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На маяк. Уровень 3 / To the Lighthouse
На маяк. Уровень 3 / To the Lighthouse
© Матвеев С. А., адаптация, комментарии, словарь, 2023
© ООО «Издательство АСТ», 2023
Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse
I. The Window
1
“Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow[1],” said Mrs. Ramsay. “But you’ll have to get up early,” she added.
To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy. Even at the age of six, James Ramsay even in earliest childhood had the power to crystallize and transfix the moment of gloom or radiance into a feeling. He was sitting on the floor and cutting out pictures from the illustrated catalogue of the Army and Navy stores. The wheelbarrow, the lawnmower, the trees, the leaves before rain, rooks, brooms, dresses, – all these were coloured and distinguished in his mind.
“But,” said his father, “it won’t be fine.”
James was ready to gash a hole in his father’s breast and kill him. Mr. Ramsay annoyed his children very much by his mere presence. He liked to disillusion his son and cast ridicule upon his wife, who was ten thousand times better in every way than he was (James thought). What he said was true. It was always true. He was incapable of untruth.
“But it may be fine – I expect it will be fine,” said Mrs. Ramsay.
She was knitting the reddish brown stocking. If she finishes it tonight, if they go to the Lighthouse after all, she will give the stockings to the Lighthouse keeper for his little boy. She will add a pile of old magazines, and some tobacco. Those poor fellows must be bored to death.
“It’s due west[2],” said the atheist Tansley.
That is to say, the wind blew from the worst possible direction for landing at the Lighthouse.
Tansley says disagreeable things, as usual. None of her children liked him and still, Mrs. Ramsay invited him to stay with them in the Isle of Skye and protected him from their attacks.
There must be some simpler way, some less laborious way, she sighed. She looked in the glass and saw her hair grey, her cheek sunk, at fifty. In all probability, there were ways in which she could manage things better: for her husband and for her children. But for her own part[3] she would never for a single second regret her decision.