Slide to View Image: Opacity 0%
 
THE LIGHTHOUSEthe same foot, purple, crushed. But the wheel wasinnocent. So now, when his father came stridingdown the passage knocking them up early in themorning to go to the Lighthouse down it came overhis foot, over Cam’s foot, over anybody’s foot. Onesat and watched it.

But whose foot was he thinking of, and in whatgarden did all this happen? For one had settings tothese scenes; trees that grew there; flowers; a certainlight; a few figures. Everything tended to set itselfin a garden where there was none of this gloom andnone of this throwing of hands about; people spokein an ordinary tone of voice. They went in and outall day long. There was an old woman gossiping inthe kitchen; and the blinds were sucked in and outby the breeze; all was blowing, all was growing; andover all those plates and bowls and tall brandishingred and yellow flowers a very thin yellow veil wouldbe drawn, like a vine leaf, at night. Things becamestiller and darker at night. But the leaf-like veil wasso fine that lights lifted it, voices crinkled it; he couldsee through it a figure stooping, hear, coming close,going away, some dress rustling, some chain tinkling.

It was in this world that the wheel went over theperson’s foot. Something, he remembered, stayed anddarkened over him; would not move; something flour-ished up in the air, something arid and sharp descend-ed even there, like a blade, a scimitar, smiting throughthe leaves and flowers even of that happy world andmaking them shrivel and fall.

‘It will rain,’ he remembered his father saying.‘You won’t be able to go to the Lighthouse.'

The Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking215