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1、【国外英文文学】五尔夫短篇小说Title:Woolf Short StoriesAuthor:Virginia Woolf* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *eBook No.: 0200781.txtLanguage: EnglishDate first posted:October 2002Date most recently updated: October 2002This eBook was produced by: Col ChoatProduction notes: Italics in the book have been cha

2、nged to uppercase in this eBook.Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular paper edition.Copyright laws are changing all over the

3、 world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this file.This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License whi

4、ch may be viewed online at A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBookTitle:Woolf Short StoriesAuthor:Virginia WoolfCONTENTS nBecause Ive been thinking of the past. Ive been thinking of Lily, the woman I might have married. Well, why are you silent? Do you mind my thinking of the past?Why should I mind,

5、Simon? Doesnt one always think of the past, in a garden with men and women lying under the trees? Arent they ones past, all that remains of it, those men and women, those ghosts lying under the trees. ones happiness, ones reality?HFor me, a square silver shoe buckle and a dragonfly-For me, a kiss. I

6、magine six little girls sitting before their easels twenty years ago, down by the side of a lake, painting the water-lilies, the first red water-lilies Id ever seen. And suddenly a kiss, there on the back of my neck. And my hand shook all the afternoon so that I couldnt paint. I took out my watch an

7、d marked the hour when I would allow myself to think of the kiss for five minutes only-it was so precious-the kiss of an old grey-haired woman with a wart on her nose, the mother of all my kisses all my life. Come, Caroline, come, Hubert.They walked on the past the flower-bed, now walking four abrea

8、st, and soon diminished in size among the trees and looked half transparent as the sunlight and shade swam over their backs in large trembling irregular patches.In the oval flower bed the snail, whose shelled had been stained red, blue, and yellow for the space of two minutes or so, now appeared to

9、be moving very slightly in its shell, and next began to labour over the crumbs of loose earth which broke away and rolled down as it passed over them. It appeared to have a definite goal in front of it, differing in this respect from the singular high stepping angular green insect who attempted to c

10、ross in front of it, and waited for a second with its antenna trembling as if in deliberation, and then stepped off as rapidly and strangely in the opposite direction. Brown cliffs with deep green lakes in the hollows, flat, blade-like trees that waved from root to tip, round boulders of grey stone,

11、 vast crumpled surfaces of a thin crackling texture-all these objects lay across the snails progress between one stalk and another to his goal. Before he had decided whether to circumvent the arched tent of a dead leaf or to breast it there came past the bed the feet of other human beings.This time

12、they were both men. The younger of the two wore an expression of perhaps unnatural calm; he raised his eyes and fixed them veryseemed to burst out of her head, like currants in a bun. The rooms also seemed to have shrunk. Large pieces of furniture jutted out at odd angles and she found herself knock

13、ing against them. At last she put on her hat and went out. She walked along the Cromwell Road; and every room she passed and peered into seemed to be a dining-room where people sat eating under steel engravings, with thick yellow lace curtains, and mahogany sideboards. At last she reached the Natura

14、l History Museum; she used to like it when she was a child. But the first thing she saw when she went in was a stuffed hare standing on sham snow with pink glass eyes. Somehow it made her shiver all over. Perhaps it would be better when dusk fell. She went home and sat over the fire, without a light

15、, and tried to imagine that she was out alone on a moor; and there was a stream rushing; and beyond the stream a dark wood. But she could get no further than the stream. At last she squatted down on the bank on the wet grass, and sat crouched in her chair; with her hands dangling empty, and her eyes

16、 glazed, like glass eyes, in the firelight. Then there was the crack of a gun. She started as if she had been shot. It was only Ernest, turning his key in the door. She waited, trembling. He came in and switched on the light. There he stood, tall, handsome, rubbing his hands that were red with cold.

17、Sitting in the dark? he said.Oh, Ernest, Ernest! she cried, starting up in her chair.Well, whats up now? he asked briskly, warming his hands at the fire.Its Lapinova .she faltered, glancing wildly at him out of her great startled eyes. Shes gone, Ernest. Ive lost her!Ernest frowned. He pressed his l

18、ips tight together. Oh, that*s whats up, is it? he said, smiling rather grimly at his wife. For ten seconds he stood there, silent; and she waited, feeling hands tightening at the back of her neck.Yes, he said at length. Poor Lapinova. He straightened his tie at the looking-glass over the mantelpiec

19、e.Caught in a trap, he said, killed, and sat down and read the newspaper.So that was the end of that marriage.THE MAN WHO LOVED HIS KINDTrotting through Deans Yard that afternoon, Prickett Ellis ran straight into Richard Dalloway, or rather, just as they were passing, the covert side glance which ea

20、ch was casting on the other, under his hat, over his shoulder, broadened and burst into recognition; they had not met for twenty years. They had been at school together. And what was Ellis doing? The Bar? Of course, of course-he had followed the case in the papers. But it was impossible to talk here

21、. Wouldnt he drop in that evening. (They lived in the same old place-just round the corner). One or two people were coming. Joynson perhaps. An awful swell now, said Richard.Good-till this evening then, said Richard, and went his way, jolly glad (that was quite true) to have met that queer chap, who

22、 hadnt changed one bit since he had been at school-just the same knobbly, chubby little boy then, with prejudices sticking out all over him, but uncommonly brilliant-won the Newcastle. Well-off he went.Prickett Ellis, however, as he turned and looked at Dalloway disappearing, wished now he had not m

23、et him or, at least, for he had always liked him personally, hadnt promised to come to this party. Dalloway was married, gave parties; wasnt his sort at all. He would have to dress. However, as the evening drew on, he supposed, as he had said that, and didnt want to be rude, he must go there.But wha

24、t an appalling entertainment! There was Joynson; they had nothing to say to each other. He had been a pompous little boy; he had grown rather more self-important-that was all; there wasnt a single other soul in the room that Prickett Ellis knew. Not one. So, as he could not go at once, without sayin

25、g a word to Dalloway, who seemed altogether taken up with his duties, bustling about in a white waistcoat, there he had to stand. It was the sort of thing that made his gorge rise. Think of grown up, responsible men and women doing this every night of their lives! The lines deepened on his blue and

26、red shaven cheeks as he leant against the wall in complete silence, for though he worked like a horse, he kept himself fit by exercise; and he looked hard and fierce, as if his moustaches were dipped in frost. He bristled; he grated. His meagre dress clothes made him look unkempt, insignificant, ang

27、ular.Idle, chattering, overdressed, without an idea in their heads, these fine ladies and gentlemen went on talking and laughing; and Prickett Ellis watched them and compared them with the Brunners who, when they won their case against Fenners Brewery and got two hundred pounds compensation (it was

28、not half what they should have got) went and spent five of it on a clock for him. That was a decent sort of thing to do; that was the sort of thing that moved one, and he glared more severely than ever at these people, overdressed, cynical, prosperous, and compared what he felt now with what he felt

29、 at eleven oclock that morning when old Brunner and Mrs. Brunner, in their best clothes, awfully respectable and clean looking old people, had called in to give him that small token, as the old man put it, standing perfectly upright to make his speech, of gratitude and respect for the very able way

30、in which you conducted our case, and Mrs. Brunner piped up, how it was all due to him they felt. And they deeply appreciated his generosity-because, of course, he hadnt taken a fee.And as he took the clock and put it on the middle of his mantelpiece, he had felt that he wished nobody to see his face

31、. That was what he worked for-that was his reward; and he looked at the people who were actually before his eyes as if they danced over that scene in his chambers and were exposed by it, and as it faded-the Brunners faded-there remained as if left of that scene, himself, confronting this hostile pop

32、ulation, a perfectly plain, unsophisticated man, a man of the people (he straightened himself) very badly dressed, glaring, with not an air or a grace about him, a man who was an ill hand at concealing his feelings, a plain man, an ordinary human being, pitted against the evil, the corruption, the h

33、eartlessness of society. But he would not go on staring. Now he put on his spectacles and examined the pictures. He read the titles on a line of books; for the most part poetry. He would have liked well enough to read some of his old favourites again-Shakespeare, Dickens-he wished he ever had time t

34、o turn into the National Gallery, but he couldnt-no, one could not. Really one could not-with the world in the state it was in. Not when people all day long wanted your help, fairly clamoured for help. This wasnt an age for luxuries. And he looked at the arm chairs and the paper knives and the well

35、bound books, and shook his head, knowing that he would never have the time, never he was glad to think have the heart, to afford himself such luxuries. The people here would be shocked if they knew what he paid for his tobacco; how he had borrowed his clothes. His one and only extravagance was his l

36、ittle yacht on the Norfolk Broads. And that he did allow himself, He did like once a year to get right away from everybody and lie on his back in a field. He thought how shocked they would be-these fine folk-if they realized the amount of pleasure he got from what he was oldfashioned enough to call

37、the love of nature; trees and fields he had known ever since he was a boy.These fine people would be shocked. Indeed, standing there, putting his spectacles away in his pocket, he felt himself grow more and more shocking every instant. And it was a very disagreeable feeling. He did not feel this-tha

38、t he loved humanity, that he paid only fivepence an ounce for tobacco and loved nature-naturally and quietly. Each of these pleasures had been turned into a protest. He felt that these people whom he despised made him stand and deliver and justify himself. I am an ordinary man, he kept saying. And w

39、hat he said next he was really ashamed of saying, but he said it. I have done more for my kind in one day than the rest of you in all your lives. Indeed, he could not help himself; he kept recalling scene after scene, like that when the Brunners gave him the clock-he kept reminding himself of the ni

40、ce things people had said of his humanity, of his generosity, how he had helped them. He kept seeing himself as the wise and tolerant servant of humanity. And he wished he could repeat his praises aloud. It was unpleasant that the sense of his goodness should boil within him. It was still more unple

41、asant that he could tell no one what people had said about him. Thank the Lord, he kept saying, I shall be back at work to-morrow; and yet he was no longer satisfied simply to slip through the door and go home. He must stay, he must stay until he had justified himself. But how could he? In all that

42、room full of people, he did not know a soul to speak to.At last Richard Dalloway came up.I want to introduce Miss OKeefe, he said. Miss OKeefe looked him full in the eyes. She was a rather arrogant, abrupt mannered woman in the thirties.Miss OKeefe wanted an ice or something to drink. And the reason

43、 why she asked Prickett Ellis to give it her in what he felt a haughty, unjustifiable manner; was that she had seen a woman and two children, very poor, very tired, pressing against the railings of a square, peering in, that hot afternoon. Cant they be let in? she had thought, her pity rising like a

44、 wave; her indignation boiling. No; she rebuked herself the next moment, roughly, as if she boxed her own ears. The whole force of the world cant do it. So she picked up the tennis ball and hurled it back. The whole force of the world cant do it, she said in a fury, and that was why she said so comm

45、andingly, to the unknown man:Give me an ice.Long before she had eaten it, Prickett Ellis, standing beside her without taking anything, told her that he had not been to a party for fifteen years; told her that his dress suit was lent him by his brother-in-law; told her that he did not like this sort

46、of thing, and it would have eased him greatly to go on to say that he was a plain man, who happened to have a liking for ordinary people, and then would have told her (and been ashamed of it afterwards) about the Brunners and the clock, but she said:Have you seen the Tempest?then (for he had not see

47、n the Tempest), had he read some book? Again no, and then, putting her ice down, did he never read poetry?And Prickett Ellis feeling something rise within him which would decapitate this young woman, make a victim of her, massacre her, made her sit down there, where they would not be interrupted, on

48、 two chairs, in the empty garden, for everyone was upstairs, only you could hear a buzz and a hum and a chatter and a jingle, like the mad accompaniment of some phantom orchestra to a cat or two slinking across the grass, and the wavering of leaves, and the yellow and red fruit like Chinese lanterns

49、 wobbling this way and that-the talk seemed like a frantic skeleton dance music set to something very real, and full of suffering.*How beautiful! said Miss OKeefe.Oh, it was beautiful, this little patch of grass, with the towers of Westminster massed round it black, high in the air, after the drawing-room; it was silent, after that noise. After all, they had that-the tired woman, the children.Prickett Ellis lit a pipe. That would shock her;