What possibly could have put them into her head in the first place? It must have been, to begin with, the goatskin with which she bound the books. Probably it hadn't been goatskin at all, but just something to bind books with. Why had she called it goatskin? Oh, because that was the way people talked about things—there always had to be a special name for everything, whether it deserved a name or not. But she was done with adjusting herself to the peculiarities of other people. Other people now had to adjust themselves to her, nor would she admit that she had peculiarities. She was, on the contrary, the most reasonable kind of being that anyone could be, and exactly because she had made up her mind, after a long period of irritation with the peculiarities of other people, to go her own way, though everyone else was going nowhere at all—just imagining, in fact, peculiar ways to go without daring to go them. And this was how there came to be so many names, more names than things—by imagination. And names were bound to grow old-fashioned, because so many of the things with names didn't really exist; and that was a very old- fashioned world. Yes, and very old-fashioned behaviour on her part, to have an entertaining conversation with an old goatherd. And was it really entertaining? No, it was not. She was going her own way, and alone, and that was pleasure enough.
But how had the old goatherd come into the story? Why, that old goatherd was her father! But it must have been a long time ago when she had had a father. She supposed (going over everything as she walked on) it was being a little girl that had put that into her head. Thinking about fathers was another old-fashioned habit. But, after all, there was something bookish and quaint about being a little girl, even though she meant it only in a humorous way. Being a little girl was just a protection against thinking too hard. She had not, at any rate, thought about mothers! Mothers was the most old-fashioned idea. Fathers were at least more up to date than mothers; they always seemed so much younger than mothers, almost as young as oneself. And yet, how very long ago her own father seemed! Fathers were, of course, other people just like anyone else, even more so, because you expected them not to be like other people, and they really were. They were as much like other people as you were when you put on airs and behaved like other people. Yes, fathers certainly put on airs. She remembered that this was why she had quarrelled with her father long, long ago, when she was a little girl, and had left home to go and live by herself. Her father had put on airs, and she had put on airs back to him, and so they had fallen out, and she had gone to live with an aunt who had quarrelled with her father long before that—a silent haughty aunt who had made a great pet of her. And then her aunt had died. At any rate she remembered coming back one day from a walk and not finding her; but things had gone on very much the same as before.
It occurred to her that she was still a little girl, as she had been, and why? But she wasn't really a little girl now. She was merely protecting herself—against herself. Then she had been a little girl to protect herself against other people. There was a difference between tiredness caused by other people, and tiredness caused by oneself. Was the tiredness caused by oneself really tiring? Certainly not—because one didn't really let oneself tire oneself; it was impossible to be unkind to oneself. Was she really a little girl now? Certainly not. Just let anyone show her the least disrespect! And at this very moment she found herself in the street full of shops that she had seen out of the window on the right in the distance. No, indeed, she was no longer a little girl but a most grown-up and a most grand lady, talking to a tall man in a flowery waistcoat and spangled coat about—about herself. "I trust you are quite well now?" he was saying ever so respectfully. And "Oh, that was nothing," she was answering (ever so graciously, since there was really no danger of anyone's treating her disrespectfully), "I was merely busy with my thoughts!" And then she went from shop to shop choosing the grandest clothes she could find. Nor were they shops in which one bought things. One merely chose them, as if one had more than one could do with at home; which got very nicely round the difficulty of her having lost her purse. The very grandest people never bought things; they merely looked and handled and thought how much finer their own things were.
And then she came round to the last shop, which stood on the opposite side of the street from the first, facing it. It was a shop full of jewels—not like an ordinary jeweller's, where everything lay by itself in green plush, but more like a greengrocer's shop, with one thing on top of the other. And here, it seemed, one was really expected to take things along with one, like fruit that wouldn't keep. The whole family surrounded her as if she were some wonderful relative of theirs; and all the children—and as dirty as greengrocer children they were— tugged at her crackling brocaded skirt, which got a little dirty as she swept round the shop saying the pleasantest things that she could think of to everyone. For besides the children there was the younger daughter, who had been named after her and who seemed so ill that it was surprising that she should be alive; and the elder daughter, who clearly disliked her; and the mother, who did nothing but cry all the time she was there and make up a bouquet for her to take away; and the father, who treated her not so much as a wonderful relative but rather as if she were a stingy, wealthy relative who might be tricked into buying this or this or this as a bargain. She tried not to mind—what had she to fear?—but she could not help growing disgusted with them, and with the other shops as well. Yes, they had all been flattering her, and flattery was disgusting. It was disgusting because one never got it unless one wanted it; she must have wanted it, and that was disgusting. It was disgusting to make too much of oneself. Too much of anything was disgusting. So she told the greengrocer family that she really must be going. And the children tugged harder than ever at her skirts; and the daughters hung away from her, the one very feeble, the other very angry; and the mother forced on her the tremendous bouquet that she had been making up; and the father gave her an old chocolate-box full of jewels, saying shrewdly, "No, no, no money, not this time," as if in this way he was making sure of getting quite a large sum of money from her in the future. Oh, how disgusting it all was!
Suddenly she ran out, not being able to bear it any longer, hurrying in what she thought to be the direction of home. She threw the bouquet of flowers—they were already yesterday's flowers—as far from her as she could. And when they fell it seemed very far away, like a very old yesterday. It seemed like graves covered with withered flowers, and she knew that they were the graves of all the mothers who had ever been. Oh, how fast she ran then! And the faster she ran the further behind she was leaving all her love of flattery, which was the same as soft- heartedness. For even when she had been Frances Cat, underneath all her hard-heartedness and indifference she had secretly hungered for appreciation and would have been quite ready to sympathize with anyone who had appreciated her in the right way. That was why she had had to be such a long, black sulky creature, to protect herself from her own sympathy with herself. Mothers were people who got sympathy with themselves mixed up with sympathy with other people. And other people never had enough; so that not only did mothers never get to the point of feeling sympathy with themselves, but they actually had to manufacture more and more sympathy with other people. And more and more sympathy turned into more and more and more people. And so, in throwing away the flowers, she was putting mothers and sympathy out of her life for good; she was—still more—wiping out the memory of ever having been born. Mothers and birth and sympathy and flowers—this was all superstition and sadness and going too slow. And yet, one ought not to go too fast, one had to go a little slow, to make sure. Just now she must have been running, for she was all out of breath.
She stopped to get her breath again, sitting down on what she took to be a stone, though it was odd for a stone to stand right in the middle of the road like that. But there it was, and she was very grateful for it, however odd it might seem. And, in any case, the odder things were now, the more they belonged to her world, and to her personal way of looking at things. No, the things that were happening to he
r now were not so much odd as personal. How personal everything was, and what a pleasure not to have to share it with anyone! How odd, or rather how delightful, or rather how very proper; for when things were merely odd, it meant merely that they were not quite right—not odd enough. And while she was resting she opened the box of jewels which the greengrocer father had given her. And what do you think she found in it? Naturally she did not find jewels. Jewels do not exist, when you come to think of it, except in the imagination. Still, there are many interesting things besides those which exist only in the imagination. All the time she was running she felt that there must be something interesting in the box. And as what was interesting was also bound to be unpleasant, as corpses and anatomy are interesting but unpleasant, or unpleasant but interesting, so, when she opened the box—and very carefully—she said, even before looking, "Ugh!"
And—Ugh! In the box, instead of jewels, were dozens of shiny insects of every possible colour, with scarcely any space to move about in and yet crawling horribly all over one another, making a noise such as paper makes when you crumple it dead and throw it into the basket—and it goes on un- crumpling itself a very little, and a very little, long after there is any life in it. This was the kind of noise that was going on in the box, as of dozens of shiny pieces of paper of every possible colour each uncrumpling itself ever so slightly. "Ugh!" she said again, turning the box out on the ground. For it was not so much the insects themselves that disgusted her as the idea of their being crowded together like that and crawling all over one another. But once they were on the ground, instead of exercising their legs and wings and mandibles the way insects do when they first come out into the open after being shut up, they all lay quite still, as if they were really only coloured bits of paper, not insects. So she couldn't resist the temptation to smooth them out and see if perhaps there wasn't something interesting written on them.
Well, there was something written on each of them: the name of someone who had been so important that his name had lasted over beyond his importance in his own time, as names have an absurd way of doing. That was history, and how absurd it all was—names on paper. How absurd, unpleasant, and, of course, interesting: to think of all the important people who had been—and not only people, but all the important things that had happened! Yes, it was all very interesting. Ugh! It was like banquets and balls and lantern parties—and the next morning, how sick it made you, and how ashamed of the things you had done and said, and yet how you went on thinking about it all. Just so she was ashamed of history, and the silly bits of paper. Should she tear them up fine, and let them lose themselves in the wind? She did tear them up fine, but instead of getting into the wind they seemed to get into her head and whirl about, making her feel confused and giddy—so giddy that the stone on which she was sitting began to bob up and down, and she on it. Indeed, she was sitting on a grey horse and riding at a very jerky pace through—she must be riding through time!
But what of the coloured bits of paper? And what of the battles and strange crowds and goings and comings through which she was riding—without being taken the least notice of, as if she were the past and not they? That came of making comparisons between herself and others, and long ago and now. The comparisons had not been in their favour; she had not thought of them in a jewelled way, as lovely people or things that had not been what they really were, that would sometime be what they really were. No, she had not wept over the past as if it were her past and she felt lonely without it and sorry for herself because she was so alone. No, she had not hung back imagining and hoping and wishing for a happy ending that could not be—such as that everyone and everything might share in the happy ending of her story. No, no. But she had made comparisons; and comparisons were a responsibility, even when they were in one's own favour. Things long dead came alive when comparisons were made; they might become no more alive than insects, but even that was a responsibility. For then the insects turned into bits of coloured paper, and the bits of coloured paper into strange, dim scenes which you tried to make sense of as they faded, feeling guiltily that you might be the cause of their fading—as who does not feel guilty when a green fly falls downs lustreless and a nearly golden moth becomes a dusty brown corpse, and a handsome striped wasp curls up like a stale sweet?
Yes, it was true; she had been feeling just a little guilty in her own good fortune. Yes, she had felt just a little responsibility towards the world. Yes, she was perhaps just a little sorry that things could not be otherwise. But equally she was extremely pleased that things could not be otherwise. At any rate, her horse was hurrying along in the direction of home and she had no desire to stop it.
And the greengrocer father had actually expected her to come back sometime—to pay! And for what? For her own thoughts about things that were dead and gone. That was what was called education. Education was expensive, like everything that wasn't necessary. How necessary was it to study what had gone before, or the causes of present good or bad? If things were in a bad way, it might be a comfort to one's vanity to place the blame on what had gone before—rather than on oneself. But if things were in a good way? She had, of course, tried to study the Indescribable Witch, but not with any idea of educating herself. The Indescribable Witch was extensively mixed up with herself, thinking about her was different. When someone has inherited a large, imposing estate, she naturally wants to inspect it, in order to acquire a proper sense of proprietorship; thinking about the Indescribable Witch was like that. No, she could not honestly feel that she owed the greengrocer father anything. Moreover, she had lost her purse. She could get more money by putting her hand out of the left window, but such childish behaviour went against her sense of proprietorship. In fact, something like a conflict was going on between her and the Indescribable Witch on such points.
Just then someone pulled at her horse's tail. It was the greengrocer father himself. The horse slowed down, but did not actually stop, so that the greengrocer father had to run to keep up with her. "Come, come," he said, "are you not going to pay me for those chocolates you bought some time ago? It's a very small debt, and my wife has gone mad since then, and my younger daughter died, and my elder daughter killed herself, and all the little ones have run away and got lost. Or if you won't give me anything, perhaps you can advise me what to do?" And then she remembered that there had really been chocolates in the chocolate-box and that she had really eaten them. This made her very angry, not so much against the greengrocer father as against herself. What nonsense she had been talking to herself about jewels and insects and coloured bits of paper and riding through time on a grey horse—or was it the stalk of a broom? That came of going for walks and taking her ease like a rich woman with no fixed occupation. Long afternoon walks and expensive boxes of chocolates—that was the danger if she did not get it into her head that she was a poor woman. Yes, a poor woman, with nothing she could really call her own. Could she even call her soul her own? Yes, she could at least call her soul her own. Or, at least, she insisted on calling it her own. Let the Devil take the rest. Poor people always left the rest to the Devil. And she had no sooner come round to this way of thinking, than away she was flying on the stalk of a broom, like a witch, leaving the greengrocer father far, far behind. And whoop! Down she fluttered. And whoop! Here she was, a poor woman stirring her supper-pot by her own poor bright fire. And whoop! Out of the fire came the Devil himself to keep her company. "Sit down and warm yourself," she said, in a poor woman's sharp, hospitable voice, "while I get my thoughts together." And how had it happened that she had let her thoughts wander?
It all came back to the Indescribable Witch. When she had gone for a walk she had had it at the back of her mind to find her, if possible, and put an end to her nervousness about her. She could no longer deny that she was nervous about the Indescribable Witch—not interested in her, or merely grateful to her, or afraid of her, but frankly nervous about her. She was, that is, quivering with irritation that there should be anyone in her world more import
ant than herself. And yet she did not want to go against the Indescribable Witch, lest she should turn out to be—as she was beginning strongly to suspect —very much the same sort of thing as herself. The chief difference between them seemed to be that the Indescribable Witch had a tendency to practise magic, while she went about the story in a practical way. Was this because it was all a new story to her, but a very old story to the Indescribable Witch? It was the newness of the story to her that had led her back into history and made her lose such a lot of time; and no good had come of that. And she had not been innocent of a little magic herself, when she began getting bored with her own musings over a chocolate-box. And how had the chocolate-box got into the story, if not by magic, or even worse—idle greed? At any rate, that nonsense was over—first being such a dear, wise little girl, then such a grand grown-up lady. And probably a great deal of the nonsense that she had been blaming on the Indescribable Witch was her own fault—the sun and the weather and the money: just her own stupidity, or rather her conservatism. Conservatism was the mother of magic. Or, suspicion breeds lies. It was all due to a prejudice about what was natural. To a conservative mind it was the wrong things that were natural; and so, to be believed in, a new thing had to have something wrong, or unnatural, about it.
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