На маяк. Уровень 3 / To the Lighthouse

When they were walking in, walking out, parting late on door-mats, they said little things about the soup, about the children, about one thing and another which made them allies. When he stood beside her now (he was old enough to be her father too, a botanist, a widower, very scrupulous and clean) she just stood there. He just stood there. Her shoes were excellent, he observed. He was lodging in the same house with her.

Mr. Ramsay glared at them. That did make them both vaguely uncomfortable. It was with difficulty that she took her eyes off her picture.

She laid her brushes neatly in the box, side by side, and said to William Bankes:

“It suddenly gets cold. The sun gives less heat,” she said.

It was bright enough, the house starred in its greenery with purple passion flowers. But something moved, flashed, turned a silver wing in the air. It was September after all, the middle of September, and past six in the evening. So off they strolled down the garden in the usual direction, past the tennis lawn, past the pampas grass, to that break in the thick hedge.

They came there regularly every evening. The pulse of colour flooded the bay with blue, and the heart expanded with it.

They both smiled, standing there. They both felt a common hilarity. William Bankes was looking at the far sand hills. He thought of Ramsay, he thought of a road in Westmorland. William Bankes remembered a hen with its little chicks. It seemed to him that their friendship had ceased, there, on that stretch of road.

After that, Ramsay married and something important went out of their friendship. Whose fault it was he could not say. But in this dumb colloquy with the sand dunes he maintained his affection for Ramsay.

He was anxious to clear himself in his own mind from the imputation of dryness. Ramsay lived in a welter of children, whereas Bankes was childless and a widower.

Yes. That was it. He turned from the view. And Mr. Bankes felt aged and saddened. He has dried indeed.

The Ramsays were not rich.

It was a wonder how they managed to contrive it all[6 - to contrive it all – со всем этим справляться]. Eight children! To feed eight children! And the education was very expensive (true, Mrs. Ramsay had something of her own perhaps). And those fellows, angular, ruthless youngsters, required clothes. He called them after the Kings and Queens of England; Cam the Wicked, James the Ruthless, Andrew the Just, Prue the Fair.