In the Orchard

by Virginia Woolf

　　Miranda slept in the orchard, lying in a long chair beneath theapple tree. Her book had fallen into the grass, and her finger stillseemed to point at the sentence: 'Ce pays est vraiment un des coins dumonde oui le rire des filles elate le mieux . . .'* as if she had fallenasleep just there. The opals on her finger flushed green, flushed rosy,and again flushed orange as the sun, oozing through the apple-trees,filled them. Then, when the breeze blew, her purple dress rippled like aflower attached to a stalk; the grasses nodded; and the white butterflycame blowing this way and that just above her face.

　　Four feet in the air over her head the apples hung. Suddenly there was ashrill clamour as if they were gongs of cracked brass beaten violently,irregularly, and brutally. It was only the school-children saying themultiplication table in unison, stopped by the teacher, scolded, andbeginning to say the multiplication table over again. But this clamourpassed four feet above Miranda's head, went through the apple boughs,and, striking against the cowman's little boy who was pickingblackberries in the hedge when he should have been at school, made himtear his thumb on the thorns.

　　Next there was a solitary cry--sad, human, brutal. Old Parsley was,indeed, blind drunk.

　　Then the very topmost leaves of the apple-tree, flat like little fishagainst the blue, thirty feet above the earth, chimed with a pensive andlugubrious note. It was the organ in the church playing one of HymnsAncient and Modern. The sound floated out and was cut into atoms by aflock of field-fares flying at an enormous speed--somewhere or other.Miranda lay asleep thirty feet beneath.

　　Then above the apple-tree and the pear-tree two hundred feet aboveMiranda lying asleep in the orchard bells thudded, intermittent, sullen,didactic, for six poor women of the parish were being churched and theRector was returning thanks to heaven.

　　And above that with a sharp squeak the golden feather of the church towerturned from south to east. The wind changed. Above everything else itdroned, above the woods, the meadows, the hills, miles above Mirandalying in the orchard asleep. It swept on, eyeless, brainless, meetingnothing that could stand against it, until, wheeling the other way, itturned south again. Miles below, in a space as big as the eye of aneedle, Miranda stood upright and cried aloud: 'Oh, I shall be late fortea!'

　　Miranda slept in the orchard--or perhaps she was not asleep, for herlips moved very slightly as if they were saying: 'Ce pays est vraiment undes coins du monde . . . oui le rire des filles . . . eclate . . . eclate . . .eclate.'** and then she smiled and let her body sink all its weight on tothe enormous earth which rises, she thought, to carry me on its back asif I were a leaf, or a queen (here the children said the multiplicationtable), or, Miranda went on, I might be lying on the top of a cliff withthe gulls screaming above me. The higher they fly, she continued, as theteacher scolded the children and rapped Jimmy over the knuckles till theybled, the deeper they look into the sea--into the sea, she repeated, andher fingers relaxed and her lips closed gently as if she were floating onthe sea, and then, when the shout of the drunken man sounded overhead,she drew breath with an extraordinary ecstasy, for she thought that sheheard life itself crying out from a rough tongue in a scarlet mouth, fromthe wind, from the bells, from the curved green leaves of the cabbages.

　　Naturally she was being married when the organ played the tune from HymnsAncient and Modern, and, when the bells rang after the six poor women hadbeen churched, the sullen intermittent thud made her think that the veryearth shook with the hoofs of the horse that was galloping towards her('Ah, I have only to wait!' she sighed), and it seemed to her thateverything had already begun moving, crying, riding, flying round her,across her, towards her in a pattern.

　　Mary is chopping the wood, she thought; Pearman is herding the cows; thecarts are coming up from the meadows; the rider--and she traced out thelines that the men, the carts, the birds, and the rider made over thecountryside until they all seemed driven out, round, and across by thebeat of her own heart.

　　Miles up in the air the wind changed; the golden feather of the churchtower squeaked; and Miranda jumped up and cried: 'Oh, I shall be late fortea!'

　　Miranda slept in the orchard, or was she asleep or was she not asleep?Her purple dress stretched between the two apple-trees. There weretwenty-four apple-trees in the orchard, some slanting slightly, othersgrowing straight with a rush up the trunk which spread wide into branchesand formed into round red or yellow drops. Each apple-tree had sufficientspace. The sky exactly fitted the leaves. When the breeze blew, the lineof the boughs against the wall slanted slightly and then returned. Awagtail flew diagonally from one corner to another. Cautiously hopping, athrush advanced towards a fallen apple; from the other wall a sparrowfluttered just above the grass. The uprush of the trees was tied down bythese movements; the whole was compacted by the orchard walls. For milesbeneath the earth was clamped together; rippled on the surface withwavering air; and across the corner of the orchard the blue-green wasslit by a purple streak. The wind changing, one bunch of apples wastossed so high that it blotted out two cows in the meadow ('Oh, I shallbe late for tea!' cried Miranda), and the apples hung straight across thewall again.

　　** Translation: 'This country is really one of the corners of the world. . . yes the girls laugh. . . bursts . . . bursts . . . bursts .'