На маяк. Уровень 3 / To the Lighthouse

There he stood in the parlour of the poky little house. He was waiting for her, while she went upstairs a moment to see a woman. With stars in her eyes and veils in her hair, with cyclamen and wild violets – what nonsense was he thinking? She was fifty at least; she had eight children. He took her bag.

“Good-bye, Elsie,” she said, and they walked up the street.

She was holding her parasol and walking as if she expected to meet someone round the corner. Charles Tansley was very proud.

For the first time in his life Charles Tansley felt the wind and the cyclamen and the violets. He was walking with a beautiful woman.

2

“We won’t go to the Lighthouse, James,” he said.

Odious little man, thought Mrs. Ramsay.

3

“Perhaps you will wake up and find the sun and the birds,” she said compassionately.

She was smoothing the little boy’s hair.

“Perhaps it will be fine tomorrow,” she said.

All she could do now was to admire the refrigerator, and turn the pages of the catalogue.

All these young men parodied her husband, she reflected.

They ceased to talk; that was the explanation. She concluded that poor Charles Tansley was shed. That was none of her business. If her husband required sacrifices (and indeed he did) she cheerfully offered up to him Charles Tansley. Charles snubbed her little boy.

One moment more, she listened; and then she heard something rhythmical.

Suddenly a loud cry, as of a sleep-walker[5 - sleep-walker – сомнамбула], sung out with the utmost intensity in her ear:

“Stormed at with shot and shell!”

Mrs. Ramsay turned her head to see if anyone had heard him. Only Lily Briscoe, she was glad to find; and that did not matter. But the sight of the girl standing on the edge of the lawn painting reminded her; she was supposed to be keeping her head as much in the same position as possible for Lily’s picture.

Lily’s picture! Mrs. Ramsay smiled and, remembering her promise, she bent her head.

4

Indeed, he almost knocked her easel over. He came down upon her, “Boldly we rode and well!” Never was anybody at once so ridiculous and so alarming.

Someone came out of the house. He came towards her. It was William Bankes; her brush quivered. William Bankes stood beside her.

They had rooms in the village.