It is evening. Supper is over. We have left the small, cold dining-room, we have come back
to the sitting-room where there is a fire. All is as usual. I am sitting at my writing table
which is placed across a corner so that I am behind it, as it were, and facing the room. The
lamp with the green shade is alight; I have before me two large books of reference, both
open, a pile of papers
All the paraphernalia, in fact, of an extremely occupied man. My
wife, with her little boy on her lap, is in a low chair before the fire. She is about to put him
to bed before she clears away the dishes and piles them up in the kitchen for the servant
girl tomorrow morning. But the warmth, the quiet, and the sleepy baby, have made her
dreamy. One of his red woollen boots is off, one is on. She sits, bent forward, clasping the
little bare foot, staring into the glow, and as the fire quickens, falls, flares again, her
shadow—an immense Mother and Child—is here and gone again upon the wall. . . .
Outside it is raining. I like to think of that cold drenched window behind the blind, and
beyond, the dark bushes in the garden, their broad leaves bright with rain, and beyond the
fence, the gleaming road with the two hoarse little gutters singing against each other, and
the wavering reflections of the lamps, like fishes’ tails. While I am here, I am there, lifting
my face to the dim sky, and it seems to me it must be raining all over the world—that the
whole earth is drenched, is sounding with a soft quick patter or hard steady drumming, or
gurgling and something that is like sobbing and laughing mingled together, and that light
playful splashing that is of water falling into still lakes and flowing rivers. And all at one
and the same moment I am arriving in a strange city, slipping under the hood of the cab
while the driver whips the cover off the breathing horse, running from shelter to shelter,
dodging someone, swerving by someone else. I am conscious of tall houses, their doors and
shutters sealed against the night, of dripping balconies and sodden flower-pots. I am
brushing through deserted gardens and falling into moist smelling summer-houses (you
know how soft and almost crumbling the wood of a summer-house is in the rain), I am
standing on the dark quayside, giving my ticket into the wet red hand of the old sailor in an
oilskin. How strong the sea smells! How loudly the tied-up boats knock against one another! I am crossing the wet stackyard, hooded in an old sack, carrying a lantern, while the
house-dog, like a soaking doormat, springs, shakes himself over me. And now I am walking
along a deserted road—it is impossible to miss the puddles, and the trees are stirring—
stirring.
