Chapter 22 Chapter two

The lights went out, the moon went down, a light rain rustled on the roofs, and the darkness began to fall.Nothing seemed to survive this torrent of darkness: endless darkness slipped in through keyholes and crevices, crept around shutters, crept into bedrooms, swallowed kettles and washbasins, devoured red and yellow Italian Flowers, drowning the chiseled edges and solid shapes of the chest of drawers.Not only are the various pieces of furniture blurred and confused, there is almost no body or mind left out of the darkness for you to distinguish: "This is him" or "That is her".Sometimes a hand is raised as if to catch or fend something; or someone groans in a dream; or someone laughs loudly, as if sharing a joke with nothingness.

There was not a sound in the living room, in the dining room, or on the stairs.Only bits of air separated from the body of the sea-breeze sneaked around corners and broke in through rusted hinges and planks swollen with sea moisture (the house was, after all, dilapidated). in the room.You can almost imagine them entering the living room, wandering around, asking, playing with the flapping wallpaper hanging there, how long will it hang there?When will it peel off?Then they brushed calmly across the walls, musing as they passed, as if asking the red and yellow roses on the wallpaper whether they would fade, and asking debonairly (they had plenty of time) that the wastebaskets were being torn up in the wastebasket. Broken letters, flowers and books in the room (all now open to them): are they allies?Are they enemies?How long can they keep?

Some irregular light, from the unobstructed stars, from the wandering ship, or from the lighthouse, cast palely on the stair or the mat, and directed the little strands of air up the stair, where Peeping at the bedroom door.But here they must certainly stop.Everything else goes away, but what lies here lasts forever.You can tell the slithering lights and the groping airs (breathing themselves and looking down on the bed): there is nothing here you can touch or destroy.They seemed to have feather-light fingers, and feather-light and long-lasting, and they looked wearily, ghostly over the bed at their closed eyes, their slack fingers, and then they languidly folded their robes and disappeared.So they scrambled and scratched to the stair window, to the servants' bedroom, to the garret; they went downstairs again, paled the apples on the dining-room table, and stroked the roses. petals, try a picture on the easel, sweep the mat, and blow a little sand to the ground.At last they ceased, and they all stopped together, gathered together, sighed; they all uttered a nameless groan, which made a door in the kitchen resound: it flung open, let nothing in, and slammed shut again up.

[At this point Mr. Carmichael, who is reading Virgil, blows out his candle.It was midnight. 〕