followed her into the drawing-room, that young man they laughed at; he was standing by the table. They had all gone – the children; Minta Doyle and Paul Rayley; Augustus Carmichael; her husband – they had all gone. So she turned to the man with a sigh and said,

“Would you like to come with me, Mr. Tansley?”

She had things to do in the town. A letter or two to write. She will be in ten minutes perhaps; she will put on her hat and take her basket and her parasol.

They were making the great expedition, she said and laughed. They were going to the town.

“Stamps, writing-paper, tobacco?” she suggested.

No, he wanted nothing. No, nothing, he murmured.

As for her little bag, may he not carry that? No, no, she said, she always carried that herself.

“Let us all go!” she cried.

“Let’s go,” he said, repeating her words. “Let us all go to the circus.”

No. What was wrong with him then? She liked him warmly, at the moment.

When he was a child, he did not go to circuses. He had a large family, nine brothers and sisters. His father was a working man.

“My father is a chemist, Mrs. Ramsay. He keeps a shop.”

He himself has worked since thirteen. Often he went without a warm coat in winter. He worked hard – seven hours a day. They were walking on and Mrs. Ramsay did not quite catch the meaning, only the words, here and there… dissertation… fellowship… readership… lectureship. She will tell Prue about it.

He was an awful prig – oh yes, an insufferable bore.

They came out on the quay, and the whole bay spread before them. Mrs. Ramsay exclaimed,

“Oh, how beautiful!”

The great plateful of blue water was before her; the hoary Lighthouse, distant, austere, in the midst; and on the right, in soft low pleats, the green sand dunes, which always were running away into some moon country, uninhabited of men.

That was the view, she said, that her husband loved.

She paused a moment.

But now, she said, artists come here. There indeed, stood one of them, in Panama hat[4 - Panama hat – панама] and yellow boots. Ten little boys watched him. Since Mr. Paunceforte had been there, three years before, all the pictures were like that, she said, green and grey, with lemon-coloured boats, and pink women on the beach.

So Mr. Tansley supposed she meant that that man’s picture was skimpy? It was awfully strange.