Thinking no harm, for the family would not come, never again, some
said, and the house would be sold at Michaelmas perhaps, Mrs McNab
stooped and picked a bunch of flowers to take home with her. She laid
them on the table while she dusted. She was fond of flowers. It was a
pity to let them waste. Suppose the house were sold (she stood arms
akimbo in front of the looking-glass) it would want seeing to—it would.
There it had stood all these years without a soul in it. The books and
things were mouldy, for, what with the war and help being hard to get,
the house had not been cleaned as she could have wished. It was beyond
one person's strength to get it straight now. She was too old. Her legs
pained her. All those books needed to be laid out on the grass in the sun;
there was plaster fallen in the hall; the rain-pipe had blocked over the
study window and let the water in; the carpet was ruined quite. But
people should come themselves; they should have sent somebody down
to see. For there were clothes in the cupboards; they had left clothes in all
the bedrooms. What was she to do with them? They had the moth in
them—Mrs Ramsay's things. Poor lady! She would never want THEM
again. She was dead, they said; years ago, in London. There was the old
grey cloak she wore gardening (Mrs McNab fingered it). She could see
her, as she came up the drive with the washing, stooping over her
flowers (the garden was a pitiful sight now, all run to riot, and rabbits
scuttling at you out of the beds)—she could see her with one of the children
by her in that grey cloak. There were boots and shoes; and a brush
and comb left on the dressing-table, for all the world as if she expected to
come back tomorrow. (She had died very sudden at the end, they said.)
And once they had been coming, but had put off coming, what with the
war, and travel being so difficult these days; they had never come all
these years; just sent her money; but never wrote, never came, and expected
to find things as they had left them, ah, dear! Why the dressingtable
drawers were full of things (she pulled them open), handkerchiefs,
bits of ribbon. Yes, she could see Mrs Ramsay as she came up the drive
with the washing.
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"Good-evening, Mrs McNab," she would say.
She had a pleasant way with her. The girls all liked her. But, dear,
many things had changed since then (she shut the drawer); many families
had lost their dearest. So she was dead; and Mr Andrew killed; and
Miss Prue dead too, they said, with her first baby; but everyone had lost
some one these years. Prices had gone up shamefully, and didn't come
down again neither. She could well remember her in her grey cloak.
"Good-evening, Mrs McNab," she said, and told cook to keep a plate of
milk soup for her—quite thought she wanted it, carrying that heavy basket
all the way up from town. She could see her now, stooping over her
flowers; and faint and flickering, like a yellow beam or the circle at the
end of a telescope, a lady in a grey cloak, stooping over her flowers, went
wandering over the bedroom wall, up the dressing-table, across the
wash-stand, as Mrs McNab hobbled and ambled, dusting, straightening.
And cook's name now? Mildred? Marian?—some name like that. Ah, she
had forgotten—she did forget things. Fiery, like all red-haired women.
Many a laugh they had had. She was always welcome in the kitchen. She
made them laugh, she did. Things were better then than now.
She sighed; there was too much work for one woman. She wagged her
head this side and that. This had been the nursery. Why, it was all damp
in here; the plaster was falling. Whatever did they want to hang a beast's
skull there? gone mouldy too. And rats in all the attics. The rain came in.
But they never sent; never came. Some of the locks had gone, so the
doors banged. She didn't like to be up here at dusk alone neither. It was
too much for one woman, too much, too much. She creaked, she
moaned. She banged the door. She turned the key in the lock, and left the
house alone, shut up, locked.
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