He rose and looked out of the window down into Piccadilly. Some thought had struck him that made what the others were saying of no interest to him indeed, it was disagreeable to him. He sat staring ahead of him with bright blue eyes that seemed a little screwed up, as if the glare of the East were still in them and puckered at the corners as if the dust were still in them. The curious gleam which had come into all their eyes when Major Elkin began his story had faded completely from Colonel Pargiter’s face. Then Colonel Abel threw himself back in his chair. The three baldish and greyish heads remained close together for a few minutes. The others bent towards him with a brief wave of his hand Colonel Abel dismissed the servant who was removing the coffee cups. Suddenly the youngest and the sprucest of the three leant forward. It was a question of some appointment, of some possible appointment. Since his companions in the leather armchairs were men of his own type, men who had been soldiers, civil servants, men who had now retired, they were reviving with old jokes and stories now their past in India, Africa, Egypt, and then, by a natural transition, they turned to the present. Slowly wheeling, like the rays of a searchlight, the days, the weeks, the years passed one after another across the sky.Ĭolonel Abel Pargiter was sitting after luncheon in his club talking. At length the moon rose and its polished coin, though obscured now and then by wisps of cloud, shone out with serenity, with severity, or perhaps with complete indifference. Diners-out, trotting over the Bridge in hansom cabs, looked for a moment at the charming vista. The mixed light of the lamps and the setting sun was reflected equally in the placid waters of the Round Pond and the Serpentine. When the sun went down a million little gaslights, shaped like the eyes in peacocks’ feathers, opened in their glass cages, but nevertheless broad stretches of darkness were left on the pavement. Deviously ascending from the basement the silver teapot was placed on the table, and virgins and spinsters with hands that had staunched the sores of Bermondsey and Hoxton carefully measured out one, two, three, four spoonfuls of tea. In the basements of the long avenues of the residential quarters servant girls in cap and apron prepared tea. Here came the Princess, and as she passed hats were lifted. The gates at the Marble Arch and Apsley House were blocked in the afternoon by ladies in many-coloured dresses wearing bustles, and by gentlemen in frock coats carrying canes, wearing carnations. The pigeons in the squares shuffled in the tree tops, letting fall a twig or two, and crooned over and over again the lullaby that was always interrupted.

James’s by the twitter of sparrows and the sudden outbursts of the amorous but intermittent thrush. In the quieter streets musicians doled out their frail and for the most part melancholy pipe of sound, which was echoed, or parodied, here in the trees of Hyde Park, here in St. The stream of landaus, victorias and hansom cabs was incessant for the season was beginning. Interminable processions of shoppers in the West end, of business men in the East, paraded the pavements, like caravans perpetually marching,–so it seemed to those who had any reason to pause, say, to post a letter, or at a club window in Piccadilly. Thousands of shop assistants made that remark, as they handed neat parcels to ladies in flounced dresses standing on the other side of the counter at Whiteley’s and the Army and Navy Stores.

But in April such weather was to be expected. In the country farmers, looking at the fields, were apprehensive in London umbrellas were opened and then shut by people looking up at the sky. The weather, perpetually changing, sent clouds of blue and of purple flying over the land. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this file.

This eBook was produced by: Don Lainson laws are changing all over the world. It traces the history of the Pargiter family from 1880s to the mid-1930s The Years by Virginia Woolf was the last novel published when she was still alive.

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