orlando went indoors. it was completely still. it was very silent. there was the ink pot: there was the pen; there was the manuscript of her poem, broken off in the middle of a tribute to eternity. she had been about to say, when basket and bartholomew interrupted with the tea things, nothing changes. and then, in the space of three seconds and a half, everything had changed — she had broken her ankle, fallen in love, married shelmerdine.

there was the wedding ring on her finger to prove it. it was true that she had put it there herself before she met shelmerdine, but that had proved worse than useless. she now turned the ring round and round, with superstitious reverence, taking care lest it should slip past the joint of her finger.

‘the wedding ring has to be put on the third finger of the left hand’, she said, like a child cautiously repeating its lesson, ‘for it to be of any use at all.’

she spoke thus, aloud and rather more pompously than was her wont, as if she wished someone whose good opinion she desired to overhear her. indeed, she had in mind, now that she was at last able to collect her thoughts, the effect that her behaviour would have had upon the spirit of the age. she was extremely anxious to be informed whether the steps she had taken in the matter of getting engaged to shelmerdine and marrying him met with its approval. she was certainly feeling more herself. her finger had not tingled once, or nothing to count, since that night on the moor. yet, she could not deny that she had her doubts. she was married, true; but if one’s husband was always sailing round cape horn, was it marriage? if one liked him, was it marriage? if one liked other people, was it marriage? and finally, if one still wished, more than anything in the whole world, to write poetry, was it marriage? she had her doubts.

but she would put it to the test. she looked at the ring. she looked at the ink pot. did she dare? no, she did not. but she must. no, she could not. what should she do then? faint, if possible. but she had never felt better in her life.

‘hang it all!’ she cried, with a touch of her old spirit. ‘here goes!’

and she plunged her pen neck deep in the ink. to her enormous surprise, there was no explosion. she drew the nib out. it was wet, but not dripping. she wrote. the words were a little long in coming, but come they did. ah! but did they make sense? she wondered, a panic coming over her lest the pen might have been at some of its involuntary pranks again. she read,

and then i came to a field where the springing grass

was dulled by the hanging cups of fritillaries,

sullen and foreign-looking, the snaky flower,

scarfed in dull purple, like egyptian girls:—

as she wrote she felt some power (remember we are dealing with the most obscure manifestations of the human spirit) reading over her shoulder, and when she had written ‘egyptian girls’, the power told her to stop. grass, the power seemed to say, going back with a ruler such as governesses use to the beginning, is all right; the hanging cups of fritillaries — admirable; the snaky flower — a thought, strong from a lady’s pen, perhaps, but wordsworth no doubt, sanctions it; but — girls? are girls necessary? you have a husband at the cape, you say? ah, well, that’ll do.

and so the spirit passed on.

orlando now performed in spirit (for all this took place in spirit) a deep obeisance to the spirit of her age, such as — to compare great things with small — a traveller, conscious that he has a bundle of cigars in the corner of his suit case, makes to the customs officer who has obligingly made a scribble of white chalk on the lid. for she was extremely doubtful whether, if the spirit had examined the contents of her mind carefully, it would not have found something highly contraband for which she would have had to pay the full fine. she had only escaped by the skin of her teeth. she had just managed, by some dexterous deference to the spirit of the age, by putting on a ring and finding a man on a moor, by loving nature and being no satirist, cynic, or psychologist — any one of which goods would have been discovered at once — to pass its examination successfully. and she heaved a deep sigh of relief, as, indeed, well she might, for the transaction between a writer and the spirit of the age is one of infinite delicacy, and upon a nice arrangement between the two the whole fortune of his works depends. orlando had so ordered it that she was in an extremely happy position; she need neither fight her age, nor submit to it; she was of it, yet remained herself. now, therefore, she could write, and write she did. she wrote. she wrote. she wrote.

it was now november. after november, comes december. then january, february, march, and april. after april comes may. june, july, august follow. next is september. then october, and so, behold, here we are back at november again, with a whole year accomplished.

this method of writing biography, though it has its merits, is a little bare, perhaps, and the reader, if we go on with it, may complain that he could recite the calendar for himself and so save his pocket whatever sum the hogarth press may think proper to charge for this book. but what can the biographer do when his subject has put him in the predicament into which orlando has now put us? life, it has been agreed by everyone whose opinion is worth consulting, is the only fit subject for novelist or biographer; life, the same authorities have decided, has nothing whatever to do with sitting still in a chair and thinking. thought and life are as the poles asunder. therefore — since sitting in a chair and thinking is precisely what orlando is doing now — there is nothing for it but to recite the calendar, tell one’s beads, blow one’s nose, stir the fire, look out of the window, until she has done. orlando sat so still that you could have heard a pin drop. would, indeed, that a pin had dropped! that would have been life of a kind. or if a butterfly had fluttered through the window and settled on her chair, one could write about that. or suppose she had got up and killed a wasp. then, at once, we could out with our pens and write. for there would be blood shed, if only the blood of a wasp. where there is blood there is life. and if killing a wasp is the merest trifle compared with killing a man, still it is a fitter subject for novelist or biographer than this mere wool-gathering; this thinking; this sitting in a chair day in, day out, with a cigarette and a sheet of paper and a pen and an ink pot. if only subjects, we might complain (for our patience is wearing thin), had more consideration for their biographers! what is more irritating than to see one’s subject, on whom one has lavished so much time and trouble, slipping out of one’s grasp altogether and indulging — witness her sighs and gasps, her flushing, her palings, her eyes now bright as lamps, now haggard as dawns — what is more humiliating than to see all this dumb show of emotion and excitement gone through before our eyes when we know that what causes it — thought and imagination — are of no importance whatsoever?

but orlando was a woman — lord palmerston had just proved it. and when we are writing the life of a woman, we may, it is agreed, waive our demand for action, and substitute love instead. love, the poet has said, is woman’s whole existence. and if we look for a moment at orlando writing at her table, we must admit that never was there a woman more fitted for that calling. surely, since she is a woman, and a beautiful woman, and a woman in the prime of life, she will soon give over this pretence of writing and thinking and begin at least to think of a gamekeeper (and as long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking). and then she will write him a little note (and as long as she writes little notes nobody objects to a woman writing either) and make an assignation for sunday dusk and sunday dusk will come; and the gamekeeper will whistle under the window — all of which is, of course, the very stuff of life and the only possible subject for fiction. surely orlando must have done one of these things? alas,— a thousand times, alas, orlando did none of them. must it then be admitted that orlando was one of those monsters of iniquity who do not love? she was kind to dogs, faithful to friends, generosity itself to a dozen starving poets, had a passion for poetry. but love — as the male novelists define it — and who, after all, speak with greater authority?— has nothing whatever to do with kindness, fidelity, generosity, or poetry. love is slipping off one’s petticoat and — but we all know what love is. did orlando do that? truth compels us to say no, she did not. if then, the subject of one’s biography will neither love nor kill, but will only think and imagine, we may conclude that he or she is no better than a corpse and so leave her.

the only resource now left us is to look out of the window. there were sparrows; there were starlings; there were a number of doves, and one or two rooks, all occupied after their fashion. one finds a worm, another a snail. one flutters to a branch, another takes a little run on the turf. then a servant crosses the courtyard, wearing a green baize apron. presumably he is engaged on some intrigue with one of the maids in the pantry, but as no visible proof is offered us, in the courtyard, we can but hope for the best and leave it. clouds pass, thin or thick, with some disturbance of the colour of the grass beneath. the sun-dial registers the hour in its usual cryptic way. one’s mind begins tossing up a question or two, idly, vainly, about this same life. life, it sings, or croons rather, like a kettle on a hob. life, life, what art thou? light or darkness, the baize apron of the under-footman or the shadow of the starling on the grass?

let us go, then, exploring, this summer morning, when all are adoring the plum blossom and the bee. and humming and hawing, let us ask of the starling (who is a more sociable bird than the lark) what he may think on the brink of the dustbin, whence he picks among the sticks combings of scullion’s hair. what’s life, we ask, leaning on the farmyard gate; life, life, life! cries the bird, as if he had heard, and knew precisely, what we meant by this bothering prying habit of ours of asking questions indoors and out and peeping and picking at daisies as the way is of writers when they don’t know what to say next. then they come here, says the bird, and ask me what life is; life, life, life!

we trudge on then by the moor path, to the high brow of the wine-blue purple-dark hill, and fling ourselves down there, and dream there and see there a grasshopper, carting back to his home in the hollow, a straw. and he says (if sawings like his can be given a name so sacred and tender) life’s labour, or so we interpret the whirr of his dust-choked gullet. and the ant agrees and the bees, but if we lie here long enough to ask the moths, when they come at evening, stealing among the paler heather bells, they will breathe in our ears such wild nonsense as one hears from telegraph wires in snow storms; tee hee, haw haw. laughter, laughter! the moths say.

having asked then of man and of bird and the insects, for fish, men tell us, who have lived in green caves, solitary for years to hear them speak, never, never say, and so perhaps know what life is — having asked them all and grown no wiser, but only older and colder (for did we not pray once in a way to wrap up in a book something so hard, so rare, one could swear it was life’s meaning?) back we must go and say straight out to the reader who waits a-tiptoe to hear what life is — alas, we don’t know.

at this moment, but only just in time to save the book from extinction, orlando pushed away her chair, stretched her arms, dropped her pen, came to the window, and exclaimed, ‘done!’

she was almost felled to the ground by the extraordinary sight which now met her eyes. there was the garden and some birds. the world was going on as usual. all the time she was writing the world had continued.

‘and if i were dead, it would be just the same!’ she exclaimed.

such was the intensity of her feelings that she could even imagine that she had suffered dissolution, and perhaps some faintness actually attacked her. for a moment she stood looking at the fair, indifferent spectacle with staring eyes. at length she was revived in a singular way. the manuscript which reposed above her heart began shuffling and beating as if it were a living thing, and, what was still odder, and showed how fine a sympathy was between them, orlando, by inclining her head, could make out what it was that it was saying. it wanted to be read. it must be read. it would die in her bosom if it were not read. for the first time in her life she turned with violence against nature. elk-hounds and rose bushes were about her in profusion. but elk-hounds and rose bushes can none of them read. it is a lamentable oversight on the part of providence which had never struck her before. human beings alone are thus gifted. human beings had become necessary. she rang the bell. she ordered the carriage to take her to london at once.

‘there’s just time to catch the eleven forty five, m’lady,’ said basket. orlando had not yet realized the invention of the steam engine, but such was her absorption in the sufferings of a being, who, though not herself, yet entirely depended on her, that she saw a railway train for the first time, took her seat in a railway carriage, and had the rug arranged about her knees without giving a thought to ‘that stupendous invention, which had (the historians say) completely changed the face of europe in the past twenty years’ (as, indeed, happens much more frequently than historians suppose). she noticed only that it was extremely smutty; rattled horribly; and the windows stuck. lost in thought, she was whirled up to london in something less than an hour and stood on the platform at charing cross, not knowing where to go.

the old house at blackfriars, where she had spent so many pleasant days in the eighteenth century, was now sold, part to the salvation army, part to an umbrella factory. she had bought another in mayfair which was sanitary, convenient, and in the heart of the fashionable world, but was it in mayfair that her poem would be relieved of its desire? pray god, she thought, remembering the brightness of their ladyships’ eyes and the symmetry of their lordship’s legs, they haven’t taken to reading there. for that would be a thousand pities. then there was lady r.’s. the same sort of talk would be going on there still, she had no doubt. the gout might have shifted from the general’s left leg to his right, perhaps. mr l. might have stayed ten days with r. instead of t. then mr pope would come in. oh! but mr pope was dead. who were the wits now, she wondered — but that was not a question one could put to a porter, and so she moved on. her ears were now distracted by the jingling of innumerable bells on the heads of innumerable horses. fleets of the strangest little boxes on wheels were drawn up by the pavement. she walked out into the strand. there the uproar was even worse. vehicles of all sizes, drawn by blood horses and by dray horses, conveying one solitary dowager or crowded to the top by whiskered men in silk hats, were inextricably mixed. carriages, carts, and omnibuses seemed to her eyes, so long used to the look of a plain sheet of foolscap, alarmingly at loggerheads; and to her ears, attuned to a pen scratching, the uproar of the street sounded violently and hideously cacophonous. every inch of the pavement was crowded. streams of people, threading in and out between their own bodies and the lurching and lumbering traffic with incredible agility, poured incessantly east and west. along the edge of the pavement stood men, holding out trays of toys, and bawled. at corners, women sat beside great baskets of spring flowers and bawled. boys running in and out of the horses’ noses, holding printed sheets to their bodies, bawled too, disaster! disaster! at first orlando supposed that she had arrived at some moment of national crisis; but whether it was happy or tragic, she could not tell. she looked anxiously at people’s faces. but that confused her still more. here would come by a man sunk in despair, muttering to himself as if he knew some terrible sorrow. past him would nudge a fat, jolly-faced fellow, shouldering his way along as if it were a festival for all the world. indeed, she came to the conclusion that there was neither rhyme nor reason in any of it. each man and each woman was bent on his own affairs. and where was she to go?

she walked on without thinking, up one street and down another, by vast windows piled with handbags, and mirrors, and dressing gowns, and flowers, and fishing rods, and luncheon baskets; while stuff of every hue and pattern, thickness or thinness, was looped and festooned and ballooned across and across. sometimes she passed down avenues of sedate mansions, soberly numbered ‘one’, ‘two’, ‘three’, and so on right up to two or three hundred, each the copy of the other, with two pillars and six steps and a pair of curtains neatly drawn and family luncheons laid on tables, and a parrot looking out of one window and a man servant out of another, until her mind was dizzied with the monotony. then she came to great open squares with black shiny, tightly buttoned statues of fat men in the middle, and war horses prancing, and columns rising and fountains falling and pigeons fluttering. so she walked and walked along pavements between houses until she felt very hungry, and something fluttering above her heart rebuked her with having forgotten all about it. it was her manuscript. ‘the oak tree’.

she was confounded at her own neglect. she stopped dead where she stood. no coach was in sight. the street, which was wide and handsome, was singularly empty. only one elderly gentleman was approaching. there was something vaguely familiar to her in his walk. as he came nearer, she felt certain that she had met him at some time or other. but where? could it be that this gentleman, so neat, so portly, so prosperous, with a cane in his hand and a flower in his button-hole, with a pink, plump face, and combed white moustaches, could it be, yes, by jove, it was!— her old, her very old friend, nick greene!

at the same time he looked at her; remembered her; recognized her. ‘the lady orlando!’ he cried, sweeping his silk hat almost in the dust.

‘sir nicholas!’ she exclaimed. for she was made aware intuitively by something in his bearing that the scurrilous penny-a-liner, who had lampooned her and many another in the time of queen elizabeth, was now risen in the world and become certainly a knight and doubtless a dozen other fine things into the bargain.

with another bow, he acknowledged that her conclusion was correct; he was a knight; he was a litt.d.; he was a professor. he was the author of a score of volumes. he was, in short, the most influential critic of the victorian age.

a violent tumult of emotion besieged her at meeting the man who had caused her, years ago, so much pain. could this be the plaguy, restless fellow who had burnt holes in her carpets, and toasted cheese in the italian fireplace and told such merry stories of marlowe and the rest that they had seen the sun rise nine nights out of ten? he was now sprucely dressed in a grey morning suit, had a pink flower in his button-hole, and grey suede gloves to match. but even as she marvelled, he made another bow, and asked her whether she would honour him by lunching with him? the bow was a thought overdone perhaps, but the imitation of fine breeding was creditable. she followed him, wondering, into a superb restaurant, all red plush, white table-cloths, and silver cruets, as unlike as could be the old tavern or coffee house with its sanded floor, its wooden benches, its bowls of punch and chocolate, and its broadsheets and spittoons. he laid his gloves neatly on the table beside him. still she could hardly believe that he was the same man. his nails were clean; where they used to be an inch long. his chin was shaved; where a black beard used to sprout. he wore gold sleeve-links; where his ragged linen used to dip in the broth. it was not, indeed, until he had ordered the wine, which he did with a care that reminded her of his taste in malmsey long ago, that she was convinced he was the same man. ‘ah!’ he said, heaving a little sigh, which was yet comfortable enough, ‘ah! my dear lady, the great days of literature are over. marlowe, shakespeare, ben jonson — those were the giants. dryden, pope, addison — those were the heroes. all, all are dead now. and whom have they left us? tennyson, browning, carlyle!’— he threw an immense amount of scorn into his voice. ‘the truth of it is,’ he said, pouring himself a glass of wine, ‘that all our young writers are in the pay of the booksellers. they turn out any trash that serves to pay their tailor’s bills. it is an age’, he said, helping himself to hors-d’oeuvres, ‘marked by precious conceits and wild experiments — none of which the elizabethans would have tolerated for an instant.’

‘no, my dear lady,’ he continued, passing with approval the turbot au gratin, which the waiter exhibited for his sanction, ‘the great days are over. we live in degenerate times. we must cherish the past; honour those writers — there are still a few left of ‘em — who take antiquity for their model and write, not for pay but —’ here orlando almost shouted ‘glawr!’ indeed she could have sworn that she had heard him say the very same things three hundred years ago. the names were different, of course, but the spirit was the same. nick greene had not changed, for all his knighthood. and yet, some change there was. for while he ran on about taking addison as one’s model (it had been cicero once, she thought) and lying in bed of a morning (which she was proud to think her pension paid quarterly enabled him to do) rolling the best works of the best authors round and round on one’s tongue for an hour, at least, before setting pen to paper, so that the vulgarity of the present time and the deplorable condition of our native tongue (he had lived long in america, she believed) might be purified — while he ran on in much the same way that greene had run on three hundred years ago, she had time to ask herself, how was it then that he had changed? he had grown plump; but he was a man verging on seventy. he had grown sleek: literature had been a prosperous pursuit evidently; but somehow the old restless, uneasy vivacity had gone. his stories, brilliant as they were, were no longer quite so free and easy. he mentioned, it is true, ‘my dear friend pope’ or ‘my illustrious friend addison’ every other second, but he had an air of respectability about him which was depressing, and he preferred, it seemed, to enlighten her about the doings and sayings of her own blood relations rather than tell her, as he used to do, scandal about the poets.

orlando was unaccountably disappointed. she had thought of literature all these years (her seclusion, her rank, her sex must be her excuse) as something wild as the wind, hot as fire, swift as lightning; something errant, incalculable, abrupt, and behold, literature was an elderly gentleman in a grey suit talking about duchesses. the violence of her disillusionment was such that some hook or button fastening the upper part of her dress burst open, and out upon the table fell ‘the oak tree’, a poem.

‘a manuscript!’ said sir nicholas, putting on his gold pince-nez. ‘how interesting, how excessively interesting! permit me to look at it.’ and once more, after an interval of some three hundred years, nicholas greene took orlando’s poem and, laying it down among the coffee cups and the liqueur glasses, began to read it. but now his verdict was very different from what it had been then. it reminded him, he said as he turned over the pages, of addison’s “cato”. it compared favourably with thomson’s “seasons”. there was no trace in it, he was thankful to say, of the modern spirit. it was composed with a regard to truth, to nature, to the dictates of the human heart, which was rare indeed, in these days of unscrupulous eccentricity. it must, of course, be published instantly.

really orlando did not know what he meant. she had always carried her manuscripts about with her in the bosom of her dress. the idea tickled sir nicholas considerably.

‘but what about royalties?’ he asked.

orlando’s mind flew to buckingham palace and some dusky potentates who happened to be staying there.

sir nicholas was highly diverted. he explained that he was alluding to the fact that messrs — (here he mentioned a well-known firm of publishers) would be delighted, if he wrote them a line, to put the book on their list. he could probably arrange for a royalty of ten per cent on all copies up to two thousand; after that it would be fifteen. as for the reviewers, he would himself write a line to mr —, who was the most influential; then a compliment — say a little puff of her own poems — addressed to the wife of the editor of the — never did any harm. he would call —. so he ran on. orlando understood nothing of all this, and from old experience did not altogether trust his good nature, but there was nothing for it but to submit to what was evidently his wish and the fervent desire of the poem itself. so sir nicholas made the blood-stained packet into a neat parcel; flattened it into his breast pocket, lest it should disturb the set of his coat; and with many compliments on both sides, they parted.

orlando walked up the street. now that the poem was gone,— and she felt a bare place in her breast where she had been used to carry it — she had nothing to do but reflect upon whatever she liked — the extraordinary chances it might be of the human lot. here she was in st james’s street; a married woman; with a ring on her finger; where there had been a coffee house once there was now a restaurant; it was about half past three in the afternoon; the sun was shining; there were three pigeons; a mongrel terrier dog; two hansom cabs and a barouche landau. what then, was life? the thought popped into her head violently, irrelevantly (unless old greene were somehow the cause of it). and it may be taken as a comment, adverse or favourable, as the reader chooses to consider it upon her relations with her husband (who was at the horn), that whenever anything popped violently into her head, she went straight to the nearest telegraph office and wired to him. there was one, as it happened, close at hand. ‘my god shel’, she wired; ‘life literature greene toady —’ here she dropped into a cypher language which they had invented between them so that a whole spiritual state of the utmost complexity might be conveyed in a word or two without the telegraph clerk being any wiser, and added the words ‘rattigan glumphoboo’, which summed it up precisely. for not only had the events of the morning made a deep impression on her, but it cannot have escaped the reader’s attention that orlando was growing up — which is not necessarily growing better — and ‘rattigan glumphoboo’ described a very complicated spiritual state — which if the reader puts all his intelligence at our service he may discover for himself.

there could be no answer to her telegram for some hours; indeed, it was probable, she thought, glancing at the sky, where the upper clouds raced swiftly past, that there was a gale at cape horn, so that her husband would be at the mast-head, as likely as not, or cutting away some tattered spar, or even alone in a boat with a biscuit. and so, leaving the post office, she turned to beguile herself into the next shop, which was a shop so common in our day that it needs no description, yet, to her eyes, strange in the extreme; a shop where they sold books. all her life long orlando had known manuscripts; she had held in her hands the rough brown sheets on which spenser had written in his little crabbed hand; she had seen shakespeare’s script and milton’s. she owned, indeed, a fair number of quartos and folios, often with a sonnet in her praise in them and sometimes a lock of hair. but these innumerable little volumes, bright, identical, ephemeral, for they seemed bound in cardboard and printed on tissue paper, surprised her infinitely. the whole works of shakespeare cost half a crown, and could be put in your pocket. one could hardly read them, indeed, the print was so small, but it was a marvel, none the less. ‘works’— the works of every writer she had known or heard of and many more stretched from end to end of the long shelves. on tables and chairs, more ‘works’ were piled and tumbled, and these she saw, turning a page or two, were often works about other works by sir nicholas and a score of others whom, in her ignorance, she supposed, since they were bound and printed, to be very great writers too. so she gave an astounding order to the bookseller to send her everything of any importance in the shop and left.

she turned into hyde park, which she had known of old (beneath that cleft tree, she remembered, the duke of hamilton fell run through the body by lord mohun), and her lips, which are often to blame in the matter, began framing the words of her telegram into a senseless singsong; life literature greene toady rattigan glumphoboo; so that several park keepers looked at her with suspicion and were only brought to a favourable opinion of her sanity by noticing the pearl necklace which she wore. she had carried off a sheaf of papers and critical journals from the book shop, and at length, flinging herself on her elbow beneath a tree, she spread these pages round her and did her best to fathom the noble art of prose composition as these masters practised it. for still the old credulity was alive in her; even the blurred type of a weekly newspaper had some sanctity in her eyes. so she read, lying on her elbow, an article by sir nicholas on the collected works of a man she had once known — john donne. but she had pitched herself, without knowing it, not far from the serpentine. the barking of a thousand dogs sounded in her ears. carriage wheels rushed ceaselessly in a circle. leaves sighed overhead. now and again a braided skirt and a pair of tight scarlet trousers crossed the grass within a few steps of her. once a gigantic rubber ball bounced on the newspaper. violets, oranges, reds, and blues broke through the interstices of the leaves and sparkled in the emerald on her finger. she read a sentence and looked up at the sky; she looked up at the sky and looked down at the newspaper. life? literature? one to be made into the other? but how monstrously difficult! for — here came by a pair of tight scarlet trousers — how would addison have put that? here came two dogs dancing on their hind legs. how would lamb have described that? for reading sir nicholas and his friends (as she did in the intervals of looking about her), she somehow got the impression — here she rose and walked — they made one feel — it was an extremely uncomfortable feeling — one must never, never say what one thought. (she stood on the banks of the serpentine. it was a bronze colour; spider-thin boats were skimming from side to side.) they made one feel, she continued, that one must always, always write like somebody else. (the tears formed themselves in her eyes.) for really, she thought, pushing a little boat off with her toe, i don’t think i could (here the whole of sir nicholas’ article came before her as articles do, ten minutes after they are read, with the look of his room, his head, his cat, his writing-table, and the time of the day thrown in), i don’t think i could, she continued, considering the article from this point of view, sit in a study, no, it’s not a study, it’s a mouldy kind of drawing-room, all day long, and talk to pretty young men, and tell them little anecdotes, which they mustn’t repeat, about what tupper said about smiles; and then, she continued, weeping bitterly, they’re all so manly; and then, i do detest duchesses; and i don’t like cake; and though i’m spiteful enough, i could never learn to be as spiteful as all that, so how can i be a critic and write the best english prose of my time? damn it all! she exclaimed, launching a penny steamer so vigorously that the poor little boat almost sank in the bronze-coloured waves.

now, the truth is that when one has been in a state of mind (as nurses call it)— and the tears still stood in orlando’s eyes — the thing one is looking at becomes, not itself, but another thing, which is bigger and much more important and yet remains the same thing. if one looks at the serpentine in this state of mind, the waves soon become just as big as the waves on the atlantic; the toy boats become indistinguishable from ocean liners. so orlando mistook the toy boat for her husband’s brig; and the wave she had made with her toe for a mountain of water off cape horn; and as she watched the toy boat climb the ripple, she thought she saw bonthrop’s ship climb up and up a glassy wall; up and up it went, and a white crest with a thousand deaths in it arched over it; and through the thousand deaths it went and disappeared —’it’s sunk!’ she cried out in an agony — and then, behold, there it was again sailing along safe and sound among the ducks on the other side of the atlantic.

‘ecstasy!’ she cried. ‘ecstasy! where’s the post office?’ she wondered. ‘for i must wire at once to shel and tell him...’ and repeating ‘a toy boat on the serpentine’, and ‘ecstasy’, alternately, for the thoughts were interchangeable and meant exactly the same thing, she hurried towards park lane.

‘a toy boat, a toy boat, a toy boat,’ she repeated, thus enforcing upon herself the fact that it is not articles by nick greene on john donne nor eight-hour bills nor covenants nor factory acts that matter; it’s something useless, sudden, violent; something that costs a life; red, blue, purple; a spirit; a splash; like those hyacinths (she was passing a fine bed of them); free from taint, dependence, soilure of humanity or care for one’s kind; something rash, ridiculous, like my hyacinth, husband i mean, bonthrop: that’s what it is — a toy boat on the serpentine, ecstasy — it’s ecstasy that matters. thus she spoke aloud, waiting for the carriages to pass at stanhope gate, for the consequence of not living with one’s husband, except when the wind is sunk, is that one talks nonsense aloud in park lane. it would no doubt have been different had she lived all the year round with him as queen victoria recommended. as it was the thought of him would come upon her in a flash. she found it absolutely necessary to speak to him instantly. she did not care in the least what nonsense it might make, or what dislocation it might inflict on the narrative. nick greene’s article had plunged her in the depths of despair; the toy boat had raised her to the heights of joy. so she repeated: ‘ecstasy, ecstasy’, as she stood waiting to cross.

but the traffic was heavy that spring afternoon, and kept her standing there, repeating, ecstasy, ecstasy, or a toy boat on the serpentine, while the wealth and power of england sat, as if sculptured, in hat and cloak, in four-in-hand, victoria and barouche landau. it was as if a golden river had coagulated and massed itself in golden blocks across park lane. the ladies held card-cases between their fingers; the gentlemen balanced gold-mounted canes between their knees. she stood there gazing, admiring, awe-struck. one thought only disturbed her, a thought familiar to all who behold great elephants, or whales of an incredible magnitude, and that is: how do these leviathans to whom obviously stress, change, and activity are repugnant, propagate their kind? perhaps, orlando thought, looking at the stately, still faces, their time of propagation is over; this is the fruit; this is the consummation. what she now beheld was the triumph of an age. portly and splendid there they sat. but now, the policeman let fall his hand; the stream became liquid; the massive conglomeration of splendid objects moved, dispersed, and disappeared into piccadilly.

so she crossed park lane and went to her house in curzon street, where, when the meadow-sweet blew there, she could remember curlew calling and one very old man with a gun.

she could remember, she thought, stepping across the threshold of her house, how lord chesterfield had said — but her memory was checked. her discreet eighteenth-century hall, where she could see lord chesterfield putting his hat down here and his coat down there with an elegance of deportment which it was a pleasure to watch, was now completely littered with parcels. while she had been sitting in hyde park the bookseller had delivered her order, and the house was crammed — there were parcels slipping down the staircase — with the whole of victorian literature done up in grey paper and neatly tied with string. she carried as many of these packets as she could to her room, ordered footmen to bring the others, and, rapidly cutting innumerable strings, was soon surrounded by innumerable volumes.

accustomed to the little literatures of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, orlando was appalled by the consequences of her order. for, of course, to the victorians themselves victorian literature meant not merely four great names separate and distinct but four great names sunk and embedded in a mass of alexander smiths, dixons, blacks, milmans, buckles, taines, paynes, tuppers, jamesons — all vocal, clamorous, prominent, and requiring as much attention as anybody else. orlando’s reverence for print had a tough job set before it but drawing her chair to the window to get the benefit of what light might filter between the high houses of mayfair, she tried to come to a conclusion.

and now it was clear that there are only two ways of coming to a conclusion upon victorian literature — one is to write it out in sixty volumes octavo, the other is to squeeze it into six lines of the length of this one. of the two courses, economy, since time runs short, leads us to choose the second; and so we proceed. orlando then came to the conclusion (opening half-a-dozen books) that it was very odd that there was not a single dedication to a nobleman among them; next (turning over a vast pile of memoirs) that several of these writers had family trees half as high as her own; next, that it would be impolitic in the extreme to wrap a ten-pound note round the sugar tongs when miss christina rossetti came to tea; next (here were half-a-dozen invitations to celebrate centenaries by dining) that literature since it ate all these dinners must be growing very corpulent; next (she was invited to a score of lectures on the influence of this upon that; the classical revival; the romantic survival, and other titles of the same engaging kind) that literature since it listened to all these lectures must be growing very dry; next (here she attended a reception given by a peeress) that literature since it wore all those fur tippets must be growing very respectable; next (here she visited carlyle’s sound-proof room at chelsea) that genius since it needed all this coddling must be growing very delicate; and so at last she reached her final conclusion, which was of the highest importance but which, as we have already much overpassed our limit of six lines, we must omit.

orlando, having come to this conclusion, stood looking out of the window for a considerable space of time. for, when anybody comes to a conclusion it is as if they had tossed the ball over the net and must wait for the unseen antagonist to return it to them. what would be sent her next from the colourless sky above chesterfield house, she wondered? and with her hands clasped, she stood for a considerable space of time wondering. suddenly she started — and here we could only wish that, as on a former occasion, purity, chastity, and modesty would push the door ajar and provide, at least, a breathing space in which we could think how to wrap up what now has to be told delicately, as a biographer should. but no! having thrown their white garment at the naked orlando and seen it fall short by several inches, these ladies had given up all intercourse with her these many years; and were now otherwise engaged. is nothing then, going to happen this pale march morning to mitigate, to veil, to cover, to conceal, to shroud this undeniable event whatever it may be? for after giving that sudden, violent start, orlando — but heaven be praised, at this very moment there struck up outside one of these frail, reedy, fluty, jerky, old-fashioned barrel-organs which are still sometimes played by italian organ-grinders in back streets. let us accept the intervention, humble though it is, as if it were the music of the spheres, and allow it, with all its gasps and groans, to fill this page with sound until the moment comes when it is impossible to deny its coming; which the footman has seen coming and the maid-servant; and the reader will have to see too; for orlando herself is clearly unable to ignore it any longer — let the barrel-organ sound and transport us on thought, which is no more than a little boat, when music sounds, tossing on the waves; on thought, which is, of all carriers, the most clumsy, the most erratic, over the roof tops and the back gardens where washing is hanging to — what is this place? do you recognize the green and in the middle the steeple, and the gate with a lion couchant on either side? oh yes, it is kew! well, kew will do. so here we are at kew, and i will show you to-day (the second of march) under the plum tree, a grape hyacinth, and a crocus, and a bud, too, on the almond tree; so that to walk there is to be thinking of bulbs, hairy and red, thrust into the earth in october; flowering now; and to be dreaming of more than can rightly be said, and to be taking from its case a cigarette or cigar even, and to be flinging a cloak under (as the rhyme requires) an oak, and there to sit, waiting the kingfisher, which, it is said, was seen once to cross in the evening from bank to bank.

wait! wait! the kingfisher comes; the kingfisher comes not.

behold, meanwhile, the factory chimneys and their smoke; behold the city clerks flashing by in their outrigger. behold the old lady taking her dog for a walk and the servant girl wearing her new hat for the first time not at the right angle. behold them all. though heaven has mercifully decreed that the secrets of all hearts are hidden so that we are lured on for ever to suspect something, perhaps, that does not exist; still through our cigarette smoke, we see blaze up and salute the splendid fulfilment of natural desires for a hat, for a boat, for a rat in a ditch; as once one saw blazing — such silly hops and skips the mind takes when it slops like this all over the saucer and the barrel-organ plays — saw blazing a fire in a field against minarets near constantinople.

hail! natural desire! hail! happiness! divine happiness! and pleasure of all sorts, flowers and wine, though one fades and the other intoxicates; and half-crown tickets out of london on sundays, and singing in a dark chapel hymns about death, and anything, anything that interrupts and confounds the tapping of typewriters and filing of letters and forging of links and chains, binding the empire together. hail even the crude, red bows on shop girls’ lips (as if cupid, very clumsily, dipped his thumb in red ink and scrawled a token in passing). hail, happiness! kingfisher flashing from bank to bank, and all fulfilment of natural desire, whether it is what the male novelist says it is; or prayer; or denial; hail! in whatever form it comes, and may there be more forms, and stranger. for dark flows the stream — would it were true, as the rhyme hints ‘like a dream’— but duller and worser than that is our usual lot; without dreams, but alive, smug, fluent, habitual, under trees whose shade of an olive green drowns the blue of the wing of the vanishing bird when he darts of a sudden from bank to bank.

hail, happiness, then, and after happiness, hail not those dreams which bloat the sharp image as spotted mirrors do the face in a country-inn parlour; dreams which splinter the whole and tear us asunder and wound us and split us apart in the night when we would sleep; but sleep, sleep, so deep that all shapes are ground to dust of infinite softness, water of dimness inscrutable, and there, folded, shrouded, like a mummy, like a moth, prone let us lie on the sand at the bottom of sleep.

but wait! but wait! we are not going, this time, visiting the blind land. blue, like a match struck right in the ball of the innermost eye, he flies, burns, bursts the seal of sleep; the kingfisher; so that now floods back refluent like a tide, the red, thick stream of life again; bubbling, dripping; and we rise, and our eyes (for how handy a rhyme is to pass us safe over the awkward transition from death to life) fall on —(here the barrel-organ stops playing abruptly).

‘it’s a very fine boy, m’lady,’ said mrs banting, the midwife, putting her first-born child into orlando’s arms. in other words orlando was safely delivered of a son on thursday, march the 20th, at three o’clock in the morning.

once more orlando stood at the window, but let the reader take courage; nothing of the same sort is going to happen to-day, which is not, by any means, the same day. no — for if we look out of the window, as orlando was doing at the moment, we shall see that park lane itself has considerably changed. indeed one might stand there ten minutes or more, as orlando stood now, without seeing a single barouche landau. ‘look at that!’ she exclaimed, some days later when an absurd truncated carriage without any horses began to glide about of its own accord. a carriage without any horses indeed! she was called away just as she said that, but came back again after a time and had another look out of the window. it was odd sort of weather nowadays. the sky itself, she could not help thinking, had changed. it was no longer so thick, so watery, so prismatic now that king edward — see, there he was, stepping out of his neat brougham to go and visit a certain lady opposite — had succeeded queen victoria. the clouds had shrunk to a thin gauze; the sky seemed made of metal, which in hot weather tarnished verdigris, copper colour or orange as metal does in a fog. it was a little alarming — this shrinkage. everything seemed to have shrunk. driving past buckingham palace last night, there was not a trace of that vast erection which she had thought everlasting; top hats, widows’ weeds, trumpets, telescopes, wreaths, all had vanished and left not a stain, not a puddle even, on the pavement. but it was now — after another interval she had come back again to her favourite station in the window — now, in the evening, that the change was most remarkable. look at the lights in the houses! at a touch, a whole room was lit; hundreds of rooms were lit; and one was precisely the same as the other. one could see everything in the little square-shaped boxes; there was no privacy; none of those lingering shadows and odd corners that there used to be; none of those women in aprons carrying wobbly lamps which they put down carefully on this table and on that. at a touch, the whole room was bright. and the sky was bright all night long; and the pavements were bright; everything was bright. she came back again at mid-day. how narrow women have grown lately! they looked like stalks of corn, straight, shining, identical. and men’s faces were as bare as the palm of one’s hand. the dryness of the atmosphere brought out the colour in everything and seemed to stiffen the muscles of the cheeks. it was harder to cry now. water was hot in two seconds. ivy had perished or been scraped off houses. vegetables were less fertile; families were much smaller. curtains and covers had been frizzled up and the walls were bare so that new brilliantly coloured pictures of real things like streets, umbrellas, apples, were hung in frames, or painted upon the wood. there was something definite and distinct about the age, which reminded her of the eighteenth century, except that there was a distraction, a desperation — as she was thinking this, the immensely long tunnel in which she seemed to have been travelling for hundreds of years widened; the light poured in; her thoughts became mysteriously tightened and strung up as if a piano tuner had put his key in her back and stretched the nerves very taut; at the same time her hearing quickened; she could hear every whisper and crackle in the room so that the clock ticking on the mantelpiece beat like a hammer. and so for some seconds the light went on becoming brighter and brighter, and she saw everything more and more clearly and the clock ticked louder and louder until there was a terrific explosion right in her ear. orlando leapt as if she had been violently struck on the head. ten times she was struck. in fact it was ten o’clock in the morning. it was the eleventh of october. it was 1928. it was the present moment.

no one need wonder that orlando started, pressed her hand to her heart, and turned pale. for what more terrifying revelation can there be than that it is the present moment? that we survive the shock at all is only possible because the past shelters us on one side and the future on another. but we have no time now for reflections; orlando was terribly late already. she ran downstairs, she jumped into her motorcar, she pressed the self-starter and was off. vast blue blocks of building rose into the air; the red cowls of chimneys were spotted irregularly across the sky; the road shone like silver-headed nails; omnibuses bore down upon her with sculptured white-faced drivers; she noticed sponges, bird-cages, boxes of green american cloth. but she did not allow these sights to sink into her mind even the fraction of an inch as she crossed the narrow plank of the present, lest she should fall into the raging torrent beneath. ‘why don’t you look where you’re going to?...put your hand out, can’t you?’— that was all she said sharply, as if the words were jerked out of her. for the streets were immensely crowded; people crossed without looking where they were going. people buzzed and hummed round the plate-glass windows within which one could see a glow of red, a blaze of yellow, as if they were bees, orlando thought — but her thought that they were bees was violently snipped off and she saw, regaining perspective with one flick of her eye, that they were bodies. ‘why don’t you look where you’re going?’ she snapped out.

at last, however, she drew up at marshall & snelgrove’s and went into the shop. shade and scent enveloped her. the present fell from her like drops of scalding water. light swayed up and down like thin stuffs puffed out by a summer breeze. she took a list from her bag and began reading in a curious stiff voice at first, as if she were holding the words — boy’s boots, bath salts, sardines — under a tap of many-coloured water. she watched them change as the light fell on them. bath and boots became blunt, obtuse; sardines serrated itself like a saw. so she stood in the ground-floor department of messrs marshall & snelgrove; looked this way and that; snuffed this smell and that and thus wasted some seconds. then she got into the lift, for the good reason that the door stood open; and was shot smoothly upwards. the very fabric of life now, she thought as she rose, is magic. in the eighteenth century we knew how everything was done; but here i rise through the air; i listen to voices in america; i see men flying — but how its done i can’t even begin to wonder. so my belief in magic returns. now the lift gave a little jerk as it stopped at the first floor; and she had a vision of innumerable coloured stuffs flaunting in a breeze from which came distinct, strange smells; and each time the lift stopped and flung its doors open, there was another slice of the world displayed with all the smells of that world clinging to it. she was reminded of the river off wapping in the time of elizabeth, where the treasure ships and the merchant ships used to anchor. how richly and curiously they had smelt! how well she remembered the feel of rough rubies running through her fingers when she dabbled them in a treasure sack! and then lying with sukey — or whatever her name was — and having cumberland’s lantern flashed on them! the cumberlands had a house in portland place now and she had lunched with them the other day and ventured a little joke with the old man about almshouses in the sheen road. he had winked. but here as the lift could go no higher, she must get out — heaven knows into what ‘department’ as they called it. she stood still to consult her shopping list, but was blessed if she could see, as the list bade her, bath salts, or boy’s boots anywhere about. and indeed, she was about to descend again, without buying anything, but was saved from that outrage by saying aloud automatically the last item on her list; which happened to be ‘sheets for a double bed’.

‘sheets for a double bed,’ she said to a man at a counter and, by a dispensation of providence, it was sheets that the man at that particular counter happened to sell. for grimsditch, no, grimsditch was dead; bartholomew, no, bartholomew was dead; louise then — louise had come to her in a great taking the other day, for she had found a hole in the bottom of the sheet in the royal bed. many kings and queens had slept there — elizabeth; james; charles; george; victoria; edward; no wonder the sheet had a hole in it. but louise was positive she knew who had done it. it was the prince consort.

‘sale bosch!’ she said (for there had been another war; this time against the germans).

‘sheets for a double bed,’ orlando repeated dreamily, for a double bed with a silver counterpane in a room fitted in a taste which she now thought perhaps a little vulgar — all in silver; but she had furnished it when she had a passion for that metal. while the man went to get sheets for a double bed, she took out a little looking-glass and a powder puff. women were not nearly as roundabout in their ways, she thought, powdering herself with the greatest unconcern, as they had been when she herself first turned woman and lay on the deck of the “enamoured lady”. she gave her nose the right tint deliberately. she never touched her cheeks. honestly, though she was now thirty-six, she scarcely looked a day older. she looked just as pouting, as sulky, as handsome, as rosy (like a million-candled christmas tree, sasha had said) as she had done that day on the ice, when the thames was frozen and they had gone skating —

‘the best irish linen, ma’am,’ said the shopman, spreading the sheets on the counter,— and they had met an old woman picking up sticks. here, as she was fingering the linen abstractedly, one of the swing-doors between the departments opened and let through, perhaps from the fancy-goods department, a whiff of scent, waxen, tinted as if from pink candles, and the scent curved like a shell round a figure — was it a boy’s or was it a girl’s — young, slender, seductive — a girl, by god! furred, pearled, in russian trousers; but faithless, faithless!

‘faithless!’ cried orlando (the man had gone) and all the shop seemed to pitch and toss with yellow water and far off she saw the masts of the russian ship standing out to sea, and then, miraculously (perhaps the door opened again) the conch which the scent had made became a platform, a dais, off which stepped a fat, furred woman, marvellously well preserved, seductive, diademed, a grand duke’s mistress; she who, leaning over the banks of the volga, eating sandwiches, had watched men drown; and began walking down the shop towards her.

‘oh sasha!’ orlando cried. really, she was shocked that she should have come to this; she had grown so fat; so lethargic; and she bowed her head over the linen so that this apparition of a grey woman in fur, and a girl in russian trousers, with all these smells of wax candles, white flowers, and old ships that it brought with it might pass behind her back unseen.

‘any napkins, towels, dusters today, ma’am?’ the shopman persisted. and it is enormously to the credit of the shopping list, which orlando now consulted, that she was able to reply with every appearance of composure, that there was only one thing in the world she wanted and that was bath salts; which was in another department.

but descending in the lift again — so insidious is the repetition of any scene — she was again sunk far beneath the present moment; and thought when the lift bumped on the ground, that she heard a pot broken against a river bank. as for finding the right department, whatever it might be, she stood engrossed among the handbags, deaf to the suggestions of all the polite, black, combed, sprightly shop assistants, who descending as they did equally and some of them, perhaps, as proudly, even from such depths of the past as she did, chose to let down the impervious screen of the present so that today they appeared shop assistants in marshall & snelgrove’s merely. orlando stood there hesitating. through the great glass doors she could see the traffic in oxford street. omnibus seemed to pile itself upon omnibus and then to jerk itself apart. so the ice blocks had pitched and tossed that day on the thames. an old nobleman — in furred slippers had sat astride one of them. there he went — she could see him now — calling down maledictions upon the irish rebels. he had sunk there, where her car stood.

‘time has passed over me,’ she thought, trying to collect herself; ‘this is the oncome of middle age. how strange it is! nothing is any longer one thing. i take up a handbag and i think of an old bumboat woman frozen in the ice. someone lights a pink candle and i see a girl in russian trousers. when i step out of doors — as i do now,’ here she stepped on to the pavement of oxford street, ‘what is it that i taste? little herbs. i hear goat bells. i see mountains. turkey? india? persia?’ her eyes filled with tears.

that orlando had gone a little too far from the present moment will, perhaps, strike the reader who sees her now preparing to get into her motor-car with her eyes full of tears and visions of persian mountains. and indeed, it cannot be denied that the most successful practitioners of the art of life, often unknown people by the way, somehow contrive to synchronize the sixty or seventy different times which beat simultaneously in every normal human system so that when eleven strikes, all the rest chime in unison, and the present is neither a violent disruption nor completely forgotten in the past. of them we can justly say that they live precisely the sixty-eight or seventy-two years allotted them on the tombstone. of the rest some we know to be dead though they walk among us; some are not yet born though they go through the forms of life; others are hundreds of years old though they call themselves thirty-six. the true length of a person’s life, whatever the “dictionary of national biography” may say, is always a matter of dispute. for it is a difficult business — this time-keeping; nothing more quickly disorders it than contact with any of the arts; and it may have been her love of poetry that was to blame for making orlando lose her shopping list and start home without the sardines, the bath salts, or the boots. now as she stood with her hand on the door of her motor-car, the present again struck her on the head. eleven times she was violently assaulted.

‘confound it all!’ she cried, for it is a great shock to the nervous system, hearing a clock strike — so much so that for some time now there is nothing to be said of her save that she frowned slightly, changed her gears admirably, and cried out, as before, ‘look where you’re going!’ ‘don’t you know your own mind?’ ‘why didn’t you say so then?’ while the motor-car shot, swung, squeezed, and slid, for she was an expert driver, down regent street, down haymarket, down northumberland avenue, over westminster bridge, to the left, straight on, to the right, straight on again...

the old kent road was very crowded on thursday, the eleventh of october 1928. people spilt off the pavement. there were women with shopping bags. children ran out. there were sales at drapers’ shops. streets widened and narrowed. long vistas steadily shrunk together. here was a market. here a funeral. here a procession with banners upon which was written ‘ra — un’, but what else? meat was very red. butchers stood at the door. women almost had their heels sliced off. amor vin — that was over a porch. a woman looked out of a bedroom window, profoundly contemplative, and very still. applejohn and applebed, undert —. nothing could be seen whole or read from start to finish. what was seen begun — like two friends starting to meet each other across the street — was never seen ended. after twenty minutes the body and mind were like scraps of torn paper tumbling from a sack and, indeed, the process of motoring fast out of london so much resembles the chopping up small of identity which precedes unconsciousness and perhaps death itself that it is an open question in what sense orlando can be said to have existed at the present moment. indeed we should have given her over for a person entirely disassembled were it not that here, at last, one green screen was held out on the right, against which the little bits of paper fell more slowly; and then another was held out on the left so that one could see the separate scraps now turning over by themselves in the air; and then green screens were held continuously on either side, so that her mind regained the illusion of holding things within itself and she saw a cottage, a farmyard and four cows, all precisely life-size.

when this happened, orlando heaved a sigh of relief, lit a cigarette, and puffed for a minute or two in silence. then she called hesitatingly, as if the person she wanted might not be there, ‘orlando? for if there are (at a venture) seventy-six different times all ticking in the mind at once, how many different people are there not — heaven help us — all having lodgment at one time or another in the human spirit? some say two thousand and fifty-two. so that it is the most usual thing in the world for a person to call, directly they are alone, orlando? (if that is one’s name) meaning by that, come, come! i’m sick to death of this particular self. i want another. hence, the astonishing changes we see in our friends. but it is not altogether plain sailing, either, for though one may say, as orlando said (being out in the country and needing another self presumably) orlando? still the orlando she needs may not come; these selves of which we are built up, one on top of another, as plates are piled on a waiter’s hand, have attachments elsewhere, sympathies, little constitutions and rights of their own, call them what you will (and for many of these things there is no name) so that one will only come if it is raining, another in a room with green curtains, another when mrs jones is not there, another if you can promise it a glass of wine — and so on; for everybody can multiply from his own experience the different terms which his different selves have made with him — and some are too wildly ridiculous to be mentioned in print at all.

so orlando, at the turn by the barn, called ‘orlando?’ with a note of interrogation in her voice and waited. orlando did not come.

‘all right then,’ orlando said, with the good humour people practise on these occasions; and tried another. for she had a great variety of selves to call upon, far more than we have been able to find room for, since a biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may well have as many thousand. choosing then, only those selves we have found room for, orlando may now have called on the boy who cut the nigger’s head down; the boy who strung it up again; the boy who sat on the hill; the boy who saw the poet; the boy who handed the queen the bowl of rose water; or she may have called upon the young man who fell in love with sasha; or upon the courtier; or upon the ambassador; or upon the soldier; or upon the traveller; or she may have wanted the woman to come to her; the gipsy; the fine lady; the hermit; the girl in love with life; the patroness of letters; the woman who called mar (meaning hot baths and evening fires) or shelmerdine (meaning crocuses in autumn woods) or bonthrop (meaning the death we die daily) or all three together — which meant more things than we have space to write out — all were different and she may have called upon any one of them.

perhaps; but what appeared certain (for we are now in the region of ‘perhaps’ and ‘appears’) was that the one she needed most kept aloof, for she was, to hear her talk, changing her selves as quickly as she drove — there was a new one at every corner — as happens when, for some unaccountable reason, the conscious self, which is the uppermost, and has the power to desire, wishes to be nothing but one self. this is what some people call the true self, and it is, they say, compact of all the selves we have it in us to be; commanded and locked up by the captain self, the key self, which amalgamates and controls them all. orlando was certainly seeking this self as the reader can judge from overhearing her talk as she drove (and if it is rambling talk, disconnected, trivial, dull, and sometimes unintelligible, it is the reader’s fault for listening to a lady talking to herself; we only copy her words as she spoke them, adding in brackets which self in our opinion is speaking, but in this we may well be wrong).

‘what then? who then?’ she said. ‘thirty-six; in a motor-car; a woman. yes, but a million other things as well. a snob am i? the garter in the hall? the leopards? my ancestors? proud of them? yes! greedy, luxurious, vicious? am i? (here a new self came in). don’t care a damn if i am. truthful? i think so. generous? oh, but that don’t count (here a new self came in). lying in bed of a morning listening to the pigeons on fine linen; silver dishes; wine; maids; footmen. spoilt? perhaps. too many things for nothing. hence my books (here she mentioned fifty classical titles; which represented, so we think, the early romantic works that she tore up). facile, glib, romantic. but (here another self came in) a duffer, a fumbler. more clumsy i couldn’t be. and — and —(here she hesitated for a word and if we suggest ‘love’ we may be wrong, but certainly she laughed and blushed and then cried out —) a toad set in emeralds! harry the archduke! blue-bottles on the ceiling! (here another self came in). but nell, kit, sasha? (she was sunk in gloom: tears actually shaped themselves and she had long given over crying). trees, she said. (here another self came in.) i love trees (she was passing a clump) growing there a thousand years. and barns (she passed a tumbledown barn at the edge of the road). and sheep dogs (here one came trotting across the road. she carefully avoided it). and the night. but people (here another self came in). people? (she repeated it as a question.) i don’t know. chattering, spiteful, always telling lies. (here she turned into the high street of her native town, which was crowded, for it was market day, with farmers, and shepherds, and old women with hens in baskets.) i like peasants. i understand crops. but (here another self came skipping over the top of her mind like the beam from a lighthouse). fame! (she laughed.) fame! seven editions. a prize. photographs in the evening papers (here she alluded to the ‘oak tree’ and ‘the burdett coutts’ memorial prize which she had won; and we must snatch space to remark how discomposing it is for her biographer that this culmination to which the whole book moved, this peroration with which the book was to end, should be dashed from us on a laugh casually like this; but the truth is that when we write of a woman, everything is out of place — culminations and perorations; the accent never falls where it does with a man). fame! she repeated. a poet — a charlatan; both every morning as regularly as the post comes in. to dine, to meet; to meet, to dine; fame — fame! (she had here to slow down to pass through the crowd of market people. but no one noticed her. a porpoise in a fishmonger’s shop attracted far more attention than a lady who had won a prize and might, had she chosen, have worn three coronets one on top of another on her brow.) driving very slowly she now hummed as if it were part of an old song, ‘with my guineas i’ll buy flowering trees, flowering trees, flowering trees and walk among my flowering trees and tell my sons what fame is’. so she hummed, and now all her words began to sag here and there like a barbaric necklace of heavy beads. ‘and walk among my flowering trees,’ she sang, accenting the words strongly, ‘and see the moon rise slow, the waggons go...’ here she stopped short and looked ahead of her intently at the bonnet of the car in profound meditation.

‘he sat at twitchett’s table,’ she mused, ‘with a dirty ruff on...was it old mr baker come to measure the timber? or was it sh-p — re? (for when we speak names we deeply reverence to ourselves we never speak them whole.) she gazed for ten minutes ahead of her, letting the car come almost to a standstill.

‘haunted!’ she cried, suddenly pressing the accelerator. ‘haunted! ever since i was a child. there flies the wild goose. it flies past the window out to sea. up i jumped (she gripped the steering-wheel tighter) and stretched after it. but the goose flies too fast. i’ve seen it, here — there — there — england, persia, italy. always it flies fast out to sea and always i fling after it words like nets (here she flung her hand out) which shrivel as i’ve seen nets shrivel drawn on deck with only sea-weed in them; and sometimes there’s an inch of silver — six words — in the bottom of the net. but never the great fish who lives in the coral groves.’ here she bent her head, pondering deeply.

and it was at this moment, when she had ceased to call ‘orlando’ and was deep in thoughts of something else, that the orlando whom she had called came of its own accord; as was proved by the change that now came over her (she had passed through the lodge gates and was entering the park).

the whole of her darkened and settled, as when some foil whose addition makes the round and solidity of a surface is added to it, and the shallow becomes deep and the near distant; and all is contained as water is contained by the sides of a well. so she was now darkened, stilled, and become, with the addition of this orlando, what is called, rightly or wrongly, a single self, a real self. and she fell silent. for it is probable that when people talk aloud, the selves (of which there may be more than two thousand) are conscious of disseverment, and are trying to communicate, but when communication is established they fall silent.

masterfully, swiftly, she drove up the curving drive between the elms and oaks through the falling turf of the park whose fall was so gentle that had it been water it would have spread the beach with a smooth green tide. planted here and in solemn groups were beech trees and oak trees. the deer stepped among them, one white as snow, another with its head on one side, for some wire netting had caught in its horns. all this, the trees, deer, and turf, she observed with the greatest satisfaction as if her mind had become a fluid that flowed round things and enclosed them completely. next minute she drew up in the courtyard where, for so many hundred years she had come, on horseback or in coach and six, with men riding before or coming after; where plumes had tossed, torches flashed, and the same flowering trees that let their leaves drop now had shaken their blossoms. now she was alone. the autumn leaves were falling. the porter opened the great gates. ‘morning, james,’ she said, ‘there’re some things in the car. will you bring ‘em in?’ words of no beauty, interest, or significance themselves, it will be conceded, but now so plumped out with meaning that they fell like ripe nuts from a tree, and proved that when the shrivelled skin of the ordinary is stuffed out with meaning it satisfies the senses amazingly. this was true indeed of every movement and action now, usual though they were; so that to see orlando change her skirt for a pair of whipcord breeches and leather jacket, which she did in less than three minutes, was to be ravished with the beauty of movement as if madame lopokova were using her highest art. then she strode into the dining-room where her old friends dryden, pope, swift, addison regarded her demurely at first as who should say here’s the prize winner! but when they reflected that two hundred guineas was in question, they nodded their heads approvingly. two hundred guineas, they seemed to say; two hundred guineas are not to be sniffed at. she cut herself a slice of bread and ham, clapped the two together and began to eat, striding up and down the room, thus shedding her company habits in a second, without thinking. after five or six such turns, she tossed off a glass of red spanish wine, and, filling another which she carried in her hand, strode down the long corridor and through a dozen drawing-rooms and so began a perambulation of the house, attended by such elk-hounds and spaniels as chose to follow her.

this, too, was all in the day’s routine. as soon would she come home and leave her own grandmother without a kiss as come back and leave the house unvisited. she fancied that the rooms brightened as she came in; stirred, opened their eyes as if they had been dozing in her absence. she fancied, too, that, hundreds and thousands of times as she had seen them, they never looked the same twice, as if so long a life as theirs had stored in them a myriad moods which changed with winter and summer, bright weather and dark, and her own fortunes and the people’s characters who visited them. polite, they always were to strangers, but a little weary: with her, they were entirely open and at their ease. why not indeed? they had known each other for close on four centuries now. they had nothing to conceal. she knew their sorrows and joys. she knew what age each part of them was and its little secrets — a hidden drawer, a concealed cupboard, or some deficiency perhaps, such as a part made up, or added later. they, too, knew her in all her moods and changes. she had hidden nothing from them; had come to them as boy and woman, crying and dancing, brooding and gay. in this window-seat, she had written her first verses; in that chapel, she had been married. and she would be buried here, she reflected, kneeling on the window-sill in the long gallery and sipping her spanish wine. though she could hardly fancy it, the body of the heraldic leopard would be making yellow pools on the floor the day they lowered her to lie among her ancestors. she, who believed in no immortality, could not help feeling that her soul would come and go forever with the reds on the panels and the greens on the sofa. for the room — she had strolled into the ambassador’s bedroom — shone like a shell that has lain at the bottom of the sea for centuries and has been crusted over and painted a million tints by the water; it was rose and yellow, green and sand-coloured. it was frail as a shell, as iridescent and as empty. no ambassador would ever sleep there again. ah, but she knew where the heart of the house still beat. gently opening a door, she stood on the threshold so that (as she fancied) the room could not see her and watched the tapestry rising and falling on the eternal faint breeze which never failed to move it. still the hunter rode; still daphne flew. the heart still beat, she thought, however faintly, however far withdrawn; the frail indomitable heart of the immense building.

now, calling her troop of dogs to her she passed down the gallery whose floor was laid with whole oak trees sawn across. rows of chairs with all their velvets faded stood ranged against the wall holding their arms out for elizabeth, for james, for shakespeare it might be, for cecil, who never came. the sight made her gloomy. she unhooked the rope that fenced them off. she sat on the queen’s chair; she opened a manuscript book lying on lady betty’s table; she stirred her fingers in the aged rose leaves; she brushed her short hair with king james’ silver brushes: she bounced up and down upon his bed (but no king would ever sleep there again, for all louise’s new sheets) and pressed her cheek against the worn silver counterpane that lay upon it. but everywhere were little lavender bags to keep the moth out and printed notices, ‘please do not touch’, which, though she had put them there herself, seemed to rebuke her. the house was no longer hers entirely, she sighed. it belonged to time now; to history; was past the touch and control of the living. never would beer be spilt here any more, she thought (she was in the bedroom that had been old nick greene’s), or holes burnt in the carpet. never two hundred servants come running and brawling down the corridors with warming pans and great branches for the great fireplaces. never would ale be brewed and candles made and saddles fashioned and stone shaped in the workshops outside the house. hammers and mallets were silent now. chairs and beds were empty; tankards of silver and gold were locked in glass cases. the great wings of silence beat up and down the empty house.

so she sat at the end of the gallery with her dogs couched round her, in queen elizabeth’s hard armchair. the gallery stretched far away to a point where the light almost failed. it was as a tunnel bored deep into the past. as her eyes peered down it, she could see people laughing and talking; the great men she had known; dryden, swift, and pope; and statesmen in colloquy; and lovers dallying in the window-seats; and people eating and drinking at the long tables; and the wood smoke curling round their heads and making them sneeze and cough. still further down, she saw sets of splendid dancers formed for the quadrille. a fluty, frail, but nevertheless stately music began to play. an organ boomed. a coffin was borne into the chapel. a marriage procession came out of it. armed men with helmets left for the wars. they brought banners back from flodden and poitiers and stuck them on the wall. the long gallery filled itself thus, and still peering further, she thought she could make out at the very end, beyond the elizabethans and the tudors, some one older, further, darker, a cowled figure, monastic, severe, a monk, who went with his hands clasped, and a book in them, murmuring —

like thunder, the stable clock struck four. never did any earthquake so demolish a whole town. the gallery and all its occupants fell to powder. her own face, that had been dark and sombre as she gazed, was lit as by an explosion of gunpowder. in this same light everything near her showed with extreme distinctness. she saw two flies circling round and noticed the blue sheen on their bodies; she saw a knot in the wood where her foot was, and her dog’s ear twitching. at the same time, she heard a bough creaking in the garden, a sheep coughing in the park, a swift screaming past the window. her own body quivered and tingled as if suddenly stood naked in a hard frost. yet, she kept, as she had not done when the clock struck ten in london, complete composure (for she was now one and entire, and presented, it may be, a larger surface to the shock of time). she rose, but without precipitation, called her dogs, and went firmly but with great alertness of movement down the staircase and out into the garden. here the shadows of the plants were miraculously distinct. she noticed the separate grains of earth in the flower beds as if she had a microscope stuck to her eye. she saw the intricacy of the twigs of every tree. each blade of grass was distinct and the marking of veins and petals. she saw stubbs, the gardener, coming along the path, and every button on his gaiters was visible; she saw betty and prince, the cart horses, and never had she marked so clearly the white star on betty’s forehead, and the three long hairs that fell down below the rest on prince’s tail. out in the quadrangle the old grey walls of the house looked like a scraped new photograph; she heard the loud speaker condensing on the terrace a dance tune that people were listening to in the red velvet opera house at vienna. braced and strung up by the present moment she was also strangely afraid, as if whenever the gulf of time gaped and let a second through some unknown danger might come with it. the tension was too relentless and too rigorous to be endured long without discomfort. she walked more briskly than she liked, as if her legs were moved for her, through the garden and out into the park. here she forced herself, by a great effort, to stop by the carpenter’s shop, and to stand stock-still watching joe stubbs fashion a cart wheel. she was standing with her eye fixed on his hand when the quarter struck. it hurtled through her like a meteor, so hot that no fingers can hold it. she saw with disgusting vividness that the thumb on joe’s right hand was without a finger nail and there was a raised saucer of pink flesh where the nail should have been. the sight was so repulsive that she felt faint for a moment, but in that moment’s darkness, when her eyelids flickered, she was relieved of the pressure of the present. there was something strange in the shadow that the flicker of her eyes cast, something which (as anyone can test for himself by looking now at the sky) is always absent from the present — whence its terror, its nondescript character — something one trembles to pin through the body with a name and call beauty, for it has no body, is as a shadow without substance or quality of its own, yet has the power to change whatever it adds itself to. this shadow now, while she flickered her eye in her faintness in the carpenter’s shop, stole out, and attaching itself to the innumerable sights she had been receiving, composed them into something tolerable, comprehensible. her mind began to toss like the sea. yes, she thought, heaving a deep sigh of relief, as she turned from the carpenter’s shop to climb the hill, i can begin to live again. i am by the serpentine, she thought, the little boat is climbing through the white arch of a thousand deaths. i am about to understand...

those were her words, spoken quite distinctly, but we cannot conceal the fact that she was now a very indifferent witness to the truth of what was before her and might easily have mistaken a sheep for a cow, or an old man called smith for one who was called jones and was no relation of his whatever. for the shadow of faintness which the thumb without a nail had cast had deepened now, at the back of her brain (which is the part furthest from sight), into a pool where things dwell in darkness so deep that what they are we scarcely know. she now looked down into this pool or sea in which everything is reflected — and, indeed, some say that all our most violent passions, and art and religion, are the reflections which we see in the dark hollow at the back of the head when the visible world is obscured for the time. she looked there now, long, deeply, profoundly, and immediately the ferny path up the hill along which she was walking became not entirely a path, but partly the serpentine; the hawthorn bushes were partly ladies and gentlemen sitting with card-cases and gold-mounted canes; the sheep were partly tall mayfair houses; everything was partly something else, as if her mind had become a forest with glades branching here and there; things came nearer, and further, and mingled and separated and made the strangest alliances and combinations in an incessant chequer of light and shade. except when canute, the elk-hound, chased a rabbit and so reminded her that it must be about half past four — it was indeed twenty-three minutes to six — she forgot the time.

the ferny path led, with many turns and windings, higher and higher to the oak tree, which stood on the top. the tree had grown bigger, sturdier, and more knotted since she had known it, somewhere about the year 1588, but it was still in the prime of life. the little sharply frilled leaves were still fluttering thickly on its branches. flinging herself on the ground, she felt the bones of the tree running out like ribs from a spine this way and that beneath her. she liked to think that she was riding the back of the world. she liked to attach herself to something hard. as she flung herself down a little square book bound in red cloth fell from the breast of her leather jacket — her poem ‘the oak tree’. ‘i should have brought a trowel,’ she reflected. the earth was so shallow over the roots that it seemed doubtful if she could do as she meant and bury the book here. besides, the dogs would dig it up. no luck ever attends these symbolical celebrations, she thought. perhaps it would be as well then to do without them. she had a little speech on the tip of her tongue which she meant to speak over the book as she buried it. (it was a copy of the first edition, signed by author and artist.) ‘i bury this as a tribute,’ she was going to have said, ‘a return to the land of what the land has given me,’ but lord! once one began mouthing words aloud, how silly they sounded! she was reminded of old greene getting upon a platform the other day comparing her with milton (save for his blindness) and handing her a cheque for two hundred guineas. she had thought then, of the oak tree here on its hill, and what has that got to do with this, she had wondered? what has praise and fame to do with poetry? what has seven editions (the book had already gone into no less) got to do with the value of it? was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice? so that all this chatter and praise and blame and meeting people who admired one and meeting people who did not admire one was as ill suited as could be to the thing itself — a voice answering a voice. what could have been more secret, she thought, more slow, and like the intercourse of lovers, than the stammering answer she had made all these years to the old crooning song of the woods, and the farms and the brown horses standing at the gate, neck to neck, and the smithy and the kitchen and the fields, so laboriously bearing wheat, turnips, grass, and the garden blowing irises and fritillaries?

so she let her book lie unburied and dishevelled on the ground, and watched the vast view, varied like an ocean floor this evening with the sun lightening it and the shadows darkening it. there was a village with a church tower among elm trees; a grey domed manor house in a park; a spark of light burning on some glass-house; a farmyard with yellow corn stacks. the fields were marked with black tree clumps, and beyond the fields stretched long woodlands, and there was the gleam of a river, and then hills again. in the far distance snowdon’s crags broke white among the clouds; she saw the far scottish hills and the wild tides that swirl about the hebrides. she listened for the sound of gun-firing out at sea. no — only the wind blew. there was no war to-day. drake had gone; nelson had gone. ‘and there’, she thought, letting her eyes, which had been looking at these far distances, drop once more to the land beneath her, ‘was my land once: that castle between the downs was mine; and all that moor running almost to the sea was mine.’ here the landscape (it must have been some trick of the fading light) shook itself, heaped itself, let all this encumbrance of houses, castles, and woods slide off its tent-shaped sides. the bare mountains of turkey were before her. it was blazing noon. she looked straight at the baked hill-side. goats cropped the sandy tufts at her feet. an eagle soared above. the raucous voice of old rustum, the gipsy, croaked in her ears, ‘what is your antiquity and your race, and your possessions compared with this? what do you need with four hundred bedrooms and silver lids on all your dishes, and housemaids dusting?’

at this moment some church clock chimed in the valley. the tent-like landscape collapsed and fell. the present showered down upon her head once more, but now that the light was fading, gentlier than before, calling into view nothing detailed, nothing small, but only misty fields, cottages with lamps in them, the slumbering bulk of a wood, and a fan-shaped light pushing the darkness before it along some lane. whether it had struck nine, ten, or eleven, she could not say. night had come — night that she loved of all times, night in which the reflections in the dark pool of the mind shine more clearly than by day. it was not necessary to faint now in order to look deep into the darkness where things shape themselves and to see in the pool of the mind now shakespeare, now a girl in russian trousers, now a toy boat on the serpentine, and then the atlantic itself, where it storms in great waves past cape horn. she looked into the darkness. there was her husband’s brig, rising to the top of the wave! up, it went, and up and up. the white arch of a thousand deaths rose before it. oh rash, oh ridiculous man, always sailing, so uselessly, round cape horn in the teeth of a gale! but the brig was through the arch and out on the other side; it was safe at last!

‘ecstasy!’ she cried, ‘ecstasy!’ and then the wind sank, the waters grew calm; and she saw the waves rippling peacefully in the moonlight.

‘marmaduke bonthrop shelmerdine!’ she cried, standing by the oak tree.

the beautiful, glittering name fell out of the sky like a steel-blue feather. she watched it fall, turning and twisting like a slow-falling arrow that cleaves the deep air beautifully. he was coming, as he always came, in moments of dead calm; when the wave rippled and the spotted leaves fell slowly over her foot in the autumn woods; when the leopard was still; the moon was on the waters, and nothing moved in between sky and sea. then he came.

all was still now. it was near midnight. the moon rose slowly over the weald. its light raised a phantom castle upon earth. there stood the great house with all its windows robed in silver. of wall or substance there was none. all was phantom. all was still. all was lit as for the coming of a dead queen. gazing below her, orlando saw dark plumes tossing in the courtyard, and torches flickering and shadows kneeling. a queen once more stepped from her chariot.

‘the house is at your service, ma’am,’ she cried, curtseying deeply. ‘nothing has been changed. the dead lord, my father, shall lead you in.’

as she spoke, the first stroke of midnight sounded. the cold breeze of the present brushed her face with its little breath of fear. she looked anxiously into the sky. it was dark with clouds now. the wind roared in her ears. but in the roar of the wind she heard the roar of an aeroplane coming nearer and nearer.

‘here! shel, here!’ she cried, baring her breast to the moon (which now showed bright) so that her pearls glowed — like the eggs of some vast moon-spider. the aeroplane rushed out of the clouds and stood over her head. it hovered above her. her pearls burnt like a phosphorescent flare in the darkness.

and as shelmerdine, now grown a fine sea captain, hale, fresh-coloured, and alert, leapt to the ground, there sprang up over his head a single wild bird.

‘it is the goose!’ orlando cried. ‘the wild goose...’

and the twelfth stroke of midnight sounded; the twelfth stroke of midnight, thursday, the eleventh of october, nineteen hundred and twenty eight.

奥兰多回到屋里。屋里静悄悄的，一片沉寂。这里有她的墨水瓶、她的笔，还有中断了的诗稿，当时她正在赞颂永恒，巴斯克特和巴特洛莫进来送茶，打断了她，她正准备说，一切都没有变。然而，三秒半钟后，一切都变了，她跌断踝骨，坠人爱河，嫁给了谢尔默丁。

这一点，她有手上的结婚戒指为证。不错，她确是在遇到谢尔默丁之前，自己把它戴上的，但结果证明，它不但解决不了问题，情况反而更糟。现在，她满心敬畏，很迷信地不停转动这戒指，生怕它从骨节上滑下来。

“结婚戒指必须戴在左手第三指上才行，”她说，孩童一样小心翼翼地重复学到的课程。

她说话的声音很大，口气中也添了不少炫耀的色彩，仿佛希望某人无意中听到她的话，而此人的意见又是她极为看重的。现在既然终于能够理清思绪，她就很关心自己的行为会对时代精神产生什么影响。她迫不及待地想知道，她与谢尔默丁订婚并嫁给他，在这件事上，她的所作所为，能否得到时代精神的赞许。她显然感觉好多了，自沼泽地之夜后，她再没觉得手指刺痛过，一次也算不上痛过。但她无法否认自己仍有疑问。不错，她是嫁了人，但她的丈夫总在绕合恩角航行，这能算是婚姻吗?如果她喜欢他，这算是婚姻吗?如果她喜欢上了其他人，这算是婚姻吗?最后，倘若世上她最渴望的依然是写诗，这算是婚姻吗?她很怀疑。

不过，她要来检验一下。她看看戒指，又看看墨水瓶。她是否有这个勇气?没有，她没有。但她必须这样做。不行，这不行。那她该怎么办呢?昏厥过去，如果有这个可能的话。但她一辈子都没如此这般的精气神儿十足。

“真该死!”她大喊，又上来了过去的那股劲儿。“来吧!”

她拿起笔，狠狠地杵进墨水瓶。令她大吃一惊的是，并没有迸溅发生。她提笔出来，笔尖湿漉漉的，却没有滴滴答答。她写了起来，文思虽有些迟慢，但来总是要来的。啊!但它们来得可有道理?她思索着，忽然觉得心慌意乱，惟恐手中的笔又会不听使唤，闹出什么恶作剧来。她读道：

我行到一片野地，蔓布的绿草因为低垂的贝母花萼愈见颓靡，蛇一般的花朵，郁郁寡欢，陌生模样，裹在沉闷的紫色中，好似埃及姑娘——

她边写边感到有个精灵(切记我们现在是与人类精神最朦胧的表现形式打交道)在她身后探头探脑，窥视她的写作。当她写到“埃及姑娘”时，那精灵让她停笔。绿草这个字嘛，用得还中规中矩，它似乎在说，拿了一把家庭女教师用的戒尺，从头开始评说。低垂的贝母花萼，很妙。蛇一般的花朵嘛，这想法出自女士之口，或许过分了，但华兹华斯无疑会对它赞许有加；而姑娘这词?姑娘这词有必要吗?你说你有个丈夫在合恩角?那好啊，这就没问题了。

于是时代的精神传续下去。

奥兰多现在对时代精神心存(因为这一切都发生在心中)深深的感激。以小比大，就好似一个知道自己箱子里塞了一捆雪茄的旅行者，对大度放行的海关官员心存感激一样。因为奥兰多很怀疑，如果时代精神仔细检查她的头脑，会发现其中有一些严重的违禁品，为此她会遭重罚。她不过是勉强逃脱而已，靠的是耍了点小聪明，顺从时代的精神，例如戴上戒指，在沼泽地找到一位男人，以及热爱自然，不当讽刺家，不愤世嫉俗，也不当牛理学家，那等货色立即就会被人发现。她大大松了一口气，她确实很可以这样做，因为作家与时代精神之间的交易无限微妙，作家的作品有什么样的命运，全部系之于这两者之间达成的妥善。奥兰多做了如此安排，她现在处于非常幸福的状态，既不需要抗拒自己的时代，也不需要屈从它。她是时代的产物，又保持了自己的独立性。所以，现在她可以写作，而且她也确实在写作。她写啊，写啊，写啊。

眼下是十一月。十一月过后是十二月。之后是一、二、三、四月。四月之后是五月。而后是六、七、八月。再后是九月。然后是十月，瞧，我们又回到十一月，完成了整整一年的循环。

这样写传记，有其好处，却也多少空洞无味，长此下去，恐怕读者会抱怨，他自己也能背日历，何必按霍加思出版公司(1917年由弗吉尼亚·吴尔夫与丈夫共同创建，主要出版吴尔夫本人及其他一些新作家的作品)的所谓合适订价去掏腰包买这本书。但是，如果传主把传记作者置于尴尬境地，像奥兰多对我们这样，传记作者又有什么法子?任何一个值得我们去请教的人，都会同意生活是小说家或传记作家惟一适当的主题。这些权威人士还言之凿凿地说，生活与坐在椅子上胡思乱想毫不沾边。思想与生活，是相去甚远的两极。因此，既然坐在椅子上胡思乱想是奥兰多目前的所作所为，那么在她结束胡思乱想之前，我们除了背日历、手捻了念珠祈祷、擦鼻涕、拨弄炉火、观望窗外，就别无它事好做了。奥兰多坐枉那里，一动不动，屋里静得甚至可以听到大头针掉在地上的声音。倘若真有根大头针掉到地上也好啊!那也是一种生活。或者有只蝴蝶拍拍翅膀从窗子飞进来，落在她的椅子上，我们也可以写写这件事。或者假设她站起来，杀死一只黄蜂。我们立即就可以提笔开写，因为那样就会有流血，即便只是一只黄蜂的血。哪里有流血，哪里便有生活。虽然与杀人相比，杀只黄蜂不过是区区小事，但它仍然更适合拿来当小说家或传记作家的主题，胜过整天坐在椅子上胡思乱想，旁边放支烟、再放上纸笔和墨水瓶。我们可以抱怨说(因为我们正变得愈来愈不耐烦)，传主若能体谅传记作家的苦衷，该有多好!你已在她身上花了如此之多的时间，找了如此之多的麻烦，现在还有什么比看到她完全溜出你的掌握更让你恼火呢?她沉迷于——你目睹她叹气、喘息、脸红一阵白一阵、目光时而灼灼炯炯，时而昏昏蒙蒙。亲眼目睹这一切情感骚动的无声表演，却明白引起它们的是思索和遐想这等不足挂齿的原因，难道这还不是最让人感到屈辱的吗?

但奥兰多是女人，帕尔默斯顿勋爵刚刚证明了这一点。描写女人的生活，人们的共识是，行动可以不论，只管讲述爱情。有位诗人说过，爱情是女人生存的要义。我们看一眼伏案写作的奥兰多，就必须承认，她的确是最适合这一使命的女子。当然，既然她是女子，又有美貌，且在妙龄，她很快就会不再煞有介事地写作和思索，开始哪怕思念一位猎场看守人(只要她是在想男人，无人反对女人思索)。然后，她将给他写张小纸条(只要她写小纸条，也无人反对女人写作)，约他星期日黄昏时分幽会，而星期日黄昏将至，猎场看守人将在窗下吹口哨。所有这一切，当然正是生活的本质，而且是小说惟一可能的素材。那么奥兰多是不是肯定会做这些事情中的一件呢?唉，简直太遗憾了，奥兰多一件也没有做。如此一来，我们是否必须承认，奥兰多属于那些没有爱情的谬种?她喜欢狗，忠于朋友，酷爱诗歌，曾慷慨解囊，救济十来个饥肠辘辘的诗人。但爱情与善良、忠诚、慷慨或诗歌毫不相干。我们此处所说，是男性小说家定义的那种爱情，毕竟除此之外，何人还能有更大的权威呢?爱情就是褪去衬裙和——我们大家都知道爱情是什么。那么奥兰多做没做那件事呢?事实迫使我们说没有，她没有做。那么，倘若我们的传主既不去爱，又不去杀人，只是思索和遐想，那我们就可以断定他或她几乎是死尸一具，我们应该一走了之。

现在，留给我们的惟一对策，就是眺望窗外。窗外有麻雀、椋鸟、几只鸽子和一两只秃鼻乌鸦，都在忙着追求自己的时尚，或寻觅蚯蚓，或寻觅蜗牛，或振翅飞上树枝，或在草皮上行走一圈。一个男仆，腰上系着绿色台面呢围裙，穿过庭园。我们假定他与配餐室的某个女仆私通，不过在庭园里又没有什么明显的证据，我们只能希望结局圆满，然后一走了之。流云掠过天空,一片片，一团团，把草地映衬得忽明忽暗，变幻不定。日晷神秘如常，记录着时光的流逝。面对这千篇一律的生活，人的大脑开始懒洋洋地、徒然地抛出一两个问题。生活，它唱道，或者不如说它低吟，好似壁炉架上的一把水壶，生活，生活，你是什么?是明还是暗?是仆人的台面呢围裙，还是草地上椋鸟的阴影?

那么，在这个夏日的清晨，这个人人爱慕绚烂的花朵和蜜蜂之时，让我们走出去，探索。嗡嗡嘤嘤的椋鸟，站在簸箕沿儿上，啄食柴枝草棍间下人掉落的头发。让我们来问问它(它比云雀更会交际)的意见，我们倚在农舍的大门边，问道，什么是生活；生活，生活，生活!椋鸟叫着，仿佛它听到而且明白我们在说什么。我们有这种令人讨厌的窥探习惯，先在屋里提出问题，然后跑到外面东窥西探，掐几朵雏菊，恰似作家才思枯竭之时所做的那样。椋鸟说，然后，他们到这里来，问我什么是生活；生活，生活，生活!

之后，我们沿着沼泽地中的小径，疲惫地登上高高的山脊，身下是深紫色的山岚。在那里，我们扑向大地；在那里，我们浮想联翩；在那里，我们注视一只螳螂，费力地把一根稻草运回洼地的老家。螳螂说，劳作就是生活(倘若可以给这种来回搬运冠以如此神圣又温柔的名称)，或者我们就是这样来解释它那被灰尘呛得窒息的喉管发出的呼呼声。蚂蚁对此表示赞同，还有蜜蜂。但我们躺在这里，若时间久长，可以问傍晚飞来的飞蛾。它们偷偷穿行在灰白色的轮生叶欧石南中。在我们耳边，它们轻轻发出疯狂的呓语，好似暴风雪中电报线发出的声音：嘻嘻，呵呵。笑声，笑声!飞蛾说。

我们已经问过了人、鸟和昆虫，至于鱼嘛，住在绿色洞穴、常年孤零、渴望鱼能张嘴说话的人们告诉我们，它们从不言语，因此可能知道什么是生活——一路问过后，我们并没有变得聪明，只是变得愈加衰老、愈加冷漠(难道我们过去没有祈祷有那么一本书，可以概括出一些我们称之为生活真谛的稀世珍宝吗?)得了，我们还是回去，直截了当地对翘首以待的读者说，关于什么是生活——天哪，我们一无所知。

此刻，仿佛是为了及时拯救本书不致夭折，奥兰多推开椅子，伸了伸胳膊，扔掉手中的笔，走到窗口，宣布：“大功告成!”

她几乎因眼前的非凡景象而趺坐在地。眼前是花园，花园里有几只鸟。世事依旧。在她写作的全部时间里，一切都在继续。

“我若死去，世界不会有任何变化!”她喊道。

她的感觉是如此强烈，她甚至想象自己已经死去，而她确实也觉得有些眩晕。有那么一会儿，她站在那里，呆呆地望着窗外那美丽、冷漠的景象。最后，她以一种奇特的方式苏醒过来。她怀中的手稿开始蠕动和跳跃，好似成了活物。更奇特的是，她和它是如此意气相投，奥兰多侧着头，可以听出它在说什么。它希望被人阅读。它必须被人阅读。倘若无人阅读，它会死在她的怀里。她平生第一次对自然生出激烈的反感。她周围有猎犬和玫瑰花丛。但猎犬和玫瑰花丛都不能阅读。这是上苍可悲的疏忽，而她过去从未意识到这一点。惟有人类具有这种天赋，因此人类成了必须。她摇铃唤人，吩咐立即备车去伦敦。

“还来得及赶上十一点四十五分的火车，夫人，”巴斯克特说。奥兰多尚未意识到蒸汽机已经发明，她一直深深沉浸于人的生存的痛苦，这人虽然不是她自己，却完全系之于她。所以她这是第一次看到火车。她在一节车厢中坐下来，用毯子围好双膝，却没有去想“那了不起的发明，过去二十年来已(历史学家说)彻底改变了欧洲的面目”(其实，这类事情发生的频繁程度要大大超过历史学家的预测)。她只注意到它满身煤灰，发出可怕的轰鸣声，窗户卡住打不开。她陷入沉思之中，不到一小时，就被风驰电掣的火车带到伦敦，站在查林克罗斯站的站台上，茫然不知所向。

十八世纪时，她在布莱克弗里亚斯的那所老房子里，度过了许多愉快的时光。现在，那所老房子卖掉了，一部分卖给救世军，一部分卖给了一家雨伞厂。她在梅费尔另外购置了一所房子，卫生、舒适，位于时尚世界的中心。然而在梅费尔，她的诗就能如愿以偿吗?祈祷上帝，她想，记起贵妇们明亮的眼睛和老爷们匀称的双腿，那些人还没有养成阅读的习惯。不过他们若是养成阅读习惯，就更糟了。那里有r夫人的公馆，公馆里还在继续同样的谈话，对此她确信无疑。那位将军的痛风可能从左腿移到了右腿。l先生可能与r而非t共度了十天。然后蒲伯先生走了进来。啊!但是蒲伯先生已经去世。当今的才子是谁呢，她好奇地想。但这不是一个能向脚夫提出的问题，于是她继续向前走。马头上发出的清脆铃声转移了她耳朵的注意力。一队队奇形怪状带轮子的小箱子，停在人行道边，排成行。她来到斯特兰德大道，这里更是喧嚣一片。形形色色的大小车辆夹杂在一起，拉车的或是纯种马，或是挽马，乘客或只有一位老年贵妇，或拥挤不堪，连车顶上都坐满头戴丝帽、留八字胡的男人。她的眼睛习惯了朴素的大开本书籍，马车、大车和公共马车看来惊人的不协调；她的耳朵习惯了笔的沙沙声，街上的喧嚣听来格外邪恶、刺耳。人行道上熙熙攘攘、川流不息的人群，绕过车水马龙，不停地向东西两个方向涌去。道边的男人在兜售一盘盘小玩艺儿。街角的女人守着大篮春天的鲜花高声叫卖。男孩儿手举报纸穿梭于马鼻子之间，口喊出大事了!出大事了!最初，奥兰多以为国家到了什么危急时刻，却闹不清是喜是悲。她急于从人们脸上找到答案，反而愈发的糊涂。这边过来一个人，满脸绝望，自言自语，痛不欲生。紧接着挤过来一个胖子，兴高采烈，仿佛全世界都在过节。她最后得出一个结论，此中既无规则也无逻辑可循。男男女女，各人忙各人的事。那么她该到哪里去呢?

她继续漫无目的地向前走，沿一条街走下去，又沿另一条街折回来。街道两旁的大玻璃窗里，堆砌着手袋、镜子、晨衣、鲜花、渔竿、午餐篮子；彩带和气球悬挂了一圈又一圈，装饰着五花八门、琳琅满目的商品。有时，她经过一条条大道，两旁的房子静悄悄的，郑重其事地编了号，次第排到二、三百号。这些房子看起来一模一样，皆是两根柱子、六节台阶、两幅窗帘匀称地拉好，桌上铺排开全家人的午餐。一扇窗里，一只鹦鹉望向窗外另一扇窗里，一个男仆望向窗外。那般单调，直看得她头晕目眩。这时，她来到一个开阔的大广场，广场中央，一座座黑色雕像闪闪发光，皆是体态臃肿的男人，衣服扣子绷得紧紧的，还有腾跃的战马、高耸的柱子和飞溅的喷泉，鸽子在广场上飞来飞去。她沿着住宅夹出的人行道走啊，走啊，直走得饥肠辘辘。突然，有什么东西在她怀中颤动，仿佛在责备她怎么把它忘得一干二净。那是她的手稿《大橡树》。

她对自己的疏忽有些手足无措，一动不动地站在原地。四周空空荡荡，宽阔、华丽的大街上连马车的影子也没有，只有一位老绅士正向她走来。他的步态中有某种东西，让她觉得似曾相识。他走得更近了，她肯定自己曾经见过他。但是在哪里呢?这位油光水滑、大腹便便的绅士，手里提根手杖，扣眼中插朵鲜花，面庞丰满红润，蓄着雪白的八字胡须，这可能吗?天啊，可能，就是他!她那很久很久以前的老朋友尼克·格林!

与此同时，他也看到了她，而且记起并认出了她。“奥兰多小姐!”他喊道，挥帽致敬，丝帽子差点儿掉到地上。

“尼古拉斯爵士!”奥兰多惊呼。从他的举止中，她凭直觉知道这个家伙如今已经发迹，受封骑士是肯定的，无疑还得了其他不少头衔。当年在伊丽莎白时代，他写一行字只能挣一便士稿酬，但他惯于恶言诽滂，曾对她和众多旁人极尽奚落讥诮之能事。

他欠了欠身，表示承认她的结论完全正确；他现在是爵士、文学博士和教授，著作等身。简言之，他是维多利亚时代最有影响的评论家。

邂逅多年前给她带来巨大痛苦的人，奥兰多心中掀起感情的轩然大波。难道这就是那个焦躁不安的讨厌鬼?把她的地毯踩出窟窿，在她的意大利壁炉上烤奶酪，大讲马洛等人的故事，听得她如醉如痴，几乎夜夜到天明。如今，看他却是衣冠楚楚，灰色的晨礼服，扣眼上别一朵粉色花朵，再配上灰色仿麂皮手套。她还在惊奇，他又深深鞠了一躬，问她能否赏光与他共进午餐?或许鞠躬此举有些多余，但对高雅教养的模仿却值得称道。她边想边跟在他身后，走进一家高级餐馆，里面清一色的红地毯、白台布、银制调味瓶，与那些老酒馆或咖啡馆没有丝毫相似之处。那些地方都是沙地、长条木凳，碗里盛了潘趣酒和巧克力，还有大张的报纸和痰盂。现在，他把手套整整齐齐放在身前的桌上。她依然难以相信他就是同一个格林。他过去指甲总有一英寸长，现在却很干净；过去胡子拉碴的下巴，现在刮得光光的。过去他的内衣袖口总是磨破，浸到肉汤里，现在却配上了金链扣。的确，直到他非常精心地点叫葡萄酒，令她忆起许久以前他对马姆齐甜酒的嗜好，她才确信他是同一个格林。“啊!”他轻轻舒了一口气，但仍有些做作。“啊!我亲爱的小姐，文学的伟大时代已经结束。马洛、莎士比亚、本·琼生，这些人是巨人。德莱顿、蒲伯、艾迪生，这些人是英雄。他们，他们现在都不在了。他们给我们留下了什么呢?丁尼生((1809—1892)，英国桂冠诗人)、布朗宁(布朗宁 (1812一1889)，英国诗人)、卡莱尔（(1795—188d，苏格兰散文作家和历史学家。）!”他的声音充满谴责的意味。“事实上，”他一边说，一边给自己斟上一杯葡萄酒，“我们所有的青年作家，如今都被书商雇了来生产卖得出去的垃圾，赚钱付账给裁缝。’’他一边说，一边给自己盛了点儿开胃小吃。“这个时代的标志就是十足的造作和疯狂的猎奇。对所有这些，伊丽莎白时代的人一刻都不能容忍。”

“不，我亲爱的小姐，”他接着说，一面点点头，认可侍者拿来请他过目的脆皮大鲆鱼。“伟大的时代已经结束。我们的时代每况愈下。我们必须珍惜往昔，尊重那些效法古代的作家，这些人所剩无几，他们写作不为报酬，而为……”听到此处，奥兰多差点儿喊出“荣悦!”两字。的确，她可以发誓，她所听到的与三百年前一字不差。当然，列举的名字不同了，但精神未变。尽管受封为骑士，尼克·格林没有变。当然，也不是一点儿没变。他喋喋不休地谈论效仿艾迪生(曾经是西塞罗，她想)，早晨躺在床上至少一小时(她骄傲地想，是她按季度付给他年金，他才有可能这样做)，翻来覆去地背诵最杰出作家的最杰出作品，然后再动笔，这样才能荡涤时下的粗俗，净化我们可悲的母语(她相信他在美国住了很长时间)。他的喋喋不休几乎与三百年前完全相同，但她有时间问自己，那么他的变化究竟在何处? 他变得肥胖，但他已年近七十。他变得光鲜整洁，文学显然已经成为一项有利可图的事业，但他过去那种躁动和鲜活的生命力已经丧失。他的故事依然有声有色，却缺少了过去的随意和轻松。不错，他依然每隔一秒钟就要提一次“我亲爱的朋友蒲伯”，或“我那大名鼎鼎的朋友艾迪生”，但他的神情里透出的那种循规蹈矩让人沮丧。况且，他现在更乐于讲的，似乎是她的那些血亲的言谈行状，完全不像以前，大讲诗人的秽闻轶事。

奥兰多的失望无以名状。所有这些年(原因可以是她的与世隔绝、她的社会地位和她的性别)，文学在她心中，狂野如风，炽烈如火，迅捷如闪电；它飘忽流走、难以预料、突如其来。可现在，瞧，文学成了身着礼服、公爵夫人不离口的老绅士。她的失望是如此剧烈，以至上衣的一个扣袢或扣子进开了，什么东西掉了出来，落到桌上。是《大橡树》，一首诗。

“手稿!”尼古拉斯爵土说，戴上金边夹鼻眼镜。“有意思，真是太有意思了!请允许我过目一下。”时隔三百来年，尼古拉斯·格林再次拿起奥兰多的诗作，放在咖啡杯和酒杯之间，开始读起来。不过现在，他的评判可与当年大相径庭。他一边翻阅，一边说这诗让他想起艾迪生的《卡托》，又说它可与汤姆逊的《四季》（詹姆斯·汤姆逊(1700—1748)，英国诗人，主要作品有歌咏自然的无韵诗 (四季》、长诗(自由)等，(四季)开创了19世纪浪漫主义诗歌之先河。）相媲美。没有时代精神的痕迹，他很欣慰地说，诗中充满叮对真理、自然和人性的关注，在目下这一无耻、怪僻的时代，这一点确实难能可贵。当然，这诗应该立即出版。

说实话，奥兰多全然不懂他在说些什么。这部诗稿她总是揣在怀里，尼古拉斯爵士觉得这一做法很好笑。

“你对版税有什么想法?”他问道。（ 版税的英文royalty也作王族讲，因此才有下句奥兰多对白金汉宫的联想。）

奥兰多听了，立即联想到白金汉宫和凑巧住在里面的一些愁眉不展的君主。

尼古拉斯爵士这回更是乐不可支。他解释道，他没有明说的是，如果他给(此处他提到一家名气很大的出版社)某几位先生写几个字，他们会很乐于把这本书列入他们的书单。他或许可以安排两千册以下百分之十、两千册以上百分之十五的版税。至于书评，他会亲自给某先生写几个字，此人影响颇大；然后不妨恭维某编辑的妻子几句，譬如小小地吹捧一下她的诗，总是有利无害。他将拜访某某……就这样，他喋喋不休地说个不停，奥兰多一句没听懂，而且根据过去的经验，也不完全信任他的和蔼可亲。但除了屈服，她别无办法，因为这显然是他的希望，也是那诗稿本身炽烈的期望。于是，尼古拉斯爵士把这血染了的一小捆手稿弄平整，小心翼翼地插进胸前的口袋，惟恐它弄皱了自己的衣服。两人又客套了一番，各自走散。

奥兰多走在街上，觉得怀里空荡荡的，她已经习惯了怀中揣着那诗稿。诗稿不在了，她就变得无事可做，惟有随意思考些什么——譬如命运难得的机会。此时她一个已婚女子，手戴戒指，走在圣詹姆斯街上。这里曾有家咖啡馆，现在成了餐馆；下午三点半，阳光融融，街上有三只鸽子、一只杂种小猎犬、两辆神气的轻便马车和一辆活顶四轮马车。那么，什么是生活呢?这想法冷不丁闯入她的头脑，与其他事情毫不相干(除非因为见到了老格林)。每当什么事冷不丁闯入她的大脑，她会立即跑到附近的电报局，打电报给她的丈夫(他在合恩角)。我们在考虑她与丈夫的关系时，可以把这一点作为一个注解，是褒是贬，读者自行判断。当时附近凑巧有个电报局。“我的老天谢尔，”她在电报中这样写道，“今天生活文学格林……”以下她开始使用他们两人发明的一种暗语，即用一两个字传达无限复杂的精神状态，而电报员也毫无觉察。她加上“拉提根格鲁姆福布”，就可精确地概括了这一切。因为不仅上午发生的事对她影响深刻，而且读者无法不注意到，奥兰多长大了，不一定变得更好，而“拉提根格鲁姆福布”描述了非常复杂的精神状态，读者只要调动自己全部的聪明才智，就可能发现这一点。

电报发出了，可能几小时后才能收到答复。她望了一眼高空中疾走的流云，想到合恩角可能正在刮大风，因此她的丈夫现在很可能正攀到桅杆顶上，或在砍断绳索，放走一些破烂的圆材，甚至独自在一条小船上，身边只剩下一块饼干。她离开邮局，为消磨时间，转身进了下一家店铺。这样的店铺在如今可谓稀松平常，根本无须描述。但在奥兰多眼里，它却新奇之极。这是一家书店。奥兰多一辈子只知道手稿，她曾手捧粗糙的棕色折纸，上面有斯宾塞的手迹（斯宾塞(1552— 1599)，英国诗人，以他的长篇寓言诗《仙后》闻名），小字潦草。她看过莎士比亚和弥尔顿的手泽。她拥有相当数量的对开本和四开本手稿，里面常夹有一首赞美她的十四行诗，有时还夹了一绺头发。但眼下这无数的小本子让她惊诧无比。它们鲜亮、短小、一模一样，似乎都印在薄绵纸上，用薄纸板装订。人们只需花半个克郎，就可买下莎士比亚的全部作品，装在口袋里。这些书上的字太小，几乎无法阅读，但它们仍然是奇迹。“作品”，她所认识或听说过的每一作家的作品，以及更多作家的作品，陈列在长长的书架上，从一端到另一端。桌椅上散乱地堆放了更多的“作品”。她翻了一两页，多是尼古拉斯爵士等人论述他人作品的作品。奥兰多无知地以为，既然他们的作品都已付梓印刷，装订成册，他们想必都是大作家。于是她下了一道惊人的命令，吩咐书店老板把店里的大著悉数送往她家，然后走了出去。

她转身进了海德公园。旧时的海德公园她很熟悉(她还记得，汉米尔顿公爵被莫汗爵土的剑刺穿身体，倒在遭雷击劈裂的那棵大树下)。她的两片嘴唇，翕动着把她的电报变成一套单调、毫无意义的说词：今天生活文学格林拉提根格鲁姆福布，弄得好几个公园管理人很怀疑地打量她，直到注意到她颈上的珍珠项链，才断定她的精神没毛病。在这类事情上，她那两片嘴唇无疑难辞其咎。在一棵大树下，她摊开从书店带出的一捆报纸和评论期刊，趴在地上，支起双肘，竭力想弄明白这些大师如何操练散文这门高尚艺术。她身上仍存有过去的那种轻信，所以甚至廉价的周报，在她眼中也很神圣。于是她支着双肘，开始读尼古拉斯爵士在一篇文章中，评论她曾认识的某人的选集，那人便是约翰·多恩。但不知不觉之中，她躺在了离蟒湖（伦敦海德公园中长形人工湖）不远的地方。无数条狗的吠叫声在她耳边响起。马车轮子不停地匆匆而过。树叶在她头顶上轻轻叹息。不时有一条镶边的裙子和一条猩红色的紧腿裤在离她只有几步远的地方穿过草地。还有一只巨大的橡皮球弹到报纸上。深深浅浅的紫罗兰、橘黄、红和蓝色，透过树叶的缝隙，一闪一闪地照在她手指的翡翠上。她读完一句话，仰头望望天空；她仰头望望天空，又低头看看报纸。生活?文学?两者必须你中有我，我中有你?但那真是难于上青天啊!因为，这边过来了一条猩红色紧腿裤，艾迪生会怎样描写它?那边过来了两只狗，立起后腿跳舞，兰姆（兰姆(1775—1834)，英国散文家、评论家。）又会怎样形容它们?读了尼古拉斯爵士及其朋友的文章(她不时四处张望，倒也不耽误她的阅读)，她莫名其妙地得出这样一个感觉，即永远、永远不应说实话。这个感觉令人极不舒服。她边想边站起身走了。她站在蟒湖畔，湖水是铜绿色的；细如蜘蛛的小船掠过水面，在两岸间穿梭。她接下去想，他们让人觉得，写作时必须永远言不由衷(她不禁眼泪汪汪)。因为，真的，她边想边用脚趾把一条小船推离湖岸，我觉得我无法(此时，如同其他文章，尼古拉斯爵士的整篇文章，在读过十分钟后，他的房间的模样、他的头、他的猫、他的写字台的模样，以及写作当天的时间，都出现在奥兰多眼前)，她继续想，从这个角度评判文章，我觉得自己无法坐在书房里，不，不是书房，是乏味的起居室，整天同一些英俊小伙子聊天，给他们讲些小小的趣闻轶事，譬如杜波说了斯迈尔斯什么，然后再叮嘱他们此事不可外传。她痛苦地抹了一把眼泪，继续想，他们都那样有男子气概；而我讨厌公爵夫人，我不喜欢蛋糕。我虽然已经够恶毒，但我永远学不会像他们那样恶毒，所以我怎能成为批评家，写出我们时代最好的英语散文呢?诅咒这一切吧!她叫道，狠狠地发动了那一便士的小汽船，她用力太猛，那可怜的小船差点儿葬身铜绿色的波浪中。

事实上，人们处于某种精神状态时(护士用语)——而此刻眼泪仍在奥兰多的眼眶里打转——看到的东西就会变形，同一样东西，不再是其本身，却成了别的东西，大了许多，重要了许多。处于这种精神状态时，看蟒湖，波浪瞬间变成大西洋的滔天巨浪，模型船变得与远洋轮没有区别。因此，奥兰多误以为模型船是她丈夫的双桅帆船；她用脚趾掀起的波浪是合恩角排山倒海的巨浪。她看到模型船攀上涟漪，却以为看到的是邦斯洛普的船，它攀上光亮而透明的高墙，愈来愈高，一道夹裹了成千上万毁灭的白色波峰淹没了它；它冲进这成千上万的毁灭，消失了。“它沉了!”奥兰多脱口喊出，痛不欲生。但瞧啊，它又出现在大西洋的另一边，安安稳稳地行驶在鸭群中间。

“妙极了!”她大叫。“妙极了!哪里有邮局?”她想知道。“我必须马上给谢尔发电报，告诉他……”她急急忙忙向公园街赶去，嘴里交替重复着“蟒湖中的模型船”和“妙极了”，因为这两个想法可以互换，意思完全相同。

“模型船，模型船，模型船，”她口中不断重复这几个字，逼迫自己承认，重要的不是尼克·格林或约翰·多恩的文章，也不是八小时法案或契约或工厂法，而是某些无用的、突如其来的、暴烈的东西；某些使人丧生的东西；红色、紫色、蓝色；喷射；飞溅；就像那些风信子(她正经过一个精致的风信子花圃)；没有对人性的败坏、依赖和玷污，没有对人的出身的讲求；某些莽撞、荒唐的东西，就像我的风信子，我的意思是，就像我的丈夫邦斯洛普；重要的是蟒湖中的模型船和妙极了的感觉，重要的是妙极了的感觉。于是她在斯坦霍普门等待过马路时开始大声说话，因为除了无风的季节，她总不能与丈夫在一起，而它所造成的后果，就是她在公园街上大声胡言乱语。倘若她像维多利亚女王建议的那样，这么多年一直生活在丈夫身边，事情无疑会大不相同。因为有时她会突然想起他，觉得必须立即与他交谈。她一点儿不在乎自己可能胡言乱语，或者语无伦次。尼克·格林的文章让她陷入绝望的深渊，而模型船又把她抛上欢悦的高峰，所以她站在那里，等着过马路，口中念念有词：“妙极了，妙极了。”

然而那个春天的下午，交通拥挤不堪，她只得耐心等待，口中不断重复妙极了，妙极了，还有蟒湖中的模型船这两句话。而此时，英格兰的富豪权贵，正头戴礼帽、身披大氅，正襟危坐在四驾马车、维多利亚式马车和四轮四座敞篷大马车中。仿佛一条黄金的河流凝固了，在公园街聚结成一块块金条。女士们用手指拈着名片盒；男士们双膝夹稳镶金手杖。奥兰多站在那里，目不转睛地观看，又是赞叹，又是畏怯。惟有一个想法让她不安。有谁见过大象或鲸鱼一类庞然大物，对这个想法想必不陌生，即这些庞然大物如何繁殖?它们显然会很讨厌紧张、变化和活动。奥兰多望着那些一本正经的面孔，心想或许他们的生殖时代已经结束，这即是果实，这即是最终目的。她现在看到的，就是一个时代的非凡成果。他们冠冕堂皇地坐在那里。但这时，警察的手放了下来；车水马龙开始流动起来；由各种辉煌之物组成的巨大凝结物开始运动、疏散，最后消失在皮卡迪利广场。

她穿过公园街，向她在科松街的房子走去。在那里，当绣线菊白花盛开时，她能忆起鹬唳声和一位带枪的老人。

她迈进家门，一边想着，自己还记得切斯菲尔德勋爵说过的话。她还可以看到，在她那朴素的十八世纪的大厅里，切斯菲尔德勋爵风度翩翩，帽子放这边，大衣放那边，他的姿态是那样赏心悦目。但她的记忆在这里被阻断。大厅里凌乱地堆放了许多包裹。她坐在海德公园时，书店老板已派人送来她的订货。现在，宅子里堆满了维多利亚时代的文学作品，都用灰纸和细绳包扎得整整齐齐，楼梯上还有包裹滑下来。她能抱几包抱几包，回到自己的房间，又命男仆把其他的全部搬来，然后迅速剪断无数的细绳。很快，她就被包围在书山之中。

奥兰多习惯了十六、十七、十八世纪时文学作品的缺稀，现在她被自己这一行动的结果吓坏了。因为对维多利亚时代的人来说，维多利亚时代的文学当然不只限于四个独特的伟人的名字，而是四个伟人的名字镶嵌于无数的亚利山大·史密斯、迪克森、布莱克、米尔曼、巴克尔、泰恩、佩恩、塔珀和詹姆森之中，这些人无一不是能言善辩、吵吵嚷嚷，非常惹眼，而且处处要求得到与别人同等的注意。奥兰多一向敬畏印刷品，这让她面临一项苦差，但她把椅子拉到窗前，凭着梅费尔区大宅与大宅之间滤射进来的光线，试图得出一个结论。

对维多利亚时代的文学，要想得出结论，惟有两条途径，这一点现在已很清楚。或者八开本的著作写上六十大卷，或者把这个结论压缩到以下六行字的长度。现在既然时间所剩无几，为节省起见，在这两个途径中，我们还是选择后者。那么奥兰多(在打开半打书后)得出的结论是，没有一本书题献给某位贵族，这很奇怪；其次(在翻阅了一大摞回忆录后)，有几位作家的家谱有她的家谱一半厚；再次，如果克里斯蒂娜·罗塞蒂小姐前来饮茶，（克里斯蒂娜·罗塞蒂(1830—1894)，英国“前拉斐尔派”女诗人。）拿一张十英镑的钞票裹住方糖夹是极端失策之举；再次(有半打庆祝一百周年的宴会请帖)，既然文学吃了所有这些晚宴，一定变得十分肥硕；再次(她被邀请参加许多讲座，主题均为某某人对某某人的影响、古典的复兴、浪漫主义的幸存，以及其他同样动人的各式名称)，既然文学听了所有这些讲座，一定变得十分枯燥；再次(她出席了一位贵妇的招待会)，既然文学披挂上如此一堆裘皮披肩，一定变得十分尊贵；再次(她拜访了卡莱尔在切尔西的隔音房间)，既然天才需要如此悉心呵护，他们一定变得十分娇贵；于是她终于得出自己的最后结论，这个结论举足轻重，但我们已大大超出六行的限制，所以只能对它略而不谈。

得出这一结论后，奥兰多久久伫立窗前，凝视窗外。因为，任何人得出一个结论，就如同将球抛向球网的另一边，必须等待那无形的对手把它抛回来。她想知道，从切斯菲尔德大宅上那片黯淡的天空，会有什么东西飞下来给她?她握紧双手思索着，站立了相当长一段时间。突然之间，她吃了一惊——此处我们只能希望，如同上次，纯洁、贞操和谦恭会把门推开一条缝，至少提供一个喘息的机会，让我们有时间想想，作为传记作者，如何掩饰这段必须小心讲述的历史。啊，但她们没有这样做!当年这几位小姐把白色衣裙抛给赤裸的奥兰多，看到它落在离她还有几英寸的地方；这些年来她们已放弃了与她交流，现在正忙着别的事情。那么，在三月这个阴暗的早晨，难道不会发生任何事情，来缓和、遮掩、藏匿这无可否认的事件吗?无论它是什么样的事件?因为经过这一突如其来的一惊，奥兰多——然而赞美上苍，此时此刻，窗外开始响起微弱、尖细、长笛般柔和、清澈、飘忽、时断时续的老式手摇风琴声，如今时不时也还有意大利的街头琴师在小巷里摇这种风琴。尽管它很土气，发出的吱嘎声上气不接下气，但我们还是接受这干预吧，仿佛它是天音流转，用它来填充此页，直到那无法回避的时刻到来，对此，男仆已经看得一清二楚，女仆也很明白，读者同样不得不看到；因为奥兰多本人显然已无法继续不理不睬。让手摇风琴声响起，带着我们的思绪漂游，因为乐声响起时，思绪不过是一条随波逐流的小船，在所有载体中，它最笨拙，也最游移不定。思绪漂到屋顶，那晾衣服的后院——这是什么地方?你是否认出那大片绿色、中间的尖顶，和两边蹲伏了一对狮子的大门?啊，对，那是丘花园!行，就停在丘花园吧。于是，我们到了丘花园，我今天(三月二日)要指给你们看，在那棵李树下，有一株麝香兰，一株番红花，还有杏树上的粒粒花苞。走到那里，就要想到球茎，多毛的、红色的球茎，十月时插人大地；现在开花了；就是要幻想出更多难以出口的事情，就是从烟盒里拿出一支香烟甚至一支雪茄，就是把一件斗篷铺到大橡树下(因为韵律的需要：英文里斗篷(cloak)与橡树(oak)压韵，故有韵律之说。)，坐下来等待那只翠鸟，据说有人看到它傍晚时分穿梭于两岸之间。

等等!等等!翠鸟来了；翠鸟没来。

瞧，此时此刻，工厂的烟囱在冒烟；瞧，市政府的文职人员乘着轻便小船在湖中闪过。瞧，老妇人在遛狗，年轻的女仆第一次戴上新帽子，戴得角度都不对。瞧他们所有人。尽管上苍仁慈地命令隐藏人心中的秘密，我们因此永远受到诱惑，去猜测一些虚无缥缈的东西；但我们依然透过袅袅烟圈，看到对一顶帽子、一条小船、地沟里一只老鼠的天生的欲望，那欲望燃起，就像当年我们看到——当手摇风琴声响起，思绪如此这般泼溅到浅盘上，就有了这种愚蠢的跳跃——君士坦丁堡附近清真寺光塔背后的田野里烈火熊熊燃起。我们歌颂欲望得以实现之辉煌。

欢呼天生的欲望吧!欢呼幸福!神圣的幸福!以及形形色色的欢娱，鲜花与美酒，虽然前者凋谢，后者令人醉生梦死。星期日花半个克郎买张票离开伦敦，在昏暗的小教堂里赞美死亡或者做点儿什么，打断那些打字、信件归档、编造谎言、建立帝国的勾当。甚至欢呼女店员唇上那道红红的、粗俗的弯弓(仿佛朱庇特用大拇指笨拙地蘸了红墨水，顺手草草涂写的一个标志)。无论男性小说家怎样说，欢呼幸福吧!穿梭于两岸之间的翠鸟一切天生欲望的实现。或祷告；或否认；欢呼吧!无论幸福是什么形式，希望它来得更多、更古怪。因为阴暗的溪流淌动着——倘若它真像韵律所暗示的“仿佛梦境一般”（英文里溪流(stream)与梦境(dream)压韵。）——但我们通常的命运尚不及此；没有梦，只有活着、沾沾自喜、滔滔不绝、循规蹈矩，仿佛生活在遮天蔽日的大树之下，当翠鸟蓦地从一岸掠向另一岸时，那橄榄绿色的浓荫淹没了远去翠鸟羽翼上的蓝光。

那么，欢呼幸福吧，而此后的梦境不再值得庆贺，在那些梦境中，清晰的影像膨胀变形，犹如乡间小客栈店堂里污迹斑斑的镜子，映出一张变形的脸。在漆黑的梦境中，完整裂成碎片，我们变成无数小碎块儿；但沉睡，沉睡，睡得如此深沉，一切形状都碾成无限柔软的齑粉，一片神秘莫测的朦胧，在那里，蜷曲着，藏在裹尸布里，如一具木乃伊，似一只蛾子，我们躺在深深的睡梦的沙滩上。

不过且慢!且慢!这一次，我们并不打算造访那阴暗的领地。蓝光一闪，似一根火柴，从眼前划过，它飞了起来，熊熊燃烧，冲破沉睡的封锁；翠鸟；红色、稠密的生命之潮，折回头来，流淌，奔涌。我们起身，视线(因为一首韵诗是多么轻而易举，就让我们完成了从死到生的尴尬过渡)落到——(此时手摇风琴声戛然而止)。

“是个男孩，漂亮极了，夫人，”接生婆班廷太太说，把奥兰多的头生子放到她怀里。换句话说，三月二十日凌晨三时，奥兰多平安产下一子。

奥兰多再次站到那扇窗前，不过读者可以鼓足勇气；同类的事情今日不会再发生，而这也不是同一日了。因为我们若像奥兰多那样望向窗外，会发现公园街已面目全非。人可以在那里站上十几分钟，像奥兰多现在一样，却看不见一辆四轮大马车驶过。“瞧那玩艺儿!”过了一些天后，她会惊呼起来，因为她看到，一节截短的车厢，很滑稽可笑的样子，没有马拉，自己滑了过去。没有马拉的马车!说到这儿，她被人叫走了，过了一段时间才回来，又看了一眼窗外。如今的天气变得很奇怪。她禁不住想到，天空变了。爱德华国王，看，他在那里，刚钻出那辆式样灵巧的布鲁厄姆车，去拜访街对面的某位女士。他继承了维多利亚女王的王位，天空不再阴霾密布，也不再折射出五颜六色的光彩。云雾缩成一层薄纱；天空似乎由金属制成，热天时光泽全无，成了铜绿或橘黄色，如同烟雾中金属的颜色。这压缩有点儿吓人。一切似乎都压缩了。前一晚，她的车经过白金汉宫，她过去以为会永存下去的庞然大物，现在竟然消失得无影无踪；高高的礼帽、寡妇的丧服、号角、望远镜、花圈，全消失得一千二净，人行道上没有留下它们的任何踪迹，连个水坑都没有。然而现在——又过了一段时间，她再次回到窗前最喜爱的位置。现在是夜晚了，变化更是覆地翻天。看那些屋里的灯光!用手一触，整个房间灯火通明，成百上千的房间灯火通明；而且间间相同。一个个小方盒子，里面的一切一览无余；没有了隐私，没有了以往那些徘徊的身影和隐蔽的角落，没有了那些身着围裙、手端油灯的女人，她们把油灯放在这张或那张桌上，灯光颤抖着，摇曳着。如今，只要用手一触，整个房间立即灯火通明。天空彻夜明亮．街道也很明亮，一切都很明亮。中午，她又回到窗前。女人们近来变得多么狭长啊!她们看上去全似玉子杆子，笔直、光鲜、一模一样。男人的面颊光滑如手掌。空气非常干燥，显出一切事物的光彩，似乎也使面颊上的肌肉变得僵硬，要哭泣愈发困难了。水有两秒钟就变热。常春藤或者枯死，或者从房子的外墙亡袖铲去。植物生长得不那么繁茂，家庭也小得多了。窗帘和盖布卷起来，墙壁露出本来的面目，挂上些色彩鲜艳的新图片，或镶在镜框中，或画在木头上，图中都是实物，譬如街道啦、雨伞啦、苹果啦。有某种鲜明、独特的时代特点，令她想起十八世纪，但有一种铤而走险、一种疯狂的东西，她正这样想着，好似几百年来一直走在一条漫长无比的隧道中，隧道豁然开朗，光线倾泻进来；她的思想神秘地变得非常紧张，仿佛一个调琴师，把调弦的家伙插进她的脊背，然后旋紧神经；与此同时，她的听力变得非常敏锐，可以听到屋里一切细微的动静，座钟的滴答声好似击锤声。几秒钟的光景，光线愈发明亮，她看到一切愈来愈清晰，座钟的滴答声也愈来愈响亮，直至在她耳中发出可怕的爆炸声。奥兰多跳起来，仿佛头上挨了重重的一击。她被击了十下。事实上，这是一九二八年，十月十一日，上午十时，也就是现时。

奥兰多跳起来，手按心口，脸色灰白，这也并不足怪。还有什么能比现时这一启示更可怕呢?我们能够抵挡住这一惊吓，完全在于前有往昔、后有未来的庇护。不过眼下，我们可没有时间思考这一问题，奥兰多已经晚了。她跑下楼，跳上汽车，推下离合器，汽车嗖地向前冲去。庞大的蓝色建筑物高耸入云；红色的烟囱帽七零八落地散布在空中；马路似银头钉子闪闪发光；面色苍白的公共汽车司机，呆板地驾驶着双层车，居高临下地向她逼来；她注意到海绵、鸟笼、成箱的彩色防水布。但在驶过当下走一独木桥时，她不允许这些景象渗入她的脑海，哪怕只有微小的一丁点儿，惟恐落人桥下汹涌的急流。“你就不能眼睛看着你要去的地方?……手伸出来行不行?”她厉声说，好像这些话猛地脱口而出。街上人山人海，人们过马路时，根本不看要去的方向。他们围着商店的平板玻璃窗嘁嘁嚓嚓，窗里五颜六色，光彩夺目。奥兰多觉得这些人好似蜜蜂，但这想法立即被剪断，她眨了眨眼睛，恢复了透视感，看到他们是人。“你就不能眼睛看着你要去的地方?”她厉声喊道。

她终于来到马歇尔和斯奈尔格罗夫百货商店，走了进去，各种色彩和气味扑面而来。现时如沸腾的水珠，从她的身上洒落。摇曳的灯光如夏日微风吹拂起的轻软衣料，上下飘荡。她从手袋中拿出一张单子念起来，声音古怪又拘谨，仿佛她正在一个流出五彩水的水龙头下捧着这些字：男孩靴子、浴盐、沙丁鱼。她看见灯光照在上面，这些字词不断变化。浴盐和靴子变得迟钝；沙丁鱼变成锯齿形，像把锯子。她站在一楼的男装部，东张西望，用力嗅着各种气味，耽误了几秒钟，然后走进电梯，只因为电梯门开着。电梯平稳地向上行驶，她想，如今的生活结构本身就是魔术。十八世纪时，我们知道每件事的来龙去脉；但现在，我腾起在空中，听见人们从美国发出的声音，看见人们飞上天空，但这都是怎么回事，我甚至无从猜测。我又开始相信魔术了。这时电梯咯吱一声停在二楼，她看到五颜六色、琳琅满目的商品在微风中飘扬，传来奇特的气味；电梯每停一次，电梯门每开一次，都会有另一个小世界展现在你眼前，那个世界的各种气味扑面而来。她忆起伊丽莎白时代泰晤士河畔的外坪，运珍宝的船和商船停靠在那里。它们的气味是多么丰富、多么奇特啊!她把手指头探进装珍宝的麻袋，粗糙的红宝石漏过她的手指，那感觉她至今记忆犹新。然后与苏姬——不管她叫什么名字吧——躺在一起，坎伯兰的灯笼一闪一闪照在他们身上!坎伯兰家族现在有栋房子在波特兰街，前两天她与他们共进午餐，还冒昧地拿希思路的救济院跟那老头子开了个小小的玩笑。他听后直眨眼睛。但此时电梯已经上到顶层，她不得不下来，进了天知道他们所谓的什么“部”。她一动不动地站在那里，查看自己的购物单，但哪儿那么容易就找到单子上吩咐的浴盐或男孩靴子呢。她什么也没有买，就打算下楼去了，幸好她并没有鲁莽行事，因为她不由自主大声念出单子上的最后一项，而它凑巧是“双人床单”。

“双人床单，”她对柜台前站着的一个男人说，感谢老天的安排，那男人恰巧是卖床单的。因为格里姆斯迪奇，不对，格里姆斯迪奇已经死了；巴特洛莫，不对，巴特洛莫也死了；那么是路易丝，路易丝前两天气急败坏地来找她，因为在君王卧榻的床单上发现了一个洞。许多国王和女王都在铺了这床单的卧榻上睡过——伊丽莎白、詹姆斯、查理、乔治、维多利亚、爱德华，难怪床单上有个洞呢。但路易丝断言她知道是谁干的。是康索尔特王子。

“讨厌的德国佬!”她说(因为又发生过一次战争，这一次是与德国人开仗)。

“双人床单，”奥兰多迷迷糊糊地重复了一遍，因为一张铺着银色床罩的双人床，她现在想起来，也觉得房间的格调有点儿俗，全是银色的，但她当年装饰这房间时，正格外青睐这种金属。那男人去拿双人床单了，她掏出小镜子和粉扑，一边漫不经心地补妆，一边想，女人现在的举止再没有那般含蓄，可不像当年她变成女人、躺在“痴情女郎”号甲板上时那样了。她不慌不忙，在自己的鼻子上浅浅扑了几下。她从不碰面颊，老实说，虽然已经三十六岁，她看上去一点不老，依旧是那样噘着嘴，那样郁郁寡欢，那样英俊，那样肤色红润(像一棵装饰了无数蜡烛的圣诞树，萨莎曾说)，恰似那天在冰上，泰晤士河封冻，他们去溜冰——

“最上乘的爱尔兰亚麻制品，夫人，”那店员说，在柜台上摊开床单。她心不在焉地摸着床单，就在此刻，分隔两个营业部的弹簧门打开了，或许是从装饰品部那边，飘来一股蜡烛的香气，仿佛是粉红色的蜡烛，那香气曲曲弯弯，如贝壳包着一个人形儿，年轻、苗条、诱人。是男孩还是女孩?啊，是个姑娘，上帝!毛皮、珍珠、俄罗斯裤子；但无情无义，无情无义!

“无情无义!”奥兰多喊起来(那男人已走开了)，整个商店似乎上下翻腾着滚滚黄水，她看到远方出海口处那条俄罗斯大船的桅杆。那香气生出的海螺壳奇迹般地 (或许门又开了)变成一个台子，从那高台上走下一个臃肿的女人，身着裘皮衣，保养得很好，妖冶冷艳，头戴冠冕，她是一位大公的情妇，正靠在伏尔加河畔吃三明治，一边看人们溺水而死；她开始穿过商店，向她走来。

“啊，萨莎!”奥兰多喊了起来。她真的很震惊，没想到她会变成这样，那么臃肿，那么无精打采。她赶紧低下头看床单，好让那幽灵，那穿裘皮衣的半老徐娘和穿俄罗斯裤子的姑娘的幽灵，以及它所带来的蜡烛、白花和旧船气味从她身后过去，别注意到她。

“夫人，今天要不要再买些餐巾、毛巾、尘拂?”店员追问。幸亏有张购物单子，奥兰多举起来看看，才能镇定自若地回答，现在这世上她惟一需要的，就是浴盐；而它在另一个商品部才能找到。

再次乘坐电梯——任何景象的重复都能给人以深刻印象——她再次下沉，远离当下；当电梯砰的一声降到地面上时，她觉得自己听到一只罐子摔碎在河岸上。至于找到她所要去的商品部，无论是哪一个，她若有所思地站在各式手提包中间，对所有店员的建议充耳不闻。这些店员个个彬彬有礼、身穿黑衣、头发梳得齐整，显得生气勃勃。他们一概是什么人的后裔，可能有些人也像她一样，自豪地来自久远的过去，但他们选择降下现时这道防护屏，于是今天他们不过是百货商店的店员。奥兰多犹豫不决地站在那里，透过巨大的玻璃门，可以看到牛津街上的车流。双层汽车似乎堆到了一起又分开。那天泰晤士河里的冰块也这样翻腾。一位老绅士穿着皮拖鞋骑在一块冰上。他沉下去了——她现在可以看到他——嘴里诅咒着爱尔兰叛乱者。他沉下去了，就在她的汽车所停之处。

“时光弃我而去，”她想，试图打点精神，“这就是中年的来临。多奇怪啊!一切都不再简单。我拎起手袋，想到的是冰上冻僵的老妇。有人点燃一支粉红色蜡烛，我看到的却是穿俄罗斯裤子的姑娘。走出门外，就像我现在这样，”她踏上牛津街的人行道，“我闻到了什么?草药。我听到山羊脖子上的铃铛声。我看到崇山峻岭。土耳其?印度?波斯?”泪水溢满她的眼眶。

读者或许会觉得，奥兰多离现时有点儿太远了，他们看到她正准备钻进自己的汽车，满眼都是泪水和波斯高原的幻象。的确，善于把握生活的人，顺便说一句，这些人往往是些无名之辈，不能否认，这些人有时设法把六、七十个时间协同起来，让它们在正常的人体内同时跳动，因此当十一点的钟声敲响，所有其他时间齐鸣，当下即非剧烈的断裂，亦非全然沉溺于往昔。对于这些人，我们可以公正地说，他们不多不少地活了墓碑上分配给他们的六十八年或七十二年。其他人虽然走在我们中间，我们却知道他们已经死了；有些人尽管经历了生命的形式，但他们还没有出生；另一些人虽然自称三十六岁，却已经活了几百岁。无论《英国名人传记辞典》上怎么说，人生的真正长度，永远是个有争议的话题。因为这种计时十分棘手；转眼就能扰乱它的，莫过于接触任何艺术。或许因为迷恋诗歌，奥兰多丢了购物单，没有买沙丁鱼、浴盐和靴子，就开始往家走。现在，她把手放在自己的车门上，站在那里，现时开始狠狠敲击她的脑袋。她挨了结结实实的十一下。

“讨厌死了!”她大叫。因为钟声对神经系统震动巨大，所以关于奥兰多，我们这会儿没有什么可报告的，除了她眉头微蹙，令人钦佩地换挡，又像以前那样脱口喊道：“看着你要去的方向!”“你糊涂了还是怎么的?”“那你为什么不承认?”同时驾了汽车嗖一下冲出去，东拐西拐，钻来钻去，因为她驾车是把好手。她驶过摄政王街、干草市场、诺塔姆伯兰德大道，上了威斯敏斯特桥，左拐，直行，右拐，再直行……

一九二八年十月十一日星期四，老肯特路上行人络绎不绝，已蔓延到了人行道外。女人们拎着购物袋。孩子们东跑西窜。布店大减价。街道窄了又宽，宽了又窄。长条的远景缩挤到一起。这边叫卖，那边发丧。一会儿一队人打了旗子，上面写着“集——失”，但其他的字是什么呢?肉的颜色鲜红。屠夫们站在门口。女人们的鞋跟几乎削平了。有个门廊上写着“爱战——”。一个女人从卧室窗口向外凝望，一动不动，若有所思。艾珀尔约翰和艾珀尔伯德，殡仪——。没有什么东西能够从头到尾看到完整的全部。永远是只看到开头——譬如两个朋友过街时遇上了——看不到结尾。二十分钟后，人的身心如撕碎的纸片，从麻袋中颠了出来。的确，驾车疾驶出伦敦的过程，恰似在失去知觉、或许在死去之前，个性被剁成小块，以至从何种意义上可以说奥兰多存在于现时，成了一个悬而未决的问题。的确，我们差点儿以为她已经完全解体，但此时，终于从右侧伸出一道绿色的帷帐，衬托出缓缓下落的小纸片；然后左侧又伸出另一道帷帐，可以看到不同的纸片在空中打旋儿；绿色帷帐在两侧不断伸展，她的头脑恢复了聚合事物的魔术手法，她看到了一座农舍、一个晒谷场、四头牛，都与实物一样大小。

奥兰多这才松了口气，默默点燃一支烟，一口一口地吸了一两分钟。然后，她迟疑地叫了一声“奥兰多?”，仿佛她想见的人可能不在那里。因为如果七十六个不同的时间(碰巧)一起在脑子里滴答滴答走起来，老天啊，得有多少不同的人同时停留在人的内心?有些人说是两千零五十二。那么此人现在正好独自一人，她唤“奥兰多?”(倘若这是此人的名字)，意思是说，得了，得了!我烦死这个自我了，我想要另一个自我，这真是天下最稀松平常的事。因此我们才在朋友身上看到那些惊人的变化。但这也并非就会一帆风顺，因为人们虽然可以像奥兰多那样(假定出城来到乡村，需要另一个自我)唤一声“奥兰多?”，但她需要的奥兰多，可能并不肯前来；我们建立起的这些自我，一个叠一个，好似侍者手中一摞盘子，它们在其他地方有自己的事业、自己意气相投的朋友，自己小小的宪法和权利，随便你怎么称呼(这些事大多没有名称)，因此一个只肯下雨时来，一个要房间里有绿窗帘才来，另一个得等琼斯先生不在时，还有一个要你允诺给它一杯酒等等，等等；因为每人都能根据自己的经历，成倍地增加与不同自我达成的不同妥协，有些荒唐透顶，根本无法在书中提及。

就这样，在谷仓近旁的拐弯处，奥兰多呼唤“奥兰多?”有点质问的口气。她等了一会儿，但那个奥兰多没有来。

“那好吧，”奥兰多随和地说，这种时候人们往往如此。她又来试另一个，因为她有许许多多不同的自我可以召唤，远远超出我们的篇幅所能允许。传记只须叙述六七个自我，就可以认为是完整的了，而一个人完全可能有上千个自我。那么，选择那些我们已经叙述过的，奥兰多现在召唤的，可能是那个砍断套在黑鬼骷髅头上绳索的少年；也可能是又把骷髅头拴好吊起的少年、坐在山坡上的少年、看到诗人的少年、向女王呈上玫瑰水碗的少年；或者她在召唤那个爱上萨莎的青年、廷臣、大使、军人、旅行者；或许是那女子、吉卜赛人、娴雅的贵妇、隐修士、热爱生活的少女、文人的女恩主、那个称马尔(意为热水澡和傍晚的炉火)或谢尔默丁(意为秋天树林中的番红花)或邦斯洛普(意为我们每天死过一遍)或三个称呼联在一起的女人，这后一个意思更多，篇幅所限，容不得我们把它写出来。所有这些自我都不相同，她可以召唤它们中的任何一个。

或许如此；然而似乎可以肯定(因为我们现在身处“或许”和“似乎”的领域之内)，她最需要的那个自我却游离在外，从她的讲话中可以听出，她在不断变换自我，速度之快，就像她驾驶的汽车，每拐一次弯，都有一个新的自我出现。而知觉中的自我才是最重要的，有产生欲望的能力，此时，碰巧出于某种莫名其妙的原因，它仅仅希望保持自我。这即是某些人所谓的真我，人们说，它集中了人身所有的自我，由它作为船长来加以指挥，它把它们锁起来，它就是钥匙，它还把它们合并在一起，加以控制。奥兰多肯定是在寻找这一自我，因为读者可以根据无意中听到她驾车时说的话，判断出这一点(倘若这些话听起来杂乱无章、支离破碎、琐碎又枯燥，有时根本不知所云，那就是读者的错了，谁让你听一位女士自言自语呢；我们只管照搬她的话，在括号中加上我们认为哪一个自我在说话，但我们的猜想很可能并不正确)。

“那么是什么?是谁呢?”她说。一个女人，三十六岁，坐在汽车里。这点不错，但还有无数其他。势利眼，我是那样吗?府邸里悬挂嘉德勋章?豹子纹章?祖先? 因他们感到自豪?是的!贪婪、奢侈、堕落?我是那样吗?(此时一个新的自我出现)。是又如何?我才不在乎呢。忠诚?我想是的。慷慨?啊，那不算数(此时又一个新的自我出现)。一上午不起床，听鸽子叫，床上铺得都是精致的亚麻织物；银碟、美酒、男女仆人。娇惯坏了?可能。拥有的太多，却一事无成。于是有了我的书(此处她提到五十种经典作品；我们觉得，这代表了她撕掉的那些早期浪漫作品)。敏捷、善辩、浪漫。但(此时另一个自我出现)笨手笨脚。我真是再笨拙不过了。还有——还有——(此处她在迟疑是否该说那个词，如果我们建议用“爱情”，有可能不对，但她确实笑了，而且脸红，然后喊出声来)翡翠蟾蜍!哈里大公!天花板上的青蝇!(此时另一自我出现)。但是奈尔、基特、萨莎呢?(她陷入阴郁之中：实际上是眼泪不由自主地在眼眶中打转，因为她早就不再哭泣)。树木，她说。(此时另一个自我出现。)我喜欢在这里生长了二千年的古树(她经过树丛)。还有谷仓(她经过路边一个摇摇欲坠的谷仓)。还有牧羊犬(这边来了一只，颠颠儿地跑过公路。她小心翼翼地避开它。)还有夜晚。但是人(此处另一个自我出现)。人嘛?(她作为问题又重复了一遍。)我不知道。饶舌、恶毒、不说实话(此时她拐进家乡小镇的主要街道。)这天正是集日，街上挤满了农夫、牧人、挎着篮子的老妇，篮子里装着老母鸡。我喜欢农民。我知道庄稼是怎么回事。但(此时另一个自我犹如灯塔射出的光束，跃过她的思维的顶部出现了。)名望!(她大笑。)七版。获奖。晚报上登出照片(此处她指的是《大橡树》和她所获的伯德特·库茨纪念奖；此处我们必须占用一点儿篇幅，略微交待一下，作为她的传记作者，我们的确深感不安，因为她漫不经心地一笑，就带过了全书的高潮和尾声。但谁让传主是女人，高潮和尾声——一切都乱套了，她要强调的，永远都与男人不同)。名望!她重复了一遍。诗人——骗子；两者都像每日清晨的邮件一样定时出现。宴请，聚会；聚会，宴请；名望——名望!(此时她不得不放慢车速，穿过市场上熙熙攘攘的人群。没有人注意到她。一位获奖女士吸引的注意力，远不及鱼贩店里的鼠海豚，即使她还可以一个叠一个，戴上三重冠冕。)现在她把车开得很慢，嘴里哼着一首老歌，“我有几块金币，拿来做什么。买了几棵树儿，长满花骨朵。花开了，花开了，走进花花树丛，听我把话说。告诉我的儿子，名望值几何。”她这样哼着，所有的词开始这里瘪进一块，那里瘪进一块，好似用沉甸甸的珠子串起来的野蛮人的项链。“走进花花树丛，”她唱道，使劲强调这些词，“看月亮缓缓升起，大车离去了……”她突然住嘴，使劲盯着汽车的引擎罩，陷入冥想之中。

“他坐在特薇琪的桌旁，”她沉思着，“皱领有点脏……是老贝克先生来量木材尺寸?还是莎——比——亚?”(我们在自言自语地说崇拜的人名时，从来不说完整。)她凝视前方十分钟，车几乎停住不动了。

“萦回梦绕!”她喊到，忽然推下加速器。“萦回梦绕!我还是孩童时即如此。野鹅飞过。野鹅从窗前飞过，飞向大海。我跳起来(她更紧地握住方向盘)，伸出胳膊想抓住它。但野鹅飞得太快。我看到过它，在这里——那里——那里一—英格兰、波斯、意大利。它总是飞得很快，飞向大海，而我，总在它身后撒出网一般的文字(她把手撒出去)，它们皱缩成一团，就像收回的网，我在码头上看到过的，网中只有水草；有时，网底有一英寸的银子——六个字。但从来没有捕到珊瑚丛中的那条大鱼。”她垂下头，苦苦思索。

她不再召唤“奥兰多”，一心想着别的事情，就在此刻，她刚才呼唤的奥兰多自动出现了；现在她身上开始发生的变化(她已驶过看门人的小屋，进入庭园)仿佛就证明了这一点。

她全身沉静下来，就好似添了一个衬托物，于是有了外表的浑圆和结实，于是由浅变深，由近变远，一切都似井中之水，只能在深井四壁之内回旋。她沉默不语，在增加了这个奥兰多之后，不论是与非，她成为所谓惟一的自我、真实的自我。她不再言语。因为或许人们在大声言语时，那些自我(可能多达两千余个)知道它们是相互割裂的，于是试图彼此交流，而真的有了交流之后，它们反而沉默不语了。

她技术娴熟地驶在弯弯曲曲的车道上，车速很快。车道穿越庭园内起伏的草坪，两旁是榆树和橡树。那起伏十分平缓，仿佛碧绿平滑的潮水漫上河滩。这里齐整地种植了一丛丛山毛榉和橡树，牡鹿倘佯其间，一只颜色雪白，另一只歪着头，因为铁丝网挂住了它的角。她心满意足地注视着这一切，树、鹿和草坪，仿佛她的心化为水，在它们四周流淌，紧紧围住它们。片刻，车驶近庭院，几百年来，她骑马或乘六轮马车到这里来，鞍前马后都有男人随从。这里曾经羽饰飞舞，火把通明，满树盛开的花朵，在风中轻轻抖动。如今，这里只有她一人，秋叶萧萧下落。看门人打开大门。“早安，詹姆斯，”她说，“车里有些东西。你把它们拿进来好吗?”人们将承认，这几个字本来既无美感，也毫无意义，一点儿都不重要，现在却鼓鼓胀胀，充满了含义，仿佛熟透的坚果从树上坠落，这证明，如果平凡瘪缩的表皮因意义而鼓胀，它可以奇特地使人的感官得到满足。现在的情况就是如此，虽然每一动作举止都平凡依旧。因此，看奥兰多在不到三分钟的时间里脱下裙子，换上马裤呢马裤和皮夹克，人们会陶醉在运动的美感之中，仿佛鲁波科娃夫人在表演她那炉火纯青的艺术。之后，奥兰多大步走进餐厅，她的老友德莱顿、蒲伯、斯威夫特、艾迪生正在那里装模作样地看着她，仿佛在说，嘿，获奖者来啦!但是他们认识到涉及的是两百几尼（几尼，1663年英国发行的一种金币，等于21先令，1813年停止流通。后仅

指等于21先令即1．05英镑的币值单位，常用于规定费用、价格等。），就点头表示赞成。两百几尼，他们似乎在说，对两百几尼可不能嗤之以鼻。她给自己切了一片面包和火腿，把它们夹在一起，吃了起来，一边来回在屋里踱步，不知不觉中放下了陪客的架式。踱了五六个来回之后，她端起一杯西班牙红酒，一饮而尽，又倒满一杯，拿在手上，漫步走过长长的走廊，穿过十几间起居室，开始巡视大宅，挪威猎犬和长毛小犬殷勤地跟在她身后。

这同样是这天的例行公事之一。归来却不巡视大宅，就好似探家离去时不与祖母吻别一样不可能。她想象，只有她一进来，这些房间就会活跃起来。它们苏醒了，睁开眼睛，似乎她不在时，它们一直在打盹儿。她还想象，她看到它们千百次，从未有一次它们看上去是相同的，仿佛在如此漫长的寿命中，它们体内贮存了无数种心境，随春夏秋冬、天气阴晴、她本人的运气和来访客人的性格而变化。对陌生人，它们永远彬彬有礼，又有点儿小心翼翼；对她，它们却是敞开心扉，无拘无束。确实，为什么不呢?迄今他们相识已近四百年，一切都无须掩饰。她知道它们的喜怒哀乐，了解它们各自的年龄和小小的秘密——一只秘密的抽屉，一只隐蔽的碗柜，它们也有缺点，例如有些部分是后添的。它们同样了解她的全部心思和变化。她对它们毫无隐瞒，无论是身为少年还是女人，她来到它们的怀抱，哭过，笑过，歌舞过，沉思过。在这一窗台上，她写下自己最早的诗歌；在那一小教堂，她举行自己的婚礼。她也将葬在这里，她沉思着，跪在长廊的窗台上，小口抿着西班牙红酒。尽管难以想象，有一天她会长眠于祖先中间，纹章上的豹身映在地板上，留下黄色的斑点。不相信永生的她，不禁觉得，她的灵魂将与护墙板的红色和沙发的绿色一样永存。此时她漫步走进大使卧房，这房间犹如躺在海底几百年的一只贝壳，已被硬壳覆盖，海水给它涂上了千万种色调；它是玫瑰色、黄色、绿色和浅棕色的。这卧房如贝壳一般脆弱，一般灿灿发光，一般空虚。再不会有大使睡在里面。啊，但她知道这宅子的心脏还在跳动。她轻轻打开一扇门，站在门槛上，不想让房间看到她(这是她的想象)。她看着壁毯在永不停息的轻风中起伏，猎人仍在策马奔驰，达弗涅仍在奔逃。那颗心仍在跳动，她想，无论多么微弱，多么与世隔绝，这大宅的那颗脆弱而不屈的心仍在跳动。

她呼唤狗群和她一起走过长长的走廊，走廊的地板都是用整棵橡树刨开铺成的。一排排椅子倚墙排列，天鹅绒椅面已经褪色。它们伸出臂膀，仿佛在等待迎接伊丽莎白、詹姆斯，或者是莎士比亚，或者是从未光临的西塞罗。这情景让她忧伤，她解开围栏它们的挂钩，坐到女王的椅子上，翻开平放在贵妇白蒂桌上的手抄本。她用手指搅动年代久远的玫瑰叶，用詹姆斯王的银发刷理了理自己的短发，又在他的床上蹦了几下(尽管路易丝换上了新床单，也不会再有国王睡在上面)，然后把面颊紧紧贴在那古旧的银色床罩上。处处是防虫的小薰香袋，处处是印刷体的告示“请勿触摸”，虽然是她亲手所放，它们却似乎是在阻止她。这宅子已不再完全属于她，她叹了一口气。现在它属于时代，属于历史，活人触摸和控制它的时代已经一去不返。再不会有啤酒在这里漫溢(她来到老尼克·格林住过的卧室)，地毯上再不会烧出洞来。再不会有两百仆人端着热气腾腾的盘子，吵吵嚷嚷地在走廊里跑来跑去，或拽着大树枝给壁炉添柴。再不会有人在宅子外的作坊酿大麦酒，制蜡烛，打造马鞍和打磨石料，榔头和大头锤的声音都已消失。椅子和床上空无一人，金制和银制的大啤酒杯锁进了玻璃橱。寂静在空旷的大宅里上下扇动着巨大的翅膀。

她坐在走廊尽头，坐在伊丽莎白女王坐过的硬木扶手椅上，几只狗伏卧在她的四周。走廊长长的，向前伸展，直到光线几乎消失的那一点。它犹如一条隧道，深深钻入以往的岁月。她的视线循着它向前窥视，可以看到人们有说有笑，那些她所认识的大人物，德莱顿、斯威夫特和蒲伯，口若悬河的政治家，坐在窗台上调情的恋人。人们围长桌而坐，狂啖豪饮，燃烧的木头冒出袅袅青烟，在他们的头上缭绕，他们咳嗽，还打喷嚏。再远处，她看到一组组的人排成方阵，准备跳方阵舞。一阵悠远、飘忽而庄严的音乐传来。风琴发出的低吟四处回荡。一只棺材抬进了小教堂。从里面走出来的是婚礼的队伍。头戴盔甲的武士奔赴战场。他们把从弗劳顿（弗劳顿，英格兰地名。1513年苏格兰国王詹姆斯四世与英格兰国王亨利八世在此大战，以苏格兰人战败告终）和普瓦捷（普瓦捷，法国地名。 1356年的昔瓦捷战役是英法百年战争中英国战胜法国的著名战役），带回的旗帜插在墙上。长长的走廊渐渐有了这些东西，而再往前看，她觉得在走廊的尽头，在伊丽莎白时代和都铎王朝那些人之前，依稀可以辨认出一个更老、更远、更暗的人影，一个穿蒙头斗篷、面色严峻的隐修土，双手紧握一本书，口中喁喁低语——

大座钟雷霆般敲了四下。从未有过如此强烈的地震，将整个镇子夷为平地。长廊和长廊里的一切，霎时间灰飞烟灭。在窥视长廊时，她的面色本是阴沉、严肃的，此时却好似被火药的爆炸所照亮。在同一光亮的照耀下，她四周的一切都极其清晰地显露出来。她看到两只苍蝇在盘旋，而且注意到它们身上的蓝色光泽；她看到脚下的地板有个木瘤，狗的耳朵微微抽动。同时，她听到花园里有粗树枝折断的声音，一只羊在庭院中咳嗽，一只褐雨燕尖叫着从窗前掠过。她的身体开始战栗、颤抖，仿佛倏忽间赤身裸体站在冰天雪地之中。但她没有像伦敦大钟敲响十下时那样，而是保持了完全的镇静(因为她现在是完整的一体，或许承受时间震动的面积也更大)。她不慌不忙地起身，唤了她的狗，坚定但小心翼翼地走下楼梯，来到花园。此处植物的阴影异常清晰。她注意到花圃中不同的土质，仿佛眼睛上附了一个显微镜。她看到每一棵树上嫩枝盘绕。草的叶片清晰可见，叶脉和花蕊上的斑纹也是同样。她看到花匠斯塔布斯沿小径向她走来，绑腿上的每一粒扣子，都可以看得清清楚楚。她看到拉车的两匹高头大马白蒂和王子，她从未如此清晰地注意到白蒂脑门上有块白色的星痣，而王子的尾巴上有三根鬃毛长过其他的鬃毛。屋外的方庭中，房屋年久失修的灰墙，看上去好似表面刮磨了的新照片；她听到平台上的扬声器放了一段舞曲，是人们在维也纳铺着猩红天鹅绒的歌剧院欣赏的舞曲片断。她因现时而兴奋和紧张，但也有一种莫名的恐惧，仿佛只要时间的深渊张开大口，只要让一秒钟滑过，某种未知的危险就会接踵而来。这种精神上的持续紧张，强烈到了让人觉得很难受的地步，无法长时间忍耐下去。她开始走得飞快，穿过花园，来到庭园，腿脚好像不听使唤似的。她花了好大力气，逼迫自己停在木匠房旁，一动不动地盯着乔·斯塔布斯制作马车轮子。她站在那里，眼睛死死盯住他的手，这时一刻钟的钟声敲响了。这钟声如流星穿透她的身体，炙热灼人。她清清楚楚看到乔的右手大拇指没有指甲，在应该长着指甲的地方，是一块粉红色凸起的肉。这景象让人恶心，有一刻，她觉得自己昏了过去。但就在那片刻的昏黑之中，她的眼睑眨动了几下，她摆脱了现时的重压。在她的眼睑眨动留下的阴影中，有某种奇特的东西，某种现时永不拥有的东西(任何人都可以通过看天空来验证)——它令人恐怖即是由此而来，它那无以诉说的性质也是由此而来——某种人们急于要用某个名称把它的实体固定下来、称之为美的东西，因为它不是个实体，而像个影子，没有自己的实质或特性，但它的力量却足以令它所依附的任何物体改观。她在木匠房旁感到眩晕、眨动眼睑时，这影子溜了出去，附着于她一直在观看的数不清的景象，使它们成为可以容忍、可以领悟的东西。她的头脑开始大海般上下起伏。她离开木匠房，开始爬山，并如释重负地大大松了一口气，心想，我又可以开始生活了，我在蟒湖旁，小舟正跃上那夹裹了成千上万毁灭的白色波峰……

以上都是她的话，说得很清晰，但我们不能隐瞒以下事实：她现在只是非常冷漠地目睹眼前的真实情况，很容易把羊当成牛，把一个名叫史密斯的老头儿当成一个与他毫无干系的琼斯。因为没有指甲的拇指投下的眩晕的影子，此时在她的脑后部(距视线最远的部位)加深了，进入了事物栖息的一潭池水，那里是如此黝黯，以至我们对它几乎一无所知。此刻，她俯视这倒映出一切的池水或海水。的确，有人说，人的所有最炽烈的情感、艺术和宗教，都是在可见世界变得模糊时，我们从大脑后部那个黑洞中看到的映像。现在她久久地、意味深长地凝视那里，瞬间，她上山走过的长满羊齿草的小路不再是一条完整的小路，而有一部分变成了蟒湖；荆棘丛有一部分变成了指夹名片盒的女士和手拿金头手杖的先生；羊群有一部分变成梅费尔的高宅。实际上，所有的东西都部分地变成了别的东西，仿佛她的意识变成了丛林，不时分隔出一些林中空地。物体时远时近，交叠又分开，于是在光和影的无数交叉中，构成奇特无比的连接与组合。她忘却了时间，除了挪威猎犬卡努特追逐一只兔子，使她想起一定已经到四点半了，实际上已是五点三十七分。

长满羊齿草的小路，曲曲弯弯，不断向上，直通山顶的那棵大橡树。比起当年他们相识之时，那大概是一五八八年，它长得更粗大、更健壮了，也生出了更多的树瘤，但它仍然风华正茂。那小小的叶子生出尖褶，仍在树杈上刷刷颤动。她扑倒在地，感受树的筋骨像脊椎伸出的肋条，在她身下四处伸展。她喜爱想象自己骑在世界的脊背上。她喜爱附着于某个坚实的东西。她在扑向大地时，皮夹克的前胸口袋里掉出一本红布装订的小书，四四方方，是她的诗作《大橡树》。“我应带把小铲来，”她沉思道。树根上覆盖的土层很浅，她能否如愿以偿，把这本书葬在这里，似乎很值得怀疑。此外，它还有可能被狗刨出来。运气从不光顾这些象征性的庆祝仪式，她想。那么，或许没有这些仪式会更好。她差一点就要发表一个小小的演讲，她原打算一边下葬一边演讲。(这本书是初版中的一本，有作者兼艺术家的签名。)“我把它作为贡品葬在这里，”她本准备说，“回报这片土地给予我的一切。”但是，天啊!这些话一旦大声说出口，听起来是多么愚蠢!她想起老格林，前两天他走上讲台，拿她与弥尔顿相比(除了他是盲人这一点)，并递给她一张二百几尼的支票。她当时就想到山上的这棵大橡树，那与这些有何相干?赞美和名望与诗有何相干?出了七版(这本书的版次已绝对不低于此)，又与它的价值有何相干?难道写诗不是一种秘密的交流，即一个声音对另一声音回应?那么，这一切的喋喋不休，这一切的赞美与指摘，以及会见那些对你大加赞美和未加赞美的人，与这件事本身，即一个声音回应另一个声音相比，都是再荒唐不过了。她想，所有这些年，对树林古老的低吟，对农庄和门边交颈而立的枣红马，对铁匠铺、厨房、辛辛苦苦孕育出麦子、芜菁和青草的田野，对鸢尾和贝母花怒放的花园，她作出了踟蹰的回应，还有什么能比这些回应更神秘、更舒缓、更似恋人之间的交媾呢?

她让自己的书凌乱地摊在地上，并没有把它下葬。这个傍晚，她面前那广阔无垠的风景，在阳光和阴影下时明时暗，一如变幻多端的海底。远方的村庄，露出榆树掩映的教堂尖塔；庭园中有一座灰色拱顶的庄园大屋；一座灯塔在眨眼睛；农家场院里堆着黄色的玉米秸垛。田野上星星点点遍布黑色的树丛，在田野的另一端，伸展出长长的林区，那里还有一条波光粼粼的大河。然后又是山地了，遥远的斯诺登峰从云中露出白色的危崖。目穷之处，是苏格兰的山峦和赫布里底群岛周遭漩涡密布的汹涌海潮。她竖起耳朵听海上的炮声。没有炮声，只有风声，如今已没有战争。德雷克不在了，纳尔逊不在了。“这里，”她想，一直凝望远方的视线再次落到身下的这片土地，“曾经是我的领地：丘陵之间的那个古堡曾属我所有；几乎蔓延到海边的那片沼泽也曾属我所有。”此时四周的风景(必定是渐渐黯淡的光线耍的把戏)扭动着、聚积着，于是所有房屋、古堡和树林，所有这些累赘都从帐篷状的四壁上滑了下去。土耳其光秃秃的山脉展现在她眼前。正是阳光灼灼的正午。她两眼紧盯焦炙的山坡，山羊群在她脚边啃食沙地上的草丛，头顶上有只鹰在翱翔。吉卜赛老人拉斯多姆沙哑的声音在她耳边响起，“与此相比，你的祖先，你的宗族，还有你的财产，算得上什么?你要四百间卧房，所有的盘子上都有银盖碗，还有掸灰的女仆，又有什么用处?”

峡谷中某个教堂的钟声响起，帐篷状的风景坍塌了，现时再次兜头倾泻下来。但此时，光线已渐渐黯淡下来，比先前柔和了许多，不再映出栩栩如生的细小景象，而只有雾霭蒙蒙的田野、灯光闪烁的农舍、昏昏欲睡的树林，以及一束扇形的灯光，沿着小路推移着前面的黑暗。她不知敲响的是九点、十点还是十一点的钟声。黑夜已降临。她一向喜爱黑夜，黑夜里，意识如一潭黝黯的池水，倒映出的景象总比白昼时清晰。现在不必再觉得眩晕才能窥视到黑暗中形成的事物，看到意识的池水中，时而现出莎士比亚，时而现出穿俄罗斯裤子的少女，时而是蟒湖中的模型船，时而是真正的大西洋，那里暴风雨掀起的冲天巨浪正席卷合恩角。她窥视黑暗之中，她丈夫的双桅帆船，正升上高高的浪尖!向上，它向上，再向上。千百次毁灭的白色波峰在它面前升起。啊，快啊，荒唐的男人，总是如此枉然地顶风绕合恩角航行!但那双桅帆船穿透波峰，出现在它的另一侧；终于安全了!

“妙极了!”她喊道，“妙极了!”之后，风渐渐止息，海水平静下来；她看到海浪在月光下平静地泛着涟漪。

“马默杜克·邦斯洛普·谢尔默丁!”她站在大橡树旁喊道。

那美妙、绚烂的名字，犹如一根铁青色的翎毛，从天空中飘落下来。她看它飘落，好似一支缓缓坠落的箭，翻动，旋转，穿透厚厚的空气，徐徐而行，无比优美。他就要来了，一如既往，在死寂的时刻。当风平浪静、秋日树林里斑点相间的树叶飘落到她的脚边时，当豹子一动不动，月儿映在水中，天地之间万籁俱寂之时，他来了。

此时已近午夜，万物归于沉寂。原野上缓缓升起一轮明月。月光下，大地上耸起一座幻影般的古堡。那大宅巍然屹立，所有的窗户都沐浴在银光之中。没有城垣，没有实体。一切均为幻影。一切归于沉寂。沐浴在光亮之中的万物似乎都在等待一位逝去的女王的驾临。奥兰多俯视脚下，看到暗色的羽毛在庭院里飞舞，火炬闪烁着点点光亮，人影跪在地上。一位女王再度跨出銮舆。

“恭迎圣驾，夫人，”她喊道，深深地行了一个屈膝礼。“一切都没有变。我的父亲，逝去的勋爵，将为您引路。”

她正说着，午夜的第一声钟声敲响了。现时的丝丝凉风轻拂她的面颊，带来一丝忧虑。她焦急地仰望天空。天很黑，阴沉沉的，风在她耳边咆哮。但在风的咆哮中，她听到一架飞机行行渐近的轰鸣声。

“这里!谢尔!这里!”她喊道，向月亮(它已现出明媚的身姿)亮出她的胸脯，她的珍珠闪闪发光，犹如一只硕大的月蜘蛛的卵。飞机冲出云层，悬在她头顶上空。她的珍珠在黑暗中闪烁着灼灼磷光。

现在已是一名优秀海船长的谢尔默丁，容光焕发，敏捷地跳到地面，就在此时，一只野鹅腾起，掠过他的头顶。

“是那只鹅!”奥兰多惊叫起来。“那只野鹅……”

午夜的第十二声钟声敲响；午夜十二点，星期四，十月十一日，一千九百二十八年。