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9Title:   To the Lighthouse
10Author:   Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
11* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
12eBook No.: 0100101.txt
13Language:   English
14Date first posted:     October 2001
15Date most recently updated: September 2008
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37
38
39Title:   To the Lighthouse
40Author:   Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
41
42
43
44
45THE WINDOW
46
47
481
49
50
51"Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs. Ramsay. "But you'll
52have to be up with the lark," she added.
53
54To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were
55settled, the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which
56he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night's
57darkness and a day's sail, within touch. Since he belonged, even at the
58age of six, to that great clan which cannot keep this feeling separate
59from that, but must let future prospects, with their joys and sorrows,
60cloud what is actually at hand, since to such people even in earliest
61childhood any turn in the wheel of sensation has the power to crystallise
62and transfix the moment upon which its gloom or radiance rests, James
63Ramsay, sitting on the floor cutting out pictures from the illustrated
64catalogue of the Army and Navy stores, endowed the picture of a
65refrigerator, as his mother spoke, with heavenly bliss. It was fringed
66with joy. The wheelbarrow, the lawnmower, the sound of poplar trees,
67leaves whitening before rain, rooks cawing, brooms knocking, dresses
68rustling--all these were so coloured and distinguished in his mind that he
69had already his private code, his secret language, though he appeared the
70image of stark and uncompromising severity, with his high forehead and his
71fierce blue eyes, impeccably candid and pure, frowning slightly at the
72sight of human frailty, so that his mother, watching him guide his
73scissors neatly round the refrigerator, imagined him all red and ermine on
74the Bench or directing a stern and momentous enterprise in some crisis of
75public affairs.
76
77"But," said his father, stopping in front of the drawing-room window, "it
78won't be fine."
79
80Had there been an axe handy, a poker, or any weapon that would have gashed
81a hole in his father's breast and killed him, there and then, James would
82have seized it. Such were the extremes of emotion that Mr. Ramsay excited
83in his children's breasts by his mere presence; standing, as now, lean as
84a knife, narrow as the blade of one, grinning sarcastically, not only with
85the pleasure of disillusioning his son and casting ridicule upon his wife,
86who was ten thousand times better in every way than he was
87(James thought), but also with some secret conceit at his own accuracy of
88judgement. What he said was true. It was always true. He was incapable
89of untruth; never tampered with a fact; never altered a disagreeable word
90to suit the pleasure or convenience of any mortal being, least of all of
91his own children, who, sprung from his loins, should be aware from
92childhood that life is difficult; facts uncompromising; and the passage to
93that fabled land where our brightest hopes are extinguished, our frail
94barks founder in darkness (here Mr. Ramsay would straighten his back and
95narrow his little blue eyes upon the horizon), one that needs, above all,
96courage, truth, and the power to endure.
97
98"But it may be fine--I expect it will be fine," said Mrs. Ramsay, making
99some little twist of the reddish brown stocking she was knitting,
100impatiently. If she finished it tonight, if they did go to the Lighthouse
101after all, it was to be given to the Lighthouse keeper for his little boy,
102who was threatened with a tuberculous hip; together with a pile of old
103magazines, and some tobacco, indeed, whatever she could find lying about,
104not really wanted, but only littering the room, to give those poor
105fellows, who must be bored to death sitting all day with nothing to do but
106polish the lamp and trim the wick and rake about on their scrap of garden,
107something to amuse them. For how would you like to be shut up for a whole
108month at a time, and possibly more in stormy weather, upon a rock the size
109of a tennis lawn? she would ask; and to have no letters or newspapers, and
110to see nobody; if you were married, not to see your wife, not to know how
111your children were,--if they were ill, if they had fallen down and broken
112their legs or arms; to see the same dreary waves breaking week after week,
113and then a dreadful storm coming, and the windows covered with spray, and
114birds dashed against the lamp, and the whole place rocking, and not be
115able to put your nose out of doors for fear of being swept into the sea?
116How would you like that? she asked, addressing herself particularly to her
117daughters. So she added, rather differently, one must take them whatever
118comforts one can.
119
120"It's due west," said the atheist Tansley, holding his bony fingers spread
121so that the wind blew through them, for he was sharing Mr. Ramsay's
122evening walk up and down, up and down the terrace. That is to say, the
123wind blew from the worst possible direction for landing at the Lighthouse.
124Yes, he did say disagreeable things, Mrs. Ramsay admitted; it was odious
125of him to rub this in, and make James still more disappointed; but at the
126same time, she would not let them laugh at him. "The atheist," they
127called him; "the little atheist." Rose mocked him; Prue mocked him;
128Andrew, Jasper, Roger mocked him; even old Badger without a tooth in his
129head had bit him, for being (as Nancy put it) the hundred and tenth young
130man to chase them all the way up to the Hebrides when it was ever so much
131nicer to be alone.
132
133"Nonsense," said Mrs. Ramsay, with great severity. Apart from the habit
134of exaggeration which they had from her, and from the implication (which
135was true) that she asked too many people to stay, and had to lodge some in
136the town, she could not bear incivility to her guests, to young men in
137particular, who were poor as churchmice, "exceptionally able," her husband
138said, his great admirers, and come there for a holiday. Indeed, she had
139the whole of the other sex under her protection; for reasons she could not
140explain, for their chivalry and valour, for the fact that they negotiated
141treaties, ruled India, controlled finance; finally for an attitude towards
142herself which no woman could fail to feel or to find agreeable, something
143trustful, childlike, reverential; which an old woman could take from a
144young man without loss of dignity, and woe betide the girl--pray Heaven it
145was none of her daughters!--who did not feel the worth of it, and all
146that it implied, to the marrow of her bones!
147
148She turned with severity upon Nancy. He had not chased them, she said.
149He had been asked.
150
151They must find a way out of it all. There might be some simpler way, some
152less laborious way, she sighed. When she looked in the glass and saw her
153hair grey, her cheek sunk, at fifty, she thought, possibly she might have
154managed things better--her husband; money; his books. But for her own
155part she would never for a single second regret her decision, evade
156difficulties, or slur over duties. She was now formidable to behold, and
157it was only in silence, looking up from their plates, after she had spoken
158so severely about Charles Tansley, that her daughters, Prue, Nancy,
159Rose--could sport with infidel ideas which they had brewed for themselves
160of a life different from hers; in Paris, perhaps; a wilder life; not
161always taking care of some man or other; for there was in all their minds
162a mute questioning of deference and chivalry, of the Bank of England and
163the Indian Empire, of ringed fingers and lace, though to them all there
164was something in this of the essence of beauty, which called out the
165manliness in their girlish hearts, and made them, as they sat at table
166beneath their mother's eyes, honour her strange severity, her extreme
167courtesy, like a queen's raising from the mud to wash a beggar's dirty
168foot, when she admonished them so very severely about that wretched
169atheist who had chased them--or, speaking accurately, been invited to
170stay with them--in the Isle of Skye.
171
172"There'll be no landing at the Lighthouse tomorrow," said Charles Tansley,
173clapping his hands together as he stood at the window with her husband.
174Surely, he had said enough. She wished they would both leave her and
175James alone and go on talking. She looked at him. He was such a
176miserable specimen, the children said, all humps and hollows. He couldn't
177play cricket; he poked; he shuffled. He was a sarcastic brute, Andrew
178said. They knew what he liked best--to be for ever walking up and down,
179up and down, with Mr. Ramsay, and saying who had won this, who had won
180that, who was a "first rate man" at Latin verses, who was "brilliant but I
181think fundamentally unsound," who was undoubtedly the "ablest fellow in
182Balliol," who had buried his light temporarily at Bristol or Bedford, but
183was bound to be heard of later when his Prolegomena, of which Mr. Tansley
184had the first pages in proof with him if Mr. Ramsay would like to see
185them, to some branch of mathematics or philosophy saw the light of day.
186That was what they talked about.
187
188She could not help laughing herself sometimes. She said, the other day,
189something about "waves mountains high." Yes, said Charles Tansley, it
190was a little rough. "Aren't you drenched to the skin?" she had said.
191"Damp, not wet through," said Mr. Tansley, pinching his sleeve, feeling
192his socks.
193
194But it was not that they minded, the children said. It was not his face;
195it was not his manners. It was him--his point of view. When they talked
196about something interesting, people, music, history, anything, even said
197it was a fine evening so why not sit out of doors, then what they
198complained of about Charles Tansley was that until he had turned the whole
199thing round and made it somehow reflect himself and disparage them--he was
200not satisfied. And he would go to picture galleries they said, and he
201would ask one, did one like his tie? God knows, said Rose, one did not.
202
203Disappearing as stealthily as stags from the dinner-table directly the
204meal was over, the eight sons and daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay sought
205their bedrooms, their fastness in a house where there was no other privacy
206to debate anything, everything; Tansley's tie; the passing of the Reform
207Bill; sea birds and butterflies; people; while the sun poured into those
208attics, which a plank alone separated from each other so that every
209footstep could be plainly heard and the Swiss girl sobbing for her father
210who was dying of cancer in a valley of the Grisons, and lit up bats,
211flannels, straw hats, ink-pots, paint-pots, beetles, and the skulls of
212small birds, while it drew from the long frilled strips of seaweed pinned
213to the wall a smell of salt and weeds, which was in the towels too,
214gritty with sand from bathing.
215
216Strife, divisions, difference of opinion, prejudices twisted into the very
217fibre of being, oh, that they should begin so early, Mrs. Ramsay deplored.
218They were so critical, her children. They talked such nonsense. She went
219from the dining-room, holding James by the hand, since he would not go
220with the others. It seemed to her such nonsense--inventing differences,
221when people, heaven knows, were different enough without that. The real
222differences, she thought, standing by the drawing-room window, are enough,
223quite enough. She had in mind at the moment, rich and poor, high and low;
224the great in birth receiving from her, half grudging, some respect, for
225had she not in her veins the blood of that very noble, if slightly
226mythical, Italian house, whose daughters, scattered about English
227drawing-rooms in the nineteenth century, had lisped so charmingly, had
228stormed so wildly, and all her wit and her bearing and her temper came
229from them, and not from the sluggish English, or the cold Scotch; but more
230profoundly, she ruminated the other problem, of rich and poor, and the
231things she saw with her own eyes, weekly, daily, here or in London, when
232she visited this widow, or that struggling wife in person with a bag on
233her arm, and a note-book and pencil with which she wrote down in columns
234carefully ruled for the purpose wages and spendings, employment and
235unemployment, in the hope that thus she would cease to be a private woman
236whose charity was half a sop to her own indignation, half a relief to her
237own curiosity, and become what with her untrained mind she greatly
238admired, an investigator, elucidating the social problem.
239
240Insoluble questions they were, it seemed to her, standing there, holding
241James by the hand. He had followed her into the drawing-room, that young
242man they laughed at; he was standing by the table, fidgeting with
243something, awkwardly, feeling himself out of things, as she knew without
244looking round. They had all gone--the children; Minta Doyle and Paul
245Rayley; Augustus Carmichael; her husband--they had all gone. So she
246turned with a sigh and said, "Would it bore you to come with me,
247Mr. Tansley?"
248
249She had a dull errand in the town; she had a letter or two to write; she
250would be ten minutes perhaps; she would put on her hat. And, with her
251basket and her parasol, there she was again, ten minutes later, giving out
252a sense of being ready, of being equipped for a jaunt, which, however, she
253must interrupt for a moment, as they passed the tennis lawn, to ask
254Mr. Carmichael, who was basking with his yellow cat's eyes ajar, so that
255like a cat's they seemed to reflect the branches moving or the clouds
256passing, but to give no inkling of any inner thoughts or emotion
257whatsoever, if he wanted anything.
258
259For they were making the great expedition, she said, laughing. They were
260going to the town. "Stamps, writing-paper, tobacco?" she suggested,
261stopping by his side. But no, he wanted nothing. His hands clasped
262themselves over his capacious paunch, his eyes blinked, as if he would
263have liked to reply kindly to these blandishments (she was seductive but a
264little nervous) but could not, sunk as he was in a grey-green somnolence
265which embraced them all, without need of words, in a vast and benevolent
266lethargy of well-wishing; all the house; all the world; all the people in
267it, for he had slipped into his glass at lunch a few drops of something,
268which accounted, the children thought, for the vivid streak of
269canary-yellow in moustache and beard that were otherwise milk white. No,
270nothing, he murmured.
271
272He should have been a great philosopher, said Mrs. Ramsay, as they went
273down the road to the fishing village, but he had made an unfortunate
274marriage. Holding her black parasol very erect, and moving with an
275indescribable air of expectation, as if she were going to meet some one
276round the corner, she told the story; an affair at Oxford with some girl;
277an early marriage; poverty; going to India; translating a little poetry
278"very beautifully, I believe," being willing to teach the boys Persian or
279Hindustanee, but what really was the use of that?--and then lying, as they
280saw him, on the lawn.
281
282It flattered him; snubbed as he had been, it soothed him that Mrs. Ramsay
283should tell him this. Charles Tansley revived. Insinuating, too, as she
284did the greatness of man's intellect, even in its decay, the subjection of
285all wives--not that she blamed the girl, and the marriage had been happy
286enough, she believed--to their husband's labours, she made him feel better
287pleased with himself than he had done yet, and he would have liked, had
288they taken a cab, for example, to have paid the fare. As for her little
289bag, might he not carry that? No, no, she said, she always carried THAT
290herself. She did too. Yes, he felt that in her. He felt many things,
291something in particular that excited him and disturbed him for reasons
292which he could not give. He would like her to see him, gowned and hooded,
293walking in a procession. A fellowship, a professorship, he felt capable
294of anything and saw himself--but what was she looking at? At a man
295pasting a bill. The vast flapping sheet flattened itself out, and each
296shove of the brush revealed fresh legs, hoops, horses, glistening reds and
297blues, beautifully smooth, until half the wall was covered with the
298advertisement of a circus; a hundred horsemen, twenty performing seals,
299lions, tigers ... Craning forwards, for she was short-sighted, she read it
300out ... "will visit this town," she read. It was terribly dangerous work
301for a one-armed man, she exclaimed, to stand on top of a ladder like
302that--his left arm had been cut off in a reaping machine two years ago.
303
304"Let us all go!" she cried, moving on, as if all those riders and horses
305had filled her with childlike exultation and made her forget her pity.
306
307"Let's go," he said, repeating her words, clicking them out, however, with
308a self-consciousness that made her wince. "Let us all go to the circus."
309No. He could not say it right. He could not feel it right. But why not?
310she wondered. What was wrong with him then? She liked him warmly, at the
311moment. Had they not been taken, she asked, to circuses when they were
312children? Never, he answered, as if she asked the very thing he wanted;
313had been longing all these days to say, how they did not go to circuses.
314It was a large family, nine brothers and sisters, and his father was a
315working man. "My father is a chemist, Mrs. Ramsay. He keeps a shop." He
316himself had paid his own way since he was thirteen. Often he went without
317a greatcoat in winter. He could never "return hospitality" (those were
318his parched stiff words) at college. He had to make things last twice the
319time other people did; he smoked the cheapest tobacco; shag; the same the
320old men did in the quays. He worked hard--seven hours a day; his subject
321was now the influence of something upon somebody--they were walking on and
322Mrs. Ramsay did not quite catch the meaning, only the words, here and
323there ... dissertation ... fellowship ... readership ... lectureship. She
324could not follow the ugly academic jargon, that rattled itself off so
325glibly, but said to herself that she saw now why going to the circus had
326knocked him off his perch, poor little man, and why he came out,
327instantly, with all that about his father and mother and brothers and
328sisters, and she would see to it that they didn't laugh at him any more;
329she would tell Prue about it. What he would have liked, she supposed,
330would have been to say how he had gone not to the circus but to Ibsen with
331the Ramsays. He was an awful prig--oh yes, an insufferable bore. For,
332though they had reached the town now and were in the main street, with
333carts grinding past on the cobbles, still he went on talking, about
334settlements, and teaching, and working men, and helping our own class,
335and lectures, till she gathered that he had got back entire
336self-confidence, had recovered from the circus, and was about (and now
337again she liked him warmly) to tell her--but here, the houses falling
338away on both sides, they came out on the quay, and the whole bay
339spread before them and Mrs. Ramsay could not help exclaiming, "Oh,
340how beautiful!" For the great plateful of blue water was before her;
341the hoary Lighthouse, distant, austere, in the midst; and on the right,
342as far as the eye could see, fading and falling, in soft low pleats,
343the green sand dunes with the wild flowing grasses on them, which always
344seemed to be running away into some moon country, uninhabited of men.
345
346That was the view, she said, stopping, growing greyer-eyed, that her
347husband loved.
348
349She paused a moment. But now, she said, artists had come here. There
350indeed, only a few paces off, stood one of them, in Panama hat and yellow
351boots, seriously, softly, absorbedly, for all that he was watched by ten
352little boys, with an air of profound contentment on his round red face
353gazing, and then, when he had gazed, dipping; imbuing the tip of his
354brush in some soft mound of green or pink. Since Mr. Paunceforte had been
355there, three years before, all the pictures were like that, she said,
356green and grey, with lemon-coloured sailing-boats, and pink women on the
357beach.
358
359But her grandmother's friends, she said, glancing discreetly as they
360passed, took the greatest pains; first they mixed their own colours, and
361then they ground them, and then they put damp cloths to keep them moist.
362
363So Mr. Tansley supposed she meant him to see that that man's picture was
364skimpy, was that what one said? The colours weren't solid? Was that what
365one said? Under the influence of that extraordinary emotion which had been
366growing all the walk, had begun in the garden when he had wanted to take
367her bag, had increased in the town when he had wanted to tell her
368everything about himself, he was coming to see himself, and everything he
369had ever known gone crooked a little. It was awfully strange.
370
371There he stood in the parlour of the poky little house where she had taken
372him, waiting for her, while she went upstairs a moment to see a woman. He
373heard her quick step above; heard her voice cheerful, then low; looked at
374the mats, tea-caddies, glass shades; waited quite impatiently; looked
375forward eagerly to the walk home; determined to carry her bag; then heard
376her come out; shut a door; say they must keep the windows open and the
377doors shut, ask at the house for anything they wanted (she must be talking
378to a child) when, suddenly, in she came, stood for a moment silent (as if
379she had been pretending up there, and for a moment let herself be now),
380stood quite motionless for a moment against a picture of Queen Victoria
381wearing the blue ribbon of the Garter; when all at once he realised that
382it was this: it was this:--she was the most beautiful person he had ever
383seen.
384
385With stars in her eyes and veils in her hair, with cyclamen and wild
386violets--what nonsense was he thinking? She was fifty at least; she had
387eight children. Stepping through fields of flowers and taking to her
388breast buds that had broken and lambs that had fallen; with the stars in
389her eyes and the wind in her hair--He had hold of her bag.
390
391"Good-bye, Elsie," she said, and they walked up the street, she holding
392her parasol erect and walking as if she expected to meet some one round
393the corner, while for the first time in his life Charles Tansley felt an
394extraordinary pride; a man digging in a drain stopped digging and looked
395at her, let his arm fall down and looked at her; for the first time in his
396life Charles Tansley felt an extraordinary pride; felt the wind and the
397cyclamen and the violets for he was walking with a beautiful woman. He
398had hold of her bag.
399
400
4012
402
403
404"No going to the Lighthouse, James," he said, as trying in deference to
405Mrs. Ramsay to soften his voice into some semblance of geniality at least.
406
407Odious little man, thought Mrs. Ramsay, why go on saying that?
408
409
4103
411
412
413"Perhaps you will wake up and find the sun shining and the birds singing,"
414she said compassionately, smoothing the little boy's hair, for her
415husband, with his caustic saying that it would not be fine, had dashed his
416spirits she could see. This going to the Lighthouse was a passion of his,
417she saw, and then, as if her husband had not said enough, with his caustic
418saying that it would not be fine tomorrow, this odious little man went and
419rubbed it in all over again.
420
421"Perhaps it will be fine tomorrow," she said, smoothing his hair.
422
423All she could do now was to admire the refrigerator, and turn the pages of
424the Stores list in the hope that she might come upon something like a
425rake, or a mowing-machine, which, with its prongs and its handles, would
426need the greatest skill and care in cutting out. All these young men
427parodied her husband, she reflected; he said it would rain; they said it
428would be a positive tornado.
429
430But here, as she turned the page, suddenly her search for the picture of a
431rake or a mowing-machine was interrupted. The gruff murmur, irregularly
432broken by the taking out of pipes and the putting in of pipes which had
433kept on assuring her, though she could not hear what was said (as she sat
434in the window which opened on the terrace), that the men were happily
435talking; this sound, which had lasted now half an hour and had taken its
436place soothingly in the scale of sounds pressing on top of her, such as
437the tap of balls upon bats, the sharp, sudden bark now and then,
438"How's that? How's that?" of the children playing cricket, had ceased;
439so that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most
440part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts and seemed
441consolingly to repeat over and over again as she sat with the children
442the words of some old cradle song, murmured by nature, "I am guarding
443you--I am your support," but at other times suddenly and unexpectedly,
444especially when her mind raised itself slightly from the task actually in
445hand, had no such kindly meaning, but like a ghostly roll of drums
446remorselessly beat the measure of life, made one think of the destruction
447of the island and its engulfment in the sea, and warned her whose day had
448slipped past in one quick doing after another that it was all ephemeral as
449a rainbow--this sound which had been obscured and concealed under the
450other sounds suddenly thundered hollow in her ears and made her look up
451with an impulse of terror.
452
453They had ceased to talk; that was the explanation. Falling in one second
454from the tension which had gripped her to the other extreme which, as if
455to recoup her for her unnecessary expense of emotion, was cool, amused,
456and even faintly malicious, she concluded that poor Charles Tansley had
457been shed. That was of little account to her. If her husband required
458sacrifices (and indeed he did) she cheerfully offered up to him Charles
459Tansley, who had snubbed her little boy.
460
461One moment more, with her head raised, she listened, as if she waited for
462some habitual sound, some regular mechanical sound; and then, hearing
463something rhythmical, half said, half chanted, beginning in the garden, as
464her husband beat up and down the terrace, something between a croak and a
465song, she was soothed once more, assured again that all was well, and
466looking down at the book on her knee found the picture of a pocket knife
467with six blades which could only be cut out if James was very careful.
468
469Suddenly a loud cry, as of a sleep-walker, half roused, something about
470
471
472Stormed at with shot and shell
473
474
475sung out with the utmost intensity in her ear, made her turn
476apprehensively to see if anyone had heard him. Only Lily Briscoe, she was
477glad to find; and that did not matter. But the sight of the girl standing
478on the edge of the lawn painting reminded her; she was supposed to be
479keeping her head as much in the same position as possible for Lily's
480picture. Lily's picture! Mrs. Ramsay smiled. With her little Chinese
481eyes and her puckered-up face, she would never marry; one could not take
482her painting very seriously; she was an independent little creature, and
483Mrs. Ramsay liked her for it; so, remembering her promise, she bent her
484head.
485
486
4874
488
489
490Indeed, he almost knocked her easel over, coming down upon her with his
491hands waving shouting out, "Boldly we rode and well," but, mercifully, he
492turned sharp, and rode off, to die gloriously she supposed upon the
493heights of Balaclava. Never was anybody at once so ridiculous and so
494alarming. But so long as he kept like that, waving, shouting, she was
495safe; he would not stand still and look at her picture. And that was what
496Lily Briscoe could not have endured. Even while she looked at the mass,
497at the line, at the colour, at Mrs. Ramsay sitting in the window with
498James, she kept a feeler on her surroundings lest some one should creep
499up, and suddenly she should find her picture looked at. But now, with all
500her senses quickened as they were, looking, straining, till the colour of
501the wall and the jacmanna beyond burnt into her eyes, she was aware of
502someone coming out of the house, coming towards her; but somehow divined,
503from the footfall, William Bankes, so that though her brush quivered, she
504did not, as she would have done had it been Mr. Tansley, Paul Rayley,
505Minta Doyle, or practically anybody else, turn her canvas upon the grass,
506but let it stand. William Bankes stood beside her.
507
508They had rooms in the village, and so, walking in, walking out, parting
509late on door-mats, had said little things about the soup, about the
510children, about one thing and another which made them allies; so that when
511he stood beside her now in his judicial way (he was old enough to be her
512father too, a botanist, a widower, smelling of soap, very scrupulous and
513clean) she just stood there. He just stood there. Her shoes were
514excellent, he observed. They allowed the toes their natural expansion.
515Lodging in the same house with her, he had noticed too, how orderly she
516was, up before breakfast and off to paint, he believed, alone: poor,
517presumably, and without the complexion or the allurement of Miss Doyle
518certainly, but with a good sense which made her in his eyes superior to
519that young lady. Now, for instance, when Ramsay bore down on them,
520shouting, gesticulating, Miss Briscoe, he felt certain, understood.
521
522
523Some one had blundered.
524
525
526Mr. Ramsay glared at them. He glared at them without seeming to see them.
527That did make them both vaguely uncomfortable. Together they had seen a
528thing they had not been meant to see. They had encroached upon a privacy.
529So, Lily thought, it was probably an excuse of his for moving, for getting
530out of earshot, that made Mr. Bankes almost immediately say something
531about its being chilly and suggested taking a stroll. She would come,
532yes. But it was with difficulty that she took her eyes off her picture.
533
534The jacmanna was bright violet; the wall staring white. She would not
535have considered it honest to tamper with the bright violet and the staring
536white, since she saw them like that, fashionable though it was, since
537Mr. Paunceforte's visit, to see everything pale, elegant, semitransparent.
538Then beneath the colour there was the shape. She could see it all so
539clearly, so commandingly, when she looked: it was when she took her brush
540in hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment's flight
541between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often
542brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to
543work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child. Such she often
544felt herself--struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to
545say: "But this is what I see; this is what I see," and so to clasp some
546miserable remnant of her vision to her breast, which a thousand forces did
547their best to pluck from her. And it was then too, in that chill and
548windy way, as she began to paint, that there forced themselves upon her
549other things, her own inadequacy, her insignificance, keeping house for
550her father off the Brompton Road, and had much ado to control her impulse
551to fling herself (thank Heaven she had always resisted so far) at
552Mrs. Ramsay's knee and say to her--but what could one say to her? "I'm in
553love with you?" No, that was not true. "I'm in love with this all,"
554waving her hand at the hedge, at the house, at the children. It was
555absurd, it was impossible. So now she laid her brushes neatly in the box,
556side by side, and said to William Bankes:
557
558"It suddenly gets cold. The sun seems to give less heat," she said,
559looking about her, for it was bright enough, the grass still a soft deep
560green, the house starred in its greenery with purple passion flowers, and
561rooks dropping cool cries from the high blue. But something moved,
562flashed, turned a silver wing in the air. It was September after all,
563the middle of September, and past six in the evening. So off they
564strolled down the garden in the usual direction, past the tennis lawn,
565past the pampas grass, to that break in the thick hedge, guarded by red
566hot pokers like brasiers of clear burning coal, between which the blue
567waters of the bay looked bluer than ever.
568
569They came there regularly every evening drawn by some need. It was as if
570the water floated off and set sailing thoughts which had grown stagnant on
571dry land, and gave to their bodies even some sort of physical relief.
572First, the pulse of colour flooded the bay with blue, and the heart
573expanded with it and the body swam, only the next instant to be checked
574and chilled by the prickly blackness on the ruffled waves. Then, up
575behind the great black rock, almost every evening spurted irregularly, so
576that one had to watch for it and it was a delight when it came, a fountain
577of white water; and then, while one waited for that, one watched, on the
578pale semicircular beach, wave after wave shedding again and again
579smoothly, a film of mother of pearl.
580
581They both smiled, standing there. They both felt a common hilarity,
582excited by the moving waves; and then by the swift cutting race of a
583sailing boat, which, having sliced a curve in the bay, stopped; shivered;
584let its sails drop down; and then, with a natural instinct to complete the
585picture, after this swift movement, both of them looked at the dunes
586far away, and instead of merriment felt come over them some
587sadness--because the thing was completed partly, and partly because
588distant views seem to outlast by a million years (Lily thought) the gazer
589and to be communing already with a sky which beholds an earth entirely
590at rest.
591
592Looking at the far sand hills, William Bankes thought of Ramsay: thought
593of a road in Westmorland, thought of Ramsay striding along a road by
594himself hung round with that solitude which seemed to be his natural air.
595But this was suddenly interrupted, William Bankes remembered (and this
596must refer to some actual incident), by a hen, straddling her wings out in
597protection of a covey of little chicks, upon which Ramsay, stopping,
598pointed his stick and said "Pretty--pretty," an odd illumination in to
599his heart, Bankes had thought it, which showed his simplicity, his
600sympathy with humble things; but it seemed to him as if their friendship
601had ceased, there, on that stretch of road. After that, Ramsay had
602married. After that, what with one thing and another, the pulp had gone
603out of their friendship. Whose fault it was he could not say, only, after
604a time, repetition had taken the place of newness. It was to repeat that
605they met. But in this dumb colloquy with the sand dunes he maintained
606that his affection for Ramsay had in no way diminished; but there, like
607the body of a young man laid up in peat for a century, with the red fresh
608on his lips, was his friendship, in its acuteness and reality, laid up
609across the bay among the sandhills.
610
611He was anxious for the sake of this friendship and perhaps too in order to
612clear himself in his own mind from the imputation of having dried and
613shrunk--for Ramsay lived in a welter of children, whereas Bankes was
614childless and a widower--he was anxious that Lily Briscoe should not
615disparage Ramsay (a great man in his own way) yet should understand how
616things stood between them. Begun long years ago, their friendship had
617petered out on a Westmorland road, where the hen spread her wings before
618her chicks; after which Ramsay had married, and their paths lying
619different ways, there had been, certainly for no one's fault, some
620tendency, when they met, to repeat.
621
622Yes. That was it. He finished. He turned from the view. And, turning
623to walk back the other way, up the drive, Mr. Bankes was alive to things
624which would not have struck him had not those sandhills revealed to him
625the body of his friendship lying with the red on its lips laid up in
626peat--for instance, Cam, the little girl, Ramsay's youngest daughter. She
627was picking Sweet Alice on the bank. She was wild and fierce. She would
628not "give a flower to the gentleman" as the nursemaid told her.
629No! no! no! she would not! She clenched her fist. She stamped. And
630Mr. Bankes felt aged and saddened and somehow put into the wrong by her
631about his friendship. He must have dried and shrunk.
632
633The Ramsays were not rich, and it was a wonder how they managed to
634contrive it all. Eight children! To feed eight children on philosophy!
635Here was another of them, Jasper this time, strolling past, to have a shot
636at a bird, he said, nonchalantly, swinging Lily's hand like a pump-handle
637as he passed, which caused Mr. Bankes to say, bitterly, how SHE was a
638favourite. There was education now to be considered (true, Mrs. Ramsay
639had something of her own perhaps) let alone the daily wear and tear of
640shoes and stockings which those "great fellows," all well grown, angular,
641ruthless youngsters, must require. As for being sure which was which, or
642in what order they came, that was beyond him. He called them privately
643after the Kings and Queens of England; Cam the Wicked, James the Ruthless,
644Andrew the Just, Prue the Fair--for Prue would have beauty, he thought,
645how could she help it?--and Andrew brains. While he walked up the drive
646and Lily Briscoe said yes and no and capped his comments (for she was in
647love with them all, in love with this world) he weighed Ramsay's case,
648commiserated him, envied him, as if he had seen him divest himself of all
649those glories of isolation and austerity which crowned him in youth to
650cumber himself definitely with fluttering wings and clucking
651domesticities. They gave him something--William Bankes acknowledged that;
652it would have been pleasant if Cam had stuck a flower in his coat or
653clambered over his shoulder, as over her father's, to look at a picture
654of Vesuvius in eruption; but they had also, his old friends could not but
655feel, destroyed something. What would a stranger think now? What did
656this Lily Briscoe think? Could one help noticing that habits grew on him?
657eccentricities, weaknesses perhaps? It was astonishing that a man of his
658intellect could stoop so low as he did--but that was too harsh a
659phrase--could depend so much as he did upon people's praise.
660
661"Oh, but," said Lily, "think of his work!"
662
663Whenever she "thought of his work" she always saw clearly before her a
664large kitchen table. It was Andrew's doing. She asked him what his
665father's books were about. "Subject and object and the nature of
666reality," Andrew had said. And when she said Heavens, she had no notion
667what that meant. "Think of a kitchen table then," he told her, "when
668you're not there."
669
670So now she always saw, when she thought of Mr. Ramsay's work, a scrubbed
671kitchen table. It lodged now in the fork of a pear tree, for they had
672reached the orchard. And with a painful effort of concentration, she
673focused her mind, not upon the silver-bossed bark of the tree, or upon its
674fish-shaped leaves, but upon a phantom kitchen table, one of those
675scrubbed board tables, grained and knotted, whose virtue seems to have
676been laid bare by years of muscular integrity, which stuck there, its four
677legs in air. Naturally, if one's days were passed in this seeing of
678angular essences, this reducing of lovely evenings, with all their
679flamingo clouds and blue and silver to a white deal four-legged table
680(and it was a mark of the finest minds to do so), naturally one could not
681be judged like an ordinary person.
682
683Mr. Bankes liked her for bidding him "think of his work." He had thought
684of it, often and often. Times without number, he had said, "Ramsay is one
685of those men who do their best work before they are forty." He had made a
686definite contribution to philosophy in one little book when he was only
687five and twenty; what came after was more or less amplification,
688repetition. But the number of men who make a definite contribution to
689anything whatsoever is very small, he said, pausing by the pear tree, well
690brushed, scrupulously exact, exquisitely judicial. Suddenly, as if the
691movement of his hand had released it, the load of her accumulated
692impressions of him tilted up, and down poured in a ponderous avalanche all
693she felt about him. That was one sensation. Then up rose in a fume the
694essence of his being. That was another. She felt herself transfixed
695by the intensity of her perception; it was his severity; his goodness. I
696respect you (she addressed silently him in person) in every atom; you are
697not vain; you are entirely impersonal; you are finer than Mr. Ramsay; you
698are the finest human being that I know; you have neither wife nor child
699(without any sexual feeling, she longed to cherish that loneliness), you
700live for science (involuntarily, sections of potatoes rose before her
701eyes); praise would be an insult to you; generous, pure-hearted, heroic
702man! But simultaneously, she remembered how he had brought a valet all
703the way up here; objected to dogs on chairs; would prose for hours (until
704Mr. Ramsay slammed out of the room) about salt in vegetables and the
705iniquity of English cooks.
706
707How then did it work out, all this? How did one judge people, think of
708them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that it was liking
709one felt or disliking? And to those words, what meaning attached, after
710all? Standing now, apparently transfixed, by the pear tree, impressions
711poured in upon her of those two men, and to follow her thought was like
712following a voice which speaks too quickly to be taken down by one's
713pencil, and the voice was her own voice saying without prompting
714undeniable, everlasting, contradictory things, so that even the
715fissures and humps on the bark of the pear tree were irrevocably
716fixed there for eternity. You have greatness, she continued, but
717Mr. Ramsay has none of it. He is petty, selfish, vain, egotistical; he is
718spoilt; he is a tyrant; he wears Mrs. Ramsay to death; but he has what you
719(she addressed Mr. Bankes) have not; a fiery unworldliness; he knows
720nothing about trifles; he loves dogs and his children. He has eight.
721Mr. Bankes has none. Did he not come down in two coats the other night
722and let Mrs. Ramsay trim his hair into a pudding basin? All of this
723danced up and down, like a company of gnats, each separate but all
724marvellously controlled in an invisible elastic net--danced up and down in
725Lily's mind, in and about the branches of the pear tree, where still hung
726in effigy the scrubbed kitchen table, symbol of her profound respect for
727Mr. Ramsay's mind, until her thought which had spun quicker and quicker
728exploded of its own intensity; she felt released; a shot went off close at
729hand, and there came, flying from its fragments, frightened, effusive,
730tumultuous, a flock of starlings.
731
732"Jasper!" said Mr. Bankes. They turned the way the starlings flew, over
733the terrace. Following the scatter of swift-flying birds in the sky they
734stepped through the gap in the high hedge straight into Mr. Ramsay, who
735boomed tragically at them, "Some one had blundered!"
736
737His eyes, glazed with emotion, defiant with tragic intensity, met theirs
738for a second, and trembled on the verge of recognition; but then, raising
739his hand, half-way to his face as if to avert, to brush off, in an agony
740of peevish shame, their normal gaze, as if he begged them to withhold for
741a moment what he knew to be inevitable, as if he impressed upon them his
742own child-like resentment of interruption, yet even in the moment of
743discovery was not to be routed utterly, but was determined to hold fast to
744something of this delicious emotion, this impure rhapsody of which he was
745ashamed, but in which he revelled--he turned abruptly, slammed his private
746door on them; and, Lily Briscoe and Mr. Bankes, looking uneasily up into
747the sky, observed that the flock of starlings which Jasper had routed with
748his gun had settled on the tops of the elm trees.
749
750
7515
752
753
754"And even if it isn't fine tomorrow," said Mrs. Ramsay, raising her eyes
755to glance at William Bankes and Lily Briscoe as they passed, "it will be
756another day. And now," she said, thinking that Lily's charm was her
757Chinese eyes, aslant in her white, puckered little face, but it would take
758a clever man to see it, "and now stand up, and let me measure your leg,"
759for they might go to the Lighthouse after all, and she must see if the
760stocking did not need to be an inch or two longer in the leg.
761
762Smiling, for it was an admirable idea, that had flashed upon her this very
763second--William and Lily should marry--she took the heather-mixture
764stocking, with its criss-cross of steel needles at the mouth of it, and
765measured it against James's leg.
766
767"My dear, stand still," she said, for in his jealousy, not liking to serve
768as measuring block for the Lighthouse keeper's little boy, James fidgeted
769purposely; and if he did that, how could she see, was it too long, was it
770too short? she asked.
771
772She looked up--what demon possessed him, her youngest, her cherished?--and
773saw the room, saw the chairs, thought them fearfully shabby. Their
774entrails, as Andrew said the other day, were all over the floor; but then
775what was the point, she asked, of buying good chairs to let them spoil up
776here all through the winter when the house, with only one old woman to see
777to it, positively dripped with wet? Never mind, the rent was precisely
778twopence half-penny; the children loved it; it did her husband good to be
779three thousand, or if she must be accurate, three hundred miles from his
780libraries and his lectures and his disciples; and there was room for
781visitors. Mats, camp beds, crazy ghosts of chairs and tables whose London
782life of service was done--they did well enough here; and a photograph or
783two, and books. Books, she thought, grew of themselves. She never had
784time to read them. Alas! even the books that had been given her and
785inscribed by the hand of the poet himself: "For her whose wishes must be
786obeyed" ... "The happier Helen of our days" ... disgraceful to say, she
787had never read them. And Croom on the Mind and Bates on the Savage
788Customs of Polynesia ("My dear, stand still," she said)--neither of those
789could one send to the Lighthouse. At a certain moment, she supposed, the
790house would become so shabby that something must be done. If they could
791be taught to wipe their feet and not bring the beach in with them--that
792would be something. Crabs, she had to allow, if Andrew really wished to
793dissect them, or if Jasper believed that one could make soup from seaweed,
794one could not prevent it; or Rose's objects--shells, reeds, stones; for
795they were gifted, her children, but all in quite different ways. And the
796result of it was, she sighed, taking in the whole room from floor to
797ceiling, as she held the stocking against James's leg, that things got
798shabbier and got shabbier summer after summer. The mat was fading; the
799wall-paper was flapping. You couldn't tell any more that those were roses
800on it. Still, if every door in a house is left perpetually open, and no
801lockmaker in the whole of Scotland can mend a bolt, things must spoil.
802What was the use of flinging a green Cashemere shawl over the edge of
803a picture frame? In two weeks it would be the colour of pea soup.
804But it was the doors that annoyed her; every door was left open.
805She listened. The drawing-room door was open; the hall door was open;
806it sounded as if the bedroom doors were open; and certainly the window
807on the landing was open, for that she had opened herself. That windows
808should be open, and doors shut--simple as it was, could none of them
809remember it? She would go into the maids' bedrooms at night and find
810them sealed like ovens, except for Marie's, the Swiss girl, who
811would rather go without a bath than without fresh air, but then
812at home, she had said, "the mountains are so beautiful." She had said
813that last night looking out of the window with tears in her eyes.
814"The mountains are so beautiful." Her father was dying there,
815Mrs. Ramsay knew. He was leaving them fatherless. Scolding and
816demonstrating (how to make a bed, how to open a window, with hands that
817shut and spread like a Frenchwoman's) all had folded itself quietly about
818her, when the girl spoke, as, after a flight through the sunshine the
819wings of a bird fold themselves quietly and the blue of its plumage
820changes from bright steel to soft purple. She had stood there silent for
821there was nothing to be said. He had cancer of the throat. At the
822recolection--how she had stood there, how the girl had said, "At home the
823mountains are so beautiful," and there was no hope, no hope whatever, she
824had a spasm of irritation, and speaking sharply, said to James:
825
826"Stand still. Don't be tiresome," so that he knew instantly that her
827severity was real, and straightened his leg and she measured it.
828
829The stocking was too short by half an inch at least, making allowance for
830the fact that Sorley's little boy would be less well grown than James.
831
832"It's too short," she said, "ever so much too short."
833
834Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, half-way down, in the
835darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhaps
836a tear formed; a tear fell; the waters swayed this way and that, received
837it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad.
838
839But was it nothing but looks, people said? What was there behind it--her
840beauty and splendour? Had he blown his brains out, they asked, had he
841died the week before they were married--some other, earlier lover, of whom
842rumours reached one? Or was there nothing? nothing but an incomparable
843beauty which she lived behind, and could do nothing to disturb? For
844easily though she might have said at some moment of intimacy when stories
845of great passion, of love foiled, of ambition thwarted came her way how
846she too had known or felt or been through it herself, she never spoke.
847She was silent always. She knew then--she knew without having learnt.
848Her simplicity fathomed what clever people falsified. Her singleness of
849mind made her drop plumb like a stone, alight exact as a bird, gave her,
850naturally, this swoop and fall of the spirit upon truth which delighted,
851eased, sustained--falsely perhaps.
852
853("Nature has but little clay," said Mr. Bankes once, much moved by her
854voice on the telephone, though she was only telling him a fact about a
855train, "like that of which she moulded you." He saw her at the end of the
856line, Greek, blue-eyed, straight-nosed. How incongruous it seemed to be
857telephoning to a woman like that. The Graces assembling seemed to have
858joined hands in meadows of asphodel to compose that face. Yes, he would
859catch the 10:30 at Euston.
860
861"But she's no more aware of her beauty than a child," said Mr. Bankes,
862replacing the receiver and crossing the room to see what progress the
863workmen were making with an hotel which they were building at the back of
864his house. And he thought of Mrs. Ramsay as he looked at that stir among
865the unfinished walls. For always, he thought, there was something
866incongruous to be worked into the harmony of her face. She clapped a
867deer-stalker's hat on her head; she ran across the lawn in galoshes to
868snatch a child from mischief. So that if it was her beauty merely that
869one thought of, one must remember the quivering thing, the living thing
870(they were carrying bricks up a little plank as he watched them), and work
871it into the picture; or if one thought of her simply as a woman, one must
872endow her with some freak of idiosyncrasy--she did not like admiration--or
873suppose some latent desire to doff her royalty of form as if her beauty
874bored her and all that men say of beauty, and she wanted only to be like
875other people, insignificant. He did not know. He did not know. He must
876go to his work.)
877
878Knitting her reddish-brown hairy stocking, with her head outlined absurdly
879by the gilt frame, the green shawl which she had tossed over the edge of
880the frame, and the authenticated masterpiece by Michael Angelo,
881Mrs. Ramsay smoothed out what had been harsh in her manner a moment
882before, raised his head, and kissed her little boy on the forehead.
883"Let us find another picture to cut out," she said.
884
885
8866
887
888
889But what had happened?
890
891Some one had blundered.
892
893Starting from her musing she gave meaning to words which she had held
894meaningless in her mind for a long stretch of time. "Some one had
895blundered"--Fixing her short-sighted eyes upon her husband, who was now
896bearing down upon her, she gazed steadily until his closeness revealed to
897her (the jingle mated itself in her head) that something had happened,
898some one had blundered. But she could not for the life of her think what.
899
900He shivered; he quivered. All his vanity, all his satisfaction in his own
901splendour, riding fell as a thunderbolt, fierce as a hawk at the head of
902his men through the valley of death, had been shattered, destroyed.
903Stormed at by shot and shell, boldly we rode and well, flashed through the
904valley of death, volleyed and thundered--straight into Lily Briscoe and
905William Bankes. He quivered; he shivered.
906
907Not for the world would she have spoken to him, realising, from the
908familiar signs, his eyes averted, and some curious gathering together
909of his person, as if he wrapped himself about and needed privacy into
910which to regain his equilibrium, that he was outraged and anguished. She
911stroked James's head; she transferred to him what she felt for her
912husband, and, as she watched him chalk yellow the white dress shirt of a
913gentleman in the Army and Navy Stores catalogue, thought what a delight it
914would be to her should he turn out a great artist; and why should he not?
915He had a splendid forehead. Then, looking up, as her husband passed her
916once more, she was relieved to find that the ruin was veiled; domesticity
917triumphed; custom crooned its soothing rhythm, so that when stopping
918deliberately, as his turn came round again, at the window he bent
919quizzically and whimsically to tickle James's bare calf with a sprig of
920something, she twitted him for having dispatched "that poor young man,"
921Charles Tansley. Tansley had had to go in and write his dissertation,
922he said.
923
924"James will have to write HIS dissertation one of these days," he added
925ironically, flicking his sprig.
926
927Hating his father, James brushed away the tickling spray with which in a
928manner peculiar to him, compound of severity and humour, he teased his
929youngest son's bare leg.
930
931She was trying to get these tiresome stockings finished to send to
932Sorley's little boy tomorrow, said Mrs. Ramsay.
933
934There wasn't the slightest possible chance that they could go to the
935Lighthouse tomorrow, Mr. Ramsay snapped out irascibly.
936
937How did he know? she asked. The wind often changed.
938
939The extraordinary irrationality of her remark, the folly of women's minds
940enraged him. He had ridden through the valley of death, been shattered
941and shivered; and now, she flew in the face of facts, made his children
942hope what was utterly out of the question, in effect, told lies. He
943stamped his foot on the stone step. "Damn you," he said. But what had she
944said? Simply that it might be fine tomorrow. So it might.
945
946Not with the barometer falling and the wind due west.
947
948To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of consideration for other
949people's feelings, to rendthe thin veils of civilization so wantonly, so
950brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of human decency that, without
951replying, dazed and blinded, she bent her head as if to let the pelt of
952jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked. There
953was nothing to be said.
954
955He stood by her in silence. Very humbly, at length, he said that he would
956step over and ask the Coastguards if she liked.
957
958There was nobody whom she reverenced as she reverenced him.
959
960She was quite ready to take his word for it, she said. Only then they
961need not cut sandwiches--that was all. They came to her, naturally, since
962she was a woman, all day long with this and that; one wanting this,
963another that; the children were growing up; she often felt she was nothing
964but a sponge sopped full of human emotions. Then he said, Damn you. He
965said, It must rain. He said, It won't rain; and instantly a Heaven of
966security opened before her. There was nobody she reverenced more. She
967was not good enough to tie his shoe strings, she felt.
968
969Already ashamed of that petulance, of that gesticulation of the hands when
970charging at the head of his troops, Mr. Ramsay rather sheepishly prodded
971his son's bare legs once more, and then, as if he had her leave for it,
972with a movement which oddly reminded his wife of the great sea lion at the
973Zoo tumbling backwards after swallowing his fish and walloping off so that
974the water in the tank washes from side to side, he dived into the evening
975air which, already thinner, was taking the substance from leaves and
976hedges but, as if in return, restoring to roses and pinks a lustre which
977they had not had by day.
978
979"Some one had blundered," he said again, striding off, up and down the
980terrace.
981
982But how extraordinarily his note had changed! It was like the cuckoo;
983"in June he gets out of tune"; as if he were trying over, tentatively
984seeking, some phrase for a new mood, and having only this at hand, used
985it, cracked though it was. But it sounded ridiculous--"Some one had
986blundered"--said like that, almost as a question, without any conviction,
987melodiously. Mrs. Ramsay could not help smiling, and soon, sure enough,
988walking up and down, he hummed it, dropped it, fell silent.
989
990He was safe, he was restored to his privacy. He stopped to light his
991pipe, looked once at his wife and son in the window, and as one raises
992one's eyes from a page in an express train and sees a farm, a tree, a
993cluster of cottages as an illustration, a confirmation of something on the
994printed page to which one returns, fortified, and satisfied, so without
995his distinguishing either his son or his wife, the sight of them fortified
996him and satisfied him and consecrated his effort to arrive at a perfectly
997clear understanding of the problem which now engaged the energies of his
998splendid mind.
999
1000It was a splendid mind. For if thought is like the keyboard of a piano,
1001divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is ranged in twenty-six
1002letters all in order, then his splendid mind had no sort of difficulty
1003in running over those letters one by one, firmly and accurately, until
1004it had reached, say, the letter Q. He reached Q. Very few people in
1005the whole of England ever reach Q. Here, stopping for one moment
1006by the stone urn which held the geraniums, he saw, but now far, far
1007away, like children picking up shells, divinely innocent and occupied with
1008little trifles at their feet and somehow entirely defenceless against a
1009doom which he perceived, his wife and son, together, in the window. They
1010needed his protection; he gave it them. But after Q? What comes next?
1011After Q there are a number of letters the last of which is scarcely
1012visible to mortal eyes, but glimmers red in the distance. Z is only
1013reached once by one man in a generation. Still, if he could reach R it
1014would be something. Here at least was Q. He dug his heels in at Q. Q he
1015was sure of. Q he could demonstrate. If Q then is Q--R--. Here he
1016knocked his pipe out, with two or three resonant taps on the handle of the
1017urn, and proceeded. "Then R ..." He braced himself. He clenched
1018himself.
1019
1020Qualities that would have saved a ship's company exposed on a broiling
1021sea with six biscuits and a flask of water--endurance and justice,
1022foresight, devotion, skill, came to his help. R is then--what is R?
1023
1024A shutter, like the leathern eyelid of a lizard, flickered over the
1025intensity of his gaze and obscured the letter R. In that flash of
1026darkness he heard people saying--he was a failure--that R was beyond him.
1027He would never reach R. On to R, once more. R--
1028
1029Qualities that in a desolate expedition across the icy solitudes of the
1030Polar region would have made him the leader, the guide, the counsellor,
1031whose temper, neither sanguine nor despondent, surveys with equanimity
1032what is to be and faces it, came to his help again. R--
1033
1034The lizard's eye flickered once more. The veins on his forehead bulged.
1035The geranium in the urn became startlingly visible and, displayed among
1036its leaves, he could see, without wishing it, that old, that obvious
1037distinction between the two classes of men; on the one hand the steady
1038goers of superhuman strength who, plodding and persevering, repeat the
1039whole alphabet in order, twenty-six letters in all, from start to finish;
1040on the other the gifted, the inspired who, miraculously, lump all the
1041letters together in one flash--the way of genius. He had not genius; he
1042laid no claim to that: but he had, or might have had, the power to repeat
1043every letter of the alphabet from A to Z accurately in order. Meanwhile,
1044he stuck at Q. On, then, on to R.
1045
1046Feelings that would not have disgraced a leader who, now that the snow has
1047begun to fall and the mountain top is covered in mist, knows that he must
1048lay himself down and die before morning comes, stole upon him, paling the
1049colour of his eyes, giving him, even in the two minutes of his turn on
1050the terrace, the bleached look of withered old age. Yet he would not die
1051lying down; he would find some crag of rock, and there, his eyes fixed
1052on the storm, trying to the end to pierce the darkness, he would die
1053standing. He would never reach R.
1054
1055He stood stock-still, by the urn, with the geranium flowing over it. How
1056many men in a thousand million, he asked himself, reach Z after all?
1057Surely the leader of a forlorn hope may ask himself that, and answer,
1058without treachery to the expedition behind him, "One perhaps." One in a
1059generation. Is he to be blamed then if he is not that one? provided he
1060has toiled honestly, given to the best of his power, and till he has no
1061more left to give? And his fame lasts how long? It is permissible even
1062for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him
1063hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two
1064thousand years? (asked Mr. Ramsay ironically, staring at the hedge).
1065What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the
1066ages? The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare.
1067His own little light would shine, not very brightly, for a year or two,
1068and would then be merged in some bigger light, and that in a bigger still.
1069(He looked into the hedge, into the intricacy of the twigs.) Who then
1070could blame the leader of that forlorn party which after all has climbed
1071high enough to see the waste of the years and the perishing of the stars,
1072if before death stiffens his limbs beyond the power of movement he does a
1073little consciously raise his numbed fingers to his brow, and square his
1074shoulders, so that when the search party comes they will find him dead at
1075his post, the fine figure of a soldier? Mr. Ramsay squared his shoulders
1076and stood very upright by the urn.
1077
1078Who shall blame him, if, so standing for a moment he dwells upon fame,
1079upon search parties, upon cairns raised by grateful followers over his
1080bones? Finally, who shall blame the leader of the doomed expedition, if,
1081having adventured to the uttermost, and used his strength wholly to the
1082last ounce and fallen asleep not much caring if he wakes or not, he now
1083perceives by some pricking in his toes that he lives, and does not on the
1084whole object to live, but requires sympathy, and whisky, and some one to
1085tell the story of his suffering to at once? Who shall blame him? Who
1086will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by
1087the window and gazes at his wife and son, who, very distant at first,
1088gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly
1089before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his
1090isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and
1091finally putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent head
1092before her--who will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the
1093world?
1094
1095
10967
1097
1098
1099But his son hated him. He hated him for coming up to them, for stopping
1100and looking down on them; he hated him for interrupting them; he hated him
1101for the exaltation and sublimity of his gestures; for the magnificence of
1102his head; for his exactingness and egotism (for there he stood, commanding
1103them to attend to him) but most of all he hated the twang and twitter of
1104his father's emotion which, vibrating round them, disturbed the perfect
1105simplicity and good sense of his relations with his mother. By looking
1106fixedly at the page, he hoped to make him move on; by pointing his finger
1107at a word, he hoped to recall his mother's attention, which, he knew
1108angrily, wavered instantly his father stopped. But, no. Nothing would
1109make Mr. Ramsay move on. There he stood, demanding sympathy.
1110
1111Mrs. Ramsay, who had been sitting loosely, folding her son in her arm,
1112braced herself, and, half turning, seemed to raise herself with an effort,
1113and at once to pour erect into the air a rain of energy, a column of
1114spray, looking at the same time animated and alive as if all her energies
1115were being fused into force, burning and illuminating (quietly though she
1116sat, taking up her stocking again), and into this delicious fecundity,
1117this fountain and spray of life, the fatal sterility of the male plunged
1118itself, like a beak of brass, barren and bare. He wanted sympathy. He
1119was a failure, he said. Mrs. Ramsay flashed her needles. Mr. Ramsay
1120repeated, never taking his eyes from her face, that he was a failure.
1121She blew the words back at him. "Charles Tansley..." she said. But he
1122must have more than that. It was sympathy he wanted, to be assured of his
1123genius, first of all, and then to be taken within the circle of life,
1124warmed and soothed, to have his senses restored to him, his barrenness
1125made furtile, and all the rooms of the house made full of life--the
1126drawing-room; behind the drawing-room the kitchen; above the kitchen the
1127bedrooms; and beyond them the nurseries; they must be furnished, they must
1128be filled with life.
1129
1130Charles Tansley thought him the greatest metaphysician of the time, she
1131said. But he must have more than that. He must have sympathy. He must
1132be assured that he too lived in the heart of life; was needed; not only
1133here, but all over the world. Flashing her needles, confident, upright,
1134she created drawing-room and kitchen, set them all aglow; bade him take
1135his ease there, go in and out, enjoy himself. She laughed, she knitted.
1136Standing between her knees, very stiff, James felt all her strength
1137flaring up to be drunk and quenched by the beak of brass, the arid
1138scimitar of the male, which smote mercilessly, again and again,
1139demanding sympathy.
1140
1141He was a failure, he repeated. Well, look then, feel then. Flashing her
1142needles, glancing round about her, out of the window, into the room, at
1143James himself, she assured him, beyond a shadow of a doubt, by her laugh,
1144her poise, her competence (as a nurse carrying a light across a dark room
1145assures a fractious child), that it was real; the house was full; the
1146garden blowing. If he put implicit faith in her, nothing should hurt him;
1147however deep he buried himself or climed high, not for a second should he
1148find himself without her. So boasting of her capacity to surround and
1149protect, there was scarcely a shell of herself left for her to know
1150herself by; all was so lavished and spent; and James, as he stood stiff
1151between her knees, felt her rise in a rosy-flowered fruit tree laid with
1152leaves and dancing boughs into which the beak of brass, the arid scimitar
1153of his father, the egotistical man, plunged and smote, demanding sympathy.
1154
1155Filled with her words, like a child who drops off satisfied, he said, at
1156last, looking at her with humble gratitude, restored, renewed, that he
1157would take a turn; he would watch the children playing cricket. He went.
1158
1159Immediately, Mrs. Ramsey seemed to fold herself together, one petal closed
1160in another, and the whole fabric fell in exhaustion upon itself, so that
1161she had only strength enough to move her finger, in exquisite abandonment
1162to exhaustion, across the page of Grimm's fairy story, while there
1163throbbed through her, like a pulse in a spring which has expanded to its
1164full width and now gently ceases to beat, the rapture of successful
1165creation.
1166
1167Every throb of this pulse seemed, as he walked away, to enclose her and
1168her husband, and to give to each that solace which two different notes,
1169one high, one low, struck together, seem to give each other as they
1170combine. Yet as the resonance died, and she turned to the Fairy Tale
1171again, Mrs. Ramsey felt not only exhausted in body (afterwards, not at the
1172time, she always felt this) but also there tinged her physical fatigue
1173some faintly disagreeable sensation with another origin. Not that, as
1174she read aloud the story of the Fisherman's Wife, she knew precisely what
1175it came from; nor did she let herself put into words her dissatisfaction
1176when she realized, at the turn of the page when she stopped and heard
1177dully, ominously, a wave fall, how it came from this: she did not like,
1178even for a second, to feel finer than her husband; and further, could not
1179bear not being entirely sure, when she spoke to him, of the truth of what
1180she said. Universities and people wanting him, lectures and books and
1181their being of the highest importance--all that she did not doubt for a
1182moment; but it was their relation, and his coming to her like that,
1183openly, so that any one could see, that discomposed her; for then people
1184said he depended on her, when they must know that of the two he was
1185infinitely the more important, and what she gave the world, in comparison
1186with what he gave, negligable. But then again, it was the other thing
1187too--not being able to tell him the truth, being afraid, for instance,
1188about the greenhouse roof and the expense it would be, fifty pounds
1189perhaps to mend it; and then about his books, to be afraid that he might
1190guess, what she a little suspected, that his last book was not quite his
1191best book (she gathered that from William Bankes); and then to hide small
1192daily things, and the children seeing it, and the burden it laid on
1193them--all this diminished the entire joy, the pure joy, of the two notes
1194sounding together, and let the sound die on her ear now with a dismal
1195flatness.
1196
1197A shadow was on the page; she looked up. It was Augustus Carmichael
1198shuffling past, precisely now, at the very moment when it was painful to
1199be reminded of the inadequacy of human relationships, that the most
1200perfect was flawed, and could not bear the examination which, loving her
1201husband, with her instinct for truth, she turned upon it; when it was
1202painful to feel herself convicted of unworthiness, and impeded in her
1203proper function by these lies, these exaggerations,--it was at this
1204moment when she was fretted thus ignobly in the wake of her exaltation,
1205that Mr. Carmichael shuffled past, in his yellow slippers, and some demon
1206in her made it necessary for her to call out, as he passed,
1207
1208"Going indoors Mr. Carmichael?"
1209
1210
12118
1212
1213
1214He said nothing. He took opium. The children said he had stained his
1215beard yellow with it. Perhaps. What was obvious to her was that the poor
1216man was unhappy, came to them every year as an escape; and yet every year
1217she felt the same thing; he did not trust her. She said, "I am going to
1218the town. Shall I get you stamps, paper, tobacco?" and she felt him
1219wince. He did not trust her. It was his wife's doing. She remembered
1220that iniquity of his wife's towards him, which had made her turn to steel
1221and adamant there, in the horrible little room in St John's Wood, when
1222with her own eyes she had seen that odious woman turn him out of the
1223house. He was unkempt; he dropped things on his coat; he had the
1224tiresomeness of an old man with nothing in the world to do; and she turned
1225him out of the room. She said, in her odious way, "Now, Mrs. Ramsay and I
1226want to have a little talk together," and Mrs. Ramsay could see, as if
1227before her eyes, the innumerable miseries of his life. Had he money
1228enough to buy tobacco? Did he have to ask her for it? half a crown?
1229eighteenpence? Oh, she could not bear to think of the little indignities
1230she made him suffer. And always now (why, she could not guess, except
1231that it came probably from that woman somehow) he shrank from her. He
1232never told her anything. But what more could she have done? There was a
1233sunny room given up to him. The children were good to him. Never did she
1234show a sign of not wanting him. She went out of her way indeed to be
1235friendly. Do you want stamps, do you want tobacco? Here's a book you
1236might like and so on. And after all--after all (here insensibly she drew
1237herself together, physically, the sense of her own beauty becoming, as it
1238did so seldom, present to her) after all, she had not generally any
1239difficulty in making people like her; for instance, George Manning; Mr.
1240Wallace; famous as they were, they would come to her of an evening,
1241quietly, and talk alone over her fire. She bore about with her, she could
1242not help knowing it, the torch of her beauty; she carried it erect into
1243any room that she entered; and after all, veil it as she might, and shrink
1244from the monotony of bearing that it imposed on her, her beauty was
1245apparent. She had been admired. She had been loved. She had entered
1246rooms where mourners sat. Tears had flown in her presence. Men, and
1247women too, letting go to the multiplicity of things, had allowed
1248themselves with her the relief of simplicity. It injured her that he
1249should shrink. It hurt her. And yet not cleanly, not rightly. That was
1250what she minded, coming as it did on top of her discontent with her
1251husband; the sense she had now when Mr. Carmichael shuffled past, just
1252nodding to her question, with a book beneath his arm, in his yellow
1253slippers, that she was suspected; and that all this desire of hers to
1254give, to help, was vanity. For her own self-satisfaction was it that she
1255wished so instinctively to help, to give, that people might say of her,
1256"O Mrs. Ramsay! dear Mrs. Ramsay ... Mrs. Ramsay, of course!" and need her
1257and send for her and admire her? Was it not secretly this that she
1258wanted, and therefore when Mr. Carmichael shrank away from her, as he did
1259at this moment, making off to some corner where he did acrostics
1260endlessly, she did not feel merely snubbed back in her instinct, but made
1261aware of the pettiness of some part of her, and of human relations, how
1262flawed they are, how despicable, how self-seeking, at their best. Shabby
1263and worn out, and not presumably (her cheeks were hollow, her hair was
1264white) any longer a sight that filled the eyes with joy, she had better
1265devote her mind to the story of the Fisherman and his Wife and so pacify
1266that bundle of sensitiveness (none of her children was as sensitive as he
1267was), her son James.
1268
1269"The man's heart grew heavy," she read aloud, "and he would not go. He
1270said to himself, 'It is not right,' and yet he went. And when he came to
1271the sea the water was quite purple and dark blue, and grey and thick, and
1272no longer so green and yellow, but it was still quiet. And he stood there
1273and said--"
1274
1275Mrs. Ramsay could have wished that her husband had not chosen that moment
1276to stop. Why had he not gone as he said to watch the children playing
1277cricket? But he did not speak; he looked; he nodded; he approved; he went
1278on. He slipped, seeing before him that hedge which had over and over
1279again rounded some pause, signified some conclusion, seeing his wife and
1280child, seeing again the urns with the trailing of red geraniums which had
1281so often decorated processes of thought, and bore, written up among their
1282leaves, as if they were scraps of paper on which one scribbles notes in
1283the rush of reading--he slipped, seeing all this, smoothly into
1284speculation suggested by an article in THE TIMES about the number of
1285Americans who visit Shakespeare's house every year. If Shakespeare
1286had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what
1287it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is
1288the lot of the average human being better now than in the time of the
1289Pharaohs? Is the lot of the average human being, however, he asked
1290himself, the criterion by which we judge the measure of civilization?
1291Possibly not. Possibly the greatest good requires the existence of a
1292slave class. The liftman in the Tube is an eternal necessity. The
1293thought was distasteful to him. He tossed his head. To avoid it, he
1294would find some way of snubbing the predominance of the arts. He would
1295argue that the world exists for the average human being; that the arts are
1296merely a decoration imposed on the top of human life; they do not express
1297it. Nor is Shakespeare necessary to it. Not knowing precisely why it was
1298that he wanted to disparage Shakespeare and come to the rescue of the man
1299who stands eternally in the door of the lift, he picked a leaf sharply
1300from the hedge. All this would have to be dished up for the young men at
1301Cardiff next month, he thought; here, on his terrace, he was merely
1302foraging and picnicking (he threw away the leaf that he had picked so
1303peevishly) like a man who reaches from his horse to pick a bunch of roses,
1304or stuffs his pockets with nuts as he ambles at his ease through the lanes
1305and fields of a country known to him from boyhood. It was all familiar;
1306this turning, that stile, that cut across the fields. Hours he would
1307spend thus, with his pipe, of an evening, thinking up and down and in and
1308out of the old familiar lanes and commons, which were all stuck about with
1309the history of that campaign there, the life of this statesman here, with
1310poems and with anecdotes, with figures too, this thinker, that soldier;
1311all very brisk and clear; but at length the lane, the field, the common,
1312the fruitful nut-tree and the flowering hedge led him on to that further
1313turn of the road where he dismounted always, tied his horse to a tree,
1314and proceeded on foot alone. He reached the edge of the lawn and looked
1315out on the bay beneath.
1316
1317It was his fate, his peculiarity, whether he wished it or not, to come out
1318thus on a spit of land which the sea is slowly eating away, and there to
1319stand, like a desolate sea-bird, alone. It was his power, his gift,
1320suddenly to shed all superfluities, to shrink and diminish so that he
1321looked barer and felt sparer, even physically, yet lost none of his
1322intensity of mind, and so to stand on his little ledge facing the dark of
1323human ignorance, how we know nothing and the sea eats away the ground we
1324stand on--that was his fate, his gift. But having thrown away, when he
1325dismounted, all gestures and fripperies, all trophies of nuts and roses,
1326and shrunk so that not only fame but even his own name was forgotten
1327by him, kept even in that desolation a vigilance which spared no
1328phantom and luxuriated in no vision, and it was in this guise that
1329he inspired in William Bankes (intermittently) and in Charles Tansley
1330(obsequiously)and in his wife now, when she looked up and saw him
1331standing at the edge of the lawn, profoundly, reverence, and pity, and
1332gratitude too, as a stake driven into the bed of a channel upon which the
1333gulls perch and the waves beat inspires in merry boat-loads a feeling of
1334gratitude for the duty it is taking upon itself of marking the channel out
1335there in the floods alone.
1336
1337"But the father of eight children has no choice." Muttering half aloud,
1338so he broke off, turned, sighed, raised his eyes, sought the figure of his
1339wife reading stories to his little boy, filled his pipe. He turned from
1340the sight of human ignorance and human fate and the sea eating the ground
1341we stand on, which, had he been able to contemplate it fixedly might have
1342led to something; and found consolation in trifles so slight compared with
1343the august theme just now before him that he was disposed to slur that
1344comfort over, to deprecate it, as if to be caught happy in a world of
1345misery was for an honest man the most despicable of crimes. It was true;
1346he was for the most part happy; he had his wife; he had his children; he
1347had promised in six weeks' time to talk "some nonsense" to the young men
1348of Cardiff about Locke, Hume, Berkeley, and the causes of the French
1349Revolution. But this and his pleasure in it, his glory in the phrases he
1350made, in the ardour of youth, in his wife's beauty, in the tributes that
1351reached him from Swansea, Cardiff, Exeter, Southampton, Kidderminster,
1352Oxford, Cambridge--all had to be deprecated and concealed under the phrase
1353"talking nonsense," because, in effect, he had not done the thing he might
1354have done. It was a disguise; it was the refuge of a man afraid to own
1355his own feelings, who could not say, This is what I like--this is what I
1356am; and rather pitiable and distasteful to William Bankes and Lily Briscoe,
1357who wondered why such concealments should be necessary; why he needed
1358always praise; why so brave a man in thought should be so timid in life;
1359how strangely he was venerable and laughable at one and the same time.
1360
1361Teaching and preaching is beyond human power, Lily suspected. (She was
1362putting away her things.) If you are exalted you must somehow come a
1363cropper. Mrs. Ramsay gave him what he asked too easily. Then the change
1364must be so upsetting, Lily said. He comes in from his books and finds us
1365all playing games and talking nonsense. Imagine what a change from the
1366things he thinks about, she said.
1367
1368He was bearing down upon them. Now he stopped dead and stood looking in
1369silence at the sea. Now he had turned away again.
1370
1371
13729
1373
1374
1375Yes, Mr. Bankes said, watching him go. It was a thousand pities. (Lily
1376had said something about his frightening her--he changed from one mood to
1377another so suddenly.) Yes, said Mr. Bankes, it was a thousand pities that
1378Ramsay could not behave a little more like other people. (For he liked
1379Lily Briscoe; he could discuss Ramsay with her quite openly.) It was for
1380that reason, he said, that the young don't read Carlyle. A crusty old
1381grumbler who lost his temper if the porridge was cold, why should he
1382preach to us? was what Mr. Bankes understood that young people said
1383nowadays. It was a thousand pities if you thought, as he did, that
1384Carlyle was one of the great teachers of mankind. Lily was ashamed to say
1385that she had not read Carlyle since she was at school. But in her opinion
1386one liked Mr. Ramsay all the better for thinking that if his little finger
1387ached the whole world must come to an end. It was not THAT she minded.
1388For who could be deceived by him? He asked you quite openly to flatter
1389him, to admire him, his little dodges deceived nobody. What she disliked
1390was his narrowness, his blindness, she said, looking after him.
1391
1392"A bit of a hypocrite?" Mr. Bankes suggested, looking too at Mr. Ramsay's
1393back, for was he not thinking of his friendship, and of Cam refusing to
1394give him a flower, and of all those boys and girls, and his own house,
1395full of comfort, but, since his wife's death, quiet rather? Of course,
1396he had his work... All the same, he rather wished Lily to agree that
1397Ramsay was, as he said, "a bit of a hypocrite."
1398
1399Lily Briscoe went on putting away her brushes, looking up, looking down.
1400Looking up, there he was--Mr. Ramsay--advancing towards them, swinging,
1401careless, oblivious, remote. A bit of a hypocrite? she repeated. Oh,
1402no--the most sincere of men, the truest (here he was), the best; but,
1403looking down, she thought, he is absorbed in himself, he is tyrannical,
1404he is unjust; and kept looking down, purposely, for only so could she keep
1405steady, staying with the Ramsays. Directly one looked up and saw them,
1406what she called "being in love" flooded them. They became part of that
1407unreal but penetrating and exciting universe which is the world seen
1408through the eyes of love. The sky stuck to them; the birds sang through
1409them. And, what was even more exciting, she felt, too, as she saw Mr.
1410Ramsay bearing down and retreating, and Mrs. Ramsay sitting with James in
1411the window and the cloud moving and the tree bending, how life, from being
1412made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became
1413curled and whole like a wave which bore one up and threw one down with
1414it, there, with a dash on the beach.
1415
1416Mr. Bankes expected her to answer. And she was about to say something
1417criticizing Mrs. Ramsay, how she was alarming, too, in her way,
1418high-handed, or words to that effect, when Mr. Bankes made it entirely
1419unnecessary for her to speak by his rapture. For such it was considering
1420his age, turned sixty, and his cleanliness and his impersonality, and the
1421white scientific coat which seemed to clothe him. For him to gaze as Lily
1422saw him gazing at Mrs. Ramsay was a rapture, equivalent, Lily felt, to the
1423loves of dozens of young men (and perhaps Mrs. Ramsay had never excited the
1424loves of dozens of young men). It was love, she thought, pretending to
1425move her canvas, distilled and filtered; love that never attempted to
1426clutch its object; but, like the love which mathematicians bear their
1427symbols, or poets their phrases, was meant to be spread over the world and
1428become part of the human gain. So it was indeed. The world by all means
1429should have shared it, could Mr. Bankes have said why that woman pleased
1430him so; why the sight of her reading a fairy tale to her boy had upon him
1431precisely the same effect as the solution of a scientific problem, so that
1432he rested in contemplation of it, and felt, as he felt when he had proved
1433something absolute about the digestive system of plants, that barbarity
1434was tamed, the reign of chaos subdued.
1435
1436Such a rapture--for by what other name could one call it?--made Lily
1437Briscoe forget entirely what she had been about to say. It was nothing of
1438importance; something about Mrs. Ramsay. It paled beside this "rapture,"
1439this silent stare, for which she felt intense gratitude; for nothing so
1440solaced her, eased her of the perplexity of life, and miraculously raised
1441its burdens, as this sublime power, this heavenly gift, and one would no
1442more disturb it, while it lasted, than break up the shaft of sunlight,
1443lying level across the floor.
1444
1445That people should love like this, that Mr. Bankes should feel this for
1446Mrs. Ramsey (she glanced at him musing) was helpful, was exalting. She
1447wiped one brush after another upon a piece of old rag, menially, on
1448purpose. She took shelter from the reverence which covered all women; she
1449felt herself praised. Let him gaze; she would steal a look at her
1450picture.
1451
1452She could have wept. It was bad, it was bad, it was infinitely bad! She
1453could have done it differently of course; the colour could have been
1454thinned and faded; the shapes etherealised; that was how Paunceforte would
1455have seen it. But then she did not see it like that. She saw the colour
1456burning on a framework of steel; the light of a butterfly's wing lying
1457upon the arches of a cathedral. Of all that only a few random marks
1458scrawled upon the canvas remained. And it would never be seen; never be
1459hung even, and there was Mr. Tansley whispering in her ear, "Women can't
1460paint, women can't write ..."
1461
1462She now remembered what she had been going to say about Mrs. Ramsay. She
1463did not know how she would have put it; but it would have been something
1464critical. She had been annoyed the other night by some highhandedness.
1465Looking along the level of Mr. Bankes's glance at her, she thought that no
1466woman could worship another woman in the way he worshipped; they could
1467only seek shelter under the shade which Mr. Bankes extended over them both.
1468Looking along his beam she added to it her different ray, thinking that
1469she was unquestionably the loveliest of people (bowed over her book); the
1470best perhaps; but also, different too from the perfect shape which one saw
1471there. But why different, and how different? she asked herself, scraping
1472her palette of all those mounds of blue and green which seemed to her like
1473clods with no life in them now, yet she vowed, she would inspire them,
1474force them to move, flow, do her bidding tomorrow. How did she differ?
1475What was the spirit in her, the essential thing, by which, had you found a
1476crumpled glove in the corner of a sofa, you would have known it, from its
1477twisted finger, hers indisputably? She was like a bird for speed, an
1478arrow for directness. She was willful; she was commanding (of course,
1479Lily reminded herself, I am thinking of her relations with women, and I am
1480much younger, an insignificant person, living off the Brompton Road). She
1481opened bedroom windows. She shut doors. (So she tried to start the tune
1482of Mrs. Ramsay in her head.) Arriving late at night, with a light tap on
1483one's bedroom door, wrapped in an old fur coat (for the setting of her
1484beauty was always that--hasty, but apt), she would enact again whatever it
1485might be--Charles Tansley losing his umbrella; Mr. Carmichael snuffling and
1486sniffing; Mr. Bankes saying, "The vegetable salts are lost." All this she
1487would adroitly shape; even maliciously twist; and, moving over to the
1488window, in pretence that she must go,--it was dawn, she could see the sun
1489rising,--half turn back, more intimately, but still always laughing,
1490insist that she must, Minta must, they all must marry, since in the whole
1491world whatever laurels might be tossed to her (but Mrs. Ramsay cared not a
1492fig for her painting), or triumphs won by her (probably Mrs. Ramsay had
1493had her share of those), and here she saddened, darkened, and came back to
1494her chair, there could be no disputing this: an unmarried woman (she
1495lightly took her hand for a moment), an unmarried woman has missed the
1496best of life. The house seemed full of children sleeping and Mrs. Ramsay
1497listening; shaded lights and regular breathing.
1498
1499Oh, but, Lily would say, there was her father; her home; even, had she
1500dared to say it, her painting. But all this seemed so little, so
1501virginal, against the other. Yet, as the night wore on, and white lights
1502parted the curtains, and even now and then some bird chirped in the
1503garden, gathering a desperate courage she would urge her own exemption
1504from the universal law; plead for it; she liked to be alone; she liked to
1505be herself; she was not made for that; and so have to meet a serious stare
1506from eyes of unparalleled depth, and confront Mrs. Ramsay's simple
1507certainty (and she was childlike now) that her dear Lily, her little
1508Brisk, was a fool. Then, she remembered, she had laid her head on Mrs.
1509Ramsay's lap and laughed and laughed and laughed, laughed almost
1510hysterically at the thought of Mrs. Ramsay presiding with immutable calm
1511over destinies which she completely failed to understand. There she sat,
1512simple, serious. She had recovered her sense of her now--this was the
1513glove's twisted finger. But into what sanctuary had one penetrated?
1514Lily Briscoe had looked up at last, and there was Mrs. Ramsay, unwitting
1515entirely what had caused her laughter, still presiding, but now with every
1516trace of wilfulness abolished, and in its stead, something clear as the
1517space which the clouds at last uncover--the little space of sky which
1518sleeps beside the moon.
1519
1520Was it wisdom? Was it knowledge? Was it, once more, the deceptiveness of
1521beauty, so that all one's perceptions, half way to truth, were tangled in
1522a golden mesh? or did she lock up within her some secret which certainly
1523Lily Briscoe believed people must have for the world to go on at all?
1524Every one could not be as helter skelter, hand to mouth as she was. But
1525if they knew, could they tell one what they knew? Sitting on the floor
1526with her arms round Mrs. Ramsay's knees, close as she could get, smiling
1527to think that Mrs. Ramsay would never know the reason of that pressure, she
1528imagined how in the chambers of the mind and heart of the woman who was,
1529physically, touching her, were stood, like the treasures in the tombs of
1530kings, tablets bearing sacred inscriptions, which if one could spell them
1531out, would teach one everything, but they would never be offered openly,
1532never made public. What art was there, known to love or cunning, by which
1533one pressed through into those secret chambers? What device for becoming,
1534like waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one with the
1535object one adored? Could the body achieve, or the mind, subtly mingling
1536in the intricate passages of the brain? or the heart? Could loving,
1537as people called it, make her and Mrs. Ramsay one? for it was not knowledge
1538but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that
1539could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which
1540is knowledge, she had thought, leaning her head on Mrs. Ramsay's knee.
1541
1542Nothing happened. Nothing! Nothing! as she leant her head against
1543Mrs. Ramsay's knee. And yet, she knew knowledge and wisdom were stored up
1544in Mrs. Ramsay's heart. How, then, she had asked herself, did one know one
1545thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were? Only like a
1546bee, drawn by some sweetness or sharpness in the air intangible to touch
1547or taste, one haunted the dome-shaped hive, ranged the wastes of the air
1548over the countries of the world alone, and then haunted the hives with
1549their murmurs and their stirrings; the hives, which were people.
1550Mrs. Ramsay rose. Lily rose. Mrs. Ramsay went. For days there hung about
1551her, as after a dream some subtle change is felt in the person one has
1552dreamt of, more vividly than anything she said, the sound of murmuring
1553and, as she sat in the wicker arm-chair in the drawing-room window she
1554wore, to Lily's eyes, an august shape; the shape of a dome.
1555
1556This ray passed level with Mr. Bankes's ray straight to Mrs. Ramsay sitting
1557reading there with James at her knee. But now while she still looked,
1558Mr. Bankes had done. He had put on his spectacles. He had stepped back.
1559He had raised his hand. He had slightly narrowed his clear blue eyes,
1560when Lily, rousing herself, saw what he was at, and winced like a dog who
1561sees a hand raised to strike it. She would have snatched her picture off
1562the easel, but she said to herself, One must. She braced herself to stand
1563the awful trial of some one looking at her picture. One must, she said,
1564one must. And if it must be seen, Mr. Bankes was less alarming than
1565another. But that any other eyes should see the residue of her
1566thirty-three years, the deposit of each day's living mixed with something
1567more secret than she had ever spoken or shown in the course of all those
1568days was an agony. At the same time it was immensely exciting.
1569
1570Nothing could be cooler and quieter. Taking out a pen-knife, Mr. Bankes
1571tapped the canvas with the bone handle. What did she wish to indicate by
1572the triangular purple shape, "just there"? he asked.
1573
1574It was Mrs. Ramsay reading to James, she said. She knew his objection--
1575that no one could tell it for a human shape. But she had made no attempt
1576at likeness, she said. For what reason had she introduced them then? he
1577asked. Why indeed?--except that if there, in that corner, it was bright,
1578here, in this, she felt the need of darkness. Simple, obvious,
1579commonplace, as it was, Mr. Bankes was interested. Mother and child
1580then--objects of universal veneration, and in this case the mother was
1581famous for her beauty--might be reduced, he pondered, to a purple shadow
1582without irreverence.
1583
1584But the picture was not of them, she said. Or, not in his sense. There
1585were other senses too in which one might reverence them. By a shadow here
1586and a light there, for instance. Her tribute took that form if, as she
1587vaguely supposed, a picture must be a tribute. A mother and child might
1588be reduced to a shadow without irreverence. A light here required a
1589shadow there. He considered. He was interested. He took it
1590scientifically in complete good faith. The truth was that all his
1591prejudices were on the other side, he explained. The largest picture in
1592his drawing-room, which painters had praised, and valued at a higher price
1593than he had given for it, was of the cherry trees in blossom on the banks
1594of the Kennet. He had spent his honeymoon on the banks of the Kennet, he
1595said. Lily must come and see that picture, he said. But now--he turned,
1596with his glasses raised to the scientific examination of her canvas. The
1597question being one of the relations of masses, of lights and shadows,
1598which, to be honest, he had never considered before, he would like to have
1599it explained--what then did she wish to make of it? And he indicated the
1600scene before them. She looked. She could not show him what she wished to
1601make of it, could not see it even herself, without a brush in her hand.
1602She took up once more her old painting position with the dim eyes and the
1603absent-minded manner, subduing all her impressions as a woman to something
1604much more general; becoming once more under the power of that vision which
1605she had seen clearly once and must now grope for among hedges and houses
1606and mothers and children--her picture. It was a question, she remembered,
1607how to connect this mass on the right hand with that on the left. She
1608might do it by bringing the line of the branch across so; or break the
1609vacancy in the foreground by an object (James perhaps) so. But the danger
1610was that by doing that the unity of the whole might be broken. She
1611stopped; she did not want to bore him; she took the canvas lightly off the
1612easel.
1613
1614But it had been seen; it had been taken from her. This man had shared
1615with her something profoundly intimate. And, thanking Mr. Ramsay for it
1616and Mrs. Ramsay for it and the hour and the place, crediting the world with
1617a power which she had not suspected--that one could walk away down that
1618long gallery not alone any more but arm in arm with somebody--the
1619strangest feeling in the world, and the most exhilarating--she nicked
1620the catch of her paint-box to, more firmly than was necessary, and the
1621nick seemed to surround in a circle forever the paint-box, the lawn,
1622Mr. Bankes, and that wild villain, Cam, dashing past.
1623
1624
162510
1626
1627
1628For Cam grazed the easel by an inch; she would not stop for Mr. Bankes
1629and Lily Briscoe; though Mr. Bankes, who would have liked a daughter of
1630his own, held out his hand; she would not stop for her father, whom she
1631grazed also by an inch; nor for her mother, who called "Cam! I want
1632you a moment!" as she dashed past. She was off like a bird, bullet, or
1633arrow, impelled by what desire, shot by whom, at what directed, who
1634could say? What, what? Mrs. Ramsay pondered, watching her. It might
1635be a vision--of a shell, of a wheelbarrow, of a fairy kingdom on the
1636far side of the hedge; or it might be the glory of speed; no one knew.
1637But when Mrs. Ramsay called "Cam!" a second time, the projectile dropped
1638in mid career, and Cam came lagging back, pulling a leaf by the way, to
1639her mother.
1640
1641What was she dreaming about, Mrs. Ramsay wondered, seeing her engrossed,
1642as she stood there, with some thought of her own, so that she had to
1643repeat the message twice--ask Mildred if Andrew, Miss Doyle, and Mr.
1644Rayley have come back?--The words seemed to be dropped into a well,
1645where, if the waters were clear, they were also so extraordinarily
1646distorting that, even as they descended, one saw them twisting about to
1647make Heaven knows what pattern on the floor of the child's mind. What
1648message would Cam give the cook? Mrs. Ramsay wondered. And indeed it
1649was only by waiting patiently, and hearing that there was an old woman in
1650the kitchen with very red cheeks, drinking soup out of a basin, that
1651Mrs. Ramsay at last prompted that parrot-like instinct which had picked up
1652Mildred's words quite accurately and could now produce them, if one
1653waited, in a colourless singsong. Shifting from foot to foot, Cam
1654repeated the words, "No, they haven't, and I've told Ellen to clear away
1655tea."
1656
1657Minta Doyle and Paul Rayley had not come back then. That could only
1658mean, Mrs. Ramsay thought, one thing. She must accept him, or she must
1659refuse him. This going off after luncheon for a walk, even though
1660Andrew was with them--what could it mean? except that she had decided,
1661rightly, Mrs. Ramsay thought (and she was very, very fond of Minta), to
1662accept that good fellow, who might not be brilliant, but then, thought
1663Mrs. Ramsay, realising that James was tugging at her, to make her go on
1664reading aloud the Fisherman and his Wife, she did in her own heart
1665infinitely prefer boobies to clever men who wrote dissertations;
1666Charles Tansley, for instance. Anyhow it must have happened, one way
1667or the other, by now.
1668
1669But she read, "Next morning the wife awoke first, and it was just
1670daybreak, and from her bed she saw the beautiful country lying before
1671her. Her husband was still stretching himself..."
1672
1673But how could Minta say now that she would not have him? Not if she
1674agreed to spend whole afternoons trapesing about the country alone--for
1675Andrew would be off after his crabs--but possibly Nancy was with them.
1676She tried to recall the sight of them standing at the hall door after
1677lunch. There they stood, looking at the sky, wondering about the
1678weather, and she had said, thinking partly to cover their shyness,
1679partly to encourage them to be off (for her sympathies were with Paul),
1680
1681"There isn't a cloud anywhere within miles," at which she could feel
1682little Charles Tansley, who had followed them out, snigger. But she
1683did it on purpose. Whether Nancy was there or not, she could not be
1684certain, looking from one to the other in her mind's eye.
1685
1686She read on: "Ah, wife," said the man, "why should we be King? I do
1687not want to be King." "Well," said the wife, "if you won't be King, I
1688will; go to the Flounder, for I will be King."
1689
1690"Come in or go out, Cam," she said, knowing that Cam was attracted only
1691by the word "Flounder" and that in a moment she would fidget and fight
1692with James as usual. Cam shot off. Mrs. Ramsay went on reading,
1693relieved, for she and James shared the same tastes and were comfortable
1694together.
1695
1696"And when he came to the sea, it was quite dark grey, and the water heaved
1697up from below, and smelt putrid. Then he went and stood by it and said,
1698
1699
1700'Flounder, flounder, in the sea,
1701Come, I pray thee, here to me;
1702For my wife, good Ilsabil,
1703Wills not as I'd have her will.'
1704
1705
1706'Well, what does she want then?' said the Flounder." And where were
1707they now? Mrs. Ramsay wondered, reading and thinking, quite easily,
1708both at the same time; for the story of the Fisherman and his Wife was
1709like the bass gently accompanying a tune, which now and then ran up
1710unexpectedly into the melody. And when should she be told? If nothing
1711happened, she would have to speak seriously to Minta. For she could
1712not go trapesing about all over the country, even if Nancy were with
1713them (she tried again, unsuccessfully, to visualize their backs going
1714down the path, and to count them). She was responsible to Minta's
1715parents--the Owl and the Poker. Her nicknames for them shot into her
1716mind as she read. The Owl and the Poker--yes, they would be annoyed if
1717they heard--and they were certain to hear--that Minta, staying with the
1718Ramsays, had been seen etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. "He wore a wig in
1719the House of Commons and she ably assisted him at the head of the
1720stairs," she repeated, fishing them up out of her mind by a phrase
1721which, coming back from some party, she had made to amuse her husband.
1722Dear, dear, Mrs. Ramsay said to herself, how did they produce this
1723incongruous daughter? this tomboy Minta, with a hole in her stocking?
1724How did she exist in that portentous atmosphere where the maid was
1725always removing in a dust-pan the sand that the parrot had scattered,
1726and conversation was almost entirely reduced to the exploits--interesting
1727perhaps, but limited after all--of that bird? Naturally, one had asked
1728her to lunch, tea, dinner, finally to stay with them up at Finlay, which
1729had resulted in some friction with the Owl, her mother, and more calling,
1730and more conversation, and more sand, and really at the end of it, she had
1731told enough lies about parrots to last her a lifetime (so she had said
1732to her husband that night, coming back from the party). However,
1733Minta came...Yes, she came, Mrs. Ramsay thought, suspecting some thorn
1734in the tangle of this thought; and disengaging it found it to be this: a
1735woman had once accused her of "robbing her of her daughter's affections";
1736something Mrs. Doyle had said made her remember that charge again. Wishing
1737to dominate, wishing to interfere, making people do what she wished--that
1738was the charge against her, and she thought it most unjust. How could
1739she help being "like that" to look at? No one could accuse her of
1740taking pains to impress. She was often ashamed of her own shabbiness.
1741Nor was she domineering, nor was she tyrannical. It was more true
1742about hospitals and drains and the dairy. About things like that she
1743did feel passionately, and would, if she had the chance, have liked to
1744take people by the scruff of their necks and make them see. No
1745hospital on the whole island. It was a disgrace. Milk delivered at
1746your door in London positively brown with dirt. It should be made
1747illegal. A model dairy and a hospital up here--those two things she
1748would have liked to do, herself. But how? With all these children?
1749When they were older, then perhaps she would have time; when they were
1750all at school.
1751
1752Oh, but she never wanted James to grow a day older! or Cam either.
1753These two she would have liked to keep for ever just as they were,
1754demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into
1755long-legged monsters. Nothing made up up for the loss. When she read
1756just now to James, "and there were numbers of soldiers with kettledrums
1757and trumpets," and his eyes darkened, she thought, why should they grow
1758up and lose all that? He was the most gifted, the most sensitive of
1759her children. But all, she thought, were full of promise. Prue, a
1760perfect angel with the others, and sometimes now, at night especially,
1761she took one's breath away with her beauty. Andrew--even her husband
1762admitted that his gift for mathematics was extraordinary. And Nancy
1763and Roger, they were both wild creatures now, scampering about over the
1764country all day long. As for Rose, her mouth was too big, but she had
1765a wonderful gift with her hands. If they had charades, Rose made the
1766dresses; made everything; liked best arranging tables, flowers,
1767anything. She did not like it that Jasper should shoot birds; but it
1768was only a stage; they all went through stages. Why, she asked,
1769pressing her chin on James's head, should they grow up so fast? Why
1770should they go to school? She would have liked always to have had a
1771baby. She was happiest carrying one in her arms. Then people might
1772say she was tyrannical, domineering, masterful, if they chose; she did
1773not mind. And, touching his hair with her lips, she thought, he will
1774never be so happy again, but stopped herself, remembering how it
1775angered her husband that she should say that. Still, it was true. They
1776were happier now than they would ever be again. A tenpenny tea set
1777made Cam happy for days. She heard them stamping and crowing on the
1778floor above her head the moment they awoke. They came bustling along
1779the passage. Then the door sprang open and in they came, fresh as
1780roses, staring, wide awake, as if this coming into the dining-room
1781after breakfast, which they did every day of their lives, was a
1782positive event to them, and so on, with one thing after another, all
1783day long, until she went up to say good-night to them, and found them
1784netted in their cots like birds among cherries and raspberries, still
1785making up stories about some little bit of rubbish--something they had
1786heard, something they had picked up in the garden. They all had their
1787little treasures... And so she went down and said to her husband, Why
1788must they grow up and lose it all? Never will they be so happy again.
1789And he was angry. Why take such a gloomy view of life? he said. It
1790is not sensible. For it was odd; and she believed it to be true; that
1791with all his gloom and desperation he was happier, more hopeful on the
1792whole, than she was. Less exposed to human worries--perhaps that was
1793it. He had always his work to fall back on. Not that she herself was
1794"pessimistic," as he accused her of being. Only she thought life--and
1795a little strip of time presented itself to her eyes--her fifty
1796years. There it was before her--life. Life, she thought--but she did
1797not finish her thought. She took a look at life, for she had a clear
1798sense of it there, something real, something private, which she shared
1799neither with her children nor with her husband. A sort of transaction
1800went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on
1801another, and she was always trying to get the better of it, as it was
1802of her; and sometimes they parleyed (when she sat alone); there were,
1803she remembered, great reconciliation scenes; but for the most part,
1804oddly enough, she must admit that she felt this thing that she called
1805life terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a
1806chance. There were eternal problems: suffering; death; the poor. There
1807was always a woman dying of cancer even here. And yet she had said to
1808all these children, You shall go through it all. To eight people she
1809had said relentlessly that (and the bill for the greenhouse would be
1810fifty pounds). For that reason, knowing what was before them--love and
1811ambition and being wretched alone in dreary places--she had often the
1812feeling, Why must they grow up and lose it all? And then she said to
1813herself, brandishing her sword at life, Nonsense. They will be
1814perfectly happy. And here she was, she reflected, feeling life rather
1815sinister again, making Minta marry Paul Rayley; because whatever she
1816might feel about her own transaction, she had had experiences which
1817need not happen to every one (she did not name them to herself); she
1818was driven on, too quickly she knew, almost as if it were an escape for
1819her too, to say that people must marry; people must have children.
1820
1821Was she wrong in this, she asked herself, reviewing her conduct for the
1822past week or two, and wondering if she had indeed put any pressure upon
1823Minta, who was only twenty-four, to make up her mind. She was uneasy.
1824Had she not laughed about it? Was she not forgetting again how
1825strongly she influenced people? Marriage needed--oh, all sorts of
1826qualities (the bill for the greenhouse would be fifty pounds); one--she
1827need not name it--that was essential; the thing she had with her
1828husband. Had they that?
1829
1830"Then he put on his trousers and ran away like a madman," she read.
1831"But outside a great storm was raging and blowing so hard that he could
1832scarcely keep his feet; houses and trees toppled over, the mountains
1833trembled, rocks rolled into the sea, the sky was pitch black, and it
1834thundered and lightened, and the sea came in with black waves as high
1835as church towers and mountains, and all with white foam at the top."
1836
1837She turned the page; there were only a few lines more, so that she
1838would finish the story, though it was past bed-time. It was getting
1839late. The light in the garden told her that; and the whitening of the
1840flowers and something grey in the leaves conspired together, to rouse
1841in her a feeling of anxiety. What it was about she could not think at
1842first. Then she remembered; Paul and Minta and Andrew had not come
1843back. She summoned before her again the little group on the terrace in
1844front of the hall door, standing looking up into the sky. Andrew had
1845his net and basket. That meant he was going to catch crabs and things.
1846That meant he would climb out on to a rock; he would be cut off. Or
1847coming back single file on one of those little paths above the cliff
1848one of them might slip. He would roll and then crash. It was growing
1849quite dark.
1850
1851But she did not let her voice change in the least as she finished the
1852story, and added, shutting the book, and speaking the last words as if
1853she had made them up herself, looking into James's eyes: "And there
1854they are living still at this very time."
1855
1856"And that's the end," she said, and she saw in his eyes, as the
1857interest of the story died away in them, something else take its place;
1858something wondering, pale, like the reflection of a light, which at
1859once made him gaze and marvel. Turning, she looked across the bay, and
1860there, sure enough, coming regularly across the waves first two quick
1861strokes and then one long steady stroke, was the light of the
1862Lighthouse. It had been lit.
1863
1864In a moment he would ask her, "Are we going to the Lighthouse?" And
1865she would have to say, "No: not tomorrow; your father says not."
1866Happily, Mildred came in to fetch them, and the bustle distracted them.
1867But he kept looking back over his shoulder as Mildred carried him out,
1868and she was certain that he was thinking, we are not going to the
1869Lighthouse tomorrow; and she thought, he will remember that all his
1870life.
1871
187211
1873
1874No, she thought, putting together some of the pictures he had cut out--
1875a refrigerator, a mowing machine, a gentleman in evening dress--
1876children never forget. For this reason, it was so important what one
1877said, and what one did, and it was a relief when they went to bed. For
1878now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by
1879herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of--to think;
1880well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and
1881the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk,
1882with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of
1883darkness, something invisible to others. Although she continued to
1884knit, and sat upright, it was thus that she felt herself; and this self
1885having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures. When
1886life sank down for a moment, the range of experience seemed limitless.
1887And to everybody there was always this sense of unlimited resources,
1888she supposed; one after another, she, Lily, Augustus Carmichael, must
1889feel, our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish.
1890Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep;
1891but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us
1892by. Her horizon seemed to her limitless. There were all the places
1893she had not seen; the Indian plains; she felt herself pushing aside the
1894thick leather curtain of a church in Rome. This core of darkness could
1895go anywhere, for no one saw it. They could not stop it, she thought,
1896exulting. There was freedom, there was peace, there was, most
1897welcome of all, a summoning together, a resting on a platform
1898of stability. Not as oneself did one find rest ever, in her experience
1899(she accomplished here something dexterous with her needles) but as a
1900wedge of darkness. Losing personality, one lost the fret, the hurry,
1901the stir; and there rose to her lips always some exclamation of triumph
1902over life when things came together in this peace, this rest, this
1903eternity; and pausing there she looked out to meet that stroke of the
1904Lighthouse, the long steady stroke, the last of the three, which was
1905her stroke, for watching them in this mood always at this hour one
1906could not help attaching oneself to one thing especially of the things
1907one saw; and this thing, the long steady stroke, was her stroke. Often
1908she found herself sitting and looking, sitting and looking, with her
1909work in her hands until she became the thing she looked at--that light,
1910for example. And it would lift up on it some little phrase or other
1911which had been lying in her mind like that--"Children don't forget,
1912children don't forget"--which she would repeat and begin adding to it,
1913It will end, it will end, she said. It will come, it will come, when
1914suddenly she added, We are in the hands of the Lord.
1915
1916But instantly she was annoyed with herself for saying that. Who had
1917said it? Not she; she had been trapped into saying something she did
1918not mean. She looked up over her knitting and met the third stroke and
1919it seemed to her like her own eyes meeting her own eyes, searching as
1920she alone could search into her mind and her heart, purifying out of
1921existence that lie, any lie. She praised herself in praising the
1922light, without vanity, for she was stern, she was searching, she was
1923beautiful like that light. It was odd, she thought, how if one was
1924alone, one leant to inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt
1925they expressed one; felt they became one; felt they knew one, in a
1926sense were one; felt an irrational tenderness thus (she looked at that
1927long steady light) as for oneself. There rose, and she looked and
1928looked with her needles suspended, there curled up off the floor of the
1929mind, rose from the lake of one's being, a mist, a bride to meet her
1930lover.
1931
1932What brought her to say that: "We are in the hands of the Lord?" she
1933wondered. The insincerity slipping in among the truths roused her,
1934annoyed her. She returned to her knitting again. How could any Lord
1935have made this world? she asked. With her mind she had always seized
1936the fact that there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death,
1937the poor. There was no treachery too base for the world to commit; she
1938knew that. No happiness lasted; she knew that. She knitted with firm
1939composure, slightly pursing her lips and, without being aware of it, so
1940stiffened and composed the lines of her face in a habit of sternness
1941that when her husband passed, though he was chuckling at the thought
1942that Hume, the philosopher, grown enormously fat, had stuck in a bog,
1943he could not help noting, as he passed, the sternness at the heart of
1944her beauty. It saddened him, and her remoteness pained him, and he
1945felt, as he passed, that he could not protect her, and, when he reached
1946the hedge, he was sad. He could do nothing to help her. He must stand
1947by and watch her. Indeed, the infernal truth was, he made things worse
1948for her. He was irritable--he was touchy. He had lost his temper over
1949the Lighthouse. He looked into the hedge, into its intricacy, its
1950darkness.
1951
1952Always, Mrs. Ramsay felt, one helped oneself out of solitude reluctantly
1953by laying hold of some little odd or end, some sound, some sight. She
1954listened, but it was all very still; cricket was over; the children
1955were in their baths; there was only the sound of the sea. She stopped
1956knitting; she held the long reddish-brown stocking dangling in her
1957hands a moment. She saw the light again. With some irony in her
1958interrogation, for when one woke at all, one's relations changed, she
1959looked at the steady light, the pitiless, the remorseless, which was so
1960much her, yet so little her, which had her at its beck and call (she
1961woke in the night and saw it bent across their bed, stroking the
1962floor), but for all that she thought, watching it with fascination,
1963hypnotised, as if it were stroking with its silver fingers some sealed
1964vessel in her brain whose bursting would flood her with delight, she
1965had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it
1966silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and
1967the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which
1968curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in
1969her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and
1970she felt, It is enough! It is enough!
1971
1972He turned and saw her. Ah! She was lovely, lovelier now than ever he
1973thought. But he could not speak to her. He could not interrupt her.
1974He wanted urgently to speak to her now that James was gone and she was
1975alone at last. But he resolved, no; he would not interrupt her. She
1976was aloof from him now in her beauty, in her sadness. He would let her
1977be, and he passed her without a word, though it hurt him that she
1978should look so distant, and he could not reach her, he could do nothing
1979to help her. And again he would have passed her without a word had she
1980not, at that very moment, given him of her own free will what she knew
1981he would never ask, and called to him and taken the green shawl off the
1982picture frame, and gone to him. For he wished, she knew, to protect
1983her.
1984
198512
1986
1987She folded the green shawl about her shoulders. She took his arm. His
1988beauty was so great, she said, beginning to speak of Kennedy the
1989gardener, at once he was so awfully handsome, that she couldn't dismiss
1990him. There was a ladder against the greenhouse, and little lumps of
1991putty stuck about, for they were beginning to mend the greenhouse.
1992Yes, but as she strolled along with her husband, she felt that that
1993particular source of worry had been placed. She had it on the tip of
1994her tongue to say, as they strolled, "It'll cost fifty pounds," but
1995instead, for her heart failed her about money, she talked about Jasper
1996shooting birds, and he said, at once, soothing her instantly, that it
1997was natural in a boy, and he trusted he would find better ways of
1998amusing himself before long. Her husband was so sensible, so just.
1999And so she said, "Yes; all children go through stages," and began
2000considering the dahlias in the big bed, and wondering what about next
2001year's flowers, and had he heard the children's nickname for Charles
2002Tansley, she asked. The atheist, they called him, the little atheist.
2003"He's not a polished specimen," said Mr. Ramsay. "Far from it," said
2004Mrs. Ramsay.
2005
2006She supposed it was all right leaving him to his own devices, Mrs.
2007Ramsay said, wondering whether it was any use sending down bulbs; did
2008they plant them? "Oh, he has his dissertation to write," said Mr.
2009Ramsay. She knew all about THAT, said Mrs. Ramsay. He talked of
2010nothing else. It was about the influence of somebody upon something.
2011"Well, it's all he has to count on," said Mr. Ramsay. "Pray Heaven he
2012won't fall in love with Prue," said Mrs. Ramsay. He'd disinherit her if
2013she married him, said Mr. Ramsay. He did not look at the flowers,
2014which his wife was considering, but at a spot about a foot or
2015so above them. There was no harm in him, he added, and was just
2016about to say that anyhow he was the only young man in England who
2017admired his--when he choked it back. He would not bother her again
2018about his books. These flowers seemed creditable, Mr. Ramsay said,
2019lowering his gaze and noticing something red, something brown. Yes, but
2020then these she had put in with her own hands, said Mrs. Ramsay. The
2021question was, what happened if she sent bulbs down; did Kennedy plant
2022them? It was his incurable laziness; she added, moving on. If she
2023stood over him all day long with a spade in her hand, he did sometimes
2024do a stroke of work. So they strolled along, towards the red-hot
2025pokers. "You're teaching your daughters to exaggerate," said Mr.
2026Ramsay, reproving her. Her Aunt Camilla was far worse than she was, Mrs.
2027Ramsay remarked. "Nobody ever held up your Aunt Camilla as a model of
2028virtue that I'm aware of," said Mr. Ramsay. "She was the most beautiful
2029woman I ever saw," said Mrs. Ramsay. "Somebody else was that," said Mr.
2030Ramsay. Prue was going to be far more beautiful than she was, said Mrs.
2031Ramsay. He saw no trace of it, said Mr. Ramsay. "Well, then, look
2032tonight," said Mrs. Ramsay. They paused. He wished Andrew could be
2033induced to work harder. He would lose every chance of a scholarship if
2034he didn't. "Oh, scholarships!" she said. Mr. Ramsay thought her foolish
2035for saying that, about a serious thing, like a scholarship. He should
2036be very proud of Andrew if he got a scholarship, he said. She would be
2037just as proud of him if he didn't, she answered. They disagreed always
2038about this, but it did not matter. She liked him to believe in
2039scholarships, and he liked her to be proud of Andrew whatever he did.
2040Suddenly she remembered those little paths on the edge of the cliffs.
2041
2042Wasn't it late? she asked. They hadn't come home yet. He flicked his
2043watch carelessly open. But it was only just past seven. He held his
2044watch open for a moment, deciding that he would tell her what he had
2045felt on the terrace. To begin with, it was not reasonable to be so
2046nervous. Andrew could look after himself. Then, he wanted to tell her
2047that when he was walking on the terrace just now--here he became
2048uncomfortable, as if he were breaking into that solitude, that
2049aloofness, that remoteness of hers. But she pressed him. What had
2050he wanted to tell her, she asked, thinking it was about going to the
2051Lighthouse; that he was sorry he had said "Damn you." But no. He did
2052not like to see her look so sad, he said. Only wool gathering, she
2053protested, flushing a little. They both felt uncomfortable, as if they
2054did not know whether to go on or go back. She had been reading fairy
2055tales to James, she said. No, they could not share that; they could
2056not say that.
2057
2058They had reached the gap between the two clumps of red-hot pokers, and
2059there was the Lighthouse again, but she would not let herself look at
2060it. Had she known that he was looking at her, she thought, she would
2061not have let herself sit there, thinking. She disliked anything that
2062reminded her that she had been seen sitting thinking. So she looked
2063over her shoulder, at the town. The lights were rippling and running
2064as if they were drops of silver water held firm in a wind. And all the
2065poverty, all the suffering had turned to that, Mrs. Ramsay thought. The
2066lights of the town and of the harbour and of the boats seemed like a
2067phantom net floating there to mark something which had sunk. Well, if
2068he could not share her thoughts, Mr. Ramsay said to himself, he would be
2069off, then, on his own. He wanted to go on thinking, telling himself the
2070story how Hume was stuck in a bog; he wanted to laugh. But first it
2071was nonsense to be anxious about Andrew. When he was Andrew's age he
2072used to walk about the country all day long, with nothing but a biscuit
2073in his pocket and nobody bothered about him, or thought that he had
2074fallen over a cliff. He said aloud he thought he would be off for a
2075day's walk if the weather held. He had had about enough of Bankes and
2076of Carmichael. He would like a little solitude. Yes, she said. It
2077annoyed him that she did not protest. She knew that he would never do
2078it. He was too old now to walk all day long with a biscuit in his
2079pocket. She worried about the boys, but not about him. Years ago,
2080before he had married, he thought, looking across the bay, as they
2081stood between the clumps of red-hot pokers, he had walked all day. He
2082had made a meal off bread and cheese in a public house. He had worked
2083ten hours at a stretch; an old woman just popped her head in now and
2084again and saw to the fire. That was the country he liked best, over
2085there; those sandhills dwindling away into darkness. One could walk
2086all day without meeting a soul. There was not a house scarcely, not a
2087single village for miles on end. One could worry things out alone.
2088There were little sandy beaches where no one had been since the
2089beginning of time. The seals sat up and looked at you. It sometimes
2090seemed to him that in a little house out there, alone--he broke off,
2091sighing. He had no right. The father of eight children--he reminded
2092himself. And he would have been a beast and a cur to wish a single
2093thing altered. Andrew would be a better man than he had been. Prue
2094would be a beauty, her mother said. They would stem the flood a bit.
2095That was a good bit of work on the whole--his eight children. They
2096showed he did not damn the poor little universe entirely, for on an
2097evening like this, he thought, looking at the land dwindling away, the
2098little island seemed pathetically small, half swallowed up in the sea.
2099
2100"Poor little place," he murmured with a sigh.
2101
2102She heard him. He said the most melancholy things, but she noticed
2103that directly he had said them he always seemed more cheerful than
2104usual. All this phrase-making was a game, she thought, for if she had
2105said half what he said, she would have blown her brains out by now.
2106
2107It annoyed her, this phrase-making, and she said to him, in a matter-
2108of-fact way, that it was a perfectly lovely evening. And what was he
2109groaning about, she asked, half laughing, half complaining, for she
2110guessed what he was thinking--he would have written better books if he
2111had not married.
2112
2113He was not complaining, he said. She knew that he did not complain.
2114She knew that he had nothing whatever to complain of. And he seized
2115her hand and raised it to his lips and kissed it with an intensity that
2116brought the tears to her eyes, and quickly he dropped it.
2117
2118They turned away from the view and began to walk up the path where the
2119silver-green spear-like plants grew, arm in arm. His arm was almost
2120like a young man's arm, Mrs. Ramsay thought, thin and hard, and she
2121thought with delight how strong he still was, though he was over sixty,
2122and how untamed and optimistic, and how strange it was that being
2123convinced, as he was, of all sorts of horrors, seemed not to depress
2124him, but to cheer him. Was it not odd, she reflected? Indeed he
2125seemed to her sometimes made differently from other people, born blind,
2126deaf, and dumb, to the ordinary things, but to the extraordinary
2127things, with an eye like an eagle's. His understanding often
2128astonished her. But did he notice the flowers? No. Did he notice the
2129view? No. Did he even notice his own daughter's beauty, or whether
2130there was pudding on his plate or roast beef? He would sit at table
2131with them like a person in a dream. And his habit of talking aloud, or
2132saying poetry aloud, was growing on him, she was afraid; for sometimes
2133it was awkward--
2134
2135
2136Best and brightest come away!
2137
2138
2139poor Miss Giddings, when he shouted that at her, almost jumped out of
2140her skin. But then, Mrs. Ramsay, though instantly taking his side
2141against all the silly Giddingses in the world, then, she thought,
2142intimating by a little pressure on his arm that he walked up hill too
2143fast for her, and she must stop for a moment to see whether those were
2144fresh molehills on the bank, then, she thought, stooping down to look,
2145a great mind like his must be different in every way from ours. All
2146the great men she had ever known, she thought, deciding that a rabbit
2147must have got in, were like that, and it was good for young men (though
2148the atmosphere of lecture-rooms was stuffy and depressing to her beyond
2149endurance almost) simply to hear him, simply to look at him. But
2150without shooting rabbits, how was one to keep them down? she wondered.
2151It might be a rabbit; it might be a mole. Some creature anyhow was
2152ruining her Evening Primroses. And looking up, she saw above the thin
2153trees the first pulse of the full-throbbing star, and wanted to make
2154her husband look at it; for the sight gave her such keen pleasure. But
2155she stopped herself. He never looked at things. If he did, all he
2156would say would be, Poor little world, with one of his sighs.
2157
2158At that moment, he said, "Very fine," to please her, and pretended to
2159admire the flowers. But she knew quite well that he did not admire
2160them, or even realise that they were there. It was only to please
2161her. Ah, but was that not Lily Briscoe strolling along with William
2162Bankes? She focussed her short-sighted eyes upon the backs of a
2163retreating couple. Yes, indeed it was. Did that not mean that they
2164would marry? Yes, it must! What an admirable idea! They must marry!
2165
216613
2167
2168He had been to Amsterdam, Mr. Bankes was saying as he strolled across
2169the lawn with Lily Briscoe. He had seen the Rembrandts. He had been to
2170Madrid. Unfortunately, it was Good Friday and the Prado was shut. He
2171had been to Rome. Had Miss Briscoe never been to Rome? Oh, she
2172should--It would be a wonderful experience for her--the Sistine
2173Chapel; Michael Angelo; and Padua, with its Giottos. His wife had been
2174in bad health for many years, so that their sight-seeing had been on a
2175modest scale.
2176
2177She had been to Brussels; she had been to Paris but only for a flying
2178visit to see an aunt who was ill. She had been to Dresden; there were
2179masses of pictures she had not seen; however, Lily Briscoe reflected,
2180perhaps it was better not to see pictures: they only made one
2181hopelessly discontented with one's own work. Mr. Bankes thought one
2182could carry that point of view too far. We can't all be Titians and we
2183can't all be Darwins, he said; at the same time he doubted whether you
2184could have your Darwin and your Titian if it weren't for humble people
2185like ourselves. Lily would have liked to pay him a compliment; you're
2186not humble, Mr. Bankes, she would have liked to have said. But he did
2187not want compliments (most men do, she thought), and she was a little
2188ashamed of her impulse and said nothing while he remarked that perhaps
2189what he was saying did not apply to pictures. Anyhow, said Lily,
2190tossing off her little insincerity, she would always go on painting,
2191because it interested her. Yes, said Mr. Bankes, he was sure she would,
2192and, as they reached the end of the lawn he was asking her whether she
2193had difficulty in finding subjects in London when they turned and saw
2194the Ramsays. So that is marriage, Lily thought, a man and a woman
2195looking at a girl throwing a ball. That is what Mrs. Ramsay tried to
2196tell me the other night, she thought. For she was wearing a green
2197shawl, and they were standing close together watching Prue and
2198Jasper throwing catches. And suddenly the meaning which, for no
2199reason at all, as perhaps they are stepping out of the Tube or
2200ringing a doorbell, descends on people, making them symbolical,
2201making them representative, came upon them, and made them in the dusk
2202standing, looking, the symbols of marriage, husband and wife. Then,
2203after an instant, the symbolical outline which transcended the real
2204figures sank down again, and they became, as they met them, Mr. and Mrs.
2205Ramsay watching the children throwing catches. But still for a moment,
2206though Mrs. Ramsay greeted them with her usual smile (oh, she's thinking
2207we're going to get married, Lily thought) and said, "I have triumphed
2208tonight," meaning that for once Mr. Bankes had agreed to dine with them
2209and not run off to his own lodging where his man cooked vegetables
2210properly; still, for one moment, there was a sense of things having
2211been blown apart, of space, of irresponsibility as the ball soared
2212high, and they followed it and lost it and saw the one star and the
2213draped branches. In the failing light they all looked sharp-edged and
2214ethereal and divided by great distances. Then, darting backwards over
2215the vast space (for it seemed as if solidity had vanished altogether),
2216Prue ran full tilt into them and caught the ball brilliantly high up in
2217her left hand, and her mother said, "Haven't they come back yet?"
2218whereupon the spell was broken. Mr. Ramsay felt free now to laugh out
2219loud at the thought that Hume had stuck in a bog and an old woman
2220rescued him on condition he said the Lord's Prayer, and chuckling to
2221himself he strolled off to his study. Mrs. Ramsay, bringing Prue back
2222into throwing catches again, from which she had escaped, asked,
2223
2224"Did Nancy go with them?"
2225
222614
2227
2228(Certainly, Nancy had gone with them, since Minta Doyle had asked it
2229with her dumb look, holding out her hand, as Nancy made off, after
2230lunch, to her attic, to escape the horror of family life. She
2231supposed she must go then. She did not want to go. She did not want to
2232be drawn into it all. For as they walked along the road to the cliff
2233Minta kept on taking her hand. Then she would let it go. Then she
2234would take it again. What was it she wanted? Nancy asked herself.
2235There was something, of course, that people wanted; for when Minta took
2236her hand and held it, Nancy, reluctantly, saw the whole world spread
2237out beneath her, as if it were Constantinople seen through a mist, and
2238then, however heavy-eyed one might be, one must needs ask, "Is that
2239Santa Sofia?" "Is that the Golden Horn?" So Nancy asked, when Minta
2240took her hand. "What is it that she wants? Is it that?" And what was
2241that? Here and there emerged from the mist (as Nancy looked down upon
2242life spread beneath her) a pinnacle, a dome; prominent things, without
2243names. But when Minta dropped her hand, as she did when they ran down
2244the hillside, all that, the dome, the pinnacle, whatever it was that
2245had protruded through the mist, sank down into it and disappeared.
2246Minta, Andrew observed, was rather a good walker. She wore more
2247sensible clothes that most women. She wore very short skirts and black
2248knickerbockers. She would jump straight into a stream and flounder
2249across. He liked her rashness, but he saw that it would not do--she
2250would kill herself in some idiotic way one of these days. She seemed
2251to be afraid of nothing--except bulls. At the mere sight of a bull in
2252a field she would throw up her arms and fly screaming, which was the
2253very thing to enrage a bull of course. But she did not mind owning up
2254to it in the least; one must admit that. She knew she was an awful
2255coward about bulls, she said. She thought she must have been tossed in
2256her perambulator when she was a baby. She didn't seem to mind what she
2257said or did. Suddenly now she pitched down on the edge of the cliff
2258and began to sing some song about
2259
2260
2261Damn your eyes, damn your eyes.
2262
2263
2264They all had to join in and sing the chorus, and shout out together:
2265
2266
2267Damn your eyes, damn your eyes,
2268
2269
2270but it would be fatal to let the tide come in and cover up all the good
2271hunting-grounds before they got on to the beach.
2272
2273"Fatal," Paul agreed, springing up, and as they went slithering down,
2274he kept quoting the guide-book about "these islands being justly
2275celebrated for their park-like prospects and the extent and variety of
2276their marine curiosities." But it would not do altogether, this
2277shouting and damning your eyes, Andrew felt, picking his way down the
2278cliff, this clapping him on the back, and calling him "old fellow" and
2279all that; it would not altogether do. It was the worst of taking women
2280on walks. Once on the beach they separated, he going out on to the
2281Pope's Nose, taking his shoes off, and rolling his socks in them and
2282letting that couple look after themselves; Nancy waded out to her own
2283rocks and searched her own pools and let that couple look after
2284themselves. She crouched low down and touched the smooth rubber-like
2285sea anemones, who were stuck like lumps of jelly to the side of the
2286rock. Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows
2287into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by
2288holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and
2289desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent
2290creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream
2291down. Out on the pale criss-crossed sand, high-stepping, fringed,
2292gauntleted, stalked some fantastic leviathan (she was still enlarging
2293the pool), and slipped into the vast fissures of the mountain side.
2294And then, letting her eyes slide imperceptibly above the pool and rest
2295on that wavering line of sea and sky, on the tree trunks which the
2296smoke of steamers made waver on the horizon, she became with all that
2297power sweeping savagely in and inevitably withdrawing, hypnotised, and
2298the two senses of that vastness and this tininess (the pool had
2299diminished again) flowering within it made her feel that she was bound
2300hand and foot and unable to move by the intensity of feelings which
2301reduced her own body, her own life, and the lives of all the people in
2302the world, for ever, to nothingness. So listening to the waves,
2303crouching over the pool, she brooded.
2304
2305And Andrew shouted that the sea was coming in, so she leapt splashing
2306through the shallow waves on to the shore and ran up the beach and was
2307carried by her own impetuosity and her desire for rapid movement right
2308behind a rock and there--oh, heavens! in each other's arms, were Paul
2309and Minta kissing probably. She was outraged, indignant. She and
2310Andrew put on their shoes and stockings in dead silence without saying
2311a thing about it. Indeed they were rather sharp with each other. She
2312might have called him when she saw the crayfish or whatever it was,
2313Andrew grumbled. However, they both felt, it's not our fault. They
2314had not wanted this horrid nuisance to happen. All the same it
2315irritated Andrew that Nancy should be a woman, and Nancy that Andrew
2316should be a man, and they tied their shoes very neatly and drew the
2317bows rather tight.
2318
2319It was not until they had climbed right up on to the top of the cliff
2320again that Minta cried out that she had lost her grandmother's brooch--
2321her grandmother's brooch, the sole ornament she possessed--a weeping
2322willow, it was (they must remember it) set in pearls. They must have
2323seen it, she said, with the tears running down her cheeks, the
2324brooch which her grandmother had fastened her cap with till the
2325last day of her life. Now she had lost it. She would rather have
2326lost anything than that! She would go back and look for it. They all
2327went back. They poked and peered and looked. They kept their heads
2328very low, and said things shortly and gruffly. Paul Rayley searched
2329like a madman all about the rock where they had been sitting. All this
2330pother about a brooch really didn't do at all, Andrew thought, as Paul
2331told him to make a "thorough search between this point and that." The
2332tide was coming in fast. The sea would cover the place where they had
2333sat in a minute. There was not a ghost of a chance of their finding it
2334now. "We shall be cut off!" Minta shrieked, suddenly terrified. As if
2335there were any danger of that! It was the same as the bulls all over
2336again--she had no control over her emotions, Andrew thought. Women
2337hadn't. The wretched Paul had to pacify her. The men (Andrew and Paul
2338at once became manly, and different from usual) took counsel briefly
2339and decided that they would plant Rayley's stick where they had sat and
2340come back at low tide again. There was nothing more that could be done
2341now. If the brooch was there, it would still be there in the morning,
2342they assured her, but Minta still sobbed, all the way up to the top of
2343the cliff. It was her grandmother's brooch; she would rather have lost
2344anything but that, and yet Nancy felt, it might be true that she minded
2345losing her brooch, but she wasn't crying only for that. She was crying
2346for something else. We might all sit down and cry, she felt. But she
2347did not know what for.
2348
2349They drew ahead together, Paul and Minta, and he comforted her, and
2350said how famous he was for finding things. Once when he was a little
2351boy he had found a gold watch. He would get up at daybreak and he was
2352positive he would find it. It seemed to him that it would be
2353almost dark, and he would be alone on the beach, and somehow it would
2354be rather dangerous. He began telling her, however, that he would
2355certainly find it, and she said that she would not hear of his getting
2356up at dawn: it was lost: she knew that: she had had a presentiment when
2357she put it on that afternoon. And secretly he resolved that he would
2358not tell her, but he would slip out of the house at dawn when they were
2359all asleep and if he could not find it he would go to Edinburgh and buy
2360her another, just like it but more beautiful. He would prove what he
2361could do. And as they came out on the hill and saw the lights of the
2362town beneath them, the lights coming out suddenly one by one seemed
2363like things that were going to happen to him--his marriage, his
2364children, his house; and again he thought, as they came out on to the
2365high road, which was shaded with high bushes, how they would retreat
2366into solitude together, and walk on and on, he always leading her, and
2367she pressing close to his side (as she did now). As they turned by the
2368cross roads he thought what an appalling experience he had been
2369through, and he must tell some one--Mrs. Ramsay of course, for it took
2370his breath away to think what he had been and done. It had been far
2371and away the worst moment of his life when he asked Minta to marry him.
2372He would go straight to Mrs. Ramsay, because he felt somehow that she
2373was the person who had made him do it. She had made him think he could
2374do anything. Nobody else took him seriously. But she made him believe
2375that he could do whatever he wanted. He had felt her eyes on him all
2376day today, following him about (though she never said a word) as if she
2377were saying, "Yes, you can do it. I believe in you. I expect it of
2378you." She had made him feel all that, and directly they got back (he
2379looked for the lights of the house above the bay) he would go to her
2380and say, "I've done it, Mrs. Ramsay; thanks to you." And so turning into
2381the lane that led to the house he could see lights moving about in the
2382upper windows. They must be awfully late then. People were getting
2383ready for dinner. The house was all lit up, and the lights after the
2384darkness made his eyes feel full, and he said to himself, childishly,
2385as he walked up the drive, Lights, lights, lights, and repeated in a
2386dazed way, Lights, lights, lights, as they came into the house staring
2387about him with his face quite stiff. But, good heavens, he said to
2388himself, putting his hand to his tie, I must not make a fool of
2389myself.)
2390
2391
239215
2393
2394
2395"Yes," said Prue, in her considering way, answering her mother's
2396question, "I think Nancy did go with them."
2397
2398
239916
2400
2401
2402Well then, Nancy had gone with them, Mrs. Ramsay supposed, wondering, as
2403she put down a brush, took up a comb, and said "Come in" to a tap at
2404the door (Jasper and Rose came in), whether the fact that Nancy was
2405with them made it less likely or more likely that anything would
2406happen; it made it less likely, somehow, Mrs. Ramsay felt, very
2407irrationally, except that after all holocaust on such a scale was not
2408probable. They could not all be drowned. And again she felt alone in
2409the presence of her old antagonist, life.
2410
2411Jasper and Rose said that Mildred wanted to know whether she should
2412wait dinner.
2413
2414"Not for the Queen of England," said Mrs. Ramsay emphatically.
2415
2416"Not for the Empress of Mexico," she added, laughing at Jasper; for he
2417shared his mother's vice: he, too, exaggerated.
2418
2419And if Rose liked, she said, while Jasper took the message, she might
2420choose which jewels she was to wear. When there are fifteen people
2421sitting down to dinner, one cannot keep things waiting for ever. She
2422was now beginning to feel annoyed with them for being so late; it was
2423inconsiderate of them, and it annoyed her on top of her anxiety about
2424them, that they should choose this very night to be out late, when, in
2425fact, she wished the dinner to be particularly nice, since William
2426Bankes had at last consented to dine with them; and they were having
2427Mildred's masterpiece--BOEUF EN DAUBE. Everything depended upon things
2428being served up to the precise moment they were ready. The beef, the
2429bayleaf, and the wine--all must be done to a turn. To keep it waiting
2430was out of the question. Yet of course tonight, of all nights, out
2431they went, and they came in late, and things had to be sent out,
2432things had to be kept hot; the BOEUF EN DAUBE would be entirely spoilt.
2433
2434Jasper offered her an opal necklace; Rose a gold necklace. Which
2435looked best against her black dress? Which did indeed, said Mrs. Ramsay
2436absent-mindedly, looking at her neck and shoulders (but avoiding her
2437face) in the glass. And then, while the children rummaged among her
2438things, she looked out of the window at a sight which always amused
2439her--the rooks trying to decide which tree to settle on. Every time,
2440they seemed to change their minds and rose up into the air again,
2441because, she thought, the old rook, the father rook, old Joseph was her
2442name for him, was a bird of a very trying and difficult disposition.
2443He was a disreputable old bird, with half his wing feathers missing.
2444He was like some seedy old gentleman in a top hat she had seen playing
2445the horn in front of a public house.
2446
2447"Look!" she said, laughing. They were actually fighting. Joseph and
2448Mary were fighting. Anyhow they all went up again, and the air was
2449shoved aside by their black wings and cut into exquisite scimitar shapes.
2450The movements of the wings beating out, out, out--she could never
2451describe it accurately enough to please herself--was one of the
2452loveliest of all to her. Look at that, she said to Rose, hoping
2453that Rose would see it more clearly than she could. For one's children
2454so often gave one's own perceptions a little thrust forwards.
2455
2456But which was it to be? They had all the trays of her jewel-case
2457open. The gold necklace, which was Italian, or the opal necklace,
2458which Uncle James had brought her from India; or should she wear her
2459amethysts?
2460
2461"Choose, dearests, choose," she said, hoping that they would make
2462haste.
2463
2464But she let them take their time to choose: she let Rose, particularly,
2465take up this and then that, and hold her jewels against the black
2466dress, for this little ceremony of choosing jewels, which was gone
2467through every night, was what Rose liked best, she knew. She had some
2468hidden reason of her own for attaching great importance to this
2469choosing what her mother was to wear. What was the reason, Mrs. Ramsay
2470wondered, standing still to let her clasp the necklace she had chosen,
2471divining, through her own past, some deep, some buried, some quite
2472speechless feeling that one had for one's mother at Rose's age. Like
2473all feelings felt for oneself, Mrs. Ramsay thought, it made one sad. It
2474was so inadequate, what one could give in return; and what Rose felt
2475was quite out of proportion to anything she actually was. And Rose
2476would grow up; and Rose would suffer, she supposed, with these deep
2477feelings, and she said she was ready now, and they would go down, and
2478Jasper, because he was the gentleman, should give her his arm, and
2479Rose, as she was the lady, should carry her handkerchief (she gave her
2480the handkerchief), and what else? oh, yes, it might be cold: a shawl.
2481Choose me a shawl, she said, for that would please Rose, who was bound
2482to suffer so. "There," she said, stopping by the window on the
2483landing, "there they are again." Joseph had settled on another tree-
2484top. "Don't you think they mind," she said to Jasper, "having their
2485wings broken?" Why did he want to shoot poor old Joseph and Mary? He
2486shuffled a little on the stairs, and felt rebuked, but not seriously,
2487for she did not understand the fun of shooting birds; and they did not
2488feel; and being his mother she lived away in another division of the
2489world, but he rather liked her stories about Mary and Joseph. She made
2490him laugh. But how did she know that those were Mary and Joseph? Did
2491she think the same birds came to the same trees every night? he asked.
2492But here, suddenly, like all grown-up people, she ceased to pay him the
2493least attention. She was listening to a clatter in the hall.
2494
2495"They've come back!" she exclaimed, and at once she felt much more
2496annoyed with them than relieved. Then she wondered, had it happened?
2497She would go down and they would tell her--but no. They could not tell
2498her anything, with all these people about. So she must go down and
2499begin dinner and wait. And, like some queen who, finding her people
2500gathered in the hall, looks down upon them, and descends among them,
2501and acknowledges their tributes silently, and accepts their devotion
2502and their prostration before her (Paul did not move a muscle but looked
2503straight before him as she passed) she went down, and crossed the hall
2504and bowed her head very slightly, as if she accepted what they could
2505not say: their tribute to her beauty.
2506
2507But she stopped. There was a smell of burning. Could they have let the
2508BOEUF EN DAUBE overboil? she wondered, pray heaven not! when the
2509great clangour of the gong announced solemnly, authoritatively, that
2510all those scattered about, in attics, in bedrooms, on little perches of
2511their own, reading, writing, putting the last smooth to their hair, or
2512fastening dresses, must leave all that, and the little odds and ends on
2513their washing-tables and dressing tables, and the novels on the bed-
2514tables, and the diaries which were so private, and assemble in the
2515dining-room for dinner.
2516
2517
251817
2519
2520
2521But what have I done with my life? thought Mrs. Ramsay, taking her
2522place at the head of the table, and looking at all the plates making
2523white circles on it. "William, sit by me," she said. "Lily," she
2524said, wearily, "over there." They had that--Paul Rayley and Minta
2525Doyle--she, only this--an infinitely long table and plates and knives.
2526At the far end was her husband, sitting down, all in a heap, frowning.
2527What at? She did not know. She did not mind. She could not
2528understand how she had ever felt any emotion or affection for him. She
2529had a sense of being past everything, through everything, out of
2530everything, as she helped the soup, as if there was an eddy--there--
2531and one could be in it, or one could be out of it, and she was out of
2532it. It's all come to an end, she thought, while they came in one after
2533another, Charles Tansley--"Sit there, please," she said--Augustus
2534Carmichael--and sat down. And meanwhile she waited, passively, for
2535some one to answer her, for something to happen. But this is not a
2536thing, she thought, ladling out soup, that one says.
2537
2538Raising her eyebrows at the discrepancy--that was what she was
2539thinking, this was what she was doing--ladling out soup--she felt, more
2540and more strongly, outside that eddy; or as if a shade had fallen, and,
2541robbed of colour, she saw things truly. The room (she looked round it)
2542was very shabby. There was no beauty anywhere. She forebore to look at
2543Mr. Tansley. Nothing seemed to have merged. They all sat separate.
2544And the whole of the effort of merging and flowing and creating rested
2545on her. Again she felt, as a fact without hostility, the sterility of
2546men, for if she did not do it nobody would do it, and so, giving
2547herself a little shake that one gives a watch that has stopped, the old
2548familiar pulse began beating, as the watch begins ticking--one, two,
2549three, one, two, three. And so on and so on, she repeated, listening
2550to it, sheltering and fostering the still feeble pulse as one might
2551guard a weak flame with a news-paper. And so then, she concluded,
2552addressing herself by bending silently in his direction to William
2553Bankes--poor man! who had no wife, and no children and dined alone in
2554lodgings except for tonight; and in pity for him, life being now strong
2555enough to bear her on again, she began all this business, as a sailor
2556not without weariness sees the wind fill his sail and yet hardly wants
2557to be off again and thinks how, had the ship sunk, he would have
2558whirled round and round and found rest on the floor of the sea.
2559
2560"Did you find your letters? I told them to put them in the hall for
2561you," she said to William Bankes.
2562
2563Lily Briscoe watched her drifting into that strange no-man's land where
2564to follow people is impossible and yet their going inflicts such a
2565chill on those who watch them that they always try at least to follow
2566them with their eyes as one follows a fading ship until the sails have
2567sunk beneath the horizon.
2568
2569How old she looks, how worn she looks, Lily thought, and how remote.
2570Then when she turned to William Bankes, smiling, it was as if the ship
2571had turned and the sun had struck its sails again, and Lily thought
2572with some amusement because she was relieved, Why does she pity him?
2573For that was the impression she gave, when she told him that his
2574letters were in the hall. Poor William Bankes, she seemed to be
2575saying, as if her own weariness had been partly pitying people, and the
2576life in her, her resolve to live again, had been stirred by pity. And
2577it was not true, Lily thought; it was one of those misjudgments of hers
2578that seemed to be instinctive and to arise from some need of her own
2579rather than of other people's. He is not in the least pitiable. He has
2580his work, Lily said to herself. She remembered, all of a sudden as if
2581she had found a treasure, that she had her work. In a flash she saw
2582her picture, and thought, Yes, I shall put the tree further in the
2583middle; then I shall avoid that awkward space. That's what I shall do.
2584That's what has been puzzling me. She took up the salt cellar and put
2585it down again on a flower pattern in the table-cloth, so as to remind
2586herself to move the tree.
2587
2588"It's odd that one scarcely gets anything worth having by post, yet one
2589always wants one's letters," said Mr. Bankes.
2590
2591What damned rot they talk, thought Charles Tansley, laying down his
2592spoon precisely in the middle of his plate, which he had swept clean,
2593as if, Lily thought (he sat opposite to her with his back to the window
2594precisely in the middle of view), he were determined to make sure of
2595his meals. Everything about him had that meagre fixity, that bare
2596unloveliness. But nevertheless, the fact remained, it was impossible
2597to dislike any one if one looked at them. She liked his eyes; they
2598were blue, deep set, frightening.
2599
2600"Do you write many letters, Mr. Tansley?" asked Mrs. Ramsay, pitying him
2601too, Lily supposed; for that was true of Mrs. Ramsay--she pitied men
2602always as if they lacked something--women never, as if they had
2603something. He wrote to his mother; otherwise he did not suppose he
2604wrote one letter a month, said Mr. Tansley, shortly.
2605
2606For he was not going to talk the sort of rot these condescended to by
2607these silly women. He had been reading in his room, and now he came
2608down and it all seemed to him silly, superficial, flimsy. Why did they
2609dress? He had come down in his ordinary clothes. He had not got any
2610dress clothes. "One never gets anything worth having by post"--that
2611was the sort of thing they were always saying. They made men say that
2612sort of thing. Yes, it was pretty well true, he thought. They never
2613got anything worth having from one year's end to another. They did
2614nothing but talk, talk, talk, eat, eat, eat. It was the women's fault.
2615Women made civilisation impossible with all their "charm," all their
2616silliness.
2617
2618"No going to the Lighthouse tomorrow, Mrs. Ramsay," he said, asserting
2619himself. He liked her; he admired her; he still thought of the man in
2620the drain-pipe looking up at her; but he felt it necessary to assert
2621himself.
2622
2623He was really, Lily Briscoe thought, in spite of his eyes, but then
2624look at his nose, look at his hands, the most uncharming human being
2625she had ever met. Then why did she mind what he said? Women can't
2626write, women can't paint--what did that matter coming from him, since
2627clearly it was not true to him but for some reason helpful to him, and
2628that was why he said it? Why did her whole being bow, like corn under
2629a wind, and erect itself again from this abasement only with a great
2630and rather painful effort? She must make it once more. There's the
2631sprig on the table-cloth; there's my painting; I must move the tree to
2632the middle; that matters--nothing else. Could she not hold fast to
2633that, she asked herself, and not lose her temper, and not argue; and if
2634she wanted revenge take it by laughing at him?
2635
2636"Oh, Mr. Tansley," she said, "do take me to the Lighthouse with you. I
2637should so love it."
2638
2639She was telling lies he could see. She was saying what she did not
2640mean to annoy him, for some reason. She was laughing at him. He was in
2641his old flannel trousers. He had no others. He felt very rough and
2642isolated and lonely. He knew that she was trying to tease him for some
2643reason; she didn't want to go to the Lighthouse with him; she despised
2644him: so did Prue Ramsay; so did they all. But he was not going to be
2645made a fool of by women, so he turned deliberately in his chair and
2646looked out of the window and said, all in a jerk, very rudely, it would
2647be too rough for her tomorrow. She would be sick.
2648
2649It annoyed him that she should have made him speak like that, with Mrs.
2650Ramsay listening. If only he could be alone in his room working, he
2651thought, among his books. That was where he felt at his ease. And he
2652had never run a penny into debt; he had never cost his father a penny
2653since he was fifteen; he had helped them at home out of his savings; he
2654was educating his sister. Still, he wished he had known how to answer
2655Miss Briscoe properly; he wished it had not come out all in a jerk like
2656that. "You'd be sick." He wished he could think of something to say to
2657Mrs. Ramsay, something which would show her that he was not just a dry
2658prig. That was what they all thought him. He turned to her. But Mrs.
2659Ramsay was talking about people he had never heard of to William
2660Bankes.
2661
2662"Yes, take it away," she said briefly, interrupting what she was saying
2663to William Bankes to speak to the maid. "It must have been fifteen--
2664no, twenty years ago--that I last saw her," she was saying, turning
2665back to him again as if she could not lose a moment of their talk, for
2666she was absorbed by what they were saying. So he had actually heard
2667from her this evening! And was Carrie still living at Marlow, and was
2668everything still the same? Oh, she could remember it as if it were
2669yesterday--on the river, feeling it as if it were yesterday--going on
2670the river, feeling very cold. But if the Mannings made a plan they
2671stuck to it. Never should she forget Herbert killing a wasp with a
2672teaspoon on the bank! And it was still going on, Mrs. Ramsay mused,
2673gliding like a ghost among the chairs and tables of that drawing-room
2674on the banks of the Thames where she had been so very, very cold twenty
2675years ago; but now she went among them like a ghost; and it fascinated
2676her, as if, while she had changed, that particular day, now become very
2677still and beautiful, had remained there, all these years. Had Carrie
2678written to him herself? she asked.
2679
2680"Yes. She says they're building a new billiard room," he said. No!
2681No! That was out of the question! Building a new billiard room!
2682It seemed to her impossible.
2683
2684Mr. Bankes could not see that there was anything very odd about it.
2685They were very well off now. Should he give her love to Carrie?
2686
2687"Oh," said Mrs. Ramsay with a little start, "No," she added, reflecting
2688that she did not know this Carrie who built a new billiard room. But
2689how strange, she repeated, to Mr. Bankes's amusement, that they should
2690be going on there still. For it was extraordinary to think that they
2691had been capable of going on living all these years when she had not
2692thought of them more than once all that time. How eventful her own
2693life had been, during those same years. Yet perhaps Carrie Manning
2694had not thought about her, either. The thought was strange and
2695distasteful.
2696
2697"People soon drift apart," said Mr. Bankes, feeling, however, some
2698satisfaction when he thought that after all he knew both the Mannings
2699and the Ramsays. He had not drifted apart he thought, laying down his
2700spoon and wiping his clean-shaven lips punctiliously. But perhaps he
2701was rather unusual, he thought, in this; he never let himself get into
2702a groove. He had friends in all circles... Mrs. Ramsay had to break
2703off here to tell the maid something about keeping food hot. That was
2704why he preferred dining alone. All those interruptions annoyed him.
2705Well, thought William Bankes, preserving a demeanour of exquisite
2706courtesy and merely spreading the fingers of his left hand on the
2707table-cloth as a mechanic examines a tool beautifully polished and
2708ready for use in an interval of leisure, such are the sacrifices one's
2709friends ask of one. It would have hurt her if he had refused to come.
2710But it was not worth it for him. Looking at his hand he thought that
2711if he had been alone dinner would have been almost over now; he would
2712have been free to work. Yes, he thought, it is a terrible waste of
2713time. The children were dropping in still. "I wish one of you would
2714run up to Roger's room," Mrs. Ramsay was saying. How trifling it all
2715is, how boring it all is, he thought, compared with the other thing--
2716work. Here he sat drumming his fingers on the table-cloth when he
2717might have been--he took a flashing bird's-eye view of his work. What
2718a waste of time it all was to be sure! Yet, he thought, she is one of
2719my oldest friends. I am by way of being devoted to her. Yet now, at
2720this moment her presence meant absolutely nothing to him: her beauty
2721meant nothing to him; her sitting with her little boy at the window--
2722nothing, nothing. He wished only to be alone and to take up that book.
2723He felt uncomfortable; he felt treacherous, that he could sit by her
2724side and feel nothing for her. The truth was that he did not enjoy
2725family life. It was in this sort of state that one asked oneself, What
2726does one live for? Why, one asked oneself, does one take all these
2727pains for the human race to go on? Is it so very desirable? Are we
2728attractive as a species? Not so very, he thought, looking at those
2729rather untidy boys. His favourite, Cam, was in bed, he supposed.
2730Foolish questions, vain questions, questions one never asked
2731if one was occupied. Is human life this? Is human life that? One
2732never had time to think about it. But here he was asking himself that
2733sort of question, because Mrs. Ramsay was giving orders to servants, and
2734also because it had struck him, thinking how surprised Mrs. Ramsay was
2735that Carrie Manning should still exist, that friendships, even the best
2736of them, are frail things. One drifts apart. He reproached himself
2737again. He was sitting beside Mrs. Ramsay and he had nothing in the
2738world to say to her.
2739
2740"I'm so sorry," said Mrs. Ramsy, turning to him at last. He felt rigid
2741and barren, like a pair of boots that have been soaked and gone dry so
2742that you can hardly force your feet into them. Yet he must force his
2743feet into them. He must make himself talk. Unless he were very
2744careful, she would find out this treachery of his; that he did not care
2745a straw for her, and that would not be at all pleasant, he thought. So
2746he bent his head courteously in her direction.
2747
2748"How you must detest dining in this bear garden," she said, making use,
2749as she did when she was distracted, of her social manner. So, when
2750there is a strife of tongues, at some meeting, the chairman, to obtain
2751unity, suggests that every one shall speak in French. Perhaps it is
2752bad French; French may not contain the words that express the speaker's
2753thoughts; nevertheless speaking French imposes some order, some
2754uniformity. Replying to her in the same language, Mr. Bankes said, "No,
2755not at all," and Mr. Tansley, who had no knowledge of this language,
2756even spoke thus in words of one syllable, at once suspected its
2757insincerity. They did talk nonsense, he thought, the Ramsays; and he
2758pounced on this fresh instance with joy, making a note which, one of
2759these days, he would read aloud, to one or two friends. There, in a
2760society where one could say what one liked he would sarcastically
2761describe "staying with the Ramsays" and what nonsense they talked. It
2762was worth while doing it once, he would say; but not again. The women
2763bored one so, he would say. Of course Ramsay had dished himself by
2764marrying a beautiful woman and having eight children. It would shape
2765itself something like that, but now, at this moment, sitting stuck
2766there with an empty seat beside him, nothing had shaped itself at all.
2767It was all in scraps and fragments. He felt extremely, even
2768physically, uncomfortable. He wanted somebody to give him a chance of
2769asserting himself. He wanted it so urgently that he fidgeted in his
2770chair, looked at this person, then at that person, tried to break into
2771their talk, opened his mouth and shut it again. They were talking
2772about the fishing industry. Why did no one ask him his opinion? What
2773did they know about the fishing industry?
2774
2775Lily Briscoe knew all that. Sitting opposite him, could she not see,
2776as in an X-ray photograph, the ribs and thigh bones of the young man's
2777desire to impress himself, lying dark in the mist of his flesh--that
2778thin mist which convention had laid over his burning desire to break
2779into the conversation? But, she thought, screwing up her Chinese
2780eyes, and remembering how he sneered at women, "can't paint, can't
2781write," why should I help him to relieve himself?
2782
2783There is a code of behaviour, she knew, whose seventh article (it may
2784be) says that on occasions of this sort it behoves the woman, whatever
2785her own occupation might be, to go to the help of the young man
2786opposite so that he may expose and relieve the thigh bones, the ribs,
2787of his vanity, of his urgent desire to assert himself; as indeed it is
2788their duty, she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness, to help us,
2789suppose the Tube were to burst into flames. Then, she thought, I should
2790certainly expect Mr. Tansley to get me out. But how would it be, she
2791thought, if neither of us did either of these things? So she sat there
2792smiling.
2793
2794"You're not planning to go to the Lighthouse, are you, Lily," said Mrs.
2795Ramsay. "Remember poor Mr. Langley; he had been round the world dozens
2796of times, but he told me he never suffered as he did when my husband
2797took him there. Are you a good sailor, Mr. Tansley?" she asked.
2798
2799Mr. Tansley raised a hammer: swung it high in air; but realising, as it
2800descended, that he could not smite that butterfly with such an
2801instrument as this, said only that he had never been sick in his life.
2802But in that one sentence lay compact, like gunpowder, that his
2803grandfather was a fisherman; his father a chemist; that he had worked
2804his way up entirely himself; that he was proud of it; that he was
2805Charles Tansley--a fact that nobody there seemed to realise; but one of
2806these days every single person would know it. He scowled ahead of him.
2807He could almost pity these mild cultivated people, who would be blown
2808sky high, like bales of wool and barrels of apples, one of these days
2809by the gunpowder that was in him.
2810
2811"Will you take me, Mr. Tansley?" said Lily, quickly, kindly, for, of
2812course, if Mrs. Ramsay said to her, as in effect she did, "I am
2813drowning, my dear, in seas of fire. Unless you apply some balm to the
2814anguish of this hour and say something nice to that young man there,
2815life will run upon the rocks--indeed I hear the grating and the
2816growling at this minute. My nerves are taut as fiddle strings.
2817Another touch and they will snap"--when Mrs. Ramsay said all this, as
2818the glance in her eyes said it, of course for the hundred and fiftieth
2819time Lily Briscoe had to renounce the experiment--what happens if one
2820is not nice to that young man there--and be nice.
2821
2822Judging the turn in her mood correctly--that she was friendly to him
2823now--he was relieved of his egotism, and told her how he had been
2824thrown out of a boat when he was a baby; how his father used to fish
2825him out with a boat-hook; that was how he had learnt to swim. One of
2826his uncles kept the light on some rock or other off the Scottish coast,
2827he said. He had been there with him in a storm. This was said loudly
2828in a pause. They had to listen to him when he said that he had been
2829with his uncle in a lighthouse in a storm. Ah, thought Lily Briscoe,
2830as the conversation took this auspicious turn, and she felt Mrs.
2831Ramsay's gratitude (for Mrs. Ramsay was free now to talk for a moment
2832herself), ah, she thought, but what haven't I paid to get it for you?
2833She had not been sincere.
2834
2835She had done the usual trick--been nice. She would never know him. He
2836would never know her. Human relations were all like that, she thought,
2837and the worst (if it had not been for Mr. Bankes) were between men and
2838women. Inevitably these were extremely insincere she thought. Then
2839her eye caught the salt cellar, which she had placed there to remind
2840her, and she remembered that next morning she would move the tree
2841further towards the middle, and her spirits rose so high at the thought
2842of painting tomorrow that she laughed out loud at what Mr. Tansley was
2843saying. Let him talk all night if he liked it.
2844
2845"But how long do they leave men on a Lighthouse?" she asked. He told
2846her. He was amazingly well informed. And as he was grateful, and as
2847he liked her, and as he was beginning to enjoy himself, so now, Mrs.
2848Ramsay thought, she could return to that dream land, that unreal but
2849fascinating place, the Mannings' drawing-room at Marlow twenty years
2850ago; where one moved about without haste or anxiety, for there was no
2851future to worry about. She knew what had happened to them, what to
2852her. It was like reading a good book again, for she knew the end of
2853that story, since it had happened twenty years ago, and life, which
2854shot down even from this dining-room table in cascades, heaven knows
2855where, was sealed up there, and lay, like a lake, placidly between its
2856banks. He said they had built a billiard room--was it possible?
2857Would William go on talking about the Mannings? She wanted him to.
2858But, no--for some reason he was no longer in the mood. She tried.
2859He did not respond. She could not force him. She was disappointed.
2860
2861"The children are disgraceful," she said, sighing. He said something
2862about punctuality being one of the minor virtues which we do not
2863acquire until later in life.
2864
2865"If at all," said Mrs. Ramsay merely to fill up space, thinking what an
2866old maid William was becoming. Conscious of his treachery, conscious
2867of her wish to talk about something more intimate, yet out of mood for
2868it at present, he felt come over him the disagreeableness of life,
2869sitting there, waiting. Perhaps the others were saying something
2870interesting? What were they saying?
2871
2872That the fishing season was bad; that the men were emigrating. They
2873were talking about wages and unemployment. The young man was abusing
2874the government. William Bankes, thinking what a relief it was to catch
2875on to something of this sort when private life was disagreeable, heard
2876him say something about "one of the most scandalous acts of the present
2877government." Lily was listening; Mrs. Ramsay was listening; they were
2878all listening. But already bored, Lily felt that something was lacking;
2879Mr. Bankes felt that something was lacking. Pulling her shawl round her
2880Mrs. Ramsay felt that something was lacking. All of them bending
2881themselves to listen thought, "Pray heaven that the inside of my mind
2882may not be exposed," for each thought, "The others are feeling this.
2883They are outraged and indignant with the government about the
2884fishermen. Whereas, I feel nothing at all." But perhaps, thought Mr.
2885Bankes, as he looked at Mr. Tansley, here is the man. One was always
2886waiting for the man. There was always a chance. At any moment the
2887leader might arise; the man of genius, in politics as in anything else.
2888Probably he will be extremely disagreeable to us old fogies, thought Mr.
2889Bankes, doing his best to make allowances, for he knew by some curious
2890physical sensation, as of nerves erect in his spine, that he was
2891jealous, for himself partly, partly more probably for his work, for his
2892point of view, for his science; and therefore he was not entirely open-
2893minded or altogether fair, for Mr. Tansley seemed to be saying, You have
2894wasted your lives. You are all of you wrong. Poor old fogies, you're
2895hopelessly behind the times. He seemed to be rather cocksure, this
2896young man; and his manners were bad. But Mr. Bankes bade himself
2897observe, he had courage; he had ability; he was extremely well up in
2898the facts. Probably, Mr. Bankes thought, as Tansley abused the
2899government, there is a good deal in what he says.
2900
2901"Tell me now..." he said. So they argued about politics, and Lily
2902looked at the leaf on the table-cloth; and Mrs. Ramsay, leaving the
2903argument entirely in the hands of the two men, wondered why she was so
2904bored by this talk, and wished, looking at her husband at the other end
2905of the table, that he would say something. One word, she said to
2906herself. For if he said a thing, it would make all the difference. He
2907went to the heart of things. He cared about fishermen and their wages.
2908He could not sleep for thinking of them. It was altogether different
2909when he spoke; one did not feel then, pray heaven you don't see how
2910little I care, because one did care. Then, realising that it was because
2911she admired him so much that she was waiting for him to speak, she
2912felt as if somebody had been praising her husband to her and their
2913marriage, and she glowed all over withiut realising that it was
2914she herself who had praised him. She looked at him thinking to find
2915this in his face; he would be looking magnificent... But not in the
2916least! He was screwing his face up, he was scowling and frowning, and
2917flushing with anger. What on earth was it about? she wondered. What
2918could be the matter? Only that poor old Augustus had asked for
2919another plate of soup--that was all. It was unthinkable, it was
2920detestable (so he signalled to her across the table) that Augustus
2921should be beginning his soup over again. He loathed people eating when
2922he had finished. She saw his anger fly like a pack of hounds into his
2923eyes, his brow, and she knew that in a moment something violent would
2924explode, and then--thank goodness! she saw him clutch himself and clap
2925a brake on the wheel, and the whole of his body seemed to emit sparks
2926but not words. He sat there scowling. He had said nothing, he would
2927have her observe. Let her give him the credit for that! But why
2928after all should poor Augustus not ask for another plate of soup? He
2929had merely touched Ellen's arm and said:
2930
2931"Ellen, please, another plate of soup," and then Mr. Ramsay scowled like
2932that.
2933
2934And why not? Mrs. Ramsay demanded. Surely they could let Augustus have
2935his soup if he wanted it. He hated people wallowing in food, Mr. Ramsay
2936frowned at her. He hated everything dragging on for hours like this.
2937But he had controlled himself, Mr. Ramsay would have her observe,
2938disgusting though the sight was. But why show it so plainly, Mrs.
2939Ramsay demanded (they looked at each other down the long table sending
2940these questions and answers across, each knowing exactly what the other
2941felt). Everybody could see, Mrs. Ramsay thought. There was Rose gazing
2942at her father, there was Roger gazing at his father; both would be off
2943in spasms of laughter in another second, she knew, and so she said
2944promptly (indeed it was time):
2945
2946"Light the candles," and they jumped up instantly and went and fumbled
2947at the sideboard.
2948
2949Why could he never conceal his feelings? Mrs. Ramsay wondered, and she
2950wondered if Augustus Carmichael had noticed. Perhaps he had; perhaps
2951he had not. She could not help respecting the composure with which he
2952sat there, drinking his soup. If he wanted soup, he asked for soup.
2953Whether people laughed at him or were angry with him he was the same.
2954He did not like her, she knew that; but partly for that very reason she
2955respected him, and looking at him, drinking soup, very large and calm
2956in the failing light, and monumental, and contemplative, she wondered
2957what he did feel then, and why he was always content and dignified; and
2958she thought how devoted he was to Andrew, and would call him into his
2959room, and Andrew said, "show him things." And there he would lie all
2960day long on the lawn brooding presumably over his poetry, till he
2961reminded one of a cat watching birds, and then he clapped his paws
2962together when he had found the word, and her husband said, "Poor old
2963Augustus--he's a true poet," which was high praise from her husband.
2964
2965Now eight candles were stood down the table, and after the first stoop
2966the flames stood upright and drew with them into visibility the long
2967table entire, and in the middle a yellow and purple dish of fruit. What
2968had she done with it, Mrs. Ramsay wondered, for Rose's arrangement of
2969the grapes and pears, of the horny pink-lined shell, of the bananas,
2970made her think of a trophy fetched from the bottom of the sea, of
2971Neptune's banquet, of the bunch that hangs with vine leaves over the
2972shoulder of Bacchus (in some picture), among the leopard skins and the
2973torches lolloping red and gold... Thus brought up suddenly into the
2974light it seemed possessed of great size and depth, was like a world in
2975which one could take one's staff and climb hills, she thought, and go
2976down into valleys, and to her pleasure (for it brought them into
2977sympathy momentarily) she saw that Augustus too feasted his eyes on the
2978same plate of fruit, plunged in, broke off a bloom there, a tassel
2979here, and returned, after feasting, to his hive. That was his way of
2980looking, different from hers. But looking together united them.
2981
2982Now all the candles were lit up, and the faces on both sides of the
2983table were brought nearer by the candle light, and composed, as they
2984had not been in the twilight, into a party round a table, for the night
2985was now shut off by panes of glass, which, far from giving any accurate
2986view of the outside world, rippled it so strangely that here, inside
2987the room, seemed to be order and dry land; there, outside, a reflection
2988in which things waved and vanished, waterily.
2989
2990Some change at once went through them all, as if this had really
2991happened, and they were all conscious of making a party together in a
2992hollow, on an island; had their common cause against that fluidity out
2993there. Mrs. Ramsay, who had been uneasy, waiting for Paul and Minta to
2994come in, and unable, she felt, to settle to things, now felt her
2995uneasiness changed to expectation. For now they must come, and Lily
2996Briscoe, trying to analyse the cause of the sudden exhilaration,
2997compared it with that moment on the tennis lawn, when solidity suddenly
2998vanished, and such vast spaces lay between them; and now the same
2999effect was got by the many candles in the sparely furnished room, and
3000the uncurtained windows, and the bright mask-like look of faces seen by
3001candlelight. Some weight was taken off them; anything might happen,
3002she felt. They must come now, Mrs. Ramsay thought, looking at the door,
3003and at that instant, Minta Doyle, Paul Rayley, and a maid carrying a
3004great dish in her hands came in together. They were awfully late; they
3005were horribly late, Minta said, as they found their way to different
3006ends of the table.
3007
3008"I lost my brooch--my grandmother's brooch," said Minta with a sound of
3009lamentation in her voice, and a suffusion in her large brown eyes,
3010looking down, looking up, as she sat by Mr. Ramsay, which roused his
3011chivalry so that he bantered her.
3012
3013How could she be such a goose, he asked, as to scramble about the rocks
3014in jewels?
3015
3016She was by way of being terrified of him--he was so fearfully clever,
3017and the first night when she had sat by him, and he talked about George
3018Eliot, she had been really frightened, for she had left the third
3019volume of MIDDLEMARCH in the train and she never knew what happened in
3020the end; but afterwards she got on perfectly, and made herself out even
3021more ignorant than she was, because he liked telling her she was a
3022fool. And so tonight, directly he laughed at her, she was not
3023frightened. Besides, she knew, directly she came into the room that the
3024miracle had happened; she wore her golden haze. Sometimes she had it;
3025sometimes not. She never knew why it came or why it went, or if she
3026had it until she came into the room and then she knew instantly by the
3027way some man looked at her. Yes, tonight she had it, tremendously; she
3028knew that by the way Mr. Ramsay told her not to be a fool. She sat
3029beside him, smiling.
3030
3031It must have happened then, thought Mrs. Ramsay; they are engaged. And
3032for a moment she felt what she had never expected to feel again--
3033jealousy. For he, her husband, felt it too--Minta's glow; he liked
3034these girls, these golden-reddish girls, with something flying,
3035something a little wild and harum-scarum about them, who didn't
3036"scrape their hair off," weren't, as he said about poor Lily Briscoe,
3037"skimpy". There was some quality which she herself had not, some
3038lustre, some richness, which attracted him, amused him, led him to make
3039favourites of girls like Minta. They might cut his hair from him,
3040plait him watch-chains, or interrupt him at his work, hailing him (she
3041heard them), "Come along, Mr. Ramsay; it's our turn to beat them now,"
3042and out he came to play tennis.
3043
3044But indeed she was not jealous, only, now and then, when she made
3045herself look in her glass, a little resentful that she had grown old,
3046perhaps, by her own fault. (The bill for the greenhouse and all the
3047rest of it.) She was grateful to them for laughing at him. ("How many
3048pipes have you smoked today, Mr. Ramsay?" and so on), till he seemed a
3049young man; a man very attractive to women, not burdened, not weighed
3050down with the greatness of his labours and the sorrows of the world and
3051his fame or his failure, but again as she had first known him, gaunt
3052but gallant; helping her out of a boat, she remembered; with delightful
3053ways, like that (she looked at him, and he looked astonishingly young,
3054teasing Minta). For herself--"Put it down there," she said, helping
3055the Swiss girl to place gently before her the huge brown pot in which
3056was the BOEUF EN DAUBE--for her own part, she liked her boobies. Paul
3057must sit by her. She had kept a place for him. Really, she sometimes
3058thought she liked the boobies best. They did not bother one with their
3059dissertations. How much they missed, after all, these very clever men!
3060How dried up they did become, to be sure. There was something, she
3061thought as he sat down, very charming about Paul. His manners were
3062delightful to her, and his sharp cut nose and his bright blue eyes. He
3063was so considerate. Would he tell her--now that they were all talking
3064again--what had happened?
3065
3066"We went back to look for Minta's brooch," he said, sitting down by
3067her. "We"--that was enough. She knew from the effort, the rise in his
3068voice to surmount a difficult word that it was the first time he had
3069said "we." "We did this, we did that." They'll say that all their
3070lives, she thought, and an exquisite scent of olives and oil and juice
3071rose from the great brown dish as Marthe, with a little flourish, took
3072the cover off. The cook had spent three days over that dish. And she
3073must take great care, Mrs. Ramsay thought, diving into the soft mass, to
3074choose a specially tender piece for William Bankes. And she peered into
3075the dish, with its shiny walls and its confusion of savoury brown and
3076yellow meats and its bay leaves and its wine, and thought, This will
3077celebrate the occasion--a curious sense rising in her, at once freakish
3078and tender, of celebrating a festival, as if two emotions were called
3079up in her, one profound--for what could be more serious than the love
3080of man for woman, what more commanding, more impressive, bearing in its
3081bosom the seeds of death; at the same time these lovers, these people
3082entering into illusion glittering eyed, must be danced round with
3083mockery, decorated with garlands.
3084
3085"It is a triumph," said Mr. Bankes, laying his knife down for a moment.
3086He had eaten attentively. It was rich; it was tender. It was perfectly
3087cooked. How did she manage these things in the depths of the country?
3088he asked her. She was a wonderful woman. All his love, all his
3089reverence, had returned; and she knew it.
3090
3091"It is a French recipe of my grandmother's," said Mrs. Ramsay, speaking
3092with a ring of great pleasure in her voice. Of course it was French.
3093What passes for cookery in England is an abomination (they agreed). It
3094is putting cabbages in water. It is roasting meat till it is like
3095leather. It is cutting off the delicious skins of vegetables. "In
3096which," said Mr. Bankes, "all the virtue of the vegetable is contained."
3097And the waste, said Mrs. Ramsay. A whole French family could live on
3098what an English cook throws away. Spurred on by her sense that
3099William's affection had come back to her, and that everything was all
3100right again, and that her suspense was over, and that now she was free
3101both to triumph and to mock, she laughed, she gesticulated, till Lily
3102thought, How childlike, how absurd she was, sitting up there with all
3103her beauty opened again in her, talking about the skins of vegetables.
3104There was something frightening about her. She was irresistible.
3105Always she got her own way in the end, Lily thought. Now she had
3106brought this off--Paul and Minta, one might suppose, were engaged. Mr.
3107Bankes was dining here. She put a spell on them all, by wishing, so
3108simply, so directly, and Lily contrasted that abundance with her own
3109poverty of spirit, and supposed that it was partly that belief (for her
3110face was all lit up--without looking young, she looked radiant) in this
3111strange, this terrifying thing, which made Paul Rayley, sitting at her
3112side, all of a tremor, yet abstract, absorbed, silent. Mrs. Ramsay,
3113Lily felt, as she talked about the skins of vegetables, exalted that,
3114worshipped that; held her hands over it to warm them, to protect it,
3115and yet, having brought it all about, somehow laughed, led her victims,
3116Lily felt, to the altar. It came over her too now--the emotion, the
3117vibration, of love. How inconspicuous she felt herself by Paul's side!
3118He, glowing, burning; she, aloof, satirical; he, bound for adventure;
3119she, moored to the shore; he, launched, incautious; she solitary,
3120left out--and, ready to implore a share, if it were a disaster, in
3121his disaster, she said shyly:
3122
3123"When did Minta lose her brooch?"
3124
3125He smiled the most exquisite smile, veiled by memory, tinged by dreams.
3126He shook his head. "On the beach," he said.
3127
3128"I'm going to find it," he said, "I'm getting up early." This being
3129kept secret from Minta, he lowered his voice, and turned his eyes to
3130where she sat, laughing, beside Mr. Ramsay.
3131
3132Lily wanted to protest violently and outrageously her desire to help
3133him, envisaging how in the dawn on the beach she would be the one to
3134pounce on the brooch half-hidden by some stone, and thus herself be
3135included among the sailors and adventurers. But what did he reply to
3136her offer? She actually said with an emotion that she seldom let
3137appear, "Let me come with you," and he laughed. He meant yes or no--
3138either perhaps. But it was not his meaning--it was the odd chuckle
3139he gave, as if he had said, Throw yourself over the cliff if you like,
3140I don't care. He turned on her cheek the heat of love, its horror, its
3141cruelty, its unscrupulosity. It scorched her, and Lily, looking at
3142Minta, being charming to Mr. Ramsay at the other end of the table,
3143flinched for her exposed to these fangs, and was thankful. For at any
3144rate, she said to herself, catching sight of the salt cellar on the
3145pattern, she need not marry, thank Heaven: she need not undergo that
3146degradation. She was saved from that dilution. She would move the tree
3147rather more to the middle.
3148
3149Such was the complexity of things. For what happened to her,
3150especially staying with the Ramsays, was to be made to feel violently
3151two opposite things at the same time; that's what you feel, was one;
3152that's what I feel, was the other, and then they fought together in her
3153mind, as now. It is so beautiful, so exciting, this love, that I
3154tremble on the verge of it, and offer, quite out of my own habit, to
3155look for a brooch on a beach; also it is the stupidest, the most
3156barbaric of human passions, and turns a nice young man with a profile
3157like a gem's (Paul's was exquisite) into a bully with a crowbar (he
3158was swaggering, he was insolent) in the Mile End Road. Yet, she said to
3159herself, from the dawn of time odes have been sung to love; wreaths
3160heaped and roses; and if you asked nine people out of ten they would
3161say they wanted nothing but this--love; while the women, judging from
3162her own experience, would all the time be feeling, This is not what we
3163want; there is nothing more tedious, puerile, and inhumane than this;
3164yet it is also beautiful and necessary. Well then, well then? she
3165asked, somehow expecting the others to go on with the argument, as if
3166in an argument like this one threw one's own little bolt which fell
3167short obviously and left the others to carry it on. So she listened
3168again to what they were saying in case they should throw any light upon
3169the question of love.
3170
3171"Then," said Mr. Bankes, "there is that liquid the English call coffee."
3172
3173"Oh, coffee!" said Mrs. Ramsay. But it was much rather a question (she
3174was thoroughly roused, Lily could see, and talked very emphatically) of
3175real butter and clean milk. Speaking with warmth and eloquence, she
3176described the iniquity of the English dairy system, and in what state
3177milk was delivered at the door, and was about to prove her charges, for
3178she had gone into the matter, when all round the table, beginning with
3179Andrew in the middle, like a fire leaping from tuft to tuft of furze,
3180her children laughed; her husband laughed; she was laughed at, fire-
3181encircled, and forced to veil her crest, dismount her batteries, and
3182only retaliate by displaying the raillery and ridicule of the table
3183to Mr. Bankes as an example of what one suffered if one attacked the
3184prejudices of the British Public.
3185
3186Purposely, however, for she had it on her mind that Lily, who had
3187helped her with Mr. Tansley, was out of things, she exempted her from
3188the rest; said "Lily anyhow agrees with me," and so drew her in, a
3189little fluttered, a little startled. (For she was thinking about
3190love.) They were both out of things, Mrs. Ramsay had been thinking,
3191both Lily and Charles Tansley. Both suffered from the glow of the
3192other two. He, it was clear, felt himself utterly in the cold; no
3193woman would look at him with Paul Rayley in the room. Poor fellow!
3194Still, he had his dissertation, the influence of somebody upon
3195something: he could take care of himself. With Lily it was different.
3196She faded, under Minta's glow; became more inconspicuous than ever, in
3197her little grey dress with her little puckered face and her little
3198Chinese eyes. Everything about her was so small. Yet, thought Mrs.
3199Ramsay, comparing her with Minta, as she claimed her help (for Lily
3200should bear her out she talked no more about her dairies than her
3201husband did about his boots--he would talk by the hour about his boots)
3202of the two, Lily at forty will be the better. There was in Lily a
3203thread of something; a flare of something; something of her own which
3204Mrs. Ramsay liked very much indeed, but no man would, she feared.
3205Obviously, not, unless it were a much older man, like William Bankes.
3206But then he cared, well, Mrs. Ramsay sometimes thought that he cared,
3207since his wife's death, perhaps for her. He was not "in love" of
3208course; it was one of those unclassified affections of which there are
3209so many. Oh, but nonsense, she thought; William must marry Lily. They
3210have so many things in common. Lily is so fond of flowers. They are
3211both cold and aloof and rather self-sufficing. She must arrange for
3212them to take a long walk together.
3213
3214Foolishly, she had set them opposite each other. That could be remedied
3215tomorrow. If it were fine, they should go for a picnic. Everything
3216seemed possible. Everything seemed right. Just now (but this cannot
3217last, she thought, dissociating herself from the moment while they were
3218all talking about boots) just now she had reached security; she hovered
3219like a hawk suspended; like a flag floated in an element of joy which
3220filled every nerve of her body fully and sweetly, not noisily, solemnly
3221rather, for it arose, she thought, looking at them all eating there,
3222from husband and children and friends; all of which rising in this
3223profound stillness (she was helping William Bankes to one very small
3224piece more, and peered into the depths of the earthenware pot) seemed
3225now for no special reason to stay there like a smoke, like a fume
3226rising upwards, holding them safe together. Nothing need be said;
3227nothing could be said. There it was, all round them. It partook, she
3228felt, carefully helping Mr. Bankes to a specially tender piece, of
3229eternity; as she had already felt about something different once before
3230that afternoon; there is a coherence in things, a stability; something,
3231she meant, is immune from change, and shines out (she glanced at the
3232window with its ripple of reflected lights) in the face of the flowing,
3233the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby; so that again tonight she had
3234the feeling she had had once today, already, of peace, of rest. Of
3235such moments, she thought, the thing is made that endures.
3236
3237"Yes," she assured William Bankes, "there is plenty for everybody."
3238
3239"Andrew," she said, "hold your plate lower, or I shall spill it." (The
3240BOEUF EN DAUBE was a perfect triumph.) Here, she felt, putting the
3241spoon down, where one could move or rest; could wait now (they were all
3242helped) listening; could then, like a hawk which lapses suddenly from
3243its high station, flaunt and sink on laughter easily, resting her whole
3244weight upon what at the other end of the table her husband was saying
3245about the square root of one thousand two hundred and fifty-three.
3246That was the number, it seemed, on his watch.
3247
3248What did it all mean? To this day she had no notion. A square root?
3249What was that? Her sons knew. She leant on them; on cubes and square
3250roots; that was what they were talking about now; on Voltaire and
3251Madame de Stael; on the character of Napoleon; on the French system of
3252land tenure; on Lord Rosebery; on Creevey's Memoirs: she let it uphold
3253her and sustain her, this admirable fabric of the masculine
3254intelligence, which ran up and down, crossed this way and that, like
3255iron girders spanning the swaying fabric, upholding the world, so that
3256she could trust herself to it utterly, even shut her eyes, or flicker
3257them for a moment, as a child staring up from its pillow winks at the
3258myriad layers of the leaves of a tree. Then she woke up. It was still
3259being fabricated. William Bankes was praising the Waverly novels.
3260
3261He read one of them every six months, he said. And why should that make
3262Charles Tansley angry? He rushed in (all, thought Mrs. Ramsay, because
3263Prue will not be nice to him) and denounced the Waverly novels when he
3264knew nothing about it, nothing about it whatsoever, Mrs. Ramsay thought,
3265observing him rather than listening to what he said. She could see how
3266it was from his manner--he wanted to assert himself, and so it would
3267always be with him till he got his Professorship or married his wife,
3268and so need not be always saying, "I--I--I." For that was what his
3269criticism of poor Sir Walter, or perhaps it was Jane Austen, amounted
3270to. "I---I---I." He was thinking of himself and the impression he
3271was making, as she could tell by the sound of his voice, and his
3272emphasis and his uneasiness. Success would be good for him. At any
3273rate they were off again. Now she need not listen. It could not last,
3274she knew, but at the moment her eyes were so clear that they seemed to
3275go round the table unveiling each of these people, and their thoughts
3276and their feelings, without effort like a light stealing under water so
3277that its ripples and the reeds in it and the minnows balancing
3278themselves, and the sudden silent trout are all lit up hanging,
3279trembling. So she saw them; she heard them; but whatever they said had
3280also this quality, as if what they said was like the movement of a
3281trout when, at the same time, one can see the ripple and the gravel,
3282something to the right, something to the left; and the whole is held
3283together; for whereas in active life she would be netting and
3284separating one thing from another; she would be saying she liked the
3285Waverly novels or had not read them; she would be urging herself
3286forward; now she said nothing. For the moment, she hung suspended.
3287
3288"Ah, but how long do you think it'll last?" said somebody. It was as
3289if she had antennae trembling out from her, which, intercepting certain
3290sentences, forced them upon her attention. This was one of them. She
3291scented danger for her husband. A question like that would lead,
3292almost certainly, to something being said which reminded him of his own
3293failure. How long would he be read--he would think at once. William
3294Bankes (who was entirely free from all such vanity) laughed, and said
3295he attached no importance to changes in fashion. Who could tell what
3296was going to last--in literature or indeed in anything else?
3297
3298"Let us enjoy what we do enjoy," he said. His integrity seemed to Mrs.
3299Ramsay quite admirable. He never seemed for a moment to think, But how
3300does this affect me? But then if you had the other temperament, which
3301must have praise, which must have encouragement, naturally you began
3302(and she knew that Mr. Ramsay was beginning) to be uneasy; to want
3303somebody to say, Oh, but your work will last, Mr. Ramsay, or something
3304like that. He showed his uneasiness quite clearly now by saying, with
3305some irritation, that, anyhow, Scott (or was it Shakespeare ?) would
3306last him his lifetime. He said it irritably. Everybody, she thought,
3307felt a little uncomfortable, without knowing why. Then Minta Doyle,
3308whose instinct was fine, said bluffly, absurdly, that she did not
3309believe that any one really enjoyed reading Shakespeare. Mr. Ramsay
3310said grimly (but his mind was turned away again) that very few people
3311liked it as much as they said they did. But, he added, there is
3312considerable merit in some of the plays nevertheless, and Mrs. Ramsay
3313saw that it would be all right for the moment anyhow; he would laugh at
3314Minta, and she, Mrs. Ramsay saw, realising his extreme anxiety about
3315himself, would, in her own way, see that he was taken care of, and
3316praise him, somehow or other. But she wished it was not necessary:
3317perhaps it was her fault that it was necessary. Anyhow, she was free
3318now to listen to what Paul Rayley was trying to say about books one had
3319read as a boy. They lasted, he said. He had read some of Tolstoi at
3320school. There was one he always remembered, but he had forgotten the
3321name. Russian names were impossible, said Mrs. Ramsay. "Vronsky," said
3322Paul. He remembered that because he always thought it such a good name
3323for a villain. "Vronsky," said Mrs. Ramsay; "Oh, ANNA KARENINA," but
3324that did not take them very far; books were not in their line. No,
3325Charles Tansley would put them both right in a second about books, but
3326it was all so mixed up with, Am I saying the right thing? Am I making
3327a good impression? that, after all, one knew more about him than
3328about Tolstoi, whereas, what Paul said was about the thing, simply, not
3329himself, nothing else. Like all stupid people, he had a kind of
3330modesty too, a consideration for what you were feeling, which, once in
3331a way at least, she found attractive. Now he was thinking, not about
3332himself, or about Tolstoi, but whether she was cold, whether she felt a
3333draught, whether she would like a pear.
3334
3335No, she said, she did not want a pear. Indeed she had been keeping
3336guard over the dish of fruit (without realising it) jealously, hoping
3337that nobody would touch it. Her eyes had been going in and out among
3338the curves and shadows of the fruit, among the rich purples of the
3339lowland grapes, then over the horny ridge of the shell, putting a
3340yellow against a purple, a curved shape against a round shape, without
3341knowing why she did it, or why, every time she did it, she felt more
3342and more serene; until, oh, what a pity that they should do it--a hand
3343reached out, took a pear, and spoilt the whole thing. In sympathy she
3344looked at Rose. She looked at Rose sitting between Jasper and Prue.
3345How odd that one's child should do that!
3346
3347How odd to see them sitting there, in a row, her children, Jasper,
3348Rose, Prue, Andrew, almost silent, but with some joke of their own
3349going on, she guessed, from the twitching at their lips. It was
3350something quite apart from everything else, something they were
3351hoarding up to laugh over in their own room. It was not about their
3352father, she hoped. No, she thought not. What was it, she wondered,
3353sadly rather, for it seemed to her that they would laugh when she was
3354not there. There was all that hoarded behind those rather set, still,
3355mask-like faces, for they did not join in easily; they were like
3356watchers, surveyors, a little raised or set apart  from the grown-up
3357people. But when she looked at Prue tonight, she saw that this was
3358not now quite true of her. She was just beginning, just moving,
3359just descending. The faintest light was on her face, as if the
3360glow of Minta opposite, some excitement, some anticipation of happiness
3361was reflected in her, as if the sun of the love of men and women rose
3362over the rim of the table-cloth, and without knowing what it was she
3363bent towards it and greeted it. She kept looking at Minta, shyly, yet
3364curiously, so that Mrs. Ramsay looked from one to the other and said,
3365speaking to Prue in her own mind, You will be as happy as she is one of
3366these days. You will be much happier, she added, because you are my
3367daughter, she meant; her own daughter must be happier than other
3368people's daughters. But dinner was over. It was time to go. They
3369were only playing with things on their plates. She would wait until
3370they had done laughing at some story her husband was telling. He was
3371having a joke with Minta about a bet. Then she would get up.
3372
3373She liked Charles Tansley, she thought, suddenly; she liked his laugh.
3374She liked him for being so angry with Paul and Minta. She liked his
3375awkwardness. There was a lot in that young man after all. And Lily,
3376she thought, putting her napkin beside her plate, she always has some
3377joke of her own. One need never bother about Lily. She waited. She
3378tucked her napkin under the edge of her plate. Well, were they done
3379now? No. That story had led to another story. Her husband was in
3380great spirits tonight, and wishing, she supposed, to make it all right
3381with old Augustus after that scene about the soup, had drawn him in--
3382they were telling stories about some one they had both known at
3383college. She looked at the window in which the candle flames burnt
3384brighter now that the panes were black, and looking at that outside
3385the voices came to her very strangely, as if they were voices at a
3386service in a cathedral, for she did not listen to the words. The
3387sudden bursts of laughter and then one voice (Minta's) speaking
3388alone, reminded her of men and boys crying out the Latin words
3389of a service in some Roman Catholic cathedral. She waited. Her
3390husband spoke. He was repeating something, and she knew it was poetry
3391from the rhythm and the ring of exultation, and melancholy in his
3392voice:
3393
3394Come out and climb the garden path, Luriana Lurilee.
3395The China rose is all abloom and buzzing with the yellow bee.
3396
3397The words (she was looking at the window) sounded as if they were
3398floating like flowers on water out there, cut off from them all, as if
3399no one had said them, but they had come into existence of themselves.
3400
3401
3402And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be
3403Are full of trees and changing leaves.
3404
3405
3406She did not know what they meant, but, like music, the words seemed to
3407be spoken by her own voice, outside her self, saying quite easily and
3408naturally what had been in her mind the whole evening while she said
3409different things. She knew, without looking round, that every one at
3410the table was listening to the voice saying:
3411
3412I wonder if it seems to you, Luriana, Lurilee
3413
3414with the same sort of relief and pleasure that she had, as if this
3415were, at last, the natural thing to say, this were their own voice
3416speaking.
3417
3418But the voice had stopped. She looked round. She made herself get up.
3419Augustus Carmichael had risen and, holding his table napkin so that it
3420looked like a long white robe he stood chanting:
3421
3422To see the Kings go riding by
3423Over lawn and daisy lea
3424With their palm leaves and cedar
3425Luriana, Lurilee,
3426
3427and as she passed him, he turned slightly towards her repeating the
3428last words:
3429
3430Luriana, Lurilee
3431
3432and bowed to her as if he did her homage. Without knowing why, she
3433felt that he liked her better than he ever had done before; and with a
3434feeling of relief and gratitude she returned his bow and passed through
3435the door which he held open for her.
3436
3437It was necessary now to carry everything a step further. With her foot
3438on the threshold she waited a moment longer in a scene which was
3439vanishing even as she looked, and then, as she moved and took Minta's
3440arm and left the room, it changed, it shaped itself differently; it had
3441become, she knew, giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already
3442the past.
3443
3444
344518
3446
3447
3448As usual, Lily thought. There was always something that had to be done
3449at that precise moment, something that Mrs. Ramsay had decided for
3450reasons of her own to do instantly, it might be with every one standing
3451about making jokes, as now, not being able to decide whether they were
3452going into the smoking-room, into the drawing-room, up to the attics.
3453Then one saw Mrs. Ramsay in the midst of this hubbub standing there with
3454Minta's arm in hers, bethink her, "Yes, it is time for that now," and
3455so make off at once with an air of secrecy to do something alone. And
3456directly she went a sort of disintegration set in; they wavered about,
3457went different ways, Mr. Bankes took Charles Tansley by the arm and went
3458off to finish on the terrace the discussion they had begun at dinner
3459about politics, thus giving a turn to the whole poise of the evening,
3460making the weight fall in a different direction, as if, Lily thought,
3461seeing them go, and hearing a word or two about the policy of the
3462Labour Party, they had gone up on to the bridge of the ship and were
3463taking their bearings; the change from poetry to politics struck her
3464like that; so Mr. Bankes and Charles Mrs. Ramsay going upstairs in the
3465lamplight alone. Where, Lily wondered, was she going so quickly?
3466
3467Not that she did in fact run or hurry; she went indeed rather slowly.
3468She felt rather inclined just for a moment to stand still after all
3469that chatter, and pick out one particular thing; the thing that
3470mattered; to detach it; separate it off; clean it of all the emotions
3471and odds and ends of things, and so hold it before her, and bring it to
3472the tribunal where, ranged about in conclave, sat the judges she had
3473set up to decide these things. Is it good, is it bad, is it right or
3474wrong? Where are we all going to? and so on. So she righted
3475herself after the shock of the event, and quite unconsciously and
3476incongruously, used the branches of the elm trees outside to help her
3477to stabilise her position. Her world was changing: they were still.
3478The event had given her a sense of movement. All must be in order.
3479She must get that right and that right, she thought, insensibly
3480approving of the dignity of the trees' stillness, and now again of the
3481superb upward rise (like the beak of a ship up a wave) of the elm
3482branches as the wind raised them. For it was windy (she stood a moment
3483to look out). It was windy, so that the leaves now and then brushed
3484open a star, and the stars themselves seemed to be shaking and darting
3485light and trying to flash out between the edges of the leaves. Yes,
3486that was done then, accomplished; and as with all things done, became
3487solemn. Now one thought of it, cleared of chatter and emotion, it
3488seemed always to have been, only was shown now and so being shown,
3489struck everything into stability. They would, she thought, going on
3490again, however long they lived, come back to this night; this moon;
3491this wind; this house: and to her too. It flattered her, where she was
3492most susceptible of flattery, to think how, wound about in their
3493hearts, however long they lived she would be woven; and this, and this,
3494and this, she thought, going upstairs, laughing, but affectionately, at
3495the sofa on the landing (her mother's); at the rocking-chair (her
3496father's); at the map of the Hebrides. All that would be revived again
3497in the lives of Paul and Minta; "the Rayleys"--she tried the new name
3498over; and she felt, with her hand on the nursery door, that community
3499of feeling with other people which emotion gives as if the walls of
3500partition had become so thin that practically (the feeling was one of
3501relief and happiness) it was all one stream, and chairs, tables, maps,
3502were hers, were theirs, it did not matter whose, and Paul and Minta
3503would carry it on when she was dead.
3504
3505She turned the handle, firmly, lest it should squeak, and went in,
3506pursing her lips slightly, as if to remind herself that she must not
3507speak aloud. But directly she came in she saw, with annoyance, that the
3508precaution was not needed. The children were not asleep. It was most
3509annoying. Mildred should be more careful. There was James wide awake
3510and Cam sitting bolt upright, and Mildred out of bed in her bare feet,
3511and it was almost eleven and they were all talking. What was the
3512matter? It was that horrid skull again. She had told Mildred to move
3513it, but Mildred, of course, had forgotten, and now there was Cam wide
3514awake, and James wide awake quarreling when they ought to have been
3515asleep hours ago. What had possessed Edward to send them this horrid
3516skull? She had been so foolish as to let them nail it up there. It
3517was nailed fast, Mildred said, and Cam couldn't go to sleep with it in
3518the room, and James screamed if she touched it.
3519
3520Then Cam must go to sleep (it had great horns said Cam)--must go to
3521sleep and dream of lovely palaces, said Mrs. Ramsay, sitting down
3522on the bed by her side. She could see the horns, Cam said, all over
3523the room. It was true. Wherever they put the light (and James could
3524not sleep without a light) there was always a shadow somewhere.
3525
3526"But think, Cam, it's only an old pig," said Mrs. Ramsay, "a nice black
3527pig like the pigs at the farm." But Cam thought it was a horrid thing,
3528branching at her all over the room.
3529
3530"Well then," said Mrs. Ramsay, "we will cover it up," and they all
3531watched her go to the chest of drawers, and open the little drawers
3532quickly one after another, and not seeing anything that would do, she
3533quickly took her own shawl off and wound it round the skull, round and
3534round and round, and then she came back to Cam and laid her head almost
3535flat on the pillow beside Cam's and said how lovely it looked now; how
3536the fairies would love it; it was like a bird's nest; it was like a
3537beautiful mountain such as she had seen abroad, with valleys and
3538flowers and bells ringing and birds singing and little goats and
3539antelopes and... She could see the words echoing as she spoke them
3540rhythmically in Cam's mind, and Cam was repeating after her how it was
3541like a mountain, a bird's nest, a garden, and there were little
3542antelopes, and her eyes were opening and shutting, and Mrs. Ramsay went
3543on speaking still more monotonously, and more rhythmically and more
3544nonsensically, how she must shut her eyes and go to sleep and dream of
3545mountains and valleys and stars falling and parrots and antelopes and
3546gardens, and everything lovely, she said, raising her head very slowly
3547and speaking more and more mechanically, until she sat upright and saw
3548that Cam was asleep.
3549
3550Now, she whispered, crossing over to his bed, James must go to sleep
3551too, for see, she said, the boar's skull was still there; they had not
3552touched it; they had done just what he wanted; it was there quite
3553unhurt. He made sure that the skull was still there under the shawl.
3554But he wanted to ask her something more. Would they go to the Lighthouse
3555tomorrow?
3556
3557No, not tomorrow, she said, but soon, she promised him; the next fine
3558day. He was very good. He lay down. She covered him up. But he
3559would never forget, she knew, and she felt angry with Charles Tansley,
3560with her husband, and with herself, for she had raised his hopes. Then
3561feeling for her shawl and remembering that she had wrapped it round the
3562boar's skull, she got up, and pulled the window down another inch or
3563two, and heard the wind, and got a breath of the perfectly indifferent
3564chill night air and murmured good night to Mildred and left the room
3565and let the tongue of the door slowly lengthen in the lock and went
3566out.
3567
3568She hoped he would not bang his books on the floor above their heads,
3569she thought, still thinking how annoying Charles Tansley was. For
3570neither of them slept well; they were excitable children, and since he
3571said things like that about the Lighthouse, it seemed to her likely
3572that he would knock a pile of books over, just as they were going to
3573sleep, clumsily sweeping them off the table with his elbow. For she
3574supposed that he had gone upstairs to work. Yet he looked so desolate;
3575yet she would feel relieved when he went; yet she would see that he was
3576better treated tomorrow; yet he was admirable with her husband; yet his
3577manners certainly wanted improving; yet she liked his laugh--thinking
3578this, as she came downstairs, she noticed that she could now see the
3579moon itself through the staircase window--the yellow harvest moon--
3580and turned, and they saw her, standing above them on the stairs.
3581
3582"That's my mother," thought Prue. Yes; Minta should look at her; Paul
3583Rayley should look at her. That is the thing itself, she felt, as if
3584there were only one person like that in the world; her mother. And,
3585from having been quite grown up, a moment before, talking with the
3586others, she became a child again, and what they had been doing was a
3587game, and would her mother sanction their game, or condemn it, she
3588wondered. And thinking what a chance it was for Minta and Paul and
3589Lily to see her, and feeling what an extraordinary stroke of fortune it
3590was for her, to have her, and how she would never grow up and never
3591leave home, she said, like a child, "We thought of going down to the
3592beach to watch the waves."
3593
3594Instantly, for no reason at all, Mrs. Ramsay became like a girl of
3595twenty, full of gaiety. A mood of revelry suddenly took possession of
3596her. Of course they must go; of course they must go, she cried,
3597laughing; and running down the last three or four steps quickly, she
3598began turning from one to the other and laughing and drawing Minta's
3599wrap round her and saying she only wished she could come too, and would
3600they be very late, and had any of them got a watch?
3601
3602"Yes, Paul has," said Minta. Paul slipped a beautiful gold watch out
3603of a little wash-leather case to show her. And as he held it in the
3604palm of his hand before her, he felt, "She knows all about it. I need
3605not say anything." He was saying to her as he showed her the watch,
3606"I've done it, Mrs. Ramsay. I owe it all to you." And seeing the gold
3607watch lying in his hand, Mrs. Ramsay felt, How extraordinarily lucky
3608Minta is! She is marrying a man who has a gold watch in a wash-
3609leather bag!
3610
3611"How I wish I could come with you!" she cried. But she was withheld by
3612something so strong that she never even thought of asking herself what
3613it was. Of course it was impossible for her to go with them. But she
3614would have liked to go, had it not been for the other thing, and
3615tickled by the absurdity of her thought (how lucky to marry a man
3616with a wash-leather bag for his watch) she went with a smile on her
3617lips into the other room, where her husband sat reading.
3618
3619
362019
3621
3622
3623Of course, she said to herself, coming into the room, she had to come
3624here to get something she wanted. First she wanted to sit down in a
3625particular chair under a particular lamp. But she wanted something
3626more, though she did not know, could not think what it was that she
3627wanted. She looked at her husband (taking up her stocking and
3628beginning to knit), and saw that he did not want to be interrupted--
3629that was clear. He was reading something that moved him very much. He
3630was half smiling and then she knew he was controlling his emotion. He
3631was tossing the pages over. He was acting it--perhaps he was
3632thinking himself the person in the book. She wondered what book it was.
3633Oh, it was one of old Sir Walter's she saw, adjusting the shade of her
3634lamp so that the light fell on her knitting. For Charles Tansley had
3635been saying (she looked up as if she expected to hear the crash of
3636books on the floor above), had been saying that people don't read Scott
3637any more. Then her husband thought, "That's what they'll say of me;"
3638so he went and got one of those books. And if he came to the
3639conclusion "That's true" what Charles Tansley said, he would accept it
3640about Scott. (She could see that he was weighing, considering, putting
3641this with that as he read.) But not about himself. He was always
3642uneasy about himself. That troubled her. He would always be worrying
3643about his own books--will they be read, are they good, why aren't they
3644better, what do people think of me? Not liking to think of him so,
3645and wondering if they had guessed at dinner why he suddenly became
3646irritable when they talked about fame and books lasting, wondering if
3647the children were laughing at that, she twitched the stockings out, and
3648all the fine gravings came drawn with steel instruments about her lips
3649and forehead, and she grew still like a tree which has been tossing and
3650quivering and now, when the breeze falls, settles, leaf by leaf, into
3651quiet.
3652
3653It didn't matter, any of it, she thought. A great man, a great book,
3654fame--who could tell? She knew nothing about it. But it was his way
3655with him, his truthfulness--for instance at dinner she had been
3656thinking quite instinctively, If only he would speak! She had complete
3657trust in him. And dismissing all this, as one passes in diving now a
3658weed, now a straw, now a bubble, she felt again, sinking deeper, as she
3659had felt in the hall when the others were talking, There is something I
3660want--something I have come to get, and she fell deeper and deeper
3661without knowing quite what it was, with her eyes closed. And she
3662waited a little, knitting, wondering, and slowly rose those words they
3663had said at dinner, "the China rose is all abloom and buzzing with the
3664honey bee," began washing from side to side of her mind rhythmically,
3665and as they washed, words, like little shaded lights, one red, one
3666blue, one yellow, lit up in the dark of her mind, and seemed leaving
3667their perches up there to fly across and across, or to cry out and to
3668be echoed; so she turned and felt on the table beside her for a book.
3669
3670
3671And all the lives we ever lived
3672And all the lives to be,
3673Are full of trees and changing leaves,
3674
3675
3676she murmured, sticking her needles into the stocking. And she opened
3677the book and began reading here and there at random, and as she did so,
3678she felt that she was climbing backwards, upwards, shoving her way up
3679under petals that curved over her, so that she only knew this is white,
3680or this is red. She did not know at first what the words meant at all.
3681
3682
3683Steer, hither steer your winged pines, all beaten Mariners
3684
3685
3686she read and turned the page, swinging herself, zigzagging this way and
3687that, from one line to another as from one branch to another, from one
3688red and white flower to another, until a little sound roused her--her
3689husband slapping his thighs. Their eyes met for a second; but they did
3690not want to speak to each other. They had nothing to say, but
3691something seemed, nevertheless, to go from him to her. It was the
3692life, it was the power of it, it was the tremendous humour, she knew,
3693that made him slap his thighs. Don't interrupt me, he seemed to be
3694saying, don't say anything; just sit there. And he went on reading.
3695His lips twitched. It filled him. It fortified him. He clean forgot
3696all the little rubs and digs of the evening, and how it bored him
3697unutterably to sit still while people ate and drank interminably, and
3698his being so irritable with his wife and so touchy and minding when
3699they passed his books over as if they didn't exist at all. But now, he
3700felt, it didn't matter a damn who reached Z (if thought ran like an
3701alphabet from A to Z). Somebody would reach it--if not he, then
3702another. This man's strength and sanity, his feeling for straight
3703forward simple things, these fishermen, the poor old crazed creature in
3704Mucklebackit's cottage made him feel so vigorous, so relieved of
3705something that he felt roused and triumphant and could not choke back
3706his tears. Raising the book a little to hide his face, he let them
3707fall and shook his head from side to side and forgot himself completely
3708(but not one or two reflections about morality and French novels and
3709English novels and Scott's hands being tied but his view perhaps being
3710as true as the other view), forgot his own bothers and failures
3711completely in poor Steenie's drowning and Mucklebackit's sorrow (that
3712was Scott at his best) and the astonishing delight and feeling of
3713vigour that it gave him.
3714
3715Well, let them improve upon that, he thought as he finished the
3716chapter. He felt that he had been arguing with somebody, and had got
3717the better of him. They could not improve upon that, whatever they
3718might say; and his own position became more secure. The lovers were
3719fiddlesticks, he thought, collecting it all in his mind again. That's
3720fiddlesticks, that's first-rate, he thought, putting one thing beside
3721another. But he must read it again. He could not remember the whole
3722shape of the thing. He had to keep his judgement in suspense. So he
3723returned to the other thought--if young men did not care for this,
3724naturally they did not care for him either. One ought not to complain,
3725thought Mr. Ramsay, trying to stifle his desire to complain to his wife
3726that young men did not admire him. But he was determined; he would not
3727bother her again. Here he looked at her reading. She looked very
3728peaceful, reading. He liked to think that every one had taken
3729themselves off and that he and she were alone. The whole of life did
3730not consist in going to bed with a woman, he thought, returning to
3731Scott and Balzac, to the English novel and the French novel.
3732
3733Mrs. Ramsay raised her head and like a person in a light sleep seemed to
3734say that if he wanted her to wake she would, she really would, but
3735otherwise, might she go on sleeping, just a little longer, just a
3736little longer? She was climbing up those branches, this way and that,
3737laying hands on one flower and then another.
3738
3739
3740Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose,
3741
3742
3743she read, and so reading she was ascending, she felt, on to the top,
3744on to the summit. How satisfying! How restful! All the odds and ends
3745of the day stuck to this magnet; her mind felt swept, felt clean. And
3746then there it was, suddenly entire; she held it in her hands, beautiful
3747and reasonable, clear and complete, here--the sonnet.
3748
3749But she was becoming conscious of her husband looking at her. He was
3750smiling at her, quizzically, as if he were ridiculing her gently for
3751being asleep in broad daylight, but at the same time he was thinking,
3752Go on reading. You don't look sad now, he thought. And he wondered
3753what she was reading, and exaggerated her ignorance, her simplicity,
3754for he liked to think that she was not clever, not book-learned at all.
3755He wondered if she understood what she was reading. Probably not, he
3756thought. She was astonishingly beautiful. Her beauty seemed to him,
3757if that were possible, to increase
3758
3759
3760Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
3761As with your shadow I with these did play,
3762
3763
3764she finished.
3765
3766"Well?" she said, echoing his smile dreamily, looking up from her book.
3767
3768
3769As with your shadow I with these did play,
3770
3771
3772she murmured, putting the book on the table.
3773
3774What had happened, she wondered, as she took up her knitting, since she
3775had seen him alone? She remembered dressing, and seeing the moon;
3776Andrew holding his plate too high at dinner; being depressed by
3777something William had said; the birds in the trees; the sofa on the
3778landing; the children being awake; Charles Tansley waking them with his
3779books falling--oh, no, that she had invented; and Paul having a wash-
3780leather case for his watch. Which should she tell him about?
3781
3782"They're engaged," she said, beginning to knit, "Paul and Minta."
3783
3784"So I guessed," he said. There was nothing very much to be said about
3785it. Her mind was still going up and down, up and down with the poetry;
3786he was still feeling very vigorous, very forthright, after reading
3787about Steenie's funeral. So they sat silent. Then she became aware
3788that she wanted him to say something.
3789
3790Anything, anything, she thought, going on with her knitting. Anything
3791will do.
3792
3793"How nice it would be to marry a man with a wash-leather bag for his
3794watch," she said, for that was the sort of joke they had together.
3795
3796He snorted. He felt about this engagement as he always felt about any
3797engagement; the girl is much too good for that young man. Slowly it
3798came into her head, why is it then that one wants people to marry?
3799What was the value, the meaning of things? (Every word they said now
3800would be true.) Do say something, she thought, wishing only to hear his
3801voice. For the shadow, the thing folding them in was beginning, she
3802felt, to close round her again. Say anything, she begged, looking at
3803him, as if for help.
3804
3805He was silent, swinging the compass on his watch-chain to and fro, and
3806thinking of Scott's novels and Balzac's novels. But through the
3807crepuscular walls of their intimacy, for they were drawing together,
3808involuntarily, coming side by side, quite close, she could feel his
3809mind like a raised hand shadowing her mind; and he was beginning, now
3810that her thoughts took a turn he disliked--towards this "pessimism" as
3811he called it--to fidget, though he said nothing, raising his hand to
3812his forehead, twisting a lock of hair, letting it fall again.
3813
3814"You won't finish that stocking tonight," he said, pointing to her
3815stocking. That was what she wanted--the asperity in his voice
3816reproving her. If he says it's wrong to be pessimistic probably it is
3817wrong, she thought; the marriage will turn out all right.
3818
3819"No," she said, flattening the stocking out upon her knee, "I shan't
3820finish it."
3821
3822And what then? For she felt that he was still looking at her, but that
3823his look had changed. He wanted something--wanted the thing she always
3824found it so difficult to give him; wanted her to tell him that she
3825loved him. And that, no, she could not do. He found talking so much
3826easier than she did. He could say things--she never could. So
3827naturally it was always he that said the things, and then for some
3828reason he would mind this suddenly, and would reproach her. A
3829heartless woman he called her; she never told him that she loved him.
3830But it was not so--it was not so. It was only that she never could say
3831what she felt. Was there no crumb on his coat? Nothing she could do
3832for him? Getting up, she stood at the window with the reddish-brown
3833stocking in her hands, partly to turn away from him, partly because she
3834remembered how beautiful it often is--the sea at night. But she knew
3835that he had turned his head as she turned; he was watching her. She
3836knew that he was thinking, You are more beautiful than ever. And she
3837felt herself very beautiful. Will you not tell me just for once that
3838you love me? He was thinking that, for he was roused, what with Minta
3839and his book, and its being the end of the day and their having
3840quarrelled about going to the Lighthouse. But she could not do it; she
3841could not say it. Then, knowing that he was watching her, instead of
3842saying anything she turned, holding her stocking, and looked at him.
3843And as she looked at him she began to smile, for though she had not
3844said a word, he knew, of course he knew, that she loved him. He could
3845not deny it. And smiling she looked out of the window and said
3846(thinking to herself, Nothing on earth can equal this happiness)--
3847
3848"Yes, you were right. It's going to be wet tomorrow. You won't be able
3849to go." And she looked at him smiling. For she had triumphed again.
3850She had not said it: yet he knew.
3851
3852
3853
3854
3855TIME PASSES
3856
3857
38581
3859
3860
3861"Well, we must wait for the future to show," said Mr. Bankes, coming in
3862from the terrace.
3863
3864"It's almost too dark to see," said Andrew, coming up from the beach.
3865
3866"One can hardly tell which is the sea and which is the land," said
3867Prue.
3868
3869"Do we leave that light burning?" said Lily as they took their coats
3870off indoors.
3871
3872"No," said Prue, "not if every one's in."
3873
3874"Andrew," she called back, "just put out the light in the hall."
3875
3876One by one the lamps were all extinguished, except that Mr. Carmichael,
3877who liked to lie awake a little reading Virgil, kept his candle burning
3878rather longer than the rest.
3879
3880
38812
3882
3883
3884So with the lamps all put out, the moon sunk, and a thin rain drumming
3885on the roof a downpouring of immense darkness began. Nothing, it
3886seemed, could survive the flood, the profusion of darkness which,
3887creeping in at keyholes and crevices, stole round window blinds, came
3888into bedrooms, swallowed up here a jug and basin, there a bowl of red
3889and yellow dahlias, there the sharp edges and firm bulk of a chest of
3890drawers. Not only was furniture confounded; there was scarcely
3891anything left of body or mind by which one could say, "This is he" or
3892"This is she." Sometimes a hand was raised as if to clutch something or
3893ward off something, or somebody groaned, or somebody laughed aloud as
3894if sharing a joke with nothingness.
3895
3896Nothing stirred in the drawing-room or in the dining-room or on the
3897staircase. Only through the rusty hinges and swollen sea-moistened
3898woodwork certain airs, detached from the body of the wind (the house
3899was ramshackle after all) crept round corners and ventured indoors.
3900Almost one might imagine them, as they entered the drawing-room
3901questioning and wondering, toying with the flap of hanging wall-paper,
3902asking, would it hang much longer, when would it fall? Then smoothly
3903brushing the walls, they passed on musingly as if asking the red and
3904yellow roses on the wall-paper whether they would fade, and questioning
3905(gently, for there was time at their disposal) the torn letters in
3906the wastepaper basket, the flowers, the books, all of which were now
3907open to them and asking, Were they allies? Were they enemies? How
3908long would they endure?
3909
3910So some random light directing them with its pale footfall upon stair
3911and mat, from some uncovered star, or wandering ship, or the Lighthouse
3912even, with its pale footfall upon stair and mat, the little airs
3913mounted the staircase and nosed round bedroom doors. But here surely,
3914they must cease. Whatever else may perish and disappear, what lies here
3915is steadfast. Here one might say to those sliding lights, those
3916fumbling airs that breathe and bend over the bed itself, here you can
3917neither touch nor destroy. Upon which, wearily, ghostlily, as if they
3918had feather-light fingers and the light persistency of feathers, they
3919would look, once, on the shut eyes, and the loosely clasping fingers,
3920and fold their garments wearily and disappear. And so, nosing,
3921rubbing, they went to the window on the staircase, to the servants'
3922bedrooms, to the boxes in the attics; descending, blanched the apples
3923on the dining-room table, fumbled the petals of roses, tried the
3924picture on the easel, brushed the mat and blew a little sand along the
3925floor. At length, desisting, all ceased together, gathered together,
3926all sighed together; all together gave off an aimless gust of
3927lamentation to which some door in the kitchen replied; swung wide;
3928admitted nothing; and slammed to.
3929
3930[Here Mr. Carmichael, who was reading Virgil, blew out his candle. It
3931was past midnight.]
3932
3933
39343
3935
3936
3937But what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the
3938darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a
3939faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of the wave.
3940Night, however, succeeds to night. The winter holds a pack of them in
3941store and deals them equally, evenly, with indefatigable fingers.
3942They lengthen; they darken. Some of them hold aloft clear planets,
3943plates of brightness. The autumn trees, ravaged as they are, take
3944on the flash of tattered flags kindling in the gloom of cool
3945cathedral caves where gold letters on marble pages describe death in
3946battle and how bones bleach and burn far away in Indian sands. The
3947autumn trees gleam in the yellow moonlight, in the light of harvest
3948moons, the light which mellows the energy of labour, and smooths the
3949stubble, and brings the wave lapping blue to the shore.
3950
3951It seemed now as if, touched by human penitence and all its toil,
3952divine goodness had parted the curtain and displayed behind it, single,
3953distinct, the hare erect; the wave falling; the boat rocking; which,
3954did we deserve them, should be ours always. But alas, divine goodness,
3955twitching the cord, draws the curtain; it does not please him; he
3956covers his treasures in a drench of hail, and so breaks them, so
3957confuses them that it seems impossible that their calm should ever
3958return or that we should ever compose from their fragments a perfect
3959whole or read in the littered pieces the clear words of truth. For our
3960penitence deserves a glimpse only; our toil respite only.
3961
3962The nights now are full of wind and destruction; the trees plunge and
3963bend and their leaves fly helter skelter until the lawn is plastered
3964with them and they lie packed in gutters and choke rain pipes and
3965scatter damp paths. Also the sea tosses itself and breaks itself, and
3966should any sleeper fancying that he might find on the beach an answer
3967to his doubts, a sharer of his solitude, throw off his bedclothes and
3968go down by himself to walk on the sand, no image with semblance of
3969serving and divine promptitude comes readily to hand bringing the night
3970to order and making the world reflect the compass of the soul. The
3971hand dwindles in his hand; the voice bellows in his ear. Almost it
3972would appear that it is useless in such confusion to ask the night
3973those questions as to what, and why, and wherefore, which tempt the
3974sleeper from his bed to seek an answer.
3975
3976[Mr. Ramsay, stumbling along a passage one dark morning, stretched his
3977arms out, but Mrs. Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before,
3978his arms, though stretched out, remained empty.]]
3979
3980
39814
3982
3983
3984So with the house empty and the doors locked and the mattresses rolled
3985round, those stray airs, advance guards of great armies, blustered in,
3986brushed bare boards, nibbled and fanned, met nothing in bedroom or
3987drawing-room that wholly resisted them but only hangings that flapped,
3988wood that creaked, the bare legs of tables, saucepans and china already
3989furred, tarnished, cracked. What people had shed and left--a pair of
3990shoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in wardrobes--those
3991alone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how once they
3992were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with hooks and
3993buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world
3994hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened,
3995in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again. Now, day
3996after day, light turned, like a flower reflected in water, its sharp
3997image on the wall opposite. Only the shadows of the trees, flourishing
3998in the wind, made obeisance on the wall, and for a moment darkened the
3999pool in which light reflected itself; or birds, flying, made a soft
4000spot flutter slowly across the bedroom floor.
4001
4002So loveliness reigned and stillness, and together made the shape of
4003loveliness itself, a form from which life had parted; solitary like a
4004pool at evening, far distant, seen from a train window, vanishing so
4005quickly that the pool, pale in the evening, is scarcely robbed of its
4006solitude, though once seen. Loveliness and stillness clasped hands in
4007the bedroom, and among the shrouded jugs and sheeted chairs even the
4008prying of the wind, and the soft nose of the clammy sea airs, rubbing,
4009snuffling, iterating, and reiterating their questions--"Will you fade?
4010Will you perish?"--scarcely disturbed the peace, the indifference, the
4011air of pure integrity, as if the question they asked scarcely needed
4012that they should answer: we remain.
4013
4014Nothing it seemed could break that image, corrupt that innocence, or
4015disturb the swaying mantle of silence which, week after week, in the
4016empty room, wove into itself the falling cries of birds, ships hooting,
4017the drone and hum of the fields, a dog's bark, a man's shout, and
4018folded them round the house in silence. Once only a board sprang on
4019the landing; once in the middle of the night with a roar, with a
4020rupture, as after centuries of quiescence, a rock rends itself from the
4021mountain and hurtles crashing into the valley, one fold of the shawl
4022loosened and swung to and fro. Then again peace descended; and the
4023shadow wavered; light bent to its own image in adoration on the bedroom
4024wall; and Mrs. McNab, tearing the veil of silence with hands that had
4025stood in the wash-tub, grinding it with boots that had crunched the
4026shingle, came as directed to open all windows, and dust the bedrooms.
4027
4028
40295
4030
4031
4032As she lurched (for she rolled like a ship at sea) and leered (for her
4033eyes fell on nothing directly, but with a sidelong glance that
4034deprecated the scorn and anger of the world--she was witless, she knew
4035it), as she clutched the banisters and hauled herself upstairs and
4036rolled from room to room, she sang. Rubbing the glass of the long
4037looking-glass and leering sideways at her swinging figure a sound
4038issued from her lips--something that had been gay twenty years before
4039on the stage perhaps, had been hummed and danced to, but now,
4040coming from the toothless, bonneted, care-taking woman, was robbed
4041of meaning, was like the voice of witlessness, humour, persistency
4042itself, trodden down but springing up again, so that as she
4043lurched, dusting, wiping, she seemed to say how it was one long sorrow
4044and trouble, how it was getting up and going to bed again, and bringing
4045things out and putting them away again. It was not easy or snug this
4046world she had known for close on seventy years. Bowed down she was
4047with weariness. How long, she asked, creaking and groaning on her
4048knees under the bed, dusting the boards, how long shall it endure? but
4049hobbled to her feet again, pulled herself up, and again with her
4050sidelong leer which slipped and turned aside even from her own face,
4051and her own sorrows, stood and gaped in the glass, aimlessly smiling,
4052and began again the old amble and hobble, taking up mats, putting down
4053china, looking sideways in the glass, as if, after all, she had her
4054consolations, as if indeed there twined about her dirge some
4055incorrigible hope. Visions of joy there must have been at the wash-
4056tub, say with her children (yet two had been base-born and one had
4057deserted her), at the public-house, drinking; turning over scraps in
4058her drawers. Some cleavage of the dark there must have been, some
4059channel in the depths of obscurity through which light enough issued to
4060twist her face grinning in the glass and make her, turning to her job
4061again, mumble out the old music hall song. The mystic, the visionary,
4062walking the beach on a fine night, stirring a puddle, looking at a
4063stone, asking themselves "What am I," "What is this?" had suddenly an
4064answer vouchsafed them: (they could not say what it was) so that they
4065were warm in the frost and had comfort in the desert. But Mrs. McNab
4066continued to drink and gossip as before.
4067
4068
40696
4070
4071
4072The Spring without a leaf to toss, bare and bright like a virgin fierce
4073in her chastity, scornful in her purity, was laid out on fields wide-
4074eyed and watchful and entirely careless of what was done or thought by
4075the beholders. [Prue Ramsay, leaning on her father's arm, was given in
4076marriage. What, people said, could have been more fitting? And, they
4077added, how beautiful she looked!]
4078
4079As summer neared, as the evenings lengthened, there came to the
4080wakeful, the hopeful, walking the beach, stirring the pool,
4081imaginations of the strangest kind--of flesh turned to atoms which
4082drove before the wind, of stars flashing in their hearts, of cliff,
4083sea, cloud, and sky brought purposely together to assemble outwardly
4084the scattered parts of the vision within. In those mirrors, the minds
4085of men, in those pools of uneasy water, in which clouds for ever turn
4086and shadows form, dreams persisted, and it was impossible to resist the
4087strange intimation which every gull, flower, tree, man and woman, and
4088the white earth itself seemed to declare (but if questioned at once to
4089withdraw) that good triumphs, happiness prevails, order rules; or to
4090resist the extraordinary stimulus to range hither and thither in search
4091of some absolute good, some crystal of intensity, remote from the known
4092pleasures and familiar virtues, something alien to the processes of
4093domestic life, single, hard, bright, like a diamond in the sand, which
4094would render the possessor secure. Moreover, softened and acquiescent,
4095the spring with her bees humming and gnats dancing threw her cloak
4096about her, veiled her eyes, averted her head, and among passing shadows
4097and flights of small rain seemed to have taken upon her a knowledge of
4098the sorrows of mankind.
4099
4100[Prue Ramsay died that summer in some illness connected with
4101childbirth, which was indeed a tragedy, people said, everything, they
4102said, had promised so well.]
4103
4104And now in the heat of summer the wind sent its spies about the house
4105again. Flies wove a web in the sunny rooms; weeds that had grown close
4106to the glass in the night tapped methodically at the window pane. When
4107darkness fell, the stroke of the Lighthouse, which had laid itself with
4108such authority upon the carpet in the darkness, tracing its pattern,
4109came now in the softer light of spring mixed with moonlight gliding
4110gently as if it laid its caress and lingered steathily and looked and
4111came lovingly again. But in the very lull of this loving caress, as
4112the long stroke leant upon the bed, the rock was rent asunder; another
4113fold of the shawl loosened; there it hung, and swayed. Through the
4114short summer nights and the long summer days, when the empty rooms
4115seemed to murmur with the echoes of the fields and the hum of flies,
4116the long streamer waved gently, swayed aimlessly; while the sun so
4117striped and barred the rooms and filled them with yellow haze that Mrs.
4118McNab, when she broke in and lurched about, dusting, sweeping, looked
4119like a tropical fish oaring its way through sun-lanced waters.
4120
4121But slumber and sleep though it might there came later in the summer
4122ominous sounds like the measured blows of hammers dulled on felt,
4123which, with their repeated shocks still further loosened the shawl and
4124cracked the tea-cups. Now and again some glass tinkled in the cupboard
4125as if a giant voice had shrieked so loud in its agony that tumblers
4126stood inside a cupboard vibrated too. Then again silence fell; and
4127then, night after night, and sometimes in plain mid-day when the roses
4128were bright and light turned on the wall its shape clearly there seemed
4129to drop into this silence, this indifference, this integrity, the thud
4130of something falling.
4131
4132[A shell exploded. Twenty or thirty young men were blown up in France,
4133among them Andrew Ramsay, whose death, mercifully, was instantaneous.]
4134
4135At that season those who had gone down to pace the beach and ask of the
4136sea and sky what message they reported or what vision they affirmed had
4137to consider among the usual tokens of divine bounty--the sunset on
4138the sea, the pallor of dawn, the moon rising, fishing-boats against the
4139moon, and children making mud pies or pelting each other with handfuls
4140of grass, something out of harmony with this jocundity and this
4141serenity. There was the silent apparition of an ashen-coloured ship
4142for instance, come, gone; there was a purplish stain upon the bland
4143surface of the sea as if something had boiled and bled, invisibly,
4144beneath. This intrusion into a scene calculated to stir the most
4145sublime reflections and lead to the most comfortable conclusions stayed
4146their pacing. It was difficult blandly to overlook them; to abolish
4147their significance in the landscape; to continue, as one walked by the
4148sea, to marvel how beauty outside mirrored beauty within.
4149
4150Did Nature supplement what man advanced? Did she complete what he
4151began? With equal complacence she saw his misery, his meanness, and
4152his torture. That dream, of sharing, completing, of finding in
4153solitude on the beach an answer, was then but a reflection in a mirror,
4154and the mirror itself was but the surface glassiness which forms in
4155quiescence when the nobler powers sleep beneath? Impatient, despairing
4156yet loth to go (for beauty offers her lures, has her consolations), to
4157pace the beach was impossible; contemplation was unendurable; the
4158mirror was broken.
4159
4160[Mr. Carmichael brought out a volume of poems that spring, which had an
4161unexpected success. The war, people said, had revived their interest
4162in poetry.]
4163
4164
41657
4166
4167
4168Night after night, summer and winter, the torment of storms, the arrow-
4169like stillness of fine (had there been any one to listen) from the
4170upper rooms of the empty house only gigantic chaos streaked with
4171lightning could have been heard tumbling and tossing, as the winds and
4172waves disported themselves like the amorphous bulks of leviathans whose
4173brows are pierced by no light of reason, and mounted one on top of
4174another, and lunged and plunged in the darkness or the daylight (for
4175night and day, month and year ran shapelessly together) in idiot games,
4176until it seemed as if the universe were battling and tumbling, in brute
4177confusion and wanton lust aimlessly by itself.
4178
4179In spring the garden urns, casually filled with wind-blown plants, were
4180gay as ever. Violets came and daffodils. But the stillness and the
4181brightness of the day were as strange as the chaos and tumult of night,
4182with the trees standing there, and the flowers standing there, looking
4183before them, looking up, yet beholding nothing, eyeless, and so
4184terrible.
4185
4186
41878
4188
4189
4190Thinking no harm, for the family would not come, never again, some
4191said, and the house would be sold at Michaelmas perhaps, Mrs. McNab
4192stooped and picked a bunch of flowers to take home with her. She laid
4193them on the table while she dusted. She was fond of flowers. It was a
4194pity to let them waste. Suppose the house were sold (she stood arms
4195akimbo in front of the looking-glass) it would want seeing to--it
4196would. There it had stood all these years without a soul in it. The
4197books and things were mouldy, for, what with the war and help being
4198hard to get, the house had not been cleaned as she could have wished.
4199It was beyond one person's strength to get it straight now. She was
4200too old. Her legs pained her. All those books needed to be laid out
4201on the grass in the sun; there was plaster fallen in the hall; the
4202rain-pipe had blocked over the study window and let the water in;
4203the carpet was ruined quite. But people should come themselves;
4204they should have sent somebody down to see. For there were clothes
4205in the cupboards; they had left clothes in all the bedrooms. What
4206was she to do with them? They had the moth in them--Mrs. Ramsay's
4207things. Poor lady! She would never want THEM again. She was dead,
4208they said; years ago, in London. There was the old grey cloak she wore
4209gardening (Mrs. McNab fingered it). She could see her, as she came up
4210the drive with the washing, stooping over her flowers (the garden was a
4211pitiful sight now, all run to riot, and rabbits scuttling at you out of
4212the beds)--she could see her with one of the children by her in that
4213grey cloak. There were boots and shoes; and a brush and comb left on
4214the dressing-table, for all the world as if she expected to come back
4215tomorrow. (She had died very sudden at the end, they said.) And once
4216they had been coming, but had put off coming, what with the war, and
4217travel being so difficult these days; they had never come all these
4218years; just sent her money; but never wrote, never came, and expected
4219to find things as they had left them, ah, dear! Why the dressing-table
4220drawers were full of things (she pulled them open), handkerchiefs, bits
4221of ribbon. Yes, she could see Mrs. Ramsay as she came up the drive with
4222the washing.
4223
4224"Good-evening, Mrs. McNab," she would say.
4225
4226She had a pleasant way with her. The girls all liked her. But, dear,
4227many things had changed since then (she shut the drawer); many families
4228had lost their dearest. So she was dead; and Mr. Andrew killed; and
4229Miss Prue dead too, they said, with her first baby; but everyone had
4230lost some one these years. Prices had gone up shamefully, and didn't
4231come down again neither. She could well remember her in her grey
4232cloak.
4233
4234"Good-evening, Mrs. McNab," she said, and told cook to keep a plate of
4235milk soup for her--quite thought she wanted it, carrying that heavy
4236basket all the way up from town. She could see her now, stooping over
4237her flowers; and faint and flickering, like a yellow beam or the circle
4238at the end of a telescope, a lady in a grey cloak, stooping over her
4239flowers, went wandering over the bedroom wall, up the dressing-table,
4240across the wash-stand, as Mrs. McNab hobbled and ambled, dusting,
4241straightening. And cook's name now? Mildred? Marian?--some name like
4242that. Ah, she had forgotten--she did forget things. Fiery, like all
4243red-haired women. Many a laugh they had had. She was always welcome
4244in the kitchen. She made them laugh, she did. Things were better then
4245than now.
4246
4247She sighed; there was too much work for one woman. She wagged her head
4248this side and that. This had been the nursery. Why, it was all damp in
4249here; the plaster was falling. Whatever did they want to hang a
4250beast's skull there? gone mouldy too. And rats in all the attics. The
4251rain came in. But they never sent; never came. Some of the locks had
4252gone, so the doors banged. She didn't like to be up here at dusk alone
4253neither. It was too much for one woman, too much, too much. She
4254creaked, she moaned. She banged the door. She turned the key in the
4255lock, and left the house alone, shut up, locked.
4256
4257
42589
4259
4260
4261The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell
4262on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it.
4263The long night seemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, the
4264clammy breaths, fumbling, seemed to have triumphed. The saucepan had
4265rusted and the mat decayed. Toads had nosed their way in. Idly,
4266aimlessly, the swaying shawl swung to and fro. A thistle thrust itself
4267between the tiles in the larder. The swallows nested in the drawing-
4268roon; the floor was strewn with straw; the plaster fell in shovelfuls;
4269rafters were laid bare; rats carried off this and that to gnaw behind
4270the wainscots. Tortoise-shell butterflies burst from the chrysalis and
4271pattered their life out on the window-pane. Poppies sowed themselves
4272among the dahlias; the lawn waved with long grass; giant artichokes
4273towered among roses; a fringed carnation flowered among the cabbages;
4274while the gentle tapping of a weed at the window had become, on
4275winters' nights, a drumming from sturdy trees and thorned briars which
4276made the whole room green in summer.
4277
4278What power could now prevent the fertility, the insensibility of
4279nature? Mrs. McNab's dream of a lady, of a child, of a plate of milk
4280soup? It had wavered over the walls like a spot of sunlight and
4281vanished. She had locked the door; she had gone. It was beyond the
4282strength of one woman, she said. They never sent. They never wrote.
4283There were things up there rotting in the drawers--it was a shame to
4284leave them so, she said. The place was gone to rack and ruin. Only
4285the Lighthouse beam entered the rooms for a moment, sent its sudden
4286stare over bed and wall in the darkness of winter, looked with
4287equanimity at the thistle and the swallow, the rat and the straw.
4288Nothing now withstood them; nothing said no to them. Let the wind
4289blow; let the poppy seed itself and the carnation mate with the
4290cabbage. Let the swallow build in the drawing-room, and the thistle
4291thrust aside the tiles, and the butterfly sun itself on the faded
4292chintz of the arm-chairs. Let the broken glass and the china lie out
4293on the lawn and be tangled over with grass and wild berries.
4294
4295For now had come that moment, that hesitation when dawn trembles and
4296night pauses, when if a feather alight in the scale it will be weighed
4297down. One feather, and the house, sinking, falling, would have turned
4298and pitched downwards to the depths of darkness. In the ruined room,
4299picnickers would have lit their kettles; lovers sought shelter there,
4300lying on the bare boards; and the shepherd stored his dinner on the
4301bricks, and the tramp slept with his coat round him to ward off the
4302cold. Then the roof would have fallen; briars and hemlocks would have
4303blotted out path, step and window; would have grown, unequally but
4304lustily over the mound, until some trespasser, losing his way, could
4305have told only by a red-hot poker among the nettles, or a scrap of
4306china in the hemlock, that here once some one had lived; there had been
4307a house.
4308
4309If the feather had fallen, if it had tipped the scale downwards, the
4310whole house would have plunged to the depths to lie upon the sands of
4311oblivion. But there was a force working; something not highly
4312conscious; something that leered, something that lurched; something not
4313inspired to go about its work with dignified ritual or solemn chanting.
4314Mrs. McNab groaned; Mrs. Bast creaked. They were old; they were stiff;
4315their legs ached. They came with their brooms and pails at last; they
4316got to work. All of a sudden, would Mrs. McNab see that the house was
4317ready, one of the young ladies wrote: would she get this done; would
4318she get that done; all in a hurry. They might be coming for the
4319summer; had left everything to the last; expected to find things as
4320they had left them. Slowly and painfully, with broom and pail,
4321mopping, scouring, Mrs. McNab, Mrs. Bast, stayed the corruption and the
4322rot; rescued from the pool of Time that was fast closing over them now
4323a basin, now a cupboard; fetched up from oblivion all the Waverley
4324novels and a tea-set one morning; in the afternoon restored to sun and
4325air a brass fender and a set of steel fire-irons. George, Mrs. Bast's
4326son, caught the rats, and cut the grass. They had the builders.
4327Attended with the creaking of hinges and the screeching of bolts, the
4328slamming and banging of damp-swollen woodwork, some rusty laborious
4329birth seemed to be taking place, as the women, stooping, rising,
4330groaning, singing, slapped and slammed, upstairs now, now down in the
4331cellars. Oh, they said, the work!
4332
4333They drank their tea in the bedroom sometimes, or in the study;
4334breaking off work at mid-day with the smudge on their faces, and their
4335old hands clasped and cramped with the broom handles. Flopped on
4336chairs, they contemplated now the magnificent conquest over taps and
4337bath; now the more arduous, more partial triumph over long rows of
4338books, black as ravens once, now white-stained, breeding pale mushrooms
4339and secreting furtive spiders. Once more, as she felt the tea warm in
4340her, the telescope fitted itself to Mrs. McNab's eyes, and in a ring of
4341light she saw the old gentleman, lean as a rake, wagging his head, as
4342she came up with the washing, talking to himself, she supposed, on the
4343lawn. He never noticed her. Some said he was dead; some said she was
4344dead. Which was it? Mrs. Bast didn't know for certain either. The
4345young gentleman was dead. That she was sure. She had read his name in
4346the papers.
4347
4348There was the cook now, Mildred, Marian, some such name as that--a red-
4349headed woman, quick-tempered like all her sort, but kind, too, if you
4350knew the way with her. Many a laugh they had had together. She saved a
4351plate of soup for Maggie; a bite of ham, sometimes; whatever was over.
4352They lived well in those days. They had everything they wanted
4353(glibly, jovially, with the tea hot in her, she unwound her ball of
4354memories, sitting in the wicker arm-chair by the nursery fender).
4355There was always plenty doing, people in the house, twenty staying
4356sometimes, and washing up till long past midnight.
4357
4358Mrs. Bast (she had never known them; had lived in Glasgow at that time)
4359wondered, putting her cup down, whatever they hung that beast's skull
4360there for? Shot in foreign parts no doubt.
4361
4362It might well be, said Mrs. McNab, wantoning on with her memories; they
4363had friends in eastern countries; gentlemen staying there, ladies in
4364evening dress; she had seen them once through the dining-room door all
4365sitting at dinner. Twenty she dared say all in their jewellery, and
4366she asked to stay help wash up, might be till after midnight.
4367
4368Ah, said Mrs. Bast, they'd find it changed. She leant out of the
4369window. She watched her son George scything the grass. They might
4370well ask, what had been done to it? seeing how old Kennedy was
4371supposed to have charge of it, and then his leg got so bad after he
4372fell from the cart; and perhaps then no one for a year, or the better
4373part of one; and then Davie Macdonald, and seeds might be sent, but who
4374should say if they were ever planted? They'd find it changed.
4375
4376She watched her son scything. He was a great one for work--one of
4377those quiet ones. Well they must be getting along with the cupboards,
4378she supposed. They hauled themselves up.
4379
4380At last, after days of labour within, of cutting and digging without,
4381dusters were flicked from the windows, the windows were shut to, keys
4382were turned all over the house; the front door was banged; it was
4383finished.
4384
4385And now as if the cleaning and the scrubbing and the scything and the
4386mowing had drowned it there rose that half-heard melody, that
4387intermittent music which the ear half catches but lets fall; a bark, a
4388bleat; irregular, intermittent, yet somehow related; the hum of an
4389insect, the tremor of cut grass, disevered yet somehow belonging; the
4390jar of a dorbeetle, the squeak of a wheel, loud, low, but mysteriously
4391related; which the ear strains to bring together and is always on the
4392verge of harmonising, but they are never quite heard, never fully
4393harmonised, and at last, in the evening, one after another the sounds
4394die out, and the harmony falters, and silence falls. With the sunset
4395sharpness was lost, and like mist rising, quiet rose, quiet spread,
4396the wind settled; loosely the world shook itself down to sleep, darkly
4397here without a light to it, save what came green suffused through
4398leaves, or pale on the white flowers in the bed by the window.
4399
4400[Lily Briscoe had her bag carried up to the house late one evening in
4401September. Mr. Carmichael came by the same train.]
4402
4403
440410
4405
4406
4407Then indeed peace had come. Messages of peace breathed from the sea to
4408the shore. Never to break its sleep any more, to lull it rather more
4409deeply to rest, and whatever the dreamers dreamt holily, dreamt wisely,
4410to confirm--what else was it murmuring--as Lily Briscoe laid her head
4411on the pillow in the clean still room and heard the sea. Through the
4412open window the voice of the beauty of the world came murmuring, too
4413softly to hear exactly what it said--but what mattered if the meaning
4414were plain? entreating the sleepers (the house was full again; Mrs.
4415Beckwith was staying there, also Mr. Carmichael), if they would not
4416actually come down to the beach itself at least to lift the blind and
4417look out. They would see then night flowing down in purple; his head
4418crowned; his sceptre jewelled; and how in his eyes a child might look.
4419And if they still faltered (Lily was tired out with travelling and
4420slept almost at once; but Mr. Carmichael read a book by candlelight), if
4421they still said no, that it was vapour, this splendour of his, and the
4422dew had more power than he, and they preferred sleeping; gently then
4423without complaint, or argument, the voice would sing its song. Gently
4424the waves would break (Lily heard them in her sleep); tenderly the
4425light fell (it seemed to come through her eyelids). And it all looked,
4426Mr. Carmichael thought, shutting his book, falling asleep, much as it
4427used to look.
4428
4429Indeed the voice might resume, as the curtains of dark wrapped
4430themselves over the house, over Mrs. Beckwith, Mr. Carmichael, and Lily
4431Briscoe so that they lay with several folds of blackness on their eyes,
4432why not accept this, be content with this, acquiesce and resign? The
4433sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them;
4434the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds
4435beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness, a
4436cart grinding, a dog somewhere barking, the sun lifted the curtains,
4437broke the veil on their eyes, and Lily Briscoe stirring in her sleep.
4438She clutched at her blankets as a faller clutches at the turf on the
4439edge of a cliff. Her eyes opened wide. Here she was again, she
4440thought, sitting bold upright in bed. Awake.
4441
4442
4443
4444
4445THE LIGHTHOUSE
4446
4447
44481
4449
4450What does it mean then, what can it all mean? Lily Briscoe asked
4451herself, wondering whether, since she had been left alone, it behoved
4452her to go to the kitchen to fetch another cup of coffee or wait here.
4453What does it mean?--a catchword that was, caught up from some book,
4454fitting her thought loosely, for she could not, this first morning with
4455the Ramsays, contract her feelings, could only make a phrase resound to
4456cover the blankness of her mind until these vapours had shrunk. For
4457really, what did she feel, come back after all these years and Mrs.
4458Ramsay dead? Nothing, nothing--nothing that she could express at all.
4459
4460She had come late last night when it was all mysterious, dark. Now she
4461was awake, at her old place at the breakfast table, but alone. It was
4462very early too, not yet eight. There was this expedition--they were
4463going to the Lighthouse, Mr. Ramsay, Cam, and James. They should have
4464gone already--they had to catch the tide or something. And Cam was
4465not ready and James was not ready and Nancy had forgotten to order the
4466sandwiches and Mr. Ramsay had lost his temper and banged out of the
4467room.
4468
4469"What's the use of going now?" he had stormed.
4470
4471Nancy had vanished. There he was, marching up and down the terrace in
4472a rage. One seemed to hear doors slamming and voices calling all over
4473the house. Now Nancy burst in, and asked, looking round the room, in a
4474queer half dazed, half desperate way, "What does one send to the
4475Lighthouse?" as if she were forcing herself to do what she despaired of
4476ever being able to do.
4477
4478What does one send to the Lighthouse indeed! At any other time Lily
4479could have suggested reasonably tea, tobacco, newspapers. But this
4480morning everything seemed so extraordinarily queer that a question like
4481Nancy's--What does one send to the Lighthouse?--opened doors in one's
4482mind that went banging and swinging to and fro and made one keep
4483asking, in a stupefied gape, What does one send? What does one do?
4484Why is one sitting here, after all?
4485
4486Sitting alone (for Nancy went out again) among the clean cups at the
4487long table, she felt cut off from other people, and able only to go on
4488watching, asking, wondering. The house, the place, the morning, all
4489seemed strangers to her. She had no attachment here, she felt, no
4490relations with it, anything might happen, and whatever did happen, a
4491step outside, a voice calling ("It's not in the cupboard; it's on the
4492landing," some one cried), was a question, as if the link that usually
4493bound things together had been cut, and they floated up here, down
4494there, off, anyhow. How aimless it was,, how chaotic, how unreal it
4495was, she thought, looking at her empty coffee cup. Mrs. Ramsay dead;
4496Andrew killed; Prue dead too--repeat it as she might, it roused no
4497feeling in her. And we all get together in a house like this on a
4498morning like this, she said, looking out of the window. It was a
4499beautiful still day.
4500
4501
45022
4503
4504
4505Suddenly Mr. Ramsay raised his head as he passed and looked straight at
4506her, with his distraught wild gaze which was yet so penetrating, as if
4507he saw you, for one second, for the first time, for ever; and she
4508pretended to drink out of her empty coffee cup so as to escape him--to
4509escape his demand on her, to put aside a moment longer that imperious
4510need. And he shook his head at her, and strode on ("Alone" she heard
4511him say, "Perished" she heard him say) and like everything else this
4512strange morning the words became symbols, wrote themselves all over the
4513grey-green walls. If only she could put them together, she felt, write
4514them out in some sentence, then she would have got at the truth of
4515things. Old Mr. Carmichael came padding softly in, fetched his coffee,
4516took his cup and made off to sit in the sun. The extraordinary
4517unreality was frightening; but it was also exciting. Going to the
4518Lighthouse. But what does one send to the Lighthouse? Perished. Alone.
4519The grey-green light on the wall opposite. The empty places. Such were
4520some of the parts, but how bring them together? she asked. As if any
4521interruption would break the frail shape she was building on the table
4522she turned her back to the window lest Mr. Ramsay should see her. She
4523must escape somewhere, be alone somewhere. Suddenly she remembered.
4524When she had sat there last ten years ago there had been a little sprig
4525or leaf pattern on the table-cloth, which she had looked at in a moment
4526of revelation. There had been a problem about a foreground of a
4527picture. Move the tree to the middle, she had said. She had never
4528finished that picture. She would paint that picture now. It had been
4529knocking about in her mind all these years. Where were her paints, she
4530wondered? Her paints, yes. She had left them in the hall last night.
4531She would start at once. She got up quickly, before Mr. Ramsay turned.
4532
4533She fetched herself a chair. She pitched her easel with her precise
4534old-maidish movements on the edge of the lawn, not too close to Mr.
4535Carmichael, but close enough for his protection. Yes, it must have
4536been precisely here that she had stood ten years ago. There was the
4537wall; the hedge; the tree. The question was of some relation between
4538those masses. She had borne it in her mind all these years. It seemed
4539as if the solution had come to her: she knew now what she wanted to do.
4540
4541But with Mr. Ramsay bearing down on her, she could do nothing. Every
4542time he approached--he was walking up and down the terrace--ruin
4543approached, chaos approached. She could not paint. She stooped, she
4544turned; she took up this rag; she squeezed that tube. But all she did
4545was to ward him off a moment. He made it impossible for her to do
4546anything. For if she gave him the least chance, if he saw her
4547disengaged a moment, looking his way a moment, he would be on her,
4548saying, as he had said last night, "You find us much changed." Last
4549night he had got up and stopped before her, and said that. Dumb and
4550staring though they had all sat, the six children whom they used to
4551call after the Kings and Queens of England--the Red, the Fair, the
4552Wicked, the Ruthless--she felt how they raged under it. Kind old Mrs.
4553Beckwith said something sensible. But it was a house full of unrelated
4554passions--she had felt that all the evening. And on top of this chaos
4555Mr. Ramsay got up, pressed her hand, and said: "You will find us much
4556changed" and none of them had moved or had spoken; but had sat there as
4557if they were forced to let him say it. Only James (certainly the
4558Sullen) scowled at the lamp; and Cam screwed her handkerchief round her
4559finger. Then he reminded them that they were going to the Lighthouse
4560tomorrow. They must be ready, in the hall, on the stroke of half-past
4561seven. Then, with his hand on the door, he stopped; he turned upon
4562them. Did they not want to go? he demanded. Had they dared say
4563No (he had some reason for wanting it) he would have flung himself
4564tragically backwards into the bitter waters of depair. Such a
4565gift he had for gesture. He looked like a king in exile. Doggedly
4566James said yes. Cam stumbled more wretchedly. Yes, oh, yes, they'd
4567both be ready, they said. And it struck her, this was tragedy--not
4568palls, dust, and the shroud; but children coerced, their spirits
4569subdued. James was sixteen, Cam, seventeen, perhaps. She had looked
4570round for some one who was not there, for Mrs. Ramsay, presumably. But
4571there was only kind Mrs. Beckwith turning over her sketches under the
4572lamp. Then, being tired, her mind still rising and falling with the
4573sea, the taste and smell that places have after long absence possessing
4574her, the candles wavering in her eyes, she had lost herself and gone
4575under. It was a wonderful night, starlit; the waves sounded as they
4576went upstairs; the moon surprised them, enormous, pale, as they passed
4577the staircase window. She had slept at once.
4578
4579She set her clean canvas firmly upon the easel, as a barrier, frail,
4580but she hoped sufficiently substantial to ward off Mr. Ramsay and his
4581exactingness. She did her best to look, when his back was turned, at
4582her picture; that line there, that mass there. But it was out of the
4583question. Let him be fifty feet away, let him not even speak to you,
4584let him not even see you, he permeated, he prevailed, he imposed
4585himself. He changed everything. She could not see the colour; she
4586could not see the lines; even with his back turned to her, she could
4587only think, But he'll be down on me in a moment, demanding--something
4588she felt she could not give him. She rejected one brush; she chose
4589another. When would those children come? When would they all be off?
4590she fidgeted. That man, she thought, her anger rising in her, never
4591gave; that man took. She, on the other hand, would be forced to give.
4592Mrs. Ramsay had given. Giving, giving, giving, she had died--and had
4593left all this. Really, she was angry with Mrs. Ramsay. With the brush
4594slightly trembling in her fingers she looked at the hedge, the step,
4595the wall. It was all Mrs. Ramsay's doing. She was dead. Here was Lily,
4596at forty-four, wasting her time, unable to do a thing, standing there,
4597playing at painting, playing at the one thing one did not play at, and
4598it was all Mrs. Ramsay's fault. She was dead. The step where she used
4599to sit was empty. She was dead.
4600
4601But why repeat this over and over again? Why be always trying to bring
4602up some feeling she had not got? There was a kind of blasphemy in it.
4603It was all dry: all withered: all spent. They ought not to have asked
4604her; she ought not to have come. One can't waste one's time at forty-
4605four, she thought. She hated playing at painting. A brush, the one
4606dependable thing in a world of strife, ruin, chaos--that one should not
4607play with, knowingly even: she detested it. But he made her. You
4608shan't touch your canvas, he seemed to say, bearing down on her, till
4609you've given me what I want of you. Here he was, close upon her again,
4610greedy, distraught. Well, thought Lily in despair, letting her right
4611hand fall at her side, it would be simpler then to have it over.
4612Surely, she could imitate from recollection the glow, the rhapsody, the
4613self-surrender, she had seen on so many women's faces (on Mrs. Ramsay's,
4614for instance) when on some occasion like this they blazed up--she could
4615remember the look on Mrs. Ramsay's face--into a rapture of sympathy, of
4616delight in the reward they had, which, though the reason of it escaped
4617her, evidently conferred on them the most supreme bliss of which human
4618nature was capable. Here he was, stopped by her side. She would give
4619him what she could.
4620
4621
46223
4623
4624
4625She seemed to have shrivelled slightly, he thought. She looked a little
4626skimpy, wispy; but not unattractive. He liked her. There had been some
4627talk of her marrying William Bankes once, but nothing had come of it.
4628His wife had been fond of her. He had been a little out of temper too
4629at breakfast. And then, and then--this was one of those moments when
4630an enormous need urged him, without being conscious what it was, to
4631approach any woman, to force them, he did not care how, his need was so
4632great, to give him what he wanted: sympathy.
4633
4634Was anybody looking after her? he said. Had she everything she
4635wanted?
4636
4637"Oh, thanks, everything," said Lily Briscoe nervously. No; she could
4638not do it. She ought to have floated off instantly upon some wave of
4639sympathetic expansion: the pressure on her was tremendous. But she
4640remained stuck. There was an awful pause. They both looked at the
4641sea. Why, thought Mr. Ramsay, should she look at the sea when I am
4642here? She hoped it would be calm enough for them to land at the
4643Lighthouse, she said. The Lighthouse! The Lighthouse! What's that
4644got to do with it? he thought impatiently. Instantly, with the force
4645of some primeval gust (for really he could not restrain himself any
4646longer), there issued from him such a groan that any other woman in the
4647whole world would have done something, said something--all except
4648myself, thought Lily, girding at herself bitterly, who am not a woman,
4649but a peevish, ill-tempered, dried-up old maid, presumably.
4650
4651[Mr. Ramsay sighed to the full. He waited. Was she not going to say
4652anything? Did she not see what he wanted from her? Then he said he
4653had a particular reason for wanting to go to the Lighthouse. His
4654wife used to send the men things. There was a poor boy with a
4655tuberculous hip, the lightkeeper's son. He sighed profoundly.
4656He sighed significantly. All Lily wished was that this enormous flood
4657of grief, this insatiable hunger for sympathy, this demand that she
4658should surrender herself up to him entirely, and even so he had sorrows
4659enough to keep her supplied for ever, should leave her, should be
4660diverted (she kept looking at the house, hoping for an interruption)
4661before it swept her down in its flow.
4662
4663"Such expeditions," said Mr. Ramsay, scraping the ground with his toe,
4664"are very painful." Still Lily said nothing. (She is a stock, she is a
4665stone, he said to himself.) "They are very exhausting," he said,
4666looking, with a sickly look that nauseated her (he was acting, she
4667felt, this great man was dramatising himself), at his beautiful hands.
4668It was horrible, it was indecent. Would they never come, she asked,
4669for she could not sustain this enormous weight of sorrow, support these
4670heavy draperies of grief (he had assumed a pose of extreme
4671decreptitude; he even tottered a little as he stood there) a moment
4672longer.
4673
4674Still she could say nothing; the whole horizon seemed swept bare of
4675objects to talk about; could only feel, amazedly, as Mr. Ramsay stood
4676there, how his gaze seemed to fall dolefully over the sunny grass and
4677discolour it, and cast over the rubicund, drowsy, entirely contented
4678figure of Mr. Carmichael, reading a French novel on a deck-chair, a veil
4679of crape, as if such an existence, flaunting its prosperity in a world
4680of woe, were enough to provoke the most dismal thoughts of all. Look
4681at him, he seemed to be saying, look at me; and indeed, all the time he
4682was feeling, Think of me, think of me. Ah, could that bulk only be
4683wafted alongside of them, Lily wished; had she only pitched her easel a
4684yard or two closer to him; a man, any man, would staunch this effusion,
4685would stop these lamentations. A woman, she had provoked this horror;
4686a woman, she should have known how to deal with it. It was immensely
4687to her discredit, sexually, to stand there dumb. One said--what did
4688one say?--Oh, Mr. Ramsay! Dear Mr. Ramsay! That was what that kind old
4689lady who sketched, Mrs. Beckwith, would have said instantly, and
4690rightly. But, no. They stood there, isolated from the rest of the
4691world. His immense self-pity, his demand for sympathy poured and
4692spread itself in pools at ther feet, and all she did, miserable sinner
4693that she was, was to draw her skirts a little closer round her ankles,
4694lest she should get wet. In complete silence she stood there, grasping
4695her paint brush.
4696
4697Heaven could never be sufficiently praised! She heard sounds in the
4698house. James and Cam must be coming. But Mr. Ramsay, as if he knew
4699that his time ran short, exerted upon her solitary figure the immense
4700pressure of his concentrated woe; his age; his frailty: his desolation;
4701when suddenly, tossing his head impatiently, in his annoyance--for
4702after all, what woman could resist him?--he noticed that his boot-laces
4703were untied. Remarkable boots they were too, Lily thought, looking
4704down at them: sculptured; colossal; like everything that Mr. Ramsay
4705wore, from his frayed tie to his half-buttoned waistcoat, his own
4706indisputably. She could see them walking to his room of their own
4707accord, expressive in his absence of pathos, surliness, ill-temper,
4708charm.
4709
4710"What beautiful boots!" she exclaimed. She was ashamed of herself. To
4711praise his boots when he asked her to solace his soul; when he had
4712shown her his bleeding hands, his lacerated heart, and asked her to
4713pity them, then to say, cheerfully, "Ah, but what beautiful boots you
4714wear!" deserved, she knew, and she looked up expecting to get it in one
4715of his sudden roars of ill-temper complete annihilation.
4716
4717Instead, Mr. Ramsay smiled. His pall, his draperies, his infirmities
4718fell from him. Ah, yes, he said, holding his foot up for her to look
4719at, they were first-rate boots. There was only one man in England who
4720could make boots like that. Boots are among the chief curses of
4721mankind, he said. "Bootmakers make it their business," he exclaimed,
4722"to cripple and torture the human foot." They are also the most
4723obstinate and perverse of mankind. It had taken him the best part of
4724his youth to get boots made as they should be made. He would have her
4725observe (he lifted his right foot and then his left) that she had never
4726seen boots made quite that shape before. They were made of the finest
4727leather in the world, also. Most leather was mere brown paper and
4728cardboard. He looked complacently at his foot, still held in the air.
4729They had reached, she felt, a sunny island where peace dwelt, sanity
4730reigned and the sun for ever shone, the blessed island of good boots.
4731Her heart warmed to him. "Now let me see if you can tie a knot," he
4732said. He poohpoohed her feeble system. He showed her his own
4733invention. Once you tied it, it never came undone. Three times he
4734knotted her shoe; three times he unknotted it.
4735
4736Why, at this completely inappropriate moment, when he was stooping over
4737her shoe, should she be so tormented with sympathy for him that, as she
4738stooped too, the blood rushed to her face, and, thinking of her
4739callousness (she had called him a play-actor) she felt her eyes swell
4740and tingle with tears? Thus occupied he seemed to her a figure of
4741infinite pathos. He tied knots. He bought boots. There was no helping
4742Mr. Ramsay on the journey he was going. But now just as she wished to
4743say something, could have said something, perhaps, here they were--Cam
4744and James. They appeared on the terrace. They came, lagging, side by
4745side, a serious, melancholy couple.
4746
4747But why was it like THAT that they came? She could not help feeling
4748annoyed with them; they might have come more cheerfully; they might
4749have given him what, now that they were off, she would not have the
4750chance of giving him. For she felt a sudden emptiness; a frustration.
4751Her feeling had come too late; there it was ready; but he no longer
4752needed it. He had become a very distinguished, elderly man, who had no
4753need of her whatsoever. She felt snubbed. He slung a knapsack round
4754his shoulders. He shared out the parcels--there were a number of them,
4755ill tied in brown paper. He sent Cam for a cloak. He had all the
4756appearance of a leader making ready for an expedition. Then, wheeling
4757about, he led the way with his firm military tread, in those wonderful
4758boots, carrying brown paper parcels, down the path, his children
4759following him. They looked, she thought, as if fate had devoted them
4760to some stern enterprise, and they went to it, still young enough to be
4761drawn acquiescent in their father's wake, obediently, but with a pallor
4762in their eyes which made her feel that they suffered something beyond
4763their years in silence. So they passed the edge of the lawn, and it
4764seemed to Lily that she watched a procession go, drawn on by some
4765stress of common feeling which made it, faltering and flagging as it
4766was, a little company bound together and strangely impressive to her.
4767Politely, but very distantly, Mr. Ramsay raised his hand and saluted her
4768as they passed.
4769
4770But what a face, she thought, immediately finding the sympathy which
4771she had not been asked to give troubling her for expression. What had
4772made it like that? Thinking, night after night, she supposed--about
4773the reality of kitchen tables, she added, remembering the symbol which
4774in her vagueness as to what Mr. Ramsay did think about Andrew had given
4775her. (He had been killed by the splinter of a shell instantly, she
4776bethought her.) The kitchen table was something visionary, austere;
4777something bare, hard, not ornamental. There was no colour to it; it
4778was all edges and angles; it was uncompromisingly plain. But Mr. Ramsay
4779kept always his eyes fixed upon it, never allowed himself to be
4780distracted or deluded, until his face became worn too and ascetic and
4781partook of this unornamented beauty which so deeply impressed her.
4782Then, she recalled (standing where he had left her, holding her brush),
4783worries had fretted it--not so nobly. He must have had his doubts
4784about that table, she supposed; whether the table was a real table;
4785whether it was worth the time he gave to it; whether he was able after
4786all to find it. He had had doubts, she felt, or he would have asked
4787less of people. That was what they talked about late at night
4788sometimes, she suspected; and then next day Mrs. Ramsay looked tired,
4789and Lily flew into a rage with him over some absurd little thing. But
4790now he had nobody to talk to about that table, or his boots, or his
4791knots; and he was like a lion seeking whom he could devour, and his
4792face had that touch of desperation, of exaggeration in it which alarmed
4793her, and made her pull her skirts about her. And then, she recalled,
4794there was that sudden revivification, that sudden flare (when she
4795praised his boots), that sudden recovery of vitality and interest in
4796ordinary human things, which too passed and changed (for he was always
4797changing, and hid nothing) into that other final phase which was new to
4798her and had, she owned, made herself ashamed of her own irritability,
4799when it seemed as if he had shed worries and ambitions, and the hope of
4800sympathy and the desire for praise, had entered some other region, was
4801drawn on, as if by curiosity, in dumb colloquy, whether with himself or
4802another, at the head of that little procession out of one's range. An
4803extraordinary face! The gate banged.
4804
4805
48064
4807
4808
4809So they're gone, she thought, sighing with relief and disappointment.
4810Her sympathy seemed to be cast back on her, like a bramble sprung
4811across her face. She felt curiously divided, as if one part of her
4812were drawn out there--it was a still day, hazy; the Lighthouse looked
4813this morning at an immense distance; the other had fixed itself
4814doggedly, solidly, here on the lawn. She saw her canvas as if it had
4815floated up and placed itself white and uncompromising directly before
4816her. It seemed to rebuke her with its cold stare for all this hurry
4817and agitation; this folly and waste of emotion; it drastically recalled
4818her and spread through her mind first a peace, as her disorderly
4819sensations (he had gone and she had been so sorry for him and she had
4820said nothing) trooped off the field; and then, emptiness. She looked
4821blankly at the canvas, with its uncompromising white stare; from the
4822canvas to the garden. There was something (she stood screwing up her
4823little Chinese eyes in her small puckered face), something she
4824remembered in the relations of those lines cutting across, slicing
4825down, and in the mass of the hedge with its green cave of blues and
4826browns, which had stayed in her mind; which had tied a knot in her mind
4827so that at odds and ends of time, involuntarily, as she walked along
4828the Brompton Road, as she brushed her hair, she found herself painting
4829that picture, passing her eye over it, and untying the knot in
4830imagination. But there was all the difference in the world between
4831this planning airily away from the canvas and actually taking her brush
4832and making the first mark.
4833
4834She had taken the wrong brush in her agitation at Mr. Ramsay's presence,
4835and her easel, rammed into the earth so nervously, was at the wrong
4836angle. And now that she had ut that right, and in so doing had subdued
4837the impertinences and irrelevances that plucked her attention and made
4838her remember how she was such and such a person, had such and such
4839relations to people, she took her hand and raised her brush. For a
4840moment it stayed trembling in a painful but exciting ecstasy in the
4841air. Where to begin?--that was the question at what point to make
4842the first mark? One line placed on the canvas committed her to
4843innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable decisions. All that in
4844idea seemed simple became in practice immediately complex; as the waves
4845shape themselves symmetrically from the cliff top, but to the swimmer
4846among them are divided by steep gulfs, and foaming crests. Still the
4847risk must be run; the mark made.
4848
4849With a curious physical sensation, as if she were urged forward and at
4850the same time must hold herself back, she made her first quick decisive
4851stroke. The brush descended. It flickered brown over the white canvas;
4852it left a running mark. A second time she did it--a third time. And
4853so pausing and so flickering, she attained a dancing rhythmical
4854movement, as if the pauses were one part of the rhythm and the strokes
4855another, and all were related; and so, lightly and swiftly pausing,
4856striking, she scored her canvas with brown running nervous lines which
4857had no sooner settled there than they enclosed ( she felt it looming
4858out at her) a space. Down in the hollow of one wave she saw the next
4859wave towering higher and higher above her. For what could be more
4860formidable than that space? Here she was again, she thought, stepping
4861back to look at it, drawn out of gossip, out of living, out of
4862community with people into the presence of this formidable ancient
4863enemy of hers--this other thing, this truth, this reality, which
4864suddenly laid hands on her, emerged stark at the back of appearances
4865and commanded her attention. She was half unwilling, half reluctant.
4866Why always be drawn out and haled away? Why not left in peace, to
4867talk to Mr. Carmichael on the lawn? It was an exacting form of
4868intercourse anyhow. Other worshipful objects were content with
4869worship; men, women, God, all let one kneel prostrate; but this
4870form, were it only the shape of a white lamp-shade looming on a
4871wicker table, roused one to perpetual combat, challenged one to a fight
4872in which one was bound to be worsted. Always (it was in her nature, or
4873in her sex, she did not know which) before she exchanged the fluidity
4874of life for the concentration of painting she had a few moments of
4875nakedness when she seemed like an unborn soul, a soul reft of body,
4876hesitating on some windy pinnacle and exposed without protection to all
4877the blasts of doubt. Why then did she do it? She looked at the
4878canvas, lightly scored with running lines. It would be hung in the
4879servants' bedrooms. It would be rolled up and stuffed under a sofa.
4880What was the good of doing it then, and she heard some voice saying she
4881couldn't paint, saying she couldn't create, as if she were caught up in
4882one of those habitual currents in which after a certain time experience
4883forms in the mind, so that one repeats words without being aware any
4884longer who originally spoke them.
4885
4886Can't paint, can't write, she murmured monotonously, anxiously
4887considering what her plan of attack should be. For the mass loomed
4888before her; it protruded; she felt it pressing on her eyeballs. Then,
4889as if some juice necessary for the lubrication of her faculties were
4890spontaneously squirted, she began precariously dipping among the blues
4891and umbers, moving her brush hither and thither, but it was now heavier
4892and went slower, as if it had fallen in with some rhythm which was
4893dictated to her (she kept looking at the hedge, at the canvas) by what
4894she rhythm was strong enough to bear her along with it on its current.
4895Certainly she was losing consciousness of outer things. And as she
4896lost consciousness of outer things, and her name and her personality
4897and her appearance, and whether Mr. Carmichael was there or not, her
4898mind kept throwing up from its depths, scenes, and names, and sayings,
4899and memories and ideas, like a fountain spurting over that glaring,
4900hideously difficult white space, while she modelled it with greens and
4901blues.
4902
4903Charles Tansley used to say that, she remembered, women can't paint,
4904can't write. Coming up behind her, he had stood close beside her, a
4905thing she hated, as she painted her on this very spot. "Shag tobacco,"
4906he said, "fivepence an ounce," parading his poverty, his principles.
4907(But the war had drawn the sting of her femininity. Poor devils, one
4908thought, poor devils, of both sexes.) He was always carrying a book
4909about under his arm--a purple book. He "worked." He sat, she
4910remembered, working in a blaze of sun. At dinner he would sit right in
4911the middle of the view. But after all, she reflected, there was the
4912scene on the beach. One must remember that. It was a windy morning.
4913They had all gone down to the beach. Mrs. Ramsay sat down and wrote
4914letters by a rock. She wrote and wrote. "Oh," she said, looking up at
4915something floating in the sea, "is it a lobster pot? Is it an upturned
4916boat?" She was so short-sighted that she could not see, and then
4917Charles Tansley became as nice as he could possibly be. He began
4918playing ducks and drakes. They chose little flat black stones and sent
4919them skipping over the waves. Every now and then Mrs. Ramsay looked up
4920over her spectacles and laughed at them. What they said she could not
4921remember, but only she and Charles throwing stones and getting on very
4922well all of a sudden and Mrs. Ramsay watching them. She was highly
4923conscious of that. Mrs. Ramsay, she thought, stepping back and screwing
4924up her eyes. (It must have altered the design a good deal when she was
4925sitting on the step with James. There must have been a shadow.) When
4926she thought of herself and Charles throwing ducks and drakes and of the
4927whole scene on the beach, it seemed to depend somehow upon Mrs. Ramsay
4928sitting under the rock, with a pad on her knee, writing letters. (She
4929wrote innumerable letters, and sometimes the wind took them and she and
4930Charles just saved a page from the sea.) But what a power was in the
4931human soul! she thought. That woman sitting there writing under the
4932rock resolved everything into simplicity; made these angers,
4933irritations fall off like old rags; she brought together this and that
4934and then this, and so made out of that miserable silliness and spite
4935(she and Charles squabbling, sparring, had been silly and spiteful)
4936something--this scene on the beach for example, this moment of
4937friendship and liking--which survived, after all these years complete,
4938so that she dipped into it to re-fashion her memory of him, and there
4939it stayed in the mind affecting one almost like a work of art.
4940
4941"Like a work of art," she repeated, looking from her canvas to the
4942drawing-room steps and back again. She must rest for a moment. And,
4943resting, looking from one to the other vaguely, the old question which
4944traversed the sky of the soul perpetually, the vast, the general
4945question which was apt to particularise itself at such moments as
4946these, when she released faculties that had been on the strain, stood
4947over her, paused over her, darkened over her. What is the meaning of
4948life? That was all--a simple question; one that tended to close in on
4949one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great
4950revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily
4951miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark;
4952here was one. This, that, and the other; herself and Charles Tansley
4953and the breaking wave; Mrs. Ramsay bringing them together; Mrs. Ramsay
4954saying, "Life stand still here"; Mrs. Ramsay making of the moment
4955something permanent (as in another sphere Lily herself tried to
4956make of the moment something permanent)--this was of the nature
4957of a revelation. In the midst of chaos there was shape; this eternal
4958passing and flowing (she looked at the clouds going and the leaves
4959shaking) was struck into stability. Life stand still here, Mrs. Ramsay
4960said. "Mrs. Ramsay! Mrs. Ramsay!" she repeated. She owed it all to her.
4961
4962All was silence. Nobody seemed yet to be stirring in the house. She
4963looked at it there sleeping in the early sunlight with its windows
4964green and blue with the reflected leaves. The faint thought she was
4965thinking of Mrs. Ramsay seemed in consonance with this quiet house; this
4966smoke; this fine early morning air. Faint and unreal, it was amazingly
4967pure and exciting. She hoped nobody would open the window or come out
4968of the house, but that she might be left alone to go on thinking, to go
4969on painting. She turned to her canvas. But impelled by some curiosity,
4970driven by the discomfort of the sympathy which she held undischarged,
4971she walked a pace or so to the end of the lawn to see whether, down
4972there on the beach, she could see that little company setting sail.
4973Down there among the little boats which floated, some with their sails
4974furled, some slowly, for it was very calm moving away, there was one
4975rather apart from the others. The sail was even now being hoisted.
4976She decided that there in that very distant and entirely silent little
4977boat Mr. Ramsay was sitting with Cam and James. Now they had got the
4978sail up; now after a little flagging and silence, she watched the boat
4979take its way with deliberation past the other boats out to sea.
4980
4981
49825
4983
4984
4985The sails flapped over their heads. The water chuckled and slapped the
4986sides of the boat, which drowsed motionless in the sun. Now and then
4987the sails rippled with a little breeze in them, but the ripple ran over
4988them and ceased. The boat made no motion at all. Mr. Ramsay sat in the
4989middle of the boat. He would be impatient in a moment, James thought,
4990and Cam thought, looking at her father, who sat in the middle of the
4991boat between them (James steered; Cam sat alone in the bow) with his
4992legs tightly curled. He hated hanging about. Sure enough, after
4993fidgeting a second or two, he said something sharp to Macalister's boy,
4994who got out his oars and began to row. But their father, they knew,
4995would never be content until they were flying along. He would keep
4996looking for a breeze, fidgeting, saying things under his breath, which
4997Macalister and and Macalister's boy would overhear, and they would both
4998be made horribly uncomfortable. He had made them come. He had forced
4999them to come. In their anger they hoped that the breeze would never
5000rise, that he might be thwarted in every possible way, since he had
5001forced them to come against their wills.
5002
5003All the way down to the beach they had lagged behind together, though
5004he bade them "Walk up, walk up," without speaking. Their heads were
5005bent down, their heads were pressed down by some remorseless gale.
5006Speak to him they could not. They must come; they must follow. They
5007must walk behind him carrying brown paper parcels. But they vowed, in
5008silence, as they walked, to stand by each other and carry out the great
5009compact--to resist tyranny to the death. So there they would sit, one
5010at one end of the boat, one at the other, in silence. They would say
5011nothing, only look at him now and then where he sat with his legs
5012twisted, frowning and fidgeting, and pishing and pshawing and muttering
5013things to himself, and waiting impatiently for a breeze. And they
5014hoped it would be calm. They hoped he would be thwarted. They hoped
5015the whole expedition would fail, and they would have to put back, with
5016their parcels, to the beach.
5017
5018But now, when Macalister's boy had rowed a little way out, the sails
5019slowly swung round, the boat quickened itself, flattened itself, and
5020shot off. Instantly, as if some great strain had been relieved, Mr.
5021Ramsay uncurled his legs, took out his tobacco pouch, handed it with a
5022little grunt to Macalister, and felt, they knew, for all they suffered,
5023perfectly content. Now they would sail on for hours like this, and Mr.
5024Ramsay would ask old Macalister a question--about the great storm
5025last winter probably--and old Macalister would answer it, and they
5026would puff their pipes together, and Macalister would take a tarry rope
5027in his fingers, tying or untying some knot, and the boy would fish, and
5028never say a word to any one. James would be forced to keep his eye all
5029the time on the sail. For if he forgot, then the sail puckered and
5030shivered, and the boat slackened, and Mr. Ramsay would say sharply,
5031"Look out! Look out!" and old Macalister would turn slowly on his
5032seat. So they heard Mr. Ramsay asking some question about the great
5033storm at Christmas. "She comes driving round the point," old
5034Macalister said, describing the great storm last Christmas, when ten
5035ships had been driven into the bay for shelter, and he had seen "one
5036there, one there, one there" (he pointed slowly round the bay. Mr.
5037Ramsay followed him, turning his head). He had seen four men clinging
5038to the mast. Then she was gone. "And at last we shoved her off," he
5039went on (but in their anger and their silence they only caught a word
5040here and there, sitting at opposite ends of the boat, united by their
5041compact to fight tyranny to the death). At last they had shoved
5042her off, they had launched the lifeboat, and they had got her out
5043past the point--Macalister told the story; and though they only
5044caught a word here and there, they were conscious all the time of their
5045father--how he leant forward, how he brought his voice into tune with
5046Macalister's voice; how, puffing at his pipe, and looking there and
5047there where Macalister pointed, he relished the thought of the storm
5048and the dark night and the fishermen striving there. He liked that men
5049should labour and sweat on the windy beach at night; pitting muscle and
5050brain against the waves and the wind; he liked men to work like that,
5051and women to keep house, and sit beside sleeping children indoors,
5052while men were drowned, out there in a storm. So James could tell, so
5053Cam could tell (they looked at him, they looked at each other), from
5054his toss and his vigilance and the ring in his voice, and the little
5055tinge of Scottish accent which came into his voice, making him seem
5056like a peasant himself, as he questioned Macalister about the eleven
5057ships that had been driven into the bay in a storm. Three had sunk.
5058
5059He looked proudly where Macalister pointed; and Cam thought, feeling
5060proud of him without knowing quite why, had he been there he would have
5061launched the lifeboat, he would have reached the wreck, Cam thought.
5062He was so brave, he was so adventurous, Cam thought. But she
5063remembered. There was the compact; to resist tyranny to the death.
5064Their grievance weighed them down. They had been forced; they had been
5065bidden. He had borne them down once more with his gloom and his
5066authority, making them do his bidding, on this fine morning, come,
5067because he wished it, carrying these parcels, to the Lighthouse; take
5068part in these rites he went through for his own pleasure in memory of
5069dead people, which they hated, so that they lagged after him, all
5070the pleasure of the day was spoilt.
5071
5072Yes, the breeze was freshening. The boat was leaning, the water was
5073sliced sharply and fell away in green cascades, in bubbles, in
5074cataracts. Cam looked down into the foam, into the sea with all its
5075treasure in it, and its speed hypnotised her, and the tie between her
5076and James sagged a little. It slackened a little. She began to think,
5077How fast it goes. Where are we going? and the movement hypnotised her,
5078while James, with his eye fixed on the sail and on the horizon, steered
5079grimly. But he began to think as he steered that he might escape; he
5080might be quit of it all. They might land somewhere; and be free then.
5081Both of them, looking at each other for a moment, had a sense of escape
5082and exaltation, what with the speed and the change. But the breeze
5083bred in Mr. Ramsay too the same excitement, and, as old Macalister
5084turned to fling his line overboard, he cried out aloud,
5085
5086"We perished," and then again, "each alone." And then with his usual
5087spasm of repentance or shyness, pulled himself up, and waved his hand
5088towards the shore.
5089
5090"See the little house," he said pointing, wishing Cam to look. She
5091raised herself reluctantly and looked. But which was it? She could no
5092longer make out, there on the hillside, which was their house. All
5093looked distant and peaceful and strange. The shore seemed refined, far
5094away, unreal. Already the little distance they had sailed had put them
5095far from it and given it the changed look, the composed look, of
5096something receding in which one has no longer any part. Which was
5097their house? She could not see it.
5098
5099"But I beneath a rougher sea," Mr. Ramsay murmured. He had found the
5100house and so seeing it, he had also seen himself there; he had seen
5101himself walking on the terrace, alone. He was walking up and down
5102between the urns; and he seemed to himself very old and bowed. Sitting
5103in the boat, he bowed, he crouched himself, acting instantly his part--
5104the part of a desolate man, widowed, bereft; and so called up before
5105him in hosts people sympathising with him; staged for himself as he sat
5106in the boat, a little drama; which required of him decrepitude and
5107exhaustion and sorrow (he raised his hands and looked at the thinness
5108of them, to confirm his dream) and then there was given him in
5109abundance women's sympathy, and he imagined how they would soothe him
5110and sympathise with him, and so getting in his dream some reflection of
5111the exquisite pleasure women's sympathy was to him, he sighed and said
5112gently and mournfully:
5113
5114
5115But I beneath a rougher sea
5116Was whelmed in deeper gulfs than he,
5117
5118
5119so that the mournful words were heard quite clearly by them all. Cam
5120half started on her seat. It shocked her--it outraged her. The
5121movement roused her father; and he shuddered, and broke off,
5122exclaiming: "Look! Look!" so urgently that James also turned his head
5123to look over his shoulder at the island. They all looked. They looked
5124at the island.
5125
5126But Cam could see nothing. She was thinking how all those paths and
5127the lawn, thick and knotted with the lives they had lived there, were
5128gone: were rubbed out; were past; were unreal, and now this was real;
5129the boat and the sail with its patch; Macalister with his earrings; the
5130noise of the waves--all this was real. Thinking this, she was
5131murmuring to herself, "We perished, each alone," for her father's words
5132broke and broke again in her mind, when her father, seeing her gazing
5133so vaguely, began to tease her. Didn't she know the points of the
5134compass? he asked. Didn't she know the North from the South? Did she
5135really think they lived right out there? And he pointed again, and
5136showed her where their house was, there, by those trees. He wished she
5137would try to be more accurate, he said: "Tell me--which is East, which
5138is West?" he said, half laughing at her, half scolding her, for he
5139could not understand the state of mind of any one, not absolutely
5140imbecile, who did not know the points of the compass. Yet she did not
5141know. And seeing her gazing, with her vague, now rather frightened,
5142eyes fixed where no house was Mr. Ramsay forgot his dream; how he walked
5143up and down between the urns on the terrace; how the arms were
5144stretched out to him. He thought, women are always like that; the
5145vagueness of their minds is hopeless; it was a thing he had never been
5146able to understand; but so it was. It had been so with her--his wife.
5147They could not keep anything clearly fixed in their minds. But he had
5148been wrong to be angry with her; moreover, did he not rather like this
5149vagueness in women? It was part of their extraordinary charm. I will
5150make her smile at me, he thought. She looks frightened. She was so
5151silent. He clutched his fingers, and determined that his voice and his
5152face and all the quick expressive gestures which had been at his
5153command making people pity him and praise him all these years should
5154subdue themselves. He would make her smile at him. He would find some
5155simple easy thing to say to her. But what? For, wrapped up in his
5156work as he was, he forgot the sort of thing one said. There was a
5157puppy. They had a puppy. Who was looking after the puppy today? he
5158asked. Yes, thought James pitilessly, seeing his sister's head against
5159the sail, now she will give way. I shall be left to fight the tyrant
5160alone. The compact would be left to him to carry out. Cam would never
5161resist tyranny to the death, he thought grimly, watching her face, sad,
5162sulky, yielding. And as sometimes happens when a cloud falls on a
5163green hillside and gravity descends and there among all the surrounding
5164hills is gloom and sorrow, and it seems as if the hills themselves
5165must ponder the fate of the clouded, the darkened, either in pity,
5166or maliciously rejoicing in her dismay: so Cam now felt herself
5167overcast, as she sat there among calm, resolute people and wondered
5168how to answer her father about the puppy; how to resist his
5169entreaty--forgive me, care for me; while James the lawgiver, with the
5170tablets of eternal wisdom laid open on his knee (his hand on the tiller
5171had become symbolical to her), said, Resist him. Fight him. He said
5172so rightly; justly. For they must fight tyranny to the death, she
5173thought. Of all human qualities she reverenced justice most. Her
5174brother was most god-like, her father most suppliant. And to which did
5175she yield, she thought, sitting between them, gazing at the shore whose
5176points were all unknown to her, and thinking how the lawn and the
5177terrace and the house were smoothed away now and peace dwelt there.
5178
5179"Jasper," she said sullenly. He'd look after the puppy.
5180
5181And what was she going to call him? her father persisted. He had had
5182a dog when he was a little boy, called Frisk. She'll give way, James
5183thought, as he watched a look come upon her face, a look he remembered.
5184They look down he thought, at their knitting or something. Then
5185suddenly they look up. There was a flash of blue, he remembered, and
5186then somebody sitting with him laughed, surrendered, and he was very
5187angry. It must have been his mother, he thought, sitting on a low
5188chair, with his father standing over her. He began to search among the
5189infinite series of impressions which time had laid down, leaf upon
5190leaf, fold upon fold softly, incessantly upon his brain; among scents,
5191sounds; voices, harsh, hollow, sweet; and lights passing, and brooms
5192tapping; and the wash and hush of the sea, how a man had marched up and
5193down and stopped dead, upright, over them. Meanwhile, he noticed, Cam
5194dabbled her fingers in the water, and stared at the shore and said
5195nothing. No, she won't give way, he thought; she's different, he
5196thought. Well, if Cam would not answer him, he would not bother her Mr.
5197Ramsay decided, feeling in his pocket for a book. But she would answer
5198him; she wished, passionately, to move some obstacle that lay upon her
5199tongue and to say, Oh, yes, Frisk. I'll call him Frisk. She wanted
5200even to say, Was that the dog that found its way over the moor alone?
5201But try as she might, she could think of nothing to say like that,
5202fierce and loyal to the compact, yet passing on to her father,
5203unsuspected by James, a private token of the love she felt for him.
5204For she thought, dabbling her hand (and now Macalister's boy had caught
5205a mackerel, and it lay kicking on the floor, with blood on its gills)
5206for she thought, looking at James who kept his eyes dispassionately on
5207the sail, or glanced now and then for a second at the horizon, you're
5208not exposed to it, to this pressure and division of feeling, this
5209extraordinary temptation. Her father was feeling in his pockets; in
5210another second, he would have found his book. For no one attracted her
5211more; his hands were beautiful, and his feet, and his voice, and his
5212words, and his haste, and his temper, and his oddity, and his passion,
5213and his saying straight out before every one, we perish, each alone,
5214and his remoteness. (He had opened his book.) But what remained
5215intolerable, she thought, sitting upright, and watching Macalister's
5216boy tug the hook out of the gills of another fish, was that crass
5217blindness and tyranny of his which had poisoned her childhood and
5218raised bitter storms, so that even now she woke in the night trembling
5219with rage and remembered some command of his; some insolence: "Do
5220this," "Do that," his dominance: his "Submit to me."
5221
5222So she said nothing, but looked doggedly and sadly at the shore,
5223wrapped in its mantle of peace; as if the people there had fallen
5224asleep, she thought; were free like smoke, were free to come and go
5225like ghosts. They have no suffering there, she thought.
5226
5227
52286
5229
5230
5231Yes, that is their boat, Lily Briscoe decided, standing on the edge of
5232the lawn. It was the boat with greyish-brown sails, which she saw now
5233flatten itself upon the water and shoot off across the bay. There he
5234sits, she thought, and the children are quite silent still. And she
5235could not reach him either. The sympathy she had not given him weighed
5236her down. It made it difficult for her to paint.
5237
5238She had always found him difficult. She never had been able to praise
5239him to his face, she remembered. And that reduced their relationship to
5240something neutral, without that element of sex in it which made his
5241manner to Minta so gallant, almost gay. He would pick a flower for
5242her, lend her his books. But could he believe that Minta read them?
5243She dragged them about the garden, sticking in leaves to mark the
5244place.
5245
5246"D'you remember, Mr. Carmichael?" she was inclined to ask, looking at
5247the old man. But he had pulled his hat half over his forehead; he was
5248asleep, or he was dreaming, or he was lying there catching words, she
5249supposed.
5250
5251"D'you remember?" she felt inclined to ask him as she passed him,
5252thinking again of Mrs. Ramsay on the beach; the cask bobbing up and
5253down; and the pages flying. Why, after all these years had that
5254survived, ringed round, lit up, visible to the last detail, with all
5255before it blank and all after it blank, for miles and miles?
5256
5257"Is it a boat? Is it a cork?" she would say, Lily repeated, turning
5258back, reluctantly again, to her canvas. Heaven be praised for it, the
5259problem of space remained, she thought, taking up her brush again. It
5260glared at her. The whole mass of the picture was poised upon that
5261weight. Beautiful and bright it should be on the surface, feathery and
5262evanescent, one colour melting into another like the colours on a
5263butterfly's wing; but beneath the fabric must be clamped together with
5264bolts of iron. It was to be a thing you could ruffle with your breath;
5265and a thing you could not dislodge with a team of horses. And she began
5266to lay on a red, a grey, and she began to model her way into the hollow
5267there. At the same time, she seemed to be sitting beside Mrs. Ramsay on
5268the beach.
5269
5270"Is it a boat? Is it a cask?" Mrs. Ramsay said. And she began hunting
5271round for her spectacles. And she sat, having found them, silent,
5272looking out to sea. And Lily, painting steadily, felt as if a door had
5273opened, and one went in and stood gazing silently about in a high
5274cathedral-like place, very dark, very solemn. Shouts came from a world
5275far away. Steamers vanished in stalks of smoke on the horizon.
5276Charles threw stones and sent them skipping.
5277
5278Mrs. Ramsay sat silent. She was glad, Lily thought, to rest in silence,
5279uncommunicative; to rest in the extreme obscurity of human
5280relationships. Who knows what we are, what we feel? Who knows even at
5281the moment of intimacy, This is knowledge? Aren't things spoilt then,
5282Mrs. Ramsay may have asked (it seemed to have happened so often, this
5283silence by her side) by saying them? Aren't we more expressive thus?
5284The moment at least seemed extraordinarily fertile. She rammed a
5285little hole in the sand and covered it up, by way of burying in it the
5286perfection of the moment. It was like a drop of silver in which one
5287dipped and illumined the darkness of the past.
5288
5289Lily stepped back to get her canvas--so--into perspective. It was an
5290odd road to be walking, this of painting. Out and out one went,
5291further, until at last one seemed to be on a narrow plank, perfectly
5292alone, over the sea. And as she dipped into the blue paint, she
5293dipped too into the past there. Now Mrs. Ramsay got up, she
5294remembered. It was time to go back to the house--time for
5295luncheon. And they all walked up from the beach together, she walking
5296behind with William Bankes, and there was Minta in front of them with a
5297hole in her stocking. How that little round hole of pink heel seemed
5298to flaunt itself before them! How William Bankes deplored it, without,
5299so far as she could remember, saying anything about it! It meant to
5300him the annihilation of womanhood, and dirt and disorder, and servants
5301leaving and beds not made at mid-day--all the things he most abhorred.
5302He had a way of shuddering and spreading his fingers out as if to cover
5303an unsightly object which he did now--holding his hand in front of
5304him. And Minta walked on ahead, and presumably Paul met her and she
5305went off with Paul in the garden.
5306
5307The Rayleys, thought Lily Briscoe, squeezing her tube of green paint.
5308She collected her impressions of the Rayleys. Their lives appeared to
5309her in a series of scenes; one, on the staircase at dawn. Paul had
5310come in and gone to bed early; Minta was late. There was Minta,
5311wreathed, tinted, garish on the stairs about three o'clock in the
5312morning. Paul came out in his pyjamas carrying a poker in case of
5313burglars. Minta was eating a sandwich, standing half-way up by a
5314window, in the cadaverous early morning light, and the carpet had a
5315hole in it. But what did they say? Lily asked herself, as if by
5316looking she could hear them. Minta went on eating her sandwich,
5317annoyingly, while he spoke something violent, abusing her, in a mutter
5318so as not to wake the children, the two little boys. He was withered,
5319drawn; she flamboyant, careless. For things had worked loose after the
5320first year or so; the marriage had turned out rather badly.
5321
5322And this, Lily thought, taking the green paint on her brush, this
5323making up scenes about them, is what we call "knowing" people,
5324"thinking" of them, "being fond" of them! Not a word of it was true;
5325she had made it up; but it was what she knew them by all the same. She
5326went on tunnelling her way into her picture, into the past.
5327
5328Another time, Paul said he "played chess in coffee-houses." She had
5329built up a whole structure of imagination on that saying too. She
5330remembered how, as he said it, she thought how he rang up the servant,
5331and she said, "Mrs. Rayley's out, sir," and he decided that he would not
5332come home either. She saw him sitting in the corner of some lugubrious
5333place where the smoke attached itself to the red plush seats, and the
5334waitresses got to know you, and he played chess with a little man who
5335was in the tea trade and lived at Surbiton, but that was all Paul knew
5336about him. And then Minta was out when he came home and then there was
5337that scene on the stairs, when he got the poker in case of burglars (no
5338doubt to frighten her too) and spoke so bitterly, saying she had ruined
5339his life. At any rate when she went down to see them at a cottage near
5340Rickmansworth, things were horribly strained. Paul took her down the
5341garden to look at the Belgian hares which he bred, and Minta followed
5342them, singing, and put her bare arm on his shoulder, lest he should
5343tell her anything.
5344
5345Minta was bored by hares, Lily thought. But Minta never gave herself
5346away. She never said things like that about playing chess in coffee-
5347houses. She was far too conscious, far too wary. But to go on with
5348their story--they had got through the dangerous stage by now. She had
5349been staying with them last summer some time and the car broke down and
5350Minta had to hand him his tools. He sat on the road mending the car,
5351and it was the way she gave him the tools--business-like,
5352straightforward, friendly--that proved it was all right now. They were
5353"in love" no longer; no, he had taken up with another woman, a serious
5354woman, with her hair in a plait and a case in her hand (Minta had
5355described her gratefully, almost admiringly), who went to meetings and
5356shared Paul's views (they had got more and more pronounced) about the
5357taxation of land values and a capital levy. Far from breaking up the
5358marriage, that alliance had righted it. They were excellent friends,
5359obviously, as he sat on the road and she handed him his tools.
5360
5361So that was the story of the Rayleys, Lily thought. She imagined
5362herself telling it to Mrs. Ramsay, who would be full of curiosity to
5363know what had become of the Rayleys. She would feel a little
5364triumphant, telling Mrs. Ramsay that the marriage had not been a
5365success.
5366
5367But the dead, thought Lily, encountering some obstacle in her design
5368which made her pause and ponder, stepping back a foot or so, oh, the
5369dead! she murmured, one pitied them, one brushed them aside, one had
5370even a little contempt for them. They are at our mercy. Mrs. Ramsay
5371has faded and gone, she thought. We can over-ride her wishes, improve
5372away her limited, old-fashioned ideas. She recedes further and further
5373from us. Mockingly she seemed to see her there at the end of the
5374corridor of years saying, of all incongruous things, "Marry, marry!"
5375(sitting very upright early in the morning with the birds beginning to
5376cheep in the garden outside). And one would have to say to her, It has
5377all gone against your wishes. They're happy like that; I'm happy like
5378this. Life has changed completely. At that all her being, even her
5379beauty, became for a moment, dusty and out of date. For a moment Lily,
5380standing there, with the sun hot on her back, summing up the Rayleys,
5381triumphed over Mrs. Ramsay, who would never know how Paul went to
5382coffee-houses and had a mistress; how he sat on the ground and Minta
5383handed him his tools; how she stood here painting, had never married,
5384not even William Bankes.
5385
5386Mrs. Ramsay had planned it. Perhaps, had she lived, she would have
5387compelled it. Already that summer he was "the kindest of men." He was
5388"the first scientist of his age, my husband says." He was also "poor
5389William--it makes me so unhappy, when I go to see him, to find nothing
5390nice in his house--no one to arrange the flowers." So they were sent
5391for walks together, and she was told, with that faint touch of irony
5392that made Mrs. Ramsay slip through one's fingers, that she had a
5393scientific mind; she liked flowers; she was so exact. What was this
5394mania of hers for marriage? Lily wondered, stepping to and fro from
5395her easel.
5396
5397(Suddenly, as suddenly as a star slides in the sky, a reddish light
5398seemed to burn in her mind, covering Paul Rayley, issuing from him. It
5399rose like a fire sent up in token of some celebration by savages on a
5400distant beach. She heard the roar and the crackle. The whole sea for
5401miles round ran red and gold. Some winey smell mixed with it and
5402intoxicated her, for she felt again her own headlong desire to throw
5403herself off the cliff and be drowned looking for a pearl brooch on a
5404beach. And the roar and the crackle repelled her with fear and
5405disgust, as if while she saw its splendour and power she saw too how it
5406fed on the treasure of the house, greedily, disgustingly, and she
5407loathed it. But for a sight, for a glory it surpassed everything in
5408her experience, and burnt year after year like a signal fire on a
5409desert island at the edge of the sea, and one had only to say "in love"
5410and instantly, as happened now, up rose Paul's fire again. And it sank
5411and she said to herself, laughing, "The Rayleys"; how Paul went to
5412coffee-houses and played chess.)
5413
5414She had only escaped by the skin of her teeth though, she thought. She
5415had been looking at the table-cloth, and it had flashed upon her that
5416she would move the tree to the middle, and need never marry anybody,
5417and she had felt an enormous exultation. She had felt, now she could
5418stand up to Mrs. Ramsay--a tribute to the astonishing power that Mrs.
5419Ramsay had over one. Do this, she said, and one did it. Even her
5420shadow at the window with James was full of authority. She remembered
5421how William Bankes had been shocked by her neglect of the significance
5422of mother and son. Did she not admire their beauty? he said. But
5423William, she remembered, had listened to her with his wise child's eyes
5424when she explained how it was not irreverence: how a light there needed
5425a shadow there and so on. She did not intend to disparage a subject
5426which, they agreed, Raphael had treated divinely. She was not cynical.
5427Quite the contrary. Thanks to his scientific mind he understood--a
5428proof of disinterested intelligence which had pleased her and comforted
5429her enormously. One could talk of painting then seriously to a man.
5430Indeed, his friendship had been one of the pleasures of her life. She
5431loved William Bankes.
5432
5433They went to Hampton Court and he always left her, like the perfect
5434gentleman he was, plenty of time to wash her hands, while he strolled
5435by the river. That was typical of their relationship. Many things were
5436left unsaid. Then they strolled through the courtyards, and admired,
5437summer after summer, the proportions and the flowers, and he would tell
5438her things, about perspective, about architecture, as they walked, and
5439he would stop to look at a tree, or the view over the lake, and admire
5440a child--(it was his great grief--he had no daughter) in the vague aloof
5441way that was natural to a man who spent spent so much time in
5442laboratories that the world when he came out seemed to dazzle him,
5443so that he walked slowly, lifted his hand to screen his eyes and
5444paused, with his head thrown back, merely to breathe the air. Then
5445he would tell her how his housekeeper was on her holiday; he must
5446buy a new carpet for the staircase. Perhaps she would go with him to
5447buy a new carpet for the staircase. And once something led him to talk
5448about the Ramsays and he had said how when he first saw her she had
5449been wearing a grey hat; she was not more than nineteen or twenty. She
5450was astonishingly beautiful. There he stood looking down the avenue at
5451Hampton Court as if he could see her there among the fountains.
5452
5453She looked now at the drawing-room step. She saw, through William's
5454eyes, the shape of a woman, peaceful and silent, with downcast eyes.
5455She sat musing, pondering (she was in grey that day, Lily thought).
5456Her eyes were bent. She would never lift them. Yes, thought Lily,
5457looking intently, I must have seen her look like that, but not in grey;
5458nor so still, nor so young, nor so peaceful. The figure came readily
5459enough. She was astonishingly beautiful, as William said. But beauty
5460was not everything. Beauty had this penalty--it came too readily, came
5461too completely. It stilled life--froze it. One forgot the little
5462agitations; the flush, the pallor, some queer distortion, some light or
5463shadow, which made the face unrecognisable for a moment and yet added a
5464quality one saw for ever after. It was simpler to smooth that all out
5465under the cover of beauty. But what was the look she had, Lily
5466wondered, when she clapped her deer-stalkers's hat on her head, or ran
5467across the grass, or scolded Kennedy, the gardener? Who could tell
5468her? Who could help her?
5469
5470Against her will she had come to the surface, and found herself half
5471out of the picture, looking, little dazedly, as if at unreal things, at
5472Mr. Carmichael. He lay on his chair with his hands clasped above his
5473paunch not reading, or sleeping, but basking like a creature gorged
5474with existence. His book had fallen on to the grass.
5475
5476She wanted to go straight up to him and say, "Mr. Carmichael!" Then he
5477would look up benevolently as always, from his smoky vague green eyes.
5478But one only woke people if one knew what one wanted to say to them.
5479And she wanted to say not one thing, but everything. Little words that
5480broke up the thought and dismembered it said nothing. "About life,
5481about death; about Mrs. Ramsay"--no, she thought, one could say
5482nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark.
5483Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low. Then
5484one gave it up; then the idea sunk back again; then one became like
5485most middle-aged people, cautious, furtive, with wrinkles between the
5486eyes and a look of perpetual apprehension. For how could one express
5487in words these emotions of the body? express that emptiness there?
5488(She was looking at the drawing-room steps; they looked extraordinarily
5489empty.) It was one's body feeling, not one's mind. The physical
5490sensations that went with the bare look of the steps had become
5491suddenly extremely unpleasant. To want and not to have, sent all up
5492her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not
5493to have--to want and want--how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again
5494and again! Oh, Mrs. Ramsay! she called out silently, to that essence
5495which sat by the boat, that abstract one made of her, that woman in
5496grey, as if to abuse her for having gone, and then having gone, come
5497back again. It had seemed so safe, thinking of her. Ghost, air,
5498nothingness, a thing you could play with easily and safely at any time
5499of day or night, she had been that, and then suddenly she put her hand
5500out and wrung the heart thus. Suddenly, the empty drawing-room steps,
5501the frill of the chair inside, the puppy tumbling on the terrace, the
5502whole wave and whisper of the garden became like curves and arabesques
5503flourishing round a centre of complete emptiness.
5504
5505"What does it mean? How do you explain it all?" she wanted to say,
5506turning to Mr. Carmichael again. For the whole world seemed to have
5507dissolved in this early morning hour into a pool of thought, a deep
5508basin of reality, and one could almost fancy that had Mr. Carmichael
5509spoken, for instance, a little tear would have rent the surface pool.
5510And then? Something would emerge. A hand would be shoved up, a blade
5511would be flashed. It was nonsense of course.
5512
5513A curious notion came to her that he did after all hear the things she
5514could not say. He was an inscrutable old man, with the yellow stain on
5515his beard, and his poetry, and his puzzles, sailing serenely through a
5516world which satisfied all his wants, so that she thought he had only to
5517put down his hand where he lay on the lawn to fish up anything he
5518wanted. She looked at her picture. That would have been his answer,
5519presumably--how "you" and "I" and "she" pass and vanish; nothing stays;
5520all changes; but not words, not paint. Yet it would be hung in the
5521attics, she thought; it would be rolled up and flung under a sofa; yet
5522even so, even of a picture like that, it was true. One might say, even
5523of this scrawl, not of that actual picture, perhaps, but of what it
5524attempted, that it "remained for ever," she was going to say, or, for
5525the words spoken sounded even to herself, too boastful, to hint,
5526wordlessly; when, looking at the picture, she was surprised to find
5527that she could not see it. Her eyes were full of a hot liquid (she did
5528not think of tears at first) which, without disturbing the firmness of
5529her lips, made the air thick, rolled down her cheeks. She had perfect
5530control of herself--Oh, yes!--in every other way. Was she crying then
5531for Mrs. Ramsay, without being aware of any unhappiness? She addressed
5532old Mr. Carmichael again. What was it then? What did it mean? Could
5533things thrust their hands up and grip one; could the blade cut; the
5534fist grasp? Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of
5535the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from
5536the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly
5537people, that this was life?--startling, unexpected, unknown? For one
5538moment she felt that if they both got up, here, now on the lawn, and
5539demanded an explanation, why was it so short, why was it so
5540inexplicable, said it with violence, as two fully equipped human beings
5541from whom nothing should be hid might speak, then, beauty would roll
5542itself up; the space would fill; those empty flourishes would form into
5543shape; if they shouted loud enough Mrs. Ramsay would return. "Mrs.
5544Ramsay!" she said aloud, "Mrs. Ramsay!" The tears ran down her face.
5545
5546
55477
5548
5549
5550[Macalister's boy took one of the fish and cut a square out of its side
5551to bait his hook with. The mutilated body (it was alive still) was
5552thrown back into the sea.]
5553
5554
55558
5556
5557
5558"Mrs. Ramsay!" Lily cried, "Mrs. Ramsay!" But nothing happened. The pain
5559increased. That anguish could reduce one to such a pitch of
5560imbecility, she thought! Anyhow the old man had not heard her. He
5561remained benignant, calm--if one chose to think it, sublime. Heaven be
5562praised, no one had heard her cry that ignominious cry, stop pain,
5563stop! She had not obviously taken leave of her senses. No one had
5564seen her step off her strip of board into the waters of annihilation.
5565She remained a skimpy old maid, holding a paint-brush.
5566
5567And now slowly the pain of the want, and the bitter anger (to be called
5568back, just as she thought she would never feel sorrow for Mrs. Ramsay
5569again. Had she missed her among the coffee cups at breakfast? not in
5570the least) lessened; and of their anguish left, as antidote, a relief
5571that was balm in itself, and also, but more mysteriously, a sense of
5572some one there, of Mrs. Ramsay, relieved for a moment of the weight that
5573the world had put on her, staying lightly by her side and then (for
5574this was Mrs. Ramsay in all her beauty) raising to her forehead a wreath
5575of white flowers with which she went. Lily squeezed her tubes again.
5576She attacked that problem of the hedge. It was strange how clearly she
5577saw her, stepping with her usual quickness across fields among whose
5578folds, purplish and soft, among whose flowers, hyacinth or lilies, she
5579vanished. It was some trick of the painter's eye. For days after she
5580had heard of her death she had seen her thus, putting her wreath to her
5581forehead and going unquestioningly with her companion, a shade across
5582the fields. The sight, the phrase, had its power to console. Wherever
5583she happened to be, painting, here, in the country or in London, the
5584vision would come to her, and her eyes, half closing, sought something
5585to base her vision on. She looked down the railway carriage, the
5586omnibus; took a line from shoulder or cheek; looked at the windows
5587opposite; at Piccadilly, lamp-strung in the evening. All had been part
5588of the fields of death. But always something--it might be a face, a
5589voice, a paper boy crying STANDARD, NEWS--thrust through, snubbed her,
5590waked her, required and got in the end an effort of attention, so that
5591the vision must be perpetually remade. Now again, moved as she was by
5592some instinctive need of distance and blue, she looked at the bay
5593beneath her, making hillocks of the blue bars of the waves, and
5594stony fields of the purpler spaces, again she was roused as usual by
5595something incongruous. There was a brown spot in the middle of the
5596bay. It was a boat. Yes, she realised that after a second. But whose
5597boat? Mr. Ramsay's boat, she replied. Mr. Ramsay; the man who had
5598marched past her, with his hand raised, aloof, at the head of a
5599procession, in his beautiful boots, asking her for sympathy, which
5600she had refused. The boat was now half way across the bay.
5601
5602So fine was the morning except for a streak of wind here and there that
5603the sea and sky looked all one fabric, as if sails were stuck high up
5604in the sky, or the clouds had dropped down into the sea. A steamer far
5605out at sea had drawn in the air a great scroll of smoke which stayed
5606there curving and circling decoratively, as if the air were a fine
5607gauze which held things and kept them softly in its mesh, only gently
5608swaying them this way and that. And as happens sometimes when the
5609weather is very fine, the cliffs looked as if they were conscious of
5610the ships, and the ships looked as if they were conscious of the
5611cliffs, as if they signalled to each other some message of their own.
5612For sometimes quite close to the shore, the Lighthouse looked this
5613morning in the haze an enormous distance away.
5614
5615"Where are they now?" Lily thought, looking out to sea. Where was he,
5616that very old man who had gone past her silently, holding a brown paper
5617parcel under his arm? The boat was in the middle of the bay.
5618
5619
56209
5621
5622
5623They don't feel a thing there, Cam thought, looking at the shore,
5624which, rising and falling, became steadily more distant and more
5625peaceful. Her hand cut a trail in the sea, as her mind made the green
5626swirls and streaks into patterns and, numbed and shrouded, wandered in
5627imagination in that underworld of waters where the pearls stuck in
5628clusters to white sprays, where in the green light a change came over
5629one's entire mind and one's body shone half transparent enveloped in a
5630green cloak.
5631
5632Then the eddy slackened round her hand. The rush of the water ceased;
5633the world became full of little creaking and squeaking sounds. One
5634heard the waves breaking and flapping against the side of the boat as
5635if they were anchored in harbour. Everything became very close to one.
5636For the sail, upon which James had his eyes fixed until it had become
5637to him like a person whom he knew, sagged entirely; there they came to
5638a stop, flapping about waiting for a breeze, in the hot sun, miles from
5639shore, miles from the Lighthouse. Everything in the whole world seemed
5640to stand still. The Lighthouse became immovable, and the line of the
5641distant shore became fixed. The sun grew hotter and everybody seemed
5642to come very close together and to feel each other's presence, which
5643they had almost forgotten. Macalister's fishing line went plumb down
5644into the sea. But Mr. Ramsay went on reading with his legs curled under
5645him.
5646
5647He was reading a little shiny book with covers mottled like a plover's
5648egg. Now and again, as they hung about in that horrid calm, he turned
5649a page. And James felt that each page was turned with a peculiar
5650gesture aimed at him; now assertively, now commandingly; now with the
5651intention of making people pity him; and all the time, as his father
5652read and turned one after another of those little pages, James kept
5653dreading the moment when he would look up and speak sharply to him
5654about something or other. Why were they lagging about here? he would
5655demand, or something quite unreasonable like that. And if he does,
5656James thought, then I shall take a knife and strike him to the heart.
5657
5658He had always kept this old symbol of taking a knife and striking
5659his father to the heart. Only now, as he grew older, and sat
5660staring at his father in an  impotent rage, it was not him, that old
5661man reading, whom he wanted to kill, but it was the thing that
5662descended on him--without his knowing it perhaps: that fierce sudden
5663black-winged harpy, with its talons and its beak all cold and hard,
5664that struck and struck at you (he could feel the beak on his bare legs,
5665where it had struck when he was a child) and then made off, and there
5666he was again, an old man, very sad, reading his book. That he would
5667kill, that he would strike to the heart. Whatever he did--(and he
5668might do anything, he felt, looking at the Lighthouse and the distant
5669shore) whether he was in a business, in a bank, a barrister, a man at
5670the head of some enterprise, that he would fight, that he would track
5671down and stamp out--tyranny, despotism, he called it--making people
5672do what they did not want to do, cutting off their right to speak. How
5673could any of them say, But I won't, when he said, Come to the
5674Lighthouse. Do this. Fetch me that. The black wings spread, and the
5675hard beak tore. And then next moment, there he sat reading his book;
5676and he might look up--one never knew--quite reasonably. He might talk
5677to the Macalisters. He might be pressing a sovereign into some frozen
5678old woman's hand in the street, James thought, and he might be shouting
5679out at some fisherman's sports; he might be waving his arms in the air
5680with excitement. Or he might sit at the head of the table dead silent
5681from one end of dinner to the other. Yes, thought James, while the
5682boat slapped and dawdled there in the hot sun; there was a waste of
5683snow and rock very lonely and austere; and there he had come to feel,
5684quite often lately, when his father said something or did something
5685which surprised the others, there were two pairs of footprints only;
5686his own and his father's. They alone knew each other. What then was
5687this terror, this hatred? Turning back among the many leaves
5688which the past had folded in him, peering into the heart of that
5689forest where light and shade so chequer each other that all shape
5690is distorted, and one blunders, now with the sun in one's eyes,
5691now with a dark shadow, he sought an image to cool and detach and round
5692off his feeling in a concrete shape. Suppose then that as a child
5693sitting helpless in a perambulator, or on some one's knee, he had seen
5694a waggon crush ignorantly and innocently, some one's foot? Suppose he
5695had seen the foot first, in the grass, smooth, and whole; then the
5696wheel; and the same foot, purple, crushed. But the wheel was innocent.
5697So now, when his father came striding down the passage knocking them up
5698early in the morning to go to the Lighthouse down it came over his
5699foot, over Cam's foot, over anybody's foot. One sat and watched it.
5700
5701But whose foot was he thinking of, and in what garden did all this
5702happen? For one had settings for these scenes; trees that grew there;
5703flowers; a certain light; a few figures. Everything tended to set
5704itself in a garden where there was none of this gloom. None of this
5705throwing of hands about; people spoke in an ordinary tone of voice.
5706They went in and out all day long. There was an old woman gossiping in
5707the kitchen; and the blinds were sucked in and out by the breeze; all
5708was blowing, all was growing; and over all those plates and bowls and
5709tall brandishing red and yellow flowers a very thin yellow veil would
5710be drawn, like a vine leaf, at night. Things became stiller and darker
5711at night. But the leaf-like veil was so fine, that lights lifted it,
5712voices crinkled it; he could see through it a figure stooping, hear,
5713coming close, going away, some dress rustling, some chain tinkling.
5714
5715It was in this world that the wheel went over the person's foot.
5716Something, he remembered, stayed flourished up in the air, something
5717arid and sharp descended even there, like a blade, a scimitar, smiting
5718through the leaves and flowers even of that happy world and making it
5719shrivel and fall.
5720
5721"It will rain," he remembered his father saying. "You won't be able to
5722go to the Lighthouse."
5723
5724The Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow
5725eye, that opened suddenly, and softly in the evening. Now--
5726
5727James looked at the Lighthouse. He could see the white-washed rocks;
5728the tower, stark and straight; he could see that it was barred with
5729black and white; he could see windows in it; he could even see washing
5730spread on the rocks to dry. So that was the Lighthouse, was it?
5731
5732No, the other was also the Lighthouse. For nothing was simply one
5733thing. The other Lighthouse was true too. It was sometimes hardly to
5734be seen across the bay. In the evening one looked up and saw the eye
5735opening and shutting and the light seemed to reach them in that airy
5736sunny garden where they sat.
5737
5738But he pulled himself up. Whenever he said "they" or "a person," and
5739then began hearing the rustle of some one coming, the tinkle of some
5740one going, he became extremely sensitive to the presence of whoever
5741might be in the room. It was his father now. The strain was acute.
5742For in one moment if there was no breeze, his father would slap the
5743covers of his book together, and say: "What's happening now? What are
5744we dawdling about here for, eh?" as, once before he had brought his
5745blade down among them on the terrace and she had gone stiff all over,
5746and if there had been an axe handy, a knife, or anything with a sharp
5747point he would have seized it and struck his father through the heart.
5748She had gone stiff all over, and then, her arm slackening, so that he
5749felt she listened to him no longer, she had risen somehow and gone away
5750and left him there, impotent, ridiculous, sitting on the floor grasping
5751a pair of scissors.
5752
5753Not a breath of wind blew. The water chuckled and gurgled in the
5754bottom of the boat where three or four mackerel beat their tails up and
5755down in a pool of water not deep enough to cover them. At any moment
5756Mr. Ramsay (he scarcely dared look at him) might rouse himself, shut his
5757book, and say something sharp; but for the moment he was reading, so
5758that James stealthily, as if he were stealing downstairs on bare feet,
5759afraid of waking a watchdog by a creaking board, went on thinking what
5760was she like, where did she go that day? He began following her from
5761room to room and at last they came to a room where in a blue light, as
5762if the reflection came from many china dishes, she talked to somebody;
5763he listened to her talking. She talked to a servant, saying simply
5764whatever came into her head. She alone spoke the truth; to her alone
5765could he speak it. That was the source of her everlasting attraction
5766for him, perhaps; she was a person to whom one could say what came into
5767one's head. But all the time he thought of her, he was conscious of
5768his father following his thought, surveying it, making it shiver and
5769falter. At last he ceased to think.
5770
5771There he sat with his hand on the tiller in the sun, staring at the
5772Lighthouse, powerless to move, powerless to flick off these grains of
5773misery which settled on his mind one after another. A rope seemed to
5774bind him there, and his father had knotted it and he could only escape
5775by taking a knife and plunging it... But at that moment the sail
5776swung slowly round, filled slowly out, the boat seemed to shake
5777herself, and then to move off half conscious in her sleep, and then she
5778woke and shot through the waves. The relief was extraordinary. They
5779all seemed to fall away from each other again and to be at their
5780ease, and the fishing-lines slanted taut across the side of the
5781boat. But his father did not rouse himself. He only raised his right
5782hand mysteriously high in the air, and let it fall upon his knee again
5783as if he were conducting some secret symphony.
5784
5785
578610
5787
5788
5789[The sea without a stain on it, thought Lily Briscoe, still standing
5790and looking out over the bay. The sea stretched like silk across the
5791bay. Distance had an extraordinary power; they had been swallowed up
5792in it, she felt, they were gone for ever, they had become part of the
5793nature of things. It was so calm; it was so quiet. The steamer itself
5794had vanished, but the great scroll of smoke still hung in the air and
5795drooped like a flag mournfully in valediction.]
5796
5797
579811
5799
5800
5801It was like that then, the island, thought Cam, once more drawing her
5802fingers through the waves. She had never seen it from out at sea
5803before. It lay like that on the sea, did it, with a dent in the middle
5804and two sharp crags, and the sea swept in there, and spread away for
5805miles and miles on either side of the island. It was very small;
5806shaped something like a leaf stood on end. So we took a little boat,
5807she thought, beginning to tell herself a story of adventure about
5808escaping from a sinking ship. But with the sea streaming through her
5809fingers, a spray of seaweed vanishing behind them, she did not want to
5810tell herself seriously a story; it was the sense of adventure and
5811escape that she wanted, for she was thinking, as the boat sailed on,
5812how her father's anger about the points of the compass, James's
5813obstinacy about the compact, and her own anguish, all had slipped, all
5814had passed, all had streamed away. What then came next? Where were
5815they going? From her hand, ice cold, held deep in the sea, there
5816spurted up a fountain of joy at the change, at the escape, at the
5817adventure (that she should be alive, that she should be there). And
5818the drops falling from this sudden and unthinking fountain of joy fell
5819here and there on the dark, the slumbrous shapes in her mind; shapes of
5820a world not realised but turning in their darkness, catching here and
5821there, a spark of light; Greece, Rome, Constantinople. Small as it
5822was, and shaped something like a leaf stood on its end with the gold-
5823sprinkled waters flowing in and about it, it had, she supposed, a place
5824in the universe--even that little island? The old gentlemen in the
5825study she thought could have told her. Sometimes she strayed in from
5826the garden purposely to catch them at it. There they were (it might be
5827Mr. Carmichael or Mr. Bankes who was sitting with her father) sitting
5828opposite each other in their low arm-chairs. They were crackling in
5829front of them the pages of THE TIMES, when she came in from the garden,
5830all in a muddle, about something some one had said about Christ, or
5831hearing that a mammoth had been dug up in a London street, or wondering
5832what Napoleon was like. Then they took all this with their clean hands
5833(they wore grey-coloured clothes; they smelt of heather) and they
5834brushed the scraps together, turning the paper, crossing their knees,
5835and said something now and then very brief. Just to please herself she
5836would take a book from the shelf and stand there, watching her father
5837write, so equally, so neatly from one side of the page to another, with
5838a little cough now and then, or something said briefly to the other old
5839gentleman opposite. And she thought, standing there with her book open,
5840one could let whatever one thought expand here like a leaf in water;
5841and if it did well here, among the old gentlemen smoking and THE TIMES
5842crackling then it was right. And watching her father as he wrote in
5843his study, she thought (now sitting in the boat) he was not vain, nor a
5844tyrant and did not wish to make you pity him. Indeed, if he saw she
5845was there, reading a book, he would ask her, as gently as any one
5846could, Was there nothing he could give her?
5847
5848Lest this should be wrong, she looked at him reading the little book
5849with the shiny cover mottled like a plover's egg. No; it was right.
5850Look at him now, she wanted to say aloud to James. (But James had his
5851eye on the sail.) He is a sarcastic brute, James would say. He brings
5852the talk round to himself and his books, James would say. He is
5853intolerably egotistical. Worst of all, he is a tyrant. But look! she
5854said, looking at him. Look at him now. She looked at him reading the
5855little book with his legs curled; the little book whose yellowish pages
5856she knew, without knowing what was written on them. It was small; it
5857was closely printed; on the fly-leaf, she knew, he had written that he
5858had spent fifteen francs on dinner; the wine had been so much; he had
5859given so much to the waiter; all was added up neatly at the bottom of
5860the page. But what might be written in the book which had rounded its
5861edges off in his pocket, she did not know. What he thought they none
5862of them knew. But he was absorbed in it, so that when he looked up, as
5863he did now for an instant, it was not to see anything; it was to pin
5864down some thought more exactly. That done, his mind flew back again
5865and he plunged into his reading. He read, she thought, as if he were
5866guiding something, or wheedling a large flock of sheep, or pushing his
5867way up and up a single narrow path; and sometimes he went fast and
5868straight, and broke his way through the bramble, and sometimes it
5869seemed a branch struck at him, a bramble blinded him, but he was not
5870going to let himself be beaten by that; on he went, tossing over page
5871after page. And she went on telling herself a story about escaping
5872from a sinking ship, for she was safe, while he sat there; safe, as she
5873felt herself when she crept in from the garden, and took a book
5874down, and the old gentleman, lowering the paper suddenly, said
5875something very brief over the top of it about the character of Napoleon.
5876
5877She gazed back over the sea, at the island. But the leaf was losing
5878its sharpness. It was very small; it was very distant. The sea was
5879more important now than the shore. Waves were all round them, tossing
5880and sinking, with a log wallowing down one wave; a gull riding on
5881another. About here, she thought, dabbling her fingers in the water, a
5882ship had sunk, and she murmured, dreamily half asleep, how we perished,
5883each alone.
5884
5885
588612
5887
5888
5889So much depends then, thought Lily Briscoe, looking at the sea which
5890had scarcely a stain on it, which was so soft that the sails and the
5891clouds seemed set in its blue, so much depends, she thought, upon
5892distance: whether people are near us or far from us; for her feeling
5893for Mr. Ramsay changed as he sailed further and further across the bay.
5894It seemed to be elongated, stretched out; he seemed to become more and
5895more remote. He and his children seemed to be swallowed up in that
5896blue, that distance; but here, on the lawn, close at hand, Mr.
5897Carmichael suddenly grunted. She laughed. He clawed his book up from
5898the grass. He settled into his chair again puffing and blowing like
5899some sea monster. That was different altogether, because he was so
5900near. And now again all was quiet. They must be out of bed by this
5901time, she supposed, looking at the house, but nothing appeared there.
5902But then, she remembered, they had always made off directly a meal was
5903over, on business of their own. It was all in keeping with this
5904silence, this emptiness, and the unreality of the early morning hour.
5905It was a way things had sometimes, she thought, lingering for a moment
5906and looking at the long glittering windows and the plume of blue smoke:
5907they became illness, before habits had spun themselves across the
5908surface, one felt that same unreality, which was so startling; felt
5909something emerge. Life was most vivid then. One could be at one's
5910ease. Mercifully one need not say, very briskly, crossing the lawn to
5911greet old Mrs. Beckwith, who would be coming out to find a corner to sit
5912in, "Oh, good-morning, Mrs. Beckwith! What a lovely day! Are you going
5913to be so bold as to sit in the sun? Jasper's hidden the chairs. Do
5914let me find you one!" and all the rest of the usual chatter. One need
5915not speak at all. One glided, one shook one's sails (there was a good
5916deal of movement in the bay, boats were starting off) between things,
5917beyond things. Empty it was not, but full to the brim. She seemed to
5918be standing up to the lips in some substance, to move and float and
5919sink in it, yes, for these waters were unfathomably deep. Into them
5920had spilled so many lives. The Ramsays'; the children's; and all sorts
5921of waifs and strays of things besides. A washer-woman with her basket;
5922a rook, a red-hot poker; the purples and grey-greens of flowers: some
5923common feeling which held the whole together.
5924
5925It was some such feeling of completeness perhaps which, ten years ago,
5926standing almost where she stood now, had made her say that she must be
5927in love with the place. Love had a thousand shapes. There might be
5928lovers whose gift it was to choose out the elements of things and place
5929them together and so, giving them a wholeness not theirs in life, make
5930of some scene, or meeting of people (all now gone and separate), one of
5931those globed compacted things over which thought lingers, and love
5932plays.
5933
5934Her eyes rested on the brown speck of Mr. Ramsay's sailing boat. They
5935would be at the Lighthouse by lunch time she supposed. But the wind
5936had freshened, and, as the sky changed slightly and the sea changed
5937slightly and the boats altered their positions, the view, which a
5938moment before had seemed miraculously fixed, was now unsatisfactory.
5939The wind had blown the trail of smoke about; there was something
5940displeasing about the placing of the ships.
5941
5942The disproportion there seemed to upset some harmony in her own mind.
5943She felt an obscure distress. It was confirmed when she turned to her
5944picture. She had been wasting her morning. For whatever reason she
5945could not achieve that razor edge of balance between two opposite
5946forces; Mr. Ramsay and the picture; which was necessary. There was
5947something perhaps wrong with the design? Was it, she wondered, that
5948the line of the wall wanted breaking, was it that the mass of the trees
5949was too heavy? She smiled ironically; for had she not thought, when
5950she began, that she had solved her problem?
5951
5952What was the problem then? She must try to get hold of something tht
5953evaded her. It evaded her when she thought of Mrs. Ramsay; it evaded
5954her now when she thought of her picture. Phrases came. Visions came.
5955Beautiful pictures. Beautiful phrases. But what she wished to get hold
5956of was that very jar on the nerves, the thing itself before it has been
5957made anything. Get that and start afresh; get that and start afresh;
5958she said desperately, pitching herself firmly again before her easel.
5959It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the
5960human apparatus for painting or for feeling; it always broke down at
5961the critical moment; heroically, one must force it on. She stared,
5962frowning. There was the hedge, sure enough. But one got nothing by
5963soliciting urgently. One got only a glare in the eye from looking at
5964the line of the wall, or from thinking--she wore a grey hat. She was
5965astonishingly beautiful. Let it come, she thought, if it will come.
5966For there are moments when one can neither think nor feel. And if
5967one can neither think nor feel, she thought, where is one?
5968
5969Here on the grass, on the ground, she thought, sitting down, and
5970examining with her brush a little colony of plantains. For the lawn
5971was very rough. Here sitting on the world, she thought, for she could
5972not shake herself free from the sense that everything this morning was
5973happening for the first time, perhaps for the last time, as a
5974traveller, even though he is half asleep, knows, looking out of the
5975train window, that he must look now, for he will never see that town,
5976or that mule-cart, or that woman at work in the fields, again. The
5977lawn was the world; they were up here together, on this exalted
5978station, she thought, looking at old Mr. Carmichael, who seemed (though
5979they had not said a word all this time) to share her thoughts. And she
5980would never see him again perhaps. He was growing old. Also, she
5981remembered, smiling at the slipper that dangled from his foot, he was
5982growing famous. People said that his poetry was "so beautiful." They
5983went and published things he had written forty years ago. There was a
5984famous man now called Carmichael, she smiled, thinking how many shapes
5985one person might wear, how he was that in the newspapers, but here the
5986same as he had always been. He looked the same--greyer, rather.
5987Yes, he looked the same, but somebody had said, she recalled, that when
5988he had heard of Andrew Ramsay's death (he was killed in a second by a
5989shell; he should have been a great mathematician) Mr. Carmichael had
5990"lost all interest in life." What did it mean--that? she wondered. Had
5991he marched through Trafalgar Square grasping a big stick? Had he
5992turned pages over and over, without reading them, sitting in his room
5993in St. John's Wood alone? She did not know what he had done, when he
5994heard that Andrew was killed, but she felt it in him all the same.
5995They only mumbled at each other on staircases; they looked up at the
5996sky and said it will be fine or it won't be fine. But this was one way
5997of knowing people, she thought: to know the outline, not the detail, to
5998sit in one's garden and look at the slopes of a hill running purple
5999down into the distant heather. She knew him in that way. She knew
6000that he had changed somehow. She had never read a line of his poetry.
6001She thought that she knew how it went though, slowly and sonorously.
6002It was seasoned and mellow. It was about the desert and the camel. It
6003was about the palm tree and the sunset. It was extremely impersonal;
6004it said something about death; it said very little about love. There
6005was an impersonality about him. He wanted very little of other people.
6006Had he not always lurched rather awkwardly past the drawing-room window
6007with some newspaper under his arm, trying to avoid Mrs. Ramsay whom for
6008some reason he did not much like? On that account, of course, she
6009would always try to make him stop. He would bow to her. He would halt
6010unwillingly and bow profoundly. Annoyed that he did not want anything
6011of her, Mrs. Ramsay would ask him (Lily could hear her) wouldn't he like
6012a coat, a rug, a newspaper? No, he wanted nothing. (Here he bowed.)
6013There was some quality in her which he did not much like. It was
6014perhaps her masterfulness, her positiveness, something matter-of-fact
6015in her. She was so direct.
6016
6017(A noise drew her attention to the drawing-room window--the squeak of a
6018hinge. The light breeze was toying with the window.)
6019
6020There must have been people who disliked her very much, Lily thought
6021(Yes; she realised that the drawing-room step was empty, but it had no
6022effect on her whatever. She did not want Mrs. Ramsay now.)--People who
6023thought her too sure, too drastic.
6024
6025Also, her beauty offended people probably. How monotonous, they would
6026say, and the same always! They preferred another type--the dark, the
6027vivacious. Then she was weak with her husband. She let him make those
6028scenes. Then she was reserved. Nobody knew exactly what had happened
6029to her. And (to go back to Mr. Carmichael and his dislike) one could not
6030imagine Mrs. Ramsay standing painting, lying reading, a whole morning on
6031the lawn. It was unthinkable. Without saying a word, the only token of
6032her errand a basket on her arm, she went off to the town, to the poor,
6033to sit in some stuffy little bedroom. Often and often Lily had seen
6034her go silently in the midst of some game, some discussion, with her
6035basket on her arm, very upright. She had noted her return. She had
6036thought, half laughing (she was so methodical with the tea cups), half
6037moved (her beauty took one's breath away), eyes that are closing in
6038pain have looked on you. You have been with them there.
6039
6040And then Mrs. Ramsay would be annoyed because somebody was late, or the
6041butter not fresh, or the teapot chipped. And all the time she was
6042saying that the butter was not fresh one would be thinking of Greek
6043temples, and how beauty had been with them there in that stuffy little
6044room. She never talked of it--she went, punctually, directly. It was
6045her instinct to go, an instinct like the swallows for the south, the
6046artichokes for the sun, turning her infallibly to the human race,
6047making her nest in its heart. And this, like all instincts, was a
6048little distressing to people who did not share it; to Mr. Carmichael
6049perhaps, to herself certainly. Some notion was in both of them about
6050the ineffectiveness of action, the supremacy of thought. Her going was
6051a reproach to them, gave a different twist to the world, so that they
6052were led to protest, seeing their own prepossessions disappear, and
6053clutch at them vanishing. Charles Tansley did that too: it was part of
6054the reason why one disliked him. He upset the proportions of one's
6055world. And what had happened to him, she wondered, idly stirring the
6056platains with her brush. He had got his fellowship. He had married;
6057he lived at Golder's Green.
6058
6059She had gone one day into a Hall and heard him speaking during the war.
6060He was denouncing something: he was condemning somebody. He was
6061preaching brotherly love. And all she felt was how could he love his
6062kind who did not know one picture from another, who had stood behind
6063her smoking shag ("fivepence an ounce, Miss Briscoe") and making it his
6064business to tell her women can't write, women can't paint, not so much
6065that he believed it, as that for some odd reason he wished it? There
6066he was lean and red and raucous, preaching love from a platform (there
6067were ants crawling about among the plantains which she disturbed with
6068her brush--red, energetic, shiny ants, rather like Charles Tansley).
6069She had looked at him ironically from her seat in the half-empty hall,
6070pumping love into that chilly space, and suddenly, there was the old
6071cask or whatever it was bobbing up and down among the waves and Mrs.
6072Ramsay looking for her spectacle case among the pebbles. "Oh, dear!
6073What a nuisance! Lost again. Don't bother, Mr. Tansley. I lose
6074thousands every summer," at which he pressed his chin back against his
6075collar, as if afraid to sanction such exaggeration, but could stand it
6076in her whom he liked, and smiled very charmingly. He must have
6077confided in her on one of those long expeditions when people got
6078separated and walked back alone. He was educating his little sister,
6079Mrs. Ramsay had told her. It was immensely to his credit. Her own idea
6080of him was grotesque, Lily knew well, stirring the plantains with her
6081brush. Half one's notions of other people were, after all, grotesque.
6082They served private purposes of one's own. He did for her instead of a
6083whipping-boy. She found herself flagellating his lean flanks when she
6084was out of temper. If she wanted to be serious about him she had to
6085help herself to Mrs. Ramsay's sayings, to look at him through her eyes.
6086
6087She raised a little mountain for the ants to climb over. She reduced
6088them to a frenzy of indecision by this interference in their cosmogony.
6089Some ran this way, others that.
6090
6091One wanted fifty pairs of eyes to see with, she reflected. Fifty pairs
6092of eyes were not enough to get round that one woman with, she thought.
6093Among them, must be one that was stone blind to her beauty. One wanted
6094most some secret sense, fine as air, with which to steal through
6095keyholes and surround her where she sat knitting, talking, sitting
6096silent in the window alone; which took to itself and treasured up like
6097the air which held the smoke of the steamer, her thoughts, her
6098imaginations, her desires. What did the hedge mean to her, what did
6099the garden mean to her, what did it mean to her when a wave broke?
6100(Lily looked up, as she had seen Mrs. Ramsay look up; she too heard a
6101wave falling on the beach.) And then what stirred and trembled in her
6102mind when the children cried, "How's that? How's that?" cricketing?
6103She would stop knitting for a second. She would look intent. Then she
6104would lapse again, and suddenly Mr. Ramsay stopped dead in his pacing in
6105front of her and some curious shock passed through her and seemed to
6106rock her in profound agitation on its breast when stopping there he
6107stood over her and looked down at her. Lily could see him.
6108
6109He stretched out his hand and raised her from her chair. It seemed
6110somehow as if he had done it before; as if he had once bent in the same
6111way and raised her from a boat which, lying a few inches off some
6112island, had required that the ladies should thus be helped on shore by
6113the gentlemen. An old-fashioned scene that was, which required,
6114very nearly, crinolines and peg-top trousers. Letting herself be
6115helped by him, Mrs. Ramsay had thought (Lily supposed) the time
6116has come now. Yes, she would say it now. Yes, she would marry him.
6117And she stepped slowly, quietly on shore. Probably she said one
6118word only, letting her hand rest still in his. I will marry you,
6119she might have said, with her hand in his; but no more. Time
6120after time the same thrill had passed between them--obviously it
6121had, Lily thought, smoothing a way for her ants. She was not
6122inventing; she was only trying to smooth out something she had been
6123given years ago folded up; something she had seen. For in the rough
6124and tumble of daily life, with all those children about, all those
6125visitors, one had constantly a sense of repetition--of one thing
6126falling where another had fallen, and so setting up an echo which
6127chimed in the air and made it full of vibrations.
6128
6129But it would be a mistake, she thought, thinking how they walked off
6130together, arm in arm, past the greenhouse, to simplify their
6131relationship. It was no monotony of bliss--she with her impulses and
6132quicknesses; he with his shudders and glooms. Oh, no. The bedroom door
6133would slam violently early in the morning. He would start from the
6134table in a temper. He would whizz his plate through the window. Then
6135all through the house there would be a sense of doors slamming and
6136blinds fluttering, as if a gusty wind were blowing and people scudded
6137about trying in a hasty way to fasten hatches and make things ship-
6138shape. She had met Paul Rayley like that one day on the stairs.
6139They had laughed and laughed, like a couple of children, all because
6140Mr. Ramsay, finding an earwig in his milk at breakfast had sent the
6141whole thing flying through the air on to the terrace outside. 'An earwig,
6142Prue murmured, awestruck, 'in his milk.' Other people might find
6143centipedes. But he had built round him such a fence of sanctity, and
6144occupied the space with such a demeanour of majesty that an earwig
6145in his milk was a monster.
6146
6147But it tired Mrs. Ramsay, it cowed her a little--the plates whizzing
6148and the doors slamming. And there would fall between them sometimes
6149long rigid silences, when, in a state of mind which annoyed Lily
6150in her, half plaintive, half resentful, she seemed unable to surmount
6151the tempest calmly, or to laugh as they laughed, but in her weariness
6152perhaps concealed something. She brooded and sat silent. After a
6153time he would hang stealthily about the places where she was--roaming
6154under the window where she sat writing letters or talking, for she
6155would take care to be busy when he passed, and evade him, and pretend
6156not to see him. Then he would turn smooth as silk, affable, urbane,
6157and try to win her so. Still she would hold off, and now she would
6158assert for a brief season some of those prides and airs the due
6159of her beauty which she was generally utterly without; would turn
6160her head; would look so, over her shoulder, always with some
6161Minta, Paul, or William Bankes at her side. At length, standing
6162outside the group the very figure of a famished wolfhound (Lily got up
6163off the grass and stood looking at the steps, at the window, where she
6164had seen him), he would say her name, once only, for all the world like
6165a wolf barking in the snow, but still she held back; and he would say
6166it once more, and this time something in the tone would rouse her, and
6167she would go to him, leaving them all of a sudden, and they would walk
6168off together among the pear trees, the cabbages, and the raspberry
6169beds. They would have it out together. But with what attitudes and
6170with what words? Such a dignity was theirs in this relationship that,
6171turning away, she and Paul and Minta would hide their curiosity and
6172their discomfort, and begin picking flowers, throwing balls,
6173chattering, until it was time for dinner, and there they were, he at
6174one end of the table, she at the other, as usual.
6175
6176"Why don't some of you take up botany?.. With all those legs and arms
6177why doesn't one of you...?" So they would talk as usual, laughing,
6178among the children. All would be as usual, save only for some quiver,
6179as of a blade in the air, which came and went between them as if
6180the usual sight of the children sitting round their soup plates
6181had freshened itself in their eyes after that hour among the pears and
6182the cabbages. Especially, Lily thought, Mrs. Ramsay would glance at
6183Prue. She sat in the middle between brothers and sisters, always
6184occupied, it seemed, seeing that nothing went wrong so that she
6185scarcely spoke herself. How Prue must have blamed herself for that
6186earwig in the milk How white she had gone when Mr. Ramsay threw his
6187plate through the window! How she drooped under those long silences
6188between them! Anyhow, her mother now would seem to be making it up to
6189her; assuring her that everything was well; promising her that one of
6190these days that same happiness would be hers. She had enjoyed it for
6191less than a year, however.
6192
6193She had let the flowers fall from her basket, Lily thought, screwing up
6194her eyes and standing back as if to look at her picture, which she was
6195not touching, however, with all her faculties in a trance, frozen over
6196superficially but moving underneath with extreme speed.
6197
6198She let her flowers fall from her basket, scattered and tumbled them on
6199to the grass and, reluctantly and hesitatingly, but without question or
6200complaint--had she not the faculty of obedience to perfection?--went
6201too. Down fields, across valleys, white, flower-strewn--that was
6202how she would have painted it. The hills were austere. It was rocky;
6203it was steep. The waves sounded hoarse on the stones beneath. They
6204went, the three of them together, Mrs. Ramsay walking rather fast in
6205front, as if she expected to meet some one round the corner.
6206
6207Suddenly the window at which she was looking was whitened by some light
6208stuff behind it. At last then somebody had come into the drawing-room;
6209somebody was sitting in the chair. For Heaven's sake, she prayed, let
6210them sit still there and not come floundering out to talk to her.
6211Mercifully, whoever it was stayed still inside; had settled by some
6212stroke of luck so as to throw an odd-shaped triangular shadow over the
6213step. It altered the composition of the picture a little. It was
6214interesting. It might be useful. Her mood was coming back to her. One
6215must keep on looking without for a second relaxing the intensity of
6216emotion, the determination not to be put off, not to be bamboozled.
6217One must hold the scene--so--in a vise and let nothing come in and
6218spoil it. One wanted, she thought, dipping her brush deliberately, to
6219be on a level with ordinary experience, to feel simply that's a chair,
6220that's a table, and yet at the same time, It's a miracle, it's an
6221ecstasy. The problem might be solved after all. Ah, but what had
6222happened? Some wave of white went over the window pane. The air must
6223have stirred some flounce in the room. Her heart leapt at her and
6224seized her and tortured her.
6225
6226"Mrs. Ramsay! Mrs. Ramsay!" she cried, feeling the old horror come
6227back--to want and want and not to have. Could she inflict that still?
6228And then, quietly, as if she refrained, that too became part of
6229ordinary experience, was on a level with the chair, with the table.
6230Mrs. Ramsay--it was part of her perfect goodness--sat there quite
6231simply, in the chair, flicked her needles to and fro, knitted her
6232reddish-brown stocking, cast her shadow on the step. There she sat.
6233
6234And as if she had something she must share, yet could hardly leave her
6235easel, so full her mind was of what she was thinking, of what she was
6236seeing, Lily went past Mr. Carmichael holding her brush to the edge of
6237the lawn. Where was that boat now? And Mr. Ramsay? She wanted him.
6238
6239
624013
6241
6242
6243Mr. Ramsay had almost done reading. One hand hovered over the page as
6244if to be in readiness to turn it the very instant he had finished it.
6245He sat there bareheaded with the wind blowing his hair about,
6246extraordinarily exposed to everything. He looked very old. He looked,
6247James thought, getting his head now against the Lighthouse, now against
6248the waste of waters running away into the open, like some old stone
6249lying on the sand; he looked as if he had become physically what was
6250always at the back of both of their minds--that loneliness which was
6251for both of them the truth about things.
6252
6253He was reading very quickly, as if he were eager to get to the end.
6254Indeed they were very close to the Lighthouse now. There it loomed up,
6255stark and straight, glaring white and black, and one could see the
6256waves breaking in white splinters like smashed glass upon the rocks.
6257One could see lines and creases in the rocks. One could see the
6258windows clearly; a dab of white on one of them, and a little tuft of
6259green on the rock. A man had come out and looked at them through a
6260glass and gone in again. So it was like that, James thought, the
6261Lighthouse one had seen across the bay all these years; it was a stark
6262tower on a bare rock. It satisfied him. It confirmed some obscure
6263feeling of his about his own character. The old ladies, he thought,
6264thinking of the garden at home, went dragging their chairs about on the
6265lawn. Old Mrs. Beckwith, for example, was always saying how nice it was
6266and how sweet it was and how they ought to be so proud and they ought
6267to be so happy, but as a matter of fact, James thought, looking at the
6268Lighthouse stood there on its rock, it's like that. He looked at his
6269father reading fiercely with his legs curled tight. They shared that
6270knowledge. "We are driving before a gale--we must sink," he began
6271saying to himself, half aloud, exactly as his father said it.
6272
6273Nobody seemed to have spoken for an age. Cam was tired of looking at
6274the sea. Little bits of black cork had floated past; the fish were
6275dead in the bottom of the boat. Still her father read, and James
6276looked at him and she looked at him, and they vowed that they would
6277fight tyranny to the death, and he went on reading quite unconscious of
6278what they thought. It was thus that he escaped, she thought. Yes,
6279with his great forehead and his great nose, holding his little mottled
6280book firmly in front of him, he escaped. You might try to lay hands on
6281him, but then like a bird, he spread his wings, he floated off to
6282settle out of your reach somewhere far away on some desolate stump.
6283She gazed at the immense expanse of the sea. The island had grown so
6284small that it scarcely looked like a leaf any longer. It looked like
6285the top of a rock which some wave bigger than the rest would cover.
6286Yet in its frailty were all those paths, those terraces, those bedrooms--
6287all those innumberable things. But as, just before sleep, things
6288simplify themselves so that only one of all the myriad details has
6289power to assert itself, so, she felt, looking drowsily at the island,
6290all those paths and terraces and bedrooms were fading and disappearing,
6291and nothing was left but a pale blue censer swinging rhythmically this
6292way and that across her mind. It was a hanging garden; it was a
6293valley, full of birds, and flowers, and antelopes... She was falling
6294asleep.
6295
6296"Come now," said Mr. Ramsay, suddenly shutting his book.
6297
6298Come where? To what extraordinary adventure? She woke with a start.
6299To land somewhere, to climb somewhere? Where was he leading them? For
6300after his immense silence the words startled them. But it was absurd.
6301He was hungry, he said. It was time for lunch. Besides, look, he
6302said. "There's the Lighthouse. We're almost there."
6303
6304"He's doing very well," said Macalister, praising James. "He's keeping
6305her very steady."
6306
6307But his father never praised him, James thought grimly.
6308
6309Mr. Ramsay opened the parcel and shared out the sandwiches among them.
6310Now he was happy, eating bread and cheese with these fishermen. He
6311would have liked to live in a cottage and lounge about in the harbour
6312spitting with the other old men, James thought, watching him slice his
6313cheese into thin yellow sheets with his penknife.
6314
6315This is right, this is it, Cam kept feeling, as she peeled her hard-
6316boiled egg. Now she felt as she did in the study when the old men were
6317reading THE TIMES. Now I can go on thinking whatever I like, and I
6318shan't fall over a precipice or be drowned, for there he is, keeping
6319his eye on me, she thought.
6320
6321At the same time they were sailing so fast along by the rocks that it
6322was very exciting--it seemed as if they were doing two things at once;
6323they were eating their lunch here in the sun and they were also making
6324for safety in a great storm after a shipwreck. Would the water last?
6325Would the provisions last? she asked herself, telling herself a story
6326but knowing at the same time what was the truth.
6327
6328They would soon be out of it, Mr. Ramsay was saying to old Macalister;
6329but their children would see some strange things. Macalister said he
6330was seventy-five last March; Mr. Ramsay was seventy-one. Macalister said
6331he had never seen a doctor; he had never lost a tooth. And that's the
6332way I'd like my children to live--Cam was sure that her father was
6333thinking that, for he stopped her throwing a sandwich into the sea and
6334told her, as if he were thinking of the fishermen and how they lived,
6335that if she did not want it she should put it back in the parcel. She
6336should not waste it. He said it so wisely, as if he knew so well all
6337the things that happened in the world that she put it back at once, and
6338then he gave her, from his own parcel, a gingerbread nut, as if he were
6339a great Spanish gentleman, she thought, handing a flower to a lady at a
6340window (so courteous his manner was). He was shabby, and simple,
6341eating bread and cheese; and yet he was leading them on a great
6342expedition where, for all she knew, they would be drowned.
6343
6344"That was where she sunk," said Macalister's boy suddenly.
6345
6346Three men were drowned where we are now, the old man said. He had seen
6347them clinging to the mast himself. And Mr. Ramsay taking a look at the
6348spot was about, James and Cam were afraid, to burst out:
6349
6350
6351But I beneath a rougher sea,
6352
6353
6354and if he did, they could not bear it; they would shriek aloud; they
6355could not endure another explosion of the passion that boiled in him;
6356but to their surprise all he said was "Ah" as if he thought to himself.
6357But why make a fuss about that? Naturally men are drowned in a storm,
6358but it is a perfectly straightforward affair, and the depths of the sea
6359(he sprinkled the crumbs from his sandwich paper over them) are only
6360water after all. Then having lighted his pipe he took out his watch.
6361He looked at it attentively; he made, perhaps, some mathematical
6362calculation. At last he said, triumphantly:
6363
6364"Well done!" James had steered them like a born sailor.
6365
6366There! Cam thought, addressing herself silently to James. You've got
6367it at last. For she knew that this was what James had been wanting,
6368and she knew that now he had got it he was so pleased that he would not
6369look at her or at his father or at any one. There he sat with his hand
6370on the tiller sitting bolt upright, looking rather sulky and frowning
6371slightly. He was so pleased that he was not going to let anybody share
6372a grain of his pleasure. His father had praised him. They must think
6373that he was perfectly indifferent. But you've got it now, Cam thought.
6374
6375They had tacked, and they were sailing swiftly, buoyantly on long
6376rocking waves which handed them on from one to another with an
6377extraordinary lilt and exhilaration beside the reef. On the left a
6378row of rocks showed brown through the water which thinned and
6379became greener and on one, a higher rock, a wave incessantly broke
6380and spurted a little column of drops which fell down in a shower. One
6381could hear the slap of the water and the patter of falling drops and a
6382kind of hushing and hissing sound from the waves rolling and gambolling
6383and slapping the rocks as if they were wild creatures who were
6384perfectly free and tossed and tumbled and sported like this for ever.
6385
6386Now they could see two men on the Lighthouse, watching them and making
6387ready to meet them.
6388
6389Mr. Ramsay buttoned his coat, and turned up his trousers. He took the
6390large, badly packed, brown paper parcel which Nancy had got ready and
6391sat with it on his knee. Thus in complete readiness to land he sat
6392looking back at the island. With his long-sighted eyes perhaps he
6393could see the dwindled leaf-like shape standing on end on a plate of
6394gold quite clearly. What could he see? Cam wondered. It was all a
6395blur to her. What was he thinking now? she wondered. What was it he
6396sought, so fixedly, so intently, so silently? They watched him, both
6397of them, sitting bareheaded with his parcel on his knee staring and
6398staring at the frail blue shape which seemed like the vapour of
6399something that had burnt itself away. What do you want? they both
6400wanted to ask. They both wanted to say, Ask us anything and we will
6401give it you. But he did not ask them anything. He sat and looked at
6402the island and he might be thinking, We perished, each alone, or he
6403might be thinking, I have reached it. I have found it; but he said
6404nothing.
6405
6406Then he put on his hat.
6407
6408"Bring those parcels," he said, nodding his head at the things Nancy
6409had done up for them to take to the Lighthouse. "The parcels for the
6410Lighthouse men," he said. He rose and stood in the bow of the boat,
6411very straight and tall, for all the world, James thought, as if he were
6412saying, "There is no God," and Cam thought, as if he were leaping into
6413space, and they both rose to follow him as he sprang, lightly like a
6414young man, holding his parcel, on to the rock.
6415
6416
641714
6418
6419
6420"He must have reached it," said Lily Briscoe aloud, feeling suddenly
6421completely tired out. For the Lighthouse had become almost invisible,
6422had melted away into a blue haze, and the effort of looking at it and
6423the effort of thinking of him landing there, which both seemed to be
6424one and the same effort, had stretched her body and mind to the utmost.
6425Ah, but she was relieved. Whatever she had wanted to give him, when he
6426left her that morning, she had given him at last.
6427
6428"He has landed," she said aloud. "It is finished." Then, surging up,
6429puffing slightly, old Mr. Carmichael stood beside her, looking like an
6430old pagan god, shaggy, with weeds in his hair and the trident (it was
6431only a French novel) in his hand. He stood by her on the edge of the
6432lawn, swaying a little in his bulk and said, shading his eyes with his
6433hand: "They will have landed," and she felt that she had been right.
6434They had not needed to speak. They had been thinking the same things
6435and he had answered her without her asking him anything. He stood
6436there as if he were spreading his hands over all the weakness and
6437suffering of mankind; she thought he was surveying, tolerantly and
6438compassionately, their final destiny. Now he has crowned the occasion,
6439she thought, when his hand slowly fell, as if she had seen him let fall
6440from his great height a wreath of violets and asphodels which,
6441fluttering slowly, lay at length upon the earth.
6442
6443Quickly, as if she were recalled by something over there, she turned to
6444her canvas. There it was--her picture. Yes, with all its greens and
6445blues, its lines running up and across, its attempt at something. It
6446would be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be destroyed. But
6447what did that matter? she asked herself, taking up her brush again.
6448She looked at the steps; they were empty; she looked at her canvas; it
6449was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a
6450second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was
6451finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue,
6452I have had my vision.
6453
6454
6455
6456THE END
6457
6458
6459
6460
6461
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