as she claimed her help (for Lily should bear her

out she talked no more about her dairies than

her husband did about his boots -- he would talk

 

by the hour about his boots) of the two, Lily at

forty will be the better.  There was in Lily a thread

of something; a flare of something; something of

her own which Mrs. Ramsay liked very much indeed,

but no man would, she feared.  Obviously, not,

unless it were a much older man, like William

Bankes. But then he cared, well, Mrs. Ramsay

sometimes thought that he cared, since his wife's

death, perhaps for her.  He was not " in love " of

course; it was one of those unclassified affections

of which there are so many.  Oh, but nonsense, she

thought; William must marry Lily.  They have so

many things in common.  Lily is so fond of flowers.

They are both cold and aloof and rather self-sufficing.

She must arrange for them to take a long walk together.

 

     Foolishly, she had set them opposite each other.

That could be remedied tomorrow.  If it were fine,

they should go for a picnic.  Everything seemed possible.

Everything seemed right.  Just now (but this

cannot last, she thought, dissociating herself from

the moment while they were all talking about boots)

just now she had reached security; she hovered like

a hawk suspended; like a flag floated in an element

of joy which filled every nerve of her body fully

and sweetly, not noisily, solemnly rather, for it

arose, she thought, looking at them all eating there,

 

from husband and children and friends; all of which

rising in this profound stillness (she was helping

William Bankes to one very small piece more, and

peered into the depths of the earthenware pot)

seemed now for no special reason to stay there like

a smoke, like a fume rising upwards, holding them

safe together.  Nothing need be said; nothing could

be said.  There it was, all round them.  It partook,

she felt, carefully helping Mr. Bankes to a specially

tender piece, of eternity; as she had already felt

about something different once before that afternoon;

there is a coherence in things, a stability;

something, she meant, is immune from change,

and shines out (she glanced at the window with its

ripple of reflected lights) in the face of the flowing,

the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby; so that again

tonight she had the feeling she had had once today,

already, of peace, of rest.  Of such moments, she

thought, the thing is made that endures.

 

     " Yes, " she assured William Bankes, " there is

plenty for everybody. "

 

     " Andrew, " she said, " hold your plate lower, or

I shall spill it. "  (The B$oeuf en Daube was a perfect

triumph.)  Here, she felt, putting the spoon down,

was the still space that lies about the heart of things,

where one could move or rest; could wait now (they

were all helped) listening; could then, like a hawk

 

which lapses suddenly from its high station, flaunt

and sink on laughter easily, resting her whole weight

upon what at the other end of the table her husband

was saying about the square root of one thousand

two hundred and fifty-three.  That was the number,

it seemed, on his watch.

 

     What did it all mean?  To this day she had no

notion.  A square root?  What was that?  Her sons

knew.  She leant on them; on cubes and square

roots; that was what they were talking about now;

on Voltaire and Madame de Stael; on the character

of Napoleon; on the French system of land tenure;

on Lord Rosebery; on Creevey's Memoirs: she let it

uphold her and sustain her, this admirable fabric

of the masculine intelligence, which ran up and

down, crossed this way and that, like iron girders

spanning the swaying fabric, upholding the world,

so that she could trust herself to it utterly, even shut

her eyes, or flicker them for a moment, as a child

staring up from its pillow winks at the myriad

layers of the leaves of a tree.  Then she woke up.  It

was still being fabricated.  William Bankes was praising

the Waverly novels.

 

     He read one of them every six months, he said.

And why should that make Charles Tansley angry?

He rushed in (all, thought Mrs. Ramsay, because

Prue will not be nice to him) and denounced the

 

Waverly novels when he knew nothing about it,

nothing about it whatsoever, Mrs. Ramsay thought,

observing him rather than listening to what he

said.  She could see how it was from his manner --

he wanted to assert himself, and so it would always

be with him till he got his Professorship or married

his wife, and so need not be always saying, " I -- I --

I. "  For that was what his criticism of poor Sir Walter,

or perhaps it was Jane Austen, amounted to.

" I --- I --- I. "  He was thinking of himself and the

impression he was making, as she could tell by the

sound of his voice, and his emphasis and his

uneasiness.  Success would be good for him.  At any rate

they were off again.  Now she need not listen.  It could

not last, she knew, but at the moment her eyes were

so clear that they seemed to go round the table

unveiling each of these people, and their thoughts and

their feelings, without effort like a light stealing

under water so that its ripples and the reeds in it and

the minnows balancing themselves, and the sudden

silent trout are all lit up hanging, trembling.  So she

saw them; she heard them; but whatever they said

had also this quality, as if what they said was like

the movement of a trout when, at the same time, one

can see the ripple and the gravel, something to the

right, something to the left; and the whole is held

together; for whereas in active life she would be

 

netting and separating one thing from another; she

would be saying she liked the Waverly novels or

had not read them; she would be urging herself

forward; now she said nothing.  For the moment, she

hung suspended.

 

     " Ah, but how long do you think it'll last? " said

somebody.  It was as if she had antennae trembling

out from her, which, intercepting certain sentences,

forced them upon her attention.  This was one of

them.  She scented danger for her husband.  A question

like that would lead, almost certainly, to something

being said which reminded him of his own

failure. How long would he be read -- he would think

at once.  William Bankes (who was entirely free

from all such vanity) laughed, and said he attached

no importance to changes in fashion.  Who could tell

what was going to last -- in literature or indeed in

anything else?

 

     " Let us enjoy what we do enjoy, " he said.  His

integrity seemed to Mrs. Ramsay quite admirable.

He never seemed for a moment to think, But how

does this affect me?  But then if you had the other

temperament, which must have praise, which must

have encouragement, naturally you began (and she

knew that Mr. Ramsay was beginning) to be uneasy;

to want somebody to say, Oh, but your work

will last, Mr. Ramsay, or something like that.  He

 

showed his uneasiness quite clearly now by saying,

with some irritation, that, anyhow, Scott (or was it

Shakespeare ?) would last him his lifetime.  He said

it irritably.  Everybody, she thought, felt a little

uncomfortable, without knowing why.  Then Minta

Doyle, whose instinct was fine, said bluffly, absurdly,

that she did not believe that any one really enjoyed

reading Shakespeare.  Mr. Ramsay said grimly (but

his mind was turned away again) that very few

people liked it as much as they said they did.  But,

he added, there is considerable merit in some of the

plays nevertheless, and Mrs. Ramsay saw that it

would be all right for the moment anyhow; he would

laugh at Minta, and she, Mrs. Ramsay saw, realising

his extreme anxiety about himself, would, in her

own way, see that he was taken care of, and

praise him, somehow or other.  But she wished it

was not necessary: perhaps it was her fault that it

was necessary. Anyhow, she was free now to listen

to what Paul Rayley was trying to say about books

one had read as a boy.  They lasted, he said.  He

had read some of Tolstoi at school.  There was one

he always remembered, but he had forgotten the

name. Russian names were impossible, said Mrs.

Ramsay. " Vronsky, " said Paul.  He remembered that

because he always thought it such a good name for

a villain.  " Vronsky, " said Mrs. Ramsay; " Oh, Anna#

 

Karenina#, " but that did not take them very far;

books were not in their line.  No, Charles Tansley

would put them both right in a second about books,

but it was all so mixed up with, Am I saying the

right thing?  Am I making a good impression?  that,

after all, one knew more about him than about Tolstoi,

whereas, what Paul said was about the thing,

simply, not himself, nothing else.  Like all stupid

people, he had a kind of modesty too, a consideration

for what you were feeling, which, once in a

way at least, she found attractive.  Now he was

thinking, not about himself, or about Tolstoi, but

whether she was cold, whether she felt a draught,

whether she would like a pear.

 

     No, she said, she did not want a pear.  Indeed

she had been keeping guard over the dish of fruit

(without realising it)  jealously, hoping that nobody

would touch it.  Her eyes had been going in and out

among the curves and shadows of the fruit, among

the rich purples of the lowland grapes, then over

the horny ridge of the shell, putting a yellow against

a purple, a curved shape against a round shape,

without knowing why she did it, or why, every time

she did it, she felt more and more serene; until, oh,

what a pity that they should do it -- a hand reached

out, took a pear, and spoilt the whole thing. In

sympathy she looked at Rose. She looked at Rose

 

sitting between Jasper and Prue. How odd that one's

child should do that!

 

     How odd to see them sitting there, in a row,

her children, Jasper, Rose, Prue, Andrew, almost

silent, but with some joke of their own going on,

she guessed, from the twitching at their lips.  It was

something quite apart from everything else, something

they were hoarding up to laugh over in their

own room.  It was not about their father, she hoped.

No, she thought not.  What was it, she wondered,

sadly rather, for it seemed to her that they would

laugh when she was not there.  There was all that

hoarded behind those rather set, still, mask-like

faces, for they did not join in easily; they were like

watchers, surveyors, a little raised or set apart from

the grown-up people.  But when she looked at Prue

tonight, she saw that this was not now quite true

of her.  She was just beginning, just moving, just

descending.  The faintest light was on her face, as

if the glow of Minta opposite, some excitement,

some anticipation of happiness was reflected in

her, as if the sun of the love of men and women

rose over the rim of the table-cloth, and without

knowing what it was she bent towards it and greeted

it.  She kept looking at Minta, shyly, yet curiously,

so that Mrs. Ramsay looked from one to the other and

said, speaking to Prue in her own mind, You

 

will be as happy as she is one of these days.  You

will be much happier, she added, because you are

my daughter, she meant; her own daughter must

be happier than other people's daughters.  But dinner

was over.  It was time to go.  They were only playing

with things on their plates.  She would wait until

they had done laughing at some story her husband

was telling.  He was having a joke with Minta about

a bet.  Then she would get up.

 

     She liked Charles Tansley, she thought, suddenly;

she liked his laugh.  She liked him for being so angry

with Paul and Minta.  She liked his awkwardness.

There was a lot in that young man after all.  And

Lily, she thought, putting her napkin beside her

plate, she always has some joke of her own.  One

need never bother about Lily.  She waited.  She

tucked her napkin under the edge of her plate.

Well, were they done now?  No.  That story had led

to another story.  Her husband was in great spirits

tonight, and wishing, she supposed, to make it all

right with old Augustus after that scene about the

soup, had drawn him in -- they were telling stories

about some one they had both known at college.  She

looked at the window in which the candle flames

burnt brighter now that the panes were black, and

looking at that outside the voices came to her very

strangely, as if they were voices at a service in

 

a cathedral, for she did not listen to the words.

The sudden bursts of laughter and then one voice

(Minta's) speaking alone, reminded her of men and

boys crying out the Latin words of a service in

some Roman Catholic cathedral.  She waited.  Her

husband spoke.  He was repeating something, and

she knew it was poetry from the rhythm and the

ring of exultation, and melancholy in his voice:

 

   Come out and climb the garden path,

     Luriana Lurilee.

   The China rose is all abloom and buzzing with the yellow

      bee.

 

 

     The words (she was looking at the window)

sounded as if they were floating like flowers on

water out there, cut off from them all, as if no one

had said them, but they had come into existence

of themselves.

 

     " And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to

be are full of trees and changing leaves. "  She did

not know what they meant, but, like music, the

words seemed to be spoken by her own voice, outside

her self, saying quite easily and naturally what

had been in her mind the whole evening while she

said different things.  She knew, without looking

round, that every one at the table was listening to the

voice saying:

 

 

   I wonder if it seems to you,

     Luriana, Lurilee

 

with the same sort of relief and pleasure that she

had, as if this were, at last, the natural thing to say,

this were their own voice speaking.

 

     But the voice had stopped.  She looked round.  She

made herself get up.  Augustus Carmichael had risen

and, holding his table napkin so that it looked like

a long white robe he stood chanting:

 

   To see the Kings go riding by

   Over lawn and daisy lea

   With their palm leaves and cedar sheaves,

     Luriana, Lurilee,

 

and as she passed him, he turned slightly towards

her repeating the last words:

 

     Luriana, Lurilee

 

and bowed to her as if he did her homage.  Without

knowing why, she felt that he liked her better

than he ever had done before; and with a feeling of

relief and gratitude she returned his bow and passed

through the door which he held open for her.

 

     It was necessary now to carry everything a step

further.  With her foot on the threshold she waited a

moment longer in a scene which was vanishing even

as she looked, and then, as she moved and took

 

Minta's arm and left the room, it changed, it shaped

itself differently; it had become, she knew, giving

one last look at it over her shoulder, already the

past.

 

 

     As usual, Lily thought.  There was always something

that had to be done at that precise moment,

something that Mrs. Ramsay had decided for

reasons of her own to do instantly, it might be with

every one standing about making jokes, as now, not

being able to decide whether they were going into

the smoking-room, into the drawing-room, up to the

attics.  Then one saw Mrs. Ramsay in the midst

of this hubbub standing there with Minta's arm in

hers, bethink her, " Yes, it is time for that now, "

and so make off at once with an air of secrecy to

do something alone.  And directly she went a sort of

disintegration set in; they wavered about, went different

ways, Mr. Bankes took Charles Tansley by

the arm and went off to finish on the terrace the

discussion they had begun at dinner about politics,

thus giving a turn to the whole poise of the evening,

making the weight fall in a different direction, as if,

Lily thought, seeing them go, and hearing a word or

two about the policy of the Labour Party, they had

 

gone up on to the bridge of the ship and were taking

their bearings; the change from poetry to politics

struck her like that; so Mr. Bankes and Charles

Tansley went off, while the others stood looking at

Mrs. Ramsay going upstairs in the lamplight alone.

Where, Lily wondered, was she going so quickly?

 

     Not that she did in fact run or hurry; she went

indeed rather slowly.  She felt rather inclined just

for a moment to stand still after all that chatter,

and pick out one particular thing; the thing that

mattered; to detach it; separate it off; clean it of

all the emotions and odds and ends of things,

and so hold it before her, and bring it to the tribunal

where, ranged about in conclave, sat the judges she

had set up to decide these things.  Is it good, is it

bad, is it right or wrong?  Where are we all

going to?  and so on.  So she righted herself after

the shock of the event, and quite unconsciously and

incongruously, used the branches of the elm trees

outside to help her to stabilise her position.  Her

world was changing: they were still.  The event had

given her a sense of movement.  All must be in

order.  She must get that right and that right, she

thought, insensibly approving of the dignity of the

trees' stillness, and now again of the superb upward

rise (like the beak of a ship up a wave) of the elm

branches as the wind raised them.  For it was windy

 

(she stood a moment to look out).  It was windy, so

that the leaves now and then brushed open a star,

and the stars themselves seemed to be shaking and

darting light and trying to flash out between the

edges of the leaves.  Yes, that was done then, accomplished;

and as with all things done, became

solemn.  Now one thought of it, cleared of chatter

and emotion, it seemed always to have been, only

was shown now and so being shown, struck everything

into stability.  They would, she thought, going

on again, however long they lived, come back to this

night; this moon; this wind; this house: and to

her too.  It flattered her, where she was most

susceptible of flattery, to think how, wound about in

their hearts, however long they lived she would be

woven; and this, and this, and this, she thought,

going upstairs, laughing, but affectionately, at the

sofa on the landing (her mother's); at the rocking-chair

(her father's); at the map of the Hebrides.  All

that would be revived again in the lives of Paul and

Minta; " the Rayleys " -- she tried the new name

over; and she felt, with her hand on the nursery

door, that community of feeling with other people

which emotion gives as if the walls of partition had

become so thin that practically (the feeling was one

of relief and happiness) it was all one stream, and

chairs, tables, maps, were hers, were theirs, it did

 

not matter whose, and Paul and Minta would carry

it on when she was dead.

 

     She turned the handle, firmly, lest it should

squeak, and went in, pursing her lips slightly, as

if to remind herself that she must not speak aloud.

But directly she came in she saw, with annoyance,

that the precaution was not needed.  The children

were not asleep.  It was most annoying.  Mildred

should be more careful.  There was James wide

awake and Cam sitting bolt upright, and Mildred

out of bed in her bare feet, and it was almost eleven

and they were all talking.  What was the matter?

It was that horrid skull again.  She had told Mildred

to move it, but Mildred, of course, had forgotten,

and now there was Cam wide awake, and James

wide awake quarreling when they ought to have

been asleep hours ago.  What had possessed Edward

to send them this horrid skull?  She had been so

foolish as to let them nail it up there.  It was nailed fast,

Mildred said, and Cam couldn't go to sleep with it

in the room, and James screamed if she touched it.

 

     Then Cam must go to sleep (it had great horns

said Cam) -- must go to sleep and dream of lovely

palaces, said Mrs. Ramsay, sitting down on the

bed by her side.  She could see the horns, Cam said,

all over the room.  It was true.  Wherever they put

 

the light (and James could not sleep without a

light) there was always a shadow somewhere.

 

     " But think, Cam, it's only an old pig, " said Mrs.

Ramsay, " a nice black pig like the pigs at the

farm. "  But Cam thought it was a horrid thing,

branching at her all over the room.

 

     " Well then, " said Mrs. Ramsay, " we will cover

it up, " and they all watched her go to the chest of

drawers, and open the little drawers quickly one

after another, and not seeing anything that would

do, she quickly took her own shawl off and wound

it round the skull, round and round and round, and

then she came back to Cam and laid her head almost

flat on the pillow beside Cam's and said how lovely

it looked now; how the fairies would love it; it was

like a bird's nest; it was like a beautiful mountain

such as she had seen abroad, with valleys and

flowers and bells ringing and birds singing and little

goats and antelopes and.....  She could see the

words echoing as she spoke them rhythmically in

Cam's mind, and Cam was repeating after her how

it was like a mountain, a bird's nest, a garden, and

there were little antelopes, and her eyes were opening

and shutting, and Mrs. Ramsay went on speaking

still more monotonously, and more rhythmically and

more nonsensically, how she must shut her eyes

and go to sleep and dream of mountains and valleys

 

and stars falling and parrots and antelopes and

gardens, and everything lovely, she said, raising her

head very slowly and speaking more and more

mechanically, until she sat upright and saw that

Cam was asleep.

 

     Now, she whispered, crossing over to his bed,

James must go to sleep too, for see, she said, the

boar's skull was still there; they had not touched it;

they had done just what he wanted; it was there

quite unhurt.  He made sure that the skull was still

there under the shawl.  But he wanted to ask her

something more.  Would they go to the Lighthouse

tomorrow?

 

     No, not tomorrow, she said, but soon, she

promised him; the next fine day.  He was very good.  He

lay down.  She covered him up.  But he would never

forget, she knew, and she felt angry with Charles

Tansley, with her husband, and with herself, for

she had raised his hopes.  Then feeling for her shawl

and remembering that she had wrapped it round the

boar's skull, she got up, and pulled the window

down another inch or two, and heard the wind, and

got a breath of the perfectly indifferent chill night

air and murmured good night to Mildred and left

the room and let the tongue of the door slowly

lengthen in the lock and went out.

 

     She hoped he would not bang his books on the

 

floor above their heads, she thought, still thinking

how annoying Charles Tansley was.  For neither of

them slept well; they were excitable children, and

since he said things like that about the Lighthouse,

it seemed to her likely that he would knock a pile of

books over, just as they were going to sleep,

clumsily sweeping them off the table with his elbow.

For she supposed that he had gone upstairs to work.

Yet he looked so desolate; yet she would feel relieved

when he went; yet she would see that he was

better treated tomorrow; yet he was admirable with

her husband; yet his manners certainly wanted

improving; yet she liked his laugh -- thinking this,

as she came downstairs, she noticed that she could

now see the moon itself through the staircase window --

the yellow harvest moon -- and turned, and they saw

her, standing above them on the stairs.

 

     " That's my mother, " thought Prue.  Yes; Minta

should look at her; Paul Rayley should look at her.

That is the thing itself, she felt, as if there were

only one person like that in the world; her mother.

And, from having been quite grown up, a moment

before, talking with the others, she became a child

again, and what they had been doing was a game,

and would her mother sanction their game, or condemn

it, she wondered.  And thinking what a chance it

was for Minta and Paul and Lily to see her, and

 

feeling what an extraordinary stroke of fortune it

was for her, to have her, and how she would never

grow up and never leave home, she said, like a

child, " We thought of going down to the beach to

watch the waves. "

 

     Instantly, for no reason at all, Mrs. Ramsay

became like a girl of twenty, full of gaiety.  A mood

of revelry suddenly took possession of her.  Of

course they must go; of course they must go, she

cried, laughing; and running down the last three or

four steps quickly, she began turning from one to

the other and laughing and drawing Minta's wrap

round her and saying she only wished she could

come too, and would they be very late, and had

any of them got a watch?

 

     " Yes, Paul has, " said Minta.  Paul slipped a

beautiful gold watch out of a little wash-leather case

to show her.  And as he held it in the palm of his

hand before her, he felt, " She knows all about it.

I need not say anything. "  He was saying to her as

he showed her the watch, " I've done it, Mrs. Ramsay.

I owe it all to you. "  And seeing the gold watch

lying in his hand, Mrs. Ramsay felt, How extraordinarily

lucky Minta is!  She is marrying a man who has a gold

watch in a wash-leather bag!

 

     " How I wish I could come with you! " she cried.

But she was withheld by something so strong that

 

she never even thought of asking herself what it was.

Of course it was impossible for her to go with

them.  But she would have liked to go, had it not

been for the other thing, and tickled by the absurdity

of her thought (how lucky to marry a man with a

wash-leather bag for his watch)  she went with a

smile on her lips into the other room, where her

husband sat reading.

 

 

     Of course, she said to herself, coming into the room,

she had to come here to get something she wanted.

First she wanted to sit down in a particular

chair under a particular lamp.  But she wanted something

more, though she did not know, could not think

what it was that she wanted. She looked at her husband

(taking up her stocking and beginning to

knit), and saw that he did not want to be interrupted --

that was clear.  He was reading something

that moved him very much.  He was half smiling and

then she knew he was controlling his emotion.  He

was tossing the pages over.  He was acting it --   perhaps

he was thinking himself the person in the book.

She wondered what book it was.  Oh, it was one of

old Sir Walter's she saw, adjusting the shade of her

lamp so that the light fell on her knitting.  For

 

Charles Tansley had been saying (she looked up

as if she expected to hear the crash of books on

the floor above), had been saying that people don't

read Scott any more.  Then her husband thought,

" That's what they'll say of me; " so he went and got

one of those books.  And if he came to the conclusion

" That's true " what Charles Tansley said, he would

accept it about Scott.  (She could see that he was

weighing, considering, putting this with that as he

read.)  But not about himself.  He was always uneasy

about himself.  That troubled her.  He would always

be worrying about his own books -- will they be read,

are they good, why aren't they better, what do people

think of me?  Not liking to think of him so,

and wondering if they had guessed at dinner why

he suddenly became irritable when they talked

about fame and books lasting, wondering if the

children were laughing at that, she twitched the stocking

out, and all the fine gravings came drawn

with steel instruments about her lips and forehead,

and she grew still like a tree which has been tossing

and quivering and now, when the breeze falls,

settles, leaf by leaf, into quiet.

 

     It didn't matter, any of it, she thought.  A great

man, a great book, fame -- who could tell?  She knew

nothing about it.  But it was his way with him, his

truthfulness -- for instance at dinner she had been

 

thinking quite instinctively, If only he would speak!

She had complete trust in him.  And dismissing all

this, as one passes in diving now a weed, now a

straw, now a bubble, she felt again, sinking deeper,

as she had felt in the hall when the others were talking,

There is something I want -- something I

have come to get, and she fell deeper and deeper

without knowing quite what it was, with her eyes

closed.  And she waited a little, knitting, wondering,

and slowly rose those words they had said at dinner,

" the China rose is all abloom and buzzing with the

honey bee, " began washing from side to side of her

mind rhythmically, and as they washed, words, like

little shaded lights, one red, one blue, one yellow, lit

up in the dark of her mind, and seemed leaving their

perches up there to fly across and across, or to cry

out and to be echoed; so she turned and felt on the

table beside her for a book.

 

   And all the lives we ever lived

   And all the lives to be,

   Are full of trees and changing leaves,

 

she murmured, sticking her needles into the stocking.

And she opened the book and began reading

here and there at random, and as she did so, she

felt that she was climbing backwards, upwards,

shoving her way up under petals that curved over

 

her, so that she only knew this is white, or this is

red.  She did not know at first what the words meant

at all.

 

   Steer, hither steer your winged pines, all beaten Mariners

 

she read and turned the page, swinging herself,

zigzagging this way and that, from one line to

another as from one branch to another, from one

red and white flower to another, until a little sound

roused her -- her husband slapping his thighs.  Their

eyes met for a second; but they did not want to

speak to each other.  They had nothing to say, but

something seemed, nevertheless, to go from him to

her.  It was the life, it was the power of it, it was

the tremendous humour, she knew, that made him

slap his thighs.  Don't interrupt me, he seemed to be

saying, don't say anything; just sit there.  And he

went on reading.  His lips twitched.  It filled him.  It

fortified him.  He clean forgot all the little rubs and

digs of the evening, and how it bored him

unutterably to sit still while people ate and drank

interminably, and his being so irritable with his wife

and so touchy and minding when they passed his

books over as if they didn't exist at all.  But now,

he felt, it didn't matter a damn who reached Z (if

thought ran like an alphabet from A to Z).  Somebody

would reach it -- if not he, then another.  This

 

man's strength and sanity, his feeling for straight

forward simple things, these fishermen, the poor old

crazed creature in Mucklebackit's cottage made him

feel so vigorous, so relieved of something that he felt

roused and triumphant and could not choke back

his tears.  Raising the book a little to hide his face,

he let them fall and shook his head from side to side

and forgot himself completely (but not one or

two reflections about morality and French novels

and English novels and Scott's hands being tied but

his view perhaps being as true as the other view),

forgot his own bothers and failures completely in

poor Steenie's drowning and Mucklebackit's sorrow

(that was Scott at his best)  and the astonishing

delight and feeling of vigour that it gave him.

 

  Well, let them improve upon that, he thought as

he finished the chapter. He felt that he had been

arguing with somebody, and had got the better of

him. They could not improve upon that, whatever

they might say; and his own position became more

secure. The lovers were fiddlesticks, he thought,

collecting it all in his mind again. That's fiddlesticks,

that's first-rate, he thought, putting one thing beside

another. But he must read it again. He could not

remember the whole shape of the thing. He had to

keep his judgement in suspense. So he returned to

the other thought -- if young men did not care for

 

this, naturally they did not care for him either. One

ought not to complain, thought Mr. Ramsay, trying

to stifle his desire to complain to his wife that young

men did not admire him. But he was determined; he

would not bother her again. Here he looked at her

reading. She looked very peaceful, reading. He liked

to think that every one had taken themselves off and

that he and she were alone. The whole of life did

not consist in going to bed with a woman, he

thought, returning to Scott and Balzac, to the

English novel and the French novel.

 

  Mrs. Ramsay raised her head and like a person

in a light sleep seemed to say that if he wanted her

to wake she would, she really would, but otherwise,

might she go on sleeping, just a little longer, just a

little longer ? She was climbing up those branches,

this way and that, laying hands on one flower and

then another.

 

  " Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose, " she

read, and so reading she was ascending, she felt, on

to the top, on to the summit. How satisfying! How

restful! All the odds and ends of the day stuck to

this magnet; her mind felt swept, felt clean. And

then there it was, suddenly entire; she held it in her

hands, beautiful and reasonable, clear and complete,

the essence sucked out of life and held rounded

here -- the sonnet.

 

 

  But she was becoming conscious of her husband

looking at her. He was smiling at her, quizzically,

as if he were ridiculing her gently for being asleep

in broad daylight, but at the same time he was

thinking, Go on reading. You don't look sad now, he

thought. And he wondered what she was reading,

and exaggerated her ignorance, her simplicity, for he

liked to think that she was not clever, not book-learned

at all. He wondered if she understood what

she was reading. Probably not, he thought. She was

astonishingly beautiful. Her beauty seemed to him,

if that were possible, to increase

       Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,

       As with your shadow I with these did play,

she finished.

 

  " Well? " she said, echoing his smile dreamily,

looking up from her book.

 

       As with your shadow I with these did play,

she murmured, putting the book on the table.

 

  What had happened, she wondered, as she took up

her knitting, since she had seen him alone? She

remembered dressing, and seeing the moon; Andrew

holding his plate too high at dinner; being depressed

by something William had said; the birds in the

trees; the sofa on the landing; the children being

 

awake; Charles Tansley waking them with his

books falling -- oh, no, that she had invented; and

Paul having a wash-leather case for his watch.

Which should she tell him about?

 

  " They're engaged, " she said, beginning to knit,

" Paul and Minta. "

 

  " So I guessed, " he said. There was nothing very

much to be said about it. Her mind was still going

up and down, up and down with the poetry; he was

still feeling very vigorous, very forthright, after

reading about Steenie's funeral. So they sat silent.

Then she became aware that she wanted him to say

something.

 

  Anything, anything, she thought, going on with

her knitting. Anything will do.

 

  " How nice it would be to marry a man with a

wash-leather bag for his watch, " she said, for that

was the sort of joke they had together.

 

  He snorted. He felt about this engagement as

he always felt about any engagement; the girl is

much too good for that young man. Slowly it came

into her head, why is it then that one wants people

to marry? What was the value, the meaning of

things? (Every word they said now would be true.)

Do say something, she thought, wishing only to

hear his voice. For the shadow, the thing folding

them in was beginning, she felt, to close round her

 

again. Say anything, she begged, looking at him,

as if for help.

 

  He was silent, swinging the compass on his watch-chain

to and fro, and thinking of Scott's novels and

Balzac's novels. But through the crepuscular walls

of their intimacy, for they were drawing together,

involuntarily, coming side by side, quite close, she

could feel his mind like a raised hand shadowing her

mind; and he was beginning, now that her thoughts

took a turn he disliked -- towards this " pessimism "

as he called it -- to fidget, though he said nothing,

raising his hand to his forehead, twisting a lock of

hair, letting it fall again.

 

  " You won't finish that stocking tonight, " he said,

pointing to her stocking. That was what she wanted

-- the asperity in his voice reproving her. If he says

it's wrong to be pessimistic probably it is wrong,

she thought; the marriage will turn out all right.

 

  " No, " she said, flattening the stocking out upon

her knee, " I shan't finish it. "

 

  And what then? For she felt that he was still

looking at her, but that his look had changed. He

wanted something -- wanted the thing she always

found it so difficult to give him; wanted her to tell

him that she loved him. And that, no, she could not

do. He found talking so much easier than she did.

 

He could say things -- she never could. So naturally

it was always he that said the things, and then for

some reason he would mind this suddenly, and

would reproach her. A heartless woman he called

her; she never told him that she loved him. But

it was not so -- it was not so. It was only that she

never could say what she felt. Was there no crumb

on his coat? Nothing she could do for him? Getting

up, she stood at the window with the reddish-brown

stocking in her hands, partly to turn away from him,

partly because she remembered how beautiful it

often is -- the sea at night. But she knew that he had

turned his head as she turned; he was watching her.

She knew that he was thinking , You are more beautiful

than ever. And she felt herself very beautiful.

Will you not tell me just for once that you love me?

He was thinking that, for he was roused, what with

Minta and his book, and its being the end of the

day and their having quarrelled about going to the

Lighthouse. But she could not do it; she could not

say it. Then, knowing that he was watching her,

instead of saying anything she turned, holding her

stocking, and looked at him. And as she looked at

him she began to smile, for though she had not said

a word, he knew, of course he knew, that she loved

him. He could not deny it. And smiling she looked

 

out of the window and said (thinking to herself,

Nothing on earth can equal this happiness) --

  " Yes, you were right. It's going to be wet tomorrow.

You won't be able to go. " And she looked at

him smiling. For she had triumphed again. She had

not said it: yet he knew.

<S II>

 

 

 

  " Well, we must wait for the future to show, "

said Mr. Bankes, coming in from the terrace.

 

  " It's almost too dark to see, " said Andrew,

coming up from the beach.

 

  " One can hardly tell which is the sea and which

is the land, " said Prue.

 

  " Do we leave that light burning? " said Lily as

they took their coats off indoors.

 

  " No, " said Prue, " not if every one's in. "

 

  " Andrew, " she called back, " just put out the

light in the hall. "

 

  One by one the lamps were all extinguished, except

that Mr. Carmichael, who liked to lie awake a

little reading Virgil, kept his candle burning rather

longer than the rest.

 

 

  So with the lamps all put out, the moon sunk,

and a thin rain drumming on the roof a downpouring

of immense darkness began. Nothing, it seemed,

could survive the flood, the profusion of darkness

 

which, creeping in at keyholes and crevices,

stole round window blinds, came into bedrooms,

swallowed up here a jug and basin, there a bowl

of red and yellow dahlias, there the sharp edges

and firm bulk of a chest of drawers. Not only was

furniture confounded; there was scarcely anything

left of body or mind by which one could say, " This is

he " or " This is she. " Sometimes a hand was raised

as if to clutch something or ward off something, or

somebody groaned, or somebody laughed aloud as if

sharing a joke with nothingness.

 

  Nothing stirred in the drawing-room or in the

dining-room or on the staircase. Only through the

rusty hinges and swollen sea-moistened woodwork

certain airs, detached from the body of the wind

(the house was ramshackle after all) crept round

corners and ventured indoors. Almost one might

imagine them, as they entered the drawing-room

questioning and wondering, toying with the flap of

hanging wall-paper, asking, would it hang much

longer, when would it fall? Then smoothly brushing

the walls, they passed on musingly as if asking the

red and yellow roses on the wall-paper whether they

would fade, and questioning (gently, for there was

time at their disposal) the torn letters in the wastepaper

basket, the flowers, the books, all of which

were now open to them and asking, Were they

 

allies? Were they enemies? How long would they

endure?

 

  So some random light directing them with its

pale footfall upon stair and mat, from some uncovered

star, or wandering ship, or the Lighthouse even,

the little airs mounted the staircase and nosed round

bedroom doors. But here surely, they must cease.

Whatever else may perish and disappear, what lies

here is steadfast. Here one might say to those sliding

lights, those fumbling airs that breathe and

bend over the bed itself, here you can neither touch

nor destroy. Upon which, wearily, ghostlily, as if

they had feather-light fingers and the light persistency

of feathers, they would look, once, on the

shut eyes, and the loosely clasping fingers, and fold

their garments wearily and disappear. And so, nosing,

rubbing, they went to the window on the staircase,

to the servants' bedrooms, to the boxes in the

attics; descending, blanched the apples on the dining-room

table, fumbled the petals of roses, tried

the picture on the easel, brushed the mat and blew

a little sand along the floor. At length, desisting, all

ceased together, gathered together, all sighed together;

all together gave off an aimless gust of

lamentation to which some door in the kitchen replied;

swung wide; admitted nothing; and slammed

to.

 

 

    Here Mr. Carmichael, who was reading Virgil,

blew out his candle. It was midnight..

 

 

  But what after all is one night? A short space,

especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so

soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a faint green

quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of the

wave. Night, however, succeeds to night. The winter

holds a pack of them in store and deals them equally,

evenly, with indefatigable fingers. They lengthen;

they darken. Some of them hold aloft clear planets,

plates of brightness. The autumn trees, ravaged as

they are, take on the flash of tattered flags kindling

in the gloom of cool cathedral caves where gold

letters on marble pages describe death in battle and

how bones bleach and burn far away in Indian

sands. The autumn trees gleam in the yellow moonlight,

in  the light of harvest moons, the light which

mellows the energy of labour, and smooths the

stubble, and brings the wave lapping blue to the

shore.

 

  It seemed now as if, touched by human penitence

and all its toil, divine goodness had parted the curtain

and displayed behind it, single, distinct, the

hare erect; the wave falling; the boat rocking;

 

which, did we deserve them, should be ours always.

But alas, divine goodness, twitching the cord, draws

the curtain; it does not please him; he covers his

treasures in a drench of hail, and so breaks them,

so confuses them that it seems impossible that their

calm should ever return or that we should ever compose

from their fragments a perfect whole or read

in the littered pieces the clear words of truth. For

our penitence deserves a glimpse only; our toil

respite only.

 

  The nights now are full of wind and destruction;

the trees plunge and bend and their leaves fly helter

skelter until the lawn is plastered with them and

they lie packed in gutters and choke rain pipes and

scatter damp paths. Also the sea tosses itself and

breaks itself, and should any sleeper fancying that

he might find on the beach an answer to his doubts,

a sharer of his solitude, throw off his bedclothes and

go down by himself to walk on the sand, no image

with semblance of serving and divine promptitude

comes readily to hand bringing the night to order

and making the world reflect the compass of the soul.

The hand dwindles in his hand; the voice bellows in

his ear. Almost it would appear that it is useless

in such confusion to ask the night those questions as

to what, and why, and wherefore, which tempt the

sleeper from his bed to seek an answer.

 

 

      [Mr. Ramsay, stumbling along a passage one dark

morning, stretched his arms out, but Mrs. Ramsay

having died rather suddenly the night before, his

arms, though stretched out, remained empty.]]

 

 

  So with the house empty and the doors locked

and the mattresses rolled round, those stray airs, advance

guards of great armies, blustered in, brushed

bare boards, nibbled and fanned, met nothing in

bedroom or drawing-room that wholly resisted them

but only hangings that flapped, wood that creaked,

the bare legs of tables, saucepans and china already

furred, tarnished, cracked. What people had shed

and left -- a pair of shoes, a shooting cap, some

faded skirts and coats in wardrobes -- those alone

kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated

how once they were filled and animated;

how once hands were busy with hooks and

buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a

face; had held a world hollowed out in which a

figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened, in

came children rushing and tumbling; and went out

again. Now, day after day, light turned, like a

flower reflected in water, its sharp image on the

wall opposite. Only the shadows of the trees, flourishing

 

in the wind, made obeisance on the wall, and

for a moment darkened the pool in which light reflected

itself; or birds, flying, made a soft spot

flutter slowly across the bedroom floor.

 

  So loveliness reigned and stillness, and together

made the shape of loveliness itself, a form from

which life had parted; solitary like a pool at evening,

far distant, seen from a train window, vanishing

so quickly that the pool, pale in the evening,

is scarcely robbed of its solitude, though once seen.

Loveliness and stillness clasped hands in the bedroom,

and among the shrouded jugs and sheeted

chairs even the prying of the wind, and the soft

nose of the clammy sea airs, rubbing, snuffling, iterating,

and reiterating their questions -- " Will you

fade? Will you perish? " -- scarcely disturbed the

peace, the indifference, the air of pure integrity, as

if the question they asked scarcely needed that they

should answer: we remain.

 

  Nothing it seemed could break that image, corrupt

that innocence, or disturb the swaying mantle

of silence which, week after week, in the empty

room, wove into itself the falling cries of birds,

ships hooting, the drone and hum of the fields, a

dog's bark, a man's shout, and folded them round

the house in silence. Once only a board sprang on

the landing; once in the middle of the night with a

 

roar, with a rupture, as after centuries of quiescence,

a rock rends itself from the mountain and hurtles

crashing into the valley, one fold of the shawl

loosened and swung to and fro. Then again peace

descended; and the shadow wavered; light bent to

its own image in adoration on the bedroom wall; and

Mrs. McNab, tearing the veil of silence with hands

that had stood in the wash-tub, grinding it with

boots that had crunched the shingle, came as

directed to open all windows, and dust the bedrooms.

 

 

  As she lurched (for she rolled like a ship at sea)

and leered (for her eyes fell on nothing directly,

but with a sidelong glance that deprecated the scorn

and anger of the world -- she was witless, she knew

it), as she clutched the banisters and hauled herself

upstairs and rolled from room to room, she sang.

Rubbing the glass of the long looking-glass and

leering sideways at her swinging figure a sound

issued from her lips -- something that had been gay

twenty years before on the stage perhaps, had been

hummed and danced to, but now, coming from the

toothless, bonneted, care-taking woman, was robbed

of meaning, was like the voice of witlessness,

humour, persistency itself, trodden down but springing

 

up again, so that as she lurched, dusting, wiping,

she seemed to say how it was one long sorrow and

trouble, how it was getting up and going to bed

again, and bringing things out and putting them

away again. It was not easy or snug this world she

had known for close on seventy years. Bowed down

she was with weariness. How long, she asked,

creaking and groaning on her knees under the bed,

dusting the boards, how long shall it endure? but

hobbled to her feet again, pulled herself up, and

again with her sidelong leer which slipped and

turned aside even from her own face, and her own

sorrows, stood and gaped in the glass, aimlessly

smiling, and began again the old amble and hobble,

taking up mats, putting down china, looking sideways

in the glass, as if, after all, she had her consolations,

as if indeed there twined about her dirge some

incorrigible hope. Visions of joy there must have

been at the wash-tub, say with her children (yet two

had been base-born and one had deserted her), at the

public-house, drinking; turning over scraps in her

drawers. Some cleavage of the dark there must have

been, some channel in the depths of obscurity

through which light enough issued to twist her face

grinning in the glass and make her, turning to her

job again, mumble out the old music hall song.

The mystic, the visionary, walking the beach on a

 

fine night, stirring a puddle, looking at a stone, asking

themselves " What am I, " " What is this? " had

suddenly an answer vouchsafed them: (they could

not say what it was) so that they were warm in the

frost and had comfort in the desert. But Mrs.

McNab continued to drink and gossip as before.

 

 

  The spring without a leaf to toss, bare and bright

like a virgin fierce in her chastity, scornful in her

purity, was laid out on fields wide-eyed and watchful

and entirely careless of what was done or thought

by the beholders. Õ [Prue Pamsay, leaning on her

father's arm, was given in marriage. What, people

said, could have been more fitting? And, they added,

how beautiful she looked!]] å

  As summer neared, as the evenings lengthened,

there came to the wakeful, the hopeful, walking the

beach, stirring the pool, imaginations of the

strangest kind -- of flesh turned to atoms which

drove before the wind, of stars flashing in their

hearts, of cliff, sea, cloud, and sky brought purposely

together to assemble outwardly the scattered

parts of the vision within. In those mirrors, the

minds of men, in those pools of uneasy water, in

which clouds for ever turn and shadows form,

 

dreams persisted, and it was impossible to resist the

strange intimation which every gull, flower, tree,

man and woman, and the white earth itself seemed

to declare (but if questioned at once to withdraw)

that good triumphs, happiness prevails, order rules;

or to resist the extraordinary stimulus to range

hither and thither in search of some absolute good,

some crystal of intensity, remote from the known

pleasures and familiar virtues, something alien to

the processes of domestic life, single, hard, bright,

like a diamond in the sand, which would render the

possessor secure. Moreover, softened and acquiescent,

the spring with her bees humming and

gnats dancing threw her cloak about her, veiled her

eyes, averted her head, and among passing shadows

and flights of small rain seemed to have taken upon

her a knowledge of the sorrows of mankind.

 

  Õ [Prue Ramsay died that summer in some illness

connected with childbirth, which was indeed a

tragedy, people said, everything, they said, had

promised so well.]] å

  And now in the heat of summer the wind sent its

spies about the house again. Flies wove a web in the

sunny rooms; weeds that had grown close to the

glass in the night tapped methodically at the window

pane. When darkness fell, the stroke of the Lighthouse,

which had laid itself with such authority

 

upon the carpet in the darkness, tracing its pattern,

came now in the softer light of spring mixed with

moonlight gliding gently as if it laid its caress and

lingered steathily and looked and came lovingly

again. But in the very lull of this loving caress, as

the long stroke leant upon the bed, the rock was rent

asunder; another fold of the shawl loosened; there

it hung, and swayed. Through the short summer

nights and the long summer days, when the empty

rooms seemed to murmur with the echoes of the

fields and the hum of flies, the long streamer waved

gently, swayed aimlessly; while the sun so striped

and barred the rooms and filled them with yellow

haze that Mrs. McNab, when she broke in and

lurched about, dusting, sweeping, looked like a

tropical fish oaring its way through sun-lanced

waters.

 

  But slumber and sleep though it might there came

later in the summer ominous sounds like the

measured blows of hammers dulled on felt, which,

with their repeated shocks still further loosened the

shawl and cracked the tea-cups. Now and again

some glass tinkled in the cupboard as if a giant

voice had shrieked so loud in its agony that tumblers

stood inside a cupboard vibrated too. Then again

silence fell; and then, night after night, and sometimes

in plain mid-day when the roses were bright

 

and light turned on the wall its shape clearly there

seemed to drop into this silence, this indifference,

this integrity, the thud of something falling.

 

  Õ [A shell exploded. Twenty or thirty young men

were blown up in France, among them Andrew

Ramsay, whose death, mercifully, was instantaneous.]] å

  At that season those who had gone down to pace

the beach and ask of the sea and sky what message

they reported or what vision they affirmed had to

consider among the usual tokens of divine bounty --

the sunset on the sea, the pallor of dawn, the moon

rising, fishing-boats against the moon, and children

making mud pies or pelting each other with handfuls

of grass, something out of harmony with this

jocundity and this serenity. There was the silent apparition

of an ashen-coloured ship for instance,

come, gone; there was a purplish stain upon the

bland surface of the sea as if something had boiled

and bled, invisibly, beneath. This intrusion into a

scene calculated to stir the most sublime reflections

and lead to the most comfortable conclusions stayed

their pacing. It was difficult blandly to overlook

them; to abolish their significance in the landscape;

to continue, as one walked by the sea, to marvel how

beauty outside mirrored beauty within.

 

  Did Nature supplement what man advanced?

 

Did she complete what he began? With equal complacence

she saw his misery, his meanness, and his

torture. That dream, of sharing, completing, of finding

in solitude on the beach an answer, was then but

a reflection in a mirror, and the mirror itself was

but the surface glassiness which forms in quiescence

when the nobler powers sleep beneath? Impatient,

despairing yet loth to go (for beauty offers her

lures, has her consolations), to pace the beach was

impossible; contemplation was unendurable; the

mirror was broken.

 

  Õ [Mr. Carmichael brought out a volume of poems

that spring, which had an unexpected success. The

war, people said, had revived their interest in

poetry.]] å

 

 

  Night after night, summer and winter, the torment

of storms, the arrow-like stillness of fine

weather, held their court without interference. Listening

(had there been any one to listen) from the

upper rooms of the empty house only gigantic chaos

streaked with lightning could have been heard

tumbling and tossing, as the winds and waves disported

themselves like the amorphous bulks of

leviathans whose brows are pierced by no light of

 

reason, and mounted one on top of another, and

lunged and plunged in the darkness or the daylight

(for night and day, month and year ran shapelessly

together) in idiot games, until it seemed as if the

universe were battling and tumbling, in brute confusion

and wanton lust aimlessly by itself.

 

  In spring the garden urns, casually filled with

wind-blown plants, were gay as ever. Violets came

and daffodils. But the stillness and the brightness of

the day were as strange as the chaos and tumult of

night, with the trees standing there, and the flowers

standing there, looking before them, looking up, yet

beholding nothing, eyeless, and so terrible.

 

 

  Thinking no harm, for the family would not come,

never again, some said, and the house would be sold

at Michaelmas perhaps, Mrs. McNab stooped and

picked a bunch of flowers to take home with her.

She laid them on the table while she dusted. She

was fond of flowers. It was a pity to let them waste.

Suppose the house were sold (she stood arms

akimbo in front of the looking-glass) it would want

seeing to -- it would. There it had stood all these

years without a soul in it. The books and things

were mouldy, for, what with the war and help being

 

hard to get, the house had not been cleaned as she

could have wished. It was beyond one person's

strength to get it straight now. She was too old. Her

legs pained her. All those books needed to be laid

out on the grass in the sun; there was plaster fallen

in the hall; the rain-pipe had blocked over the study

window and let the water in; the carpet was ruined

quite. But people should come themselves; they

should have sent somebody down to see. For there

were clothes in the cupboards; they had left clothes

in all the bedrooms. What was she to do with them?

They had the moth in them -- Mrs. Ramsay's

things. Poor lady! She would never want them#

again. She was dead, they said; years ago, in London.

There was the old grey cloak she wore gardening

(Mrs. McNab fingered it). She could see her, as

she came up the drive with the washing, stooping

over her flowers (the garden was a pitiful sight now,

all run to riot, and rabbits scuttling at you out of the

beds) -- she could see her with one of the children

by her in that grey cloak. There were boots and

shoes; and a brush and comb left on the dressing-table,

for all the world as if she expected to come

back tomorrow. (She had died very sudden at the

end, they said.) And once they had been coming,

but had put off coming, what with the war, and

travel being so difficult these days; they had never

 

come all these years; just sent her money; but never

wrote, never came, and expected to find things as

they had left them, ah, dear! Why the dressing-table

drawers were full of things (she pulled them open),

handkerchiefs, bits of ribbon. Yes, she could see

Mrs. Ramsay as she came up the drive with the

washing.

 

  " Good-evening, Mrs. McNab, " she would say.

 

  She had a pleasant way with her. The girls all

liked her. But, dear, many things had changed since

then (she shut the drawer); many families had lost

their dearest. So she was dead; and Mr. Andrew

killed; and Miss Prue dead too, they said, with her

first baby; but everyone had lost some one these

years. Prices had gone up shamefully, and didn't

come down again neither. She could well remember

her in her grey cloak.

 

  " Good-evening, Mrs. McNab, " she said, and

told cook to keep a plate of milk soup for her --

quite thought she wanted it, carrying that heavy

basket all the way up from town. She could see her

now, stooping over her flowers; and faint and flickering,

like a yellow beam or the circle at the end of

a telescope, a lady in a grey cloak, stooping over her

flowers, went wandering over the bedroom wall, up

the dressing-table, across the wash-stand, as Mrs.

McNab hobbled and ambled, dusting, straightening.

 

And cook's name now? Mildred? Marian? -- some

name like that. Ah, she had forgotten -- she did forget

things. Fiery, like all red-haired women. Many a

laugh they had had. She was always welcome in the

kitchen. She made them laugh, she did. Things were

better then than now.

 

  She sighed; there was too much work for one

woman. She wagged her head this side and that.

This had been the nursery. Why, it was all damp in

here; the plaster was falling. Whatever did they

want to hang a beast's skull there? gone mouldy too.

And rats in all the attics. The rain came in. But

they never sent; never came. Some of the locks had

gone, so the doors banged. She didn't like to be up

here at dusk alone neither. It was too much for one

woman, too much, too much. She creaked, she

moaned. She banged the door. She turned the key in

the lock, and left the house alone, shut up, locked.

 

 

  The house was left; the house was deserted. It

was left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry salt

grains now that life had left it. The long night

seemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, the

clammy breaths, fumbling, seemed to have triumphed.

The saucepan had rusted and the mat decayed.

 

Toads had nosed their way in. Idly, aimlessly,

the swaying shawl swung to and fro. A thistle

thrust itself between the tiles in the larder. The

swallows nested in the drawing-roon; the floor was

strewn with straw; the plaster fell in shovelfuls;

rafters were laid bare; rats carried off this and that

to gnaw behind the wainscots. Tortoise-shell butterflies

burst from the chrysalis and pattered their life

out on the window-pane. Poppies sowed themselves

among the dahlias; the lawn waved with long grass;

giant artichokes towered among roses; a fringed

carnation flowered among the cabbages; while the

gentle tapping of a weed at the window had become,

on winters' nights, a drumming from sturdy trees

and thorned briars which made the whole room

green in summer.

 

  What power could now prevent the fertility, the

insensibility of nature? Mrs. McNab's dream of a

lady, of a child, of a plate of milk soup? It had

wavered over the walls like a spot of sunlight and

vanished. She had locked the door; she had gone.

It was beyond the strength of one woman, she said.

They never sent. They never wrote. There were

things up there rotting in the drawers -- it was a

shame to leave them so, she said. The place was

gone to rack and ruin. Only the Lighthouse beam

entered the rooms for a moment, sent its sudden

 

stare over bed and wall in the darkness of winter,

looked with equanimity at the thistle and the

swallow, the rat and the straw. Nothing now withstood

them; nothing said no to them. Let the wind

blow; let the poppy seed itself and the carnation

mate with the cabbage. Let the swallow build in

the drawing-room, and the thistle thrust aside the

tiles, and the butterfly sun itself on the faded chintz

of the arm-chairs. Let the broken glass and the

china lie out on the lawn and be tangled over with

grass and wild berries.

 

  For now had come that moment, that hesitation

when dawn trembles and night pauses, when if a

feather alight in the scale it will be weighed down.

One feather, and the house, sinking, falling, would

have turned and pitched downwards to the depths

of darkness. In the ruined room, picnickers would

have lit their kettles; lovers sought shelter there,

lying on the bare boards; and the shepherd stored

his dinner on the bricks, and the tramp slept with

his coat round him to ward off the cold. Then the

roof would have fallen; briars and hemlocks would

have blotted out path, step and window; would

have grown, unequally but lustily over the mound,

until some trespasser, losing his way, could have

told only by a red-hot poker among the nettles,

 

or a scrap of china in the hemlock, that here once

some one had lived; there had been a house.

 

  If the feather had fallen, if it had tipped the scale

downwards, the whole house would have plunged

to the depths to lie upon the sands of oblivion. But

there was a force working; something not highly

conscious; something that leered, something that

lurched; something not inspired to go about its work

with dignified ritual or solemn chanting. Mrs. McNab

groaned; Mrs. Bast creaked. They were old;

they were stiff; their legs ached. They came with

their brooms and pails at last; they got to work. All

of a sudden, would Mrs. McNab see that the house

was ready, one of the young ladies wrote: would she

get this done; would she get that done; all in a

hurry. They might be coming for the summer; had

left everything to the last; expected to find things as

they had left them. Slowly and painfully, with

broom and pail, mopping, scouring, Mrs. McNab,

Mrs. Bast, stayed the corruption and the rot;

rescued from the pool of Time that was fast closing

over them now a basin, now a cupboard; fetched up

from oblivion all the Waverley novels and a tea-set

one morning; in the afternoon restored to sun and

air a brass fender and a set of steel fire-irons.

George, Mrs. Bast's son, caught the rats, and cut

the grass. They had the builders. Attended with the

 

creaking of hinges and the screeching of bolts, the

slamming and banging of damp-swollen woodwork

some rusty laborious birth seemed to be taking

place, as the women, stooping, rising, groaning, singing,

slapped and slammed, upstairs now, now down

in the cellars. Oh, they said, the work!

 

  They drank their tea in the bedroom sometimes,

or in the study; breaking off work at mid-day with

the smudge on their faces, and their old hands

clasped and cramped with the broom handles.

Flopped on chairs, they contemplated now the magnificent

conquest over taps and bath; now the more

arduous, more partial triumph over long rows of

books, black as ravens once, now white-stained,

breeding pale mushrooms and secreting furtive

spiders. Once more, as she felt the tea warm in her,

the telescope fitted itself to Mrs. McNab's eyes,

and in a ring of light she saw the old gentleman,

lean as a rake, wagging his head, as she came up

with the washing, talking to himself, she supposed,

on the lawn. He never noticed her. Some said he

was dead; some said she was dead. Which was it?

Mrs. Bast didn't know for certain either. The young

gentleman was dead. That she was sure. She had

read his name in the papers.

 

  There was the cook now, Mildred, Marian, some

such name as that -- a red-headed woman, quick-tempered

 

like all her sort, but kind, too, if you knew

the way with her. Many a laugh they had had together.

She saved a plate of soup for Maggie; a

bite of ham, sometimes; whatever was over. They

lived well in those days. They had everything they

wanted (glibly, jovially, with the tea hot in her, she

unwound her ball of memories, sitting in the wicker

arm-chair by the nursery fender). There was always

plenty doing, people in the house, twenty staying

sometimes, and washing up till long past midnight.

 

  Mrs. Bast (she had never known them; had lived

in Glasgow at that time) wondered, putting her cup

down, whatever they hung that beast's skull there

for? Shot in foreign parts no doubt.

 

  It might well be, said Mrs. McNab, wantoning on

with her memories; they had friends in eastern

countries; gentlemen staying there, ladies in evening

dress; she had seen them once through the dining-room

door all sitting at dinner. Twenty she dared

say all in their jewellery, and she asked to stay help

wash up, might be till after midnight.

 

  Ah, said Mrs. Bast, they'd find it changed. She

leant out of the window. She watched her son George

scything the grass. They might well ask, what had

been done to it? seeing how old Kennedy was supposed

to have charge of it, and then his leg got so

bad after he fell from the cart; and perhaps then no

 

one for a year, or the better part of one; and then

Davie Macdonald, and seeds might be sent, but who

should say if they were ever planted? They'd find it

changed.

 

  She watched her son scything. He was a great one

for work -- one of those quiet ones. Well they must

be getting along with the cupboards, she supposed.

They hauled themselves up.

 

  At last, after days of labour within, of cutting and

digging without, dusters were flicked from the

windows, the windows were shut to, keys were

turned all over the house; the front door was

banged; it was finished.

 

  And now as if the cleaning and the scrubbing and

the scything and the mowing had drowned it there

rose that half-heard melody, that intermittent music

which the ear half catches but lets fall; a bark, a

bleat; irregular, intermittent, yet somehow related;

the hum of an insect, the tremor of cut grass, disevered

yet somehow belonging; the jar of a dorbeetle,

the squeak of a wheel, loud, low, but mysteriously

related; which the ear strains to bring together

and is always on the verge of harmonising,

but they are never quite heard, never fully harmonised,

and at last, in the evening, one after another

the sounds die out, and the harmony falters, and

silence falls. With the sunset sharpness was lost, and

 

like mist rising, quiet rose, quiet spread, the wind

settled; loosely the world shook itself down to sleep,

darkly here without a light to it, save what came

green suffused through leaves, or pale on the white

flowers in the bed by the window.

 

  [Lily Briscoe had her bag carried up to the house

late one evening in September.]

 

 

  Then indeed peace had come. Messages of peace

breathed from the sea to the shore. Never to break

its sleep any more, to lull it rather more deeply to

rest, and whatever the dreamers dreamt holily,

dreamt wisely, to confirm -- what else was it murmuring

-- as Lily Briscoe laid her head on the pillow

in the clean still room and heard the sea. Through

the open window the voice of the beauty of the

world came murmuring, too softly to hear exactly

what it said -- but what mattered if the meaning

were plain? entreating the sleepers (the house was

full again; Mrs. Beckwith was staying there, also

Mr. Carmichael), if they would not actually come

down to the beach itself at least to lift the blind and

look out. They would see then night flowing down in

purple; his head crowned; his sceptre jewelled; and

how in his eyes a child might look. And if they still

 

faltered (Lily was tired out with travelling and slept

almost at once; but Mr. Carmichael read a book by

candlelight), if they still said no, that it was vapour,

this splendour of his, and the dew had more power

than he, and they preferred sleeping; gently then

without complaint, or argument, the voice would

sing its song. Gently the waves would break (Lily

heard them in her sleep); tenderly the light fell (it

seemed to come through her eyelids). And it all

looked, Mr. Carmichael thought, shutting his book,

falling asleep, much as it used to look.

 

  Indeed the voice might resume, as the curtains of

dark wrapped themselves over the house, over Mrs.

Beckwith, Mr. Carmichael, and Lily Briscoe so that

they lay with several folds of blackness on their

eyes, why not accept this, be content with this,

acquiesce and resign? The sigh of all the seas

breaking in measure round the isles soothed them;

the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep,

until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving

their thin voices in to its whiteness, a cart grinding,

a dog somewhere barking, the sun lifted the curtains,

broke the veil on their eyes, and Lily Briscoe

stirring in her sleep. She clutched at her blankets as

a faller clutches at the turf on the edge of a cliff.

Her eyes opened wide. Here she was again, she

thought, sitting bold upright in bed. Awake.

<S III>

 

 

 

  What does it mean then, what can it all mean?

Lily Briscoe asked herself, wondering whether, since

she had been left alone, it behoved her to go to the

kitchen to fetch another cup of coffee or wait here.

What does it mean? -- a catchword that was, caught

up from some book, fitting her thought loosely, for

she could not, this first morning with the Ramsays,

contract her feelings, could only make a phrase resound

to cover the blankness of her mind until these

vapours had shrunk. For really, what did she feel,

come back after all these years and Mrs. Ramsay

dead? Nothing, nothing -- nothing that she could express

at all.

 

  She had come late last night when it was all

mysterious, dark. Now she was awake, at her old

place at the breakfast table, but alone. It was very

early too, not yet eight. There was this expedition --

they were going to the Lighthouse, Mr. Ramsay,

Cam, and James. They should have gone already --

they had to catch the tide or something. And Cam

was not ready and James was not ready and Nancy

had forgotten to order the sandwiches and Mr.

 

Ramsay had lost his temper and banged out of the

room.

 

  " What's the use of going now? " he had stormed.

 

  Nancy had vanished. There he was, marching up

and down the terrace in a rage. One seemed to hear

doors slamming and voices calling all over the

house. Now Nancy burst in, and asked, looking

round the room, in a queer half dazed, half desperate

way, " What does one send to the Lighthouse? "

as if she were forcing herself to do what she

despaired of ever being able to do.

 

  What does one send to the Lighthouse indeed!

At any other time Lily could have suggested

reasonably tea, tobacco, newspapers. But this morning

everything seemed so extraordinarily queer that

a question like Nancy's -- What does one send to the

Lighthouse? -- opened doors in one's mind that went

banging and swinging to and fro and made one keep

asking, in a stupefied gape, What does one send?

What does one do? Why is one sitting here, after

all?

 

  Sitting alone (for Nancy went out again) among

the clean cups at the long table, she felt cut off from

other people, and able only to go on watching, asking,

wondering. The house, the place, the morning,

all seemed strangers to her. She had no attachment

here, she felt, no relations with it, anything might

 

happen, and whatever did happen, a step outside, a

voice calling (" It's not in the cupboard; it's on the

landing, " some one cried), was a question, as if the

link that usually bound things together had been

cut, and they floated up here, down there, off, anyhow.

How aimless it was,, how chaotic, how unreal it

was, she thought, looking at her empty coffee cup.

Mrs. Ramsay dead; Andrew killed; Prue dead too --

repeat it as she might, it roused no feeling in her.

And we all get together in a house like this on a

morning like this, she said, looking out of the window.

It was a beautiful still day.

 

  Suddenly Mr. Ramsay raised his head as he

passed and looked straight at her, with his distraught

wild gaze which was yet so penetrating, as if

he saw you, for one second, for the first time, for

ever; and she pretended to drink out of her empty

coffee cup so as to escape him -- to escape his demand

on her, to put aside a moment longer that imperious

need. And he shook his head at her, and strode on

(" Alone " she heard him say, " Perished " she heard

him say) and like everything else this strange morning

the words became symbols, wrote themselves all

over the grey-green walls. If only she could put

them together, she felt, write them out in some sentence,

then she would have got at the truth of things.

Old Mr. Carmichael came padding softly in, fetched

 

his coffee, took his cup and made off to sit in the

sun. The extraordinary unreality was frightening;

but it was also exciting. Going to the Lighthouse.

But what does one send to the Lighthouse? Perished.

Alone. The grey-green light on the wall opposite.

The empty places. Such were some of the parts, but

how bring them together? she asked. As if any interruption

would break the frail shape she was building

on the table she turned her back to the window

lest Mr. Ramsay should see her. She must escape

somewhere, be alone somewhere. Suddenly she remembered.

When she had sat there last ten years ago

there had been a little sprig or leaf pattern on the

table-cloth, which she had looked at in a moment of

revelation. There had been a problem about a foreground

of a picture. Move the tree to the middle,

she had said. She had never finished that picture.

She would paint that picture now. It had been

knocking about in her mind all these years. Where

were her paints, she wondered? Her paints, yes. She

had left them in the hall last night. She would start

at once. She got up quickly, before Mr. Ramsay

turned.

 

  She fetched herself a chair. She pitched her easel

with her precise old-maidish movements on the edge

of the lawn, not too close to Mr. Carmichael, but

close enough for his protection. Yes, it must have

 

been precisely here that she had stood ten years ago.

There was the wall; the hedge; the tree. The question

was of some relation between those masses.

She had borne it in her mind all these years. It

seemed as if the solution had come to her: she knew

now what she wanted to do.

 

  But with Mr. Ramsay bearing down on her, she

could do nothing. Every time he approached -- he

was walking up and down the terrace -- ruin approached,

chaos approached. She could not paint.

She stooped, she turned; she took up this rag; she

squeezed that tube. But all she did was to ward him

off a moment. He made it impossible for her to do

anything. For if she gave him the least chance, if

he saw her disengaged a moment, looking his way

a moment, he would be on her, saying, as he had

said last night, " You find us much changed. " Last

night he had got up and stopped before her, and said

that. Dumb and staring though they had all sat, the

six children whom they used to call after the Kings

and Queens of England -- the Red, the Fair, the

Wicked, the Ruthless -- she felt how they raged

under it. Kind old Mrs. Beckwith said something

sensible. But it was a house full of unrelated

passions -- she had felt that all the evening. And on

top of this chaos Mr. Ramsay got up, pressed her

hand, and said: " You will find us much changed "

 

and none of them had moved or had spoken; but had

sat there as if they were forced to let him say it.

Only James (certainly the Sullen) scowled at the

lamp; and Cam screwed her handkerchief round her

finger. Then he reminded them that they were going

to the Lighthouse tomorrow. They must be ready,

in the hall, on the stroke of half-past seven. Then,

with his hand on the door, he stopped; he turned

upon them. Did they not want to go? he demanded.

Had they dared say No ( he had some reason for

wanting it) he would have flung himself tragically

backwards into the bitter waters of depair. Such a

gift he had for gesture. He looked like a king in

exile. Doggedly  James said yes. Cam stumbled more

wretchedly. Yes, oh, yes, they'd both be ready, they

said. And it struck her, this was tragedy -- not palls,

dust, and the shroud; but children coerced, their

spirits subdued. James was sixteen, Cam, seventeen,

perhaps. She had looked round for some one who

was not there, for Mrs. Ramsay, presumably. But

there was only kind Mrs. Beckwith turning over

her sketches under the lamp. Then, being tired, her

mind still rising and falling with the sea, the taste

and smell that places have after long absence

possessing her, the candles wavering in her eyes,

she had lost herself and gone under. It was a wonderful

night, starlit; the waves sounded as they

 

went upstairs; the moon surprised them, enormous,

pale, as they passed the staircase window. She had

slept at once.

 

  She set her clean canvas firmly upon the easel,

as a barrier, frail, but she hoped sufficiently substantial

to ward off Mr. Ramsay and his exactingness.

She did her best to look, when his back was

turned, at her picture; that line there, that mass

there. But it was out of the question. Let him be

fifty feet away, let him not even speak to you, let

him not even see you, he permeated, he prevailed,

he imposed himself. He changed everything. She

could not see the colour; she could not see the lines;

even with his back turned to her, she could only

think, But he'll be down on me in a moment, demanding

-- something she felt she could not give him.

She rejected one brush; she chose another. When

would those children come? When would they all

be off? she fidgeted. That man, she thought, her

anger rising in her, never gave; that man took.

She, on the other hand, would be forced to give.

Mrs. Ramsay had given. Giving, giving, giving, she

had died -- and had left all this. Really, she was

angry with Mrs. Ramsay. With the brush slightly

trembling in her fingers she looked at the hedge,

the step, the wall. It was all Mrs. Ramsay's doing.

She was dead. Here was Lily, at forty-four, wasting

 

her time, unable to do a thing, standing there, playing

at painting, playing at the one thing one did

not play at, and it was all Mrs. Ramsay's fault. She

was dead. The step where she used to sit was empty.

She was dead.

 

  But why repeat this over and over again? Why

be always trying to bring up some feeling she had

not got? There was a kind of blasphemy in it.

It was all dry: all withered: all spent. They ought

not to have asked her; she ought not to have come.

One can't waste one's time at forty-four, she

thought. She hated playing at painting. A brush,

the one dependable thing in a world of strife,

ruin, chaos -- that one should not play with, knowingly

even: she detested it. But he made her.

You shan't touch your canvas, he seemed to say,

bearing down on her, till you've given me what I

want of you. Here he was, close upon her again,

greedy, distraught. Well, thought Lily in despair,

letting her right hand fall at her side, it would be

simpler then to have it over. Surely, she could

imitate from recollection the glow, the rhapsody,

the self-surrender, she had seen on so many women's

faces (on Mrs. Ramsay's, for instance) when on

some occasion like this they blazed up -- she could

remember the look on Mrs. Ramsay's face -- into a

rapture of sympathy, of delight in the reward they

 

had, which, though the reason of it escaped her,

evidently conferred on them the most supreme bliss

of which human nature was capable. Here he was,

stopped by her side. She would give him what she could.

 

 

  She seemed to have shrivelled slightly, he thought.

She looked a little skimpy, wispy; but not unattractive.

He liked her. There had been some talk of

her marrying William Bankes once, but nothing had

 come of it. His wife had been fond of her. He had

been a little out of temper too at breakfast. And

then, and then -- this was one of those moments when

an enormous need urged him, without being conscious

what it was, to approach any woman, to force

them, he did not care how, his need was so great, to

give him what he wanted: sympathy.

 

  Was anybody looking after her? he said. Had

she everything she wanted?

 

  " Oh, thanks, everything, " said Lily Briscoe

nervously. No; she could not do it. She ought to

have floated off instantly upon some wave of sympathetic

expansion: the pressure on her was tremendous.

But she remained stuck. There was an

awful pause. They both looked at the sea. Why,

 

thought Mr. Ramsay, should she look at the sea

when I am here? She hoped it would be calm enough

for them to land at the Lighthouse, she said. The

Lighthouse! The Lighthouse! What's that got to

do with it? he thought impatiently. Instantly, with

the force of some primeval gust (for really he could

not restrain himself any longer), there issued from

him such a groan that any other woman in the whole

world would have done something, said something --

all except myself, thought Lily, girding at herself

bitterly, who am not a woman, but a peevish, ill-tempered,

dried-up old maid, presumably.

 

  [Mr. Ramsay sighed to the full. He waited. Was

she not going to say anything? Did she not see what

he wanted from her? Then he said he had a particular

reason for wanting to go to the Lighthouse. His

wife used to send the men things. There was a poor

boy with a tuberculous hip, the lightkeeper's son.

He sighed profoundly. He sighed significantly. All

Lily wished was that this enormous flood of grief,

this insatiable hunger for sympathy, this demand

that she should surrender herself up to him entirely,

and even so he had sorrows enough to keep

her supplied for ever, should leave her, should be

diverted (she kept looking at the house, hoping for

an interruption) before it swept her down in its

flow.

 

 

  " Such expeditions, " said Mr. Ramsay, scraping

the ground with his toe, " are very painful. " Still

Lily said nothing. (She is a stock, she is a stone, he

said to himself.) " They are very exhausting, " he

said, looking, with a sickly look that nauseated her

(he was acting, she felt, this great man was dramatising

himself), at his beautiful hands. It was horrible,

it was indecent. Would they never come, she

asked, for she could not sustain this enormous

weight of sorrow, support these heavy draperies of

grief (he had assumed a pose of extreme decreptitude;

he even tottered a little as he stood there) a

moment longer.

 

  Still she could say nothing; the whole horizon

seemed swept bare of objects to talk about; could

only feel, amazedly, as Mr. Ramsay stood there,

how his gaze seemed to fall dolefully over the sunny

grass and discolour it, and cast over the rubicund,

drowsy, entirely contented figure of Mr. Carmichael,

reading a French novel on a deck-chair, a veil of

crape, as if such an existence, flaunting its prosperity

in a world of woe, were enough to provoke

the most dismal thoughts of all. Look at him, he

seemed to be saying, look at me; and indeed, all the

time he was feeling, Think of me, think of me. Ah,

could that bulk only be wafted alongside of them,

Lily wished; had she only pitched her easel a yard or

 

two closer to him; a man, any man, would staunch

this effusion, would stop these lamentations. A

woman, she had provoked this horror; a woman, she

should have known how to deal with it. It was immensely

to her discredit, sexually, to stand there

dumb. One said -- what did one say? -- Oh, Mr. Ramsay!

Dear Mr. Ramsay! That was what that kind

old lady who sketched, Mrs. Beckwith, would have

said instantly, and rightly. But, no. They stood

there, isolated from the rest of the world. His immense

self-pity, his demand for sympathy poured

and spread itself in pools at ther feet, and all she did,

miserable sinner that she was, was to draw her

skirts a little closer round her ankles, lest she

should get wet. In complete silence she stood there,

grasping her paint brush.

 

  Heaven could never be sufficiently  praised! She

heard sounds in the house. James and Cam must be

coming. But Mr. Ramsay, as if he knew that his

time ran short, exerted upon her solitary figure the

immense pressure of his concentrated woe; his age;

his frailty: his desolation; when suddenly, tossing

his head impatiently, in his annoyance -- for after

all, what woman could resist him? -- he noticed that

his boot-laces were untied. Remarkable boots they

were too, Lily thought, looking down at them:

sculptured; colossal; like everything that Mr.

 

Ramsay wore, from his frayed tie to his half-buttoned

waistcoat, his own indisputably. She could

see them walking to his room of their own accord,

expressive in his absence of pathos, surliness,

ill-temper, charm.

 

  " What beautiful boots! " she exclaimed. She was

ashamed of herself. To praise his boots when he

asked her to solace his soul; when he had shown her

his bleeding hands, his lacerated heart, and asked

her to pity them, then to say, cheerfully, " Ah, but

what beautiful boots you wear! " deserved, she knew,

and she looked up expecting to get it in one of his

sudden roars of ill-temper, complete annihiliation.

 

  Instead, Mr. Ramsay smiled. His pall, his draperies,

his infirmities fell from him. Ah, yes, he said,

holding his foot up for her to look at, they were

first-rate boots. There was only one man in England

who could make boots like that. Boots are among

the chief curses of mankind, he said. " Bootmakers

make it their business, " he exclaimed, " to cripple

and torture the human foot. " They are also the most

obstinate and perverse of mankind. It had taken

him the best part of his youth to get boots made as

they should be made. He would have her observe

(he lifted his right foot and then his left) that she

had never seen boots made quite that shape before.

They were made of the finest leather in the world,

 

also. Most leather was mere brown paper and cardboard.

He looked complacently at his foot, still held

in the air. They had reached, she felt, a sunny island

where peace dwelt, sanity reigned and the sun for

ever shone, the blessed island of good boots. Her

heart warmed to him. " Now let me see if you can tie

a knot, " he said. He poohpoohed her feeble system.

He showed her his own invention. Once you tied it,

it never came undone. Three times he knotted her

shoe; three times he unknotted it.

 

  Why, at this completely inappropriate moment,

when he was stooping over her shoe, should she

be so tormented with sympathy for him that, as she

stooped too, the blood rushed to her face, and,

thinking of her callousness (she had called him a

play-actor) she felt her eyes swell and tingle with

tears? Thus occupied he seemed to her a figure of

infinite pathos. He tied knots. He bought boots.

There was no helping Mr. Ramsay on the journey he

was going. But now just as she wished to say something,

could have said something, perhaps, here

they were -- Cam and James. They appeared on the

terrace. They came, lagging, side by side, a serious,

melancholy couple.

 

  But why was it like that# that they came? She

could not help feeling annoyed with them; they

might have come more cheerfully; they might have

 

given him what, now that they were off, she would

not have the chance of giving him. For she felt a

sudden emptiness; a frustration. Her feeling had

come too late; there it was ready; but he no longer

needed it. He had become a very distinguished,

elderly man, who had no need of her whatsoever.

She felt snubbed. He slung a knapsack round his

shoulders. He shared out the parcels -- there were

a number of them, ill tied in brown paper. He sent

Cam for a cloak. He had all the appearance of a

leader making ready for an expedition. Then, wheeling

about, he led the way with his firm military

tread, in those wonderful boots, carrying brown

paper parcels, down the path, his children following

him. They looked, she thought, as if fate had

devoted them to some stern enterprise, and they

went to it, still young enough to be drawn acquiescent

in their father's wake, obediently, but with

a pallor in their eyes which made her feel that they

suffered something beyond their years in silence.

So they passed the edge of the lawn, and it seemed

to Lily that she watched a procession go, drawn

on by some stress of common feeling which made it,

faltering and flagging as it was, a little company

bound together and strangely impressive to her.

Politely, but very distantly, Mr. Ramsay raised

his hand and saluted her as they passed.

 

 

  But what a face, she thought, immediately finding

the sympathy which she had not been asked to

give troubling her for expression. What had made

it like that? Thinking, night after night, she supposed

-- about the reality of kitchen tables, she

added, remembering the symbol which in her vagueness

as to what Mr. Ramsay did think about Andrew

had given her. (He had been killed by the splinter of

a shell instantly, she bethought her.) The kitchen

table was something visionary, austere; something

bare, hard, not ornamental. There was no colour

to it; it was all edges and angles; it was uncompromisingly

plain. But Mr. Ramsay kept always his

eyes fixed upon it, never allowed himself to be distracted

or deluded, until his face became worn too

and ascetic and partook of this unornamented

beauty which so deeply impressed her. Then, she

recalled (standing where he had left her, holding her

brush), worries had fretted it -- not so nobly. He

must have had his doubts about that table, she

supposed; whether the table was a real table;

whether it was worth the time he gave to it; whether

he was able after all to find it. He had had doubts,

she felt, or he would have asked less of people.

That was what they talked about late at night sometimes,

she suspected; and then next day Mrs.

Ramsay looked tired, and Lily flew into a rage with

 

him over some absurd little thing. But now he had

nobody to talk to about that table , or his boots,

or his knots; and he was like a lion seeking whom

he could devour, and his face had that touch of desperation,

of exaggeration in it which alarmed her,

and made her pull her skirts about her. And then,

she recalled, there was that sudden revivification,

that sudden flare (when she praised his boots),

that sudden recovery of vitality and interest

in ordinary human things, which too passed and

changed (for he was always changing, and hid nothing)

into that other final phase which was new to

her and had, she owned, made herself ashamed of

her own irritability, when it seemed as if he had

shed worries and ambitions, and the hope of sympathy

and the desire for praise, had entered some

other region, was drawn on, as if by curiosity, in

dumb colloquy, whether with himself or another, at

the head of that little procession out of one's range.

An extraordinary face! The gate banged.

 

 

  So they're gone, she thought, sighing with relief

and disappointment. Her sympathy seemed to be

cast back on her, like a bramble sprung across her

face. She felt curiously divided, as if one part of her

 

were drawn out there -- it was a still day, hazy; the

Lighthouse looked this morning at an immense distance;

the other had fixed itself doggedly, solidly,

here on the lawn. She saw her canvas as if it had

floated up and placed itself white and uncompromising

directly before her. It seemed to rebuke her with

its cold stare for all this hurry and agitation; this

folly and waste of emotion; it drastically recalled

her and spread through her mind first a peace, as her

disorderly sensations (he had gone and she had been

so sorry for him and she had said nothing) trooped

off the field; and then, emptiness. She looked

blankly at the canvas, with its uncompromising

white stare; from the canvas to the garden. There

was something (she stood screwing up her little

Chinese eyes in her small puckered face), something

she remembered in the relations of those lines cutting

across, slicing down, and in the mass of the

hedge with its green cave of blues and browns, which

had stayed in her mind; which had tied a knot in

her mind so that at odds and ends of time, involuntarily,

as she walked along the Brompton Road,

as she brushed her hair, she found herself painting

that picture, passing her eye over it, and untying

the knot in imagination. But there was all the difference

in the world between this planning airily

 

away from the canvas and actually taking her brush

and making the first mark.

 

  She had taken the wrong brush in her agitation at

Mr. Ramsay's presence, and her easel, rammed into

the earth so nervously, was at the wrong angle. And

now that she had put that right, and in so doing had

subdued the impertinences and irrelevances that

plucked her attention and made her remember how

she was such and such a person, had such and such

relations to people, she took her hand and raised her

brush. For a moment it stayed trembling in a painful

but exciting ecstasy in the air. Where to begin? --

that was the question at what point to make the first

mark? One line placed on the canvas committed her

to innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable

decisions. All that in idea seemed simple became in

practice immediately complex; as the waves shape

themselves symmetrically from the cliff top, but to

the swimmer among them are divided by steep

gulfs, and foaming crests. Still the risk must be

run; the mark made.

 

  With a curious physical sensation, as if she were

urged forward and at the same time must hold herself

back, she made her first quick decisive stroke.