'Now,' said Bernard, 'let us explore. There is the white house
lying among the trees. It lies down there ever so far beneath us. We
shall sink like swimmers just touching the ground with the tips of
their toes. We shall sink through the green air of the leaves, Susan.
We sink as we run. The waves close over us, the beech leaves meet
above our heads. There is the stable clock with its gilt hands
shining. Those are the flats and heights of the roofs of the great
house. There is the stable-boy clattering in the yard in rubber
boots. That is Elvedon.
'Now we have fallen through the tree-tops to the earth. The air no
longer rolls its long, unhappy, purple waves over us. We touch earth;
we tread ground. That is the close-clipped hedge of the ladies'
garden. There they walk at noon, with scissors, clipping roses. Now
we are in the ringed wood with the wall round it. This is Elvedon. I
have seen signposts at the cross-roads with one arm pointing "To
Elvedon". No one has been there. The ferns smell very strong, and
there are red funguses growing beneath them. Now we wake the sleeping
daws who have never seen a human form; now we tread on rotten oak
apples, red with age and slippery. There is a ring of wall round this
wood; nobody comes here. Listen! That is the flop of a giant toad in
the undergrowth; that is the patter of some primeval fir-cone falling
to rot among the ferns.
'Put your foot on this brick. Look over the wall. That is Elvedon.
The lady sits between the two long windows, writing. The gardeners
sweep the lawn with giant brooms. We are the first to come here. We
are the discoverers of an unknown land. Do not stir; if the gardeners
saw us they would shoot us. We should be nailed like stoats to the
stable door. Look! Do not move. Grasp the ferns tight on the top of
the wall.'
Virginia Woolf, The Waves, 1931
