never considered before, he would like to have it

explained -- what then did she wish to make of it? And

he indicated the scene before them. She looked.

She could not show him what she wished to make

of it, could not see it even herself, without a brush

in her hand. She took up once more her old painting

position with the dim eyes and the absent-minded

manner, subduing all her impressions as a woman to

something much more general; becoming once more

under the power of that vision which she had seen

clearly once and must now grope for among hedges

and houses and mothers and children -- her picture.

It was a question, she remembered, how to connect

 

this mass on the right hand with that on the left.

She might do it by bringing the line of the branch

across so; or break the vacancy in the foreground

by an object (James perhaps) so. But the danger

was that by doing that the unity of the whole might

be broken. She stopped; she did not want to bore

him; she took the canvas lightly off the easel.

 

   But it had been seen; it had been taken from her.

This man had shared with her something profoundly

intimate. And, thanking Mr. Ramsay for

it and Mrs. Ramsay for it and the hour and the

place, crediting the world with a power which she

had not suspected -- that one could walk away down

that long gallery not alone any more but arm in

arm with somebody -- the strangest feeling in the

world, and the most exhilarating -- she nicked the

catch of her paint-box to, more firmly than was

necessary, and the nick seemed to surround in a

circle forever the paint-box, the lawn, Mr. Bankes,

and that wild villain, Cam, dashing past.

 

 

   For Cam grazed the easel by an inch; she would

not stop for Mr. Bankes and Lily Briscoe; though

Mr. Bankes, who would have liked a daughter of

his own, held out his hand; she would not stop for

 

her father, whom she grazed also by an inch; nor

for her mother, who called " Cam! I want you a

moment! " as she dashed past. She was off like a bird,

bullet, or arrow, impelled by what desire, shot by

whom, at what directed, who could say? What,

what? Mrs. Ramsay pondered, watching her.

It might be a vision -- of a shell, of a wheelbarrow, of

a fairy kingdom on the far side of the hedge; or it

might be the glory of speed; no one knew. But when

Mrs. Ramsay called " Cam! " a second time, the

projectile dropped in mid career, and Cam came

lagging back, pulling a leaf by the way, to her

mother.

 

     What was she dreaming about, Mrs. Ramsay wondered,

seeing her engrossed, as she stood there, with

some thought of her own, so that she had to repeat

the message twice -- ask Mildred if Andrew, Miss

Doyle, and Mr. Rayley have come back? -- The words

seemed to be dropped into a well, where, if

the waters were clear, they were also so extraordinarily

distorting that, even as they descended, one

saw them twisting about to make Heaven knows

what pattern on the floor of the child's mind. What

message would Cam give the cook? Mrs. Ramsay

wondered. And indeed it was only by waiting patiently,

and hearing that there was an old woman in

the kitchen with very red cheeks, drinking soup out

 

of a basin, that Mrs. Ramsay at last prompted that

parrot-like instinct which had picked up Mildred's

words quite accurately and could now produce them,

if one waited, in a colourless singsong. Shifting from

foot to foot, Cam repeated the words, " No, they

haven't, and I've told Ellen to clear away tea..  "

   Minta Doyle and Paul Rayley had not come back

then. That could only mean, Mrs. Ramsay thought,

one thing. She must accept him, or she must refuse

him. This going off after luncheon for a walk,

even though Andrew was with them -- what could it

mean? except that she had decided, rightly, Mrs.

Ramsay thought (and she was very, very fond of

Minta), to accept that good fellow, who might not

be brilliant, but then, thought Mrs. Ramsay,

realising that James was tugging at her, to make her go

on reading aloud the Fisherman and his Wife, she

did in her own heart infinitely prefer boobies to

clever men who wrote dissertations; Charles Tansley,

for instance. It must have happened, one way or

the other, by now.

 

   But she read, " Next morning the wife awoke first,

and it was just daybreak, and from her bed she

saw the beautiful country lying before her. Her

husband was still stretching himself.... "

 

   But how could Minta say now that she would not

have him? Not if she agreed to spend whole

 

afternoons trapesing about the country alone -- for

Andrew would be off after his crabs -- but possibly

Nancy was with them. She tried to recall the sight

of them standing at the hall door after lunch. There

they stood, looking at the sky, wondering about

the weather, and she had said, thinking partly to

cover their shyness, partly to encourage them to be

off (for her sympathies were with Paul),

   " There isn't a cloud anywhere within miles, " at

which she could feel little Charles Tansley, who had

followed them out, snigger. But she did it on purpose.

Whether Nancy was there or not, she could not be

certain, looking from one to the other in her mind's eye.

 

   She read on: " Ah, wife, " said the man, " why

should we be King? I do not want to be King. "

" Well, " said the wife, " if you won't be King, I will;

go to the Flounder, for I will be King. " "

   " Come in or go out, Cam, " she said, knowing

that Cam was attracted only by the word " Flounder "

and that in a moment she would fidget and

fight with James as usual. Cam shot off. Mrs.

Ramsay went on reading, relieved, for she and

James shared the same tastes and were comfortable

together.

 

   " And when he came to the sea, it was quite

dark grey, and the water heaved up from below,

 

and smelt putrid. Then he went and stood by it and

said,

                'Flounder, flounder, in the sea,

                 Come, I pray thee, here to me;

                 For my wife, good Ilsabil,

                 Wills not as I'd have her will. '

' Well, what does she want then? ' said the Flounder. "

And where were they now? Mrs. Ramsay wondered,

reading and thinking, quite easily, both at the

same time; for the story of the Fisherman and his

Wife was like the bass gently accompanying a tune,

which now and then ran up unexpectedly into the

melody. And when should she be told? If nothing

happened, she would have to speak seriously to

Minta. For she could not go trapesing about all over

the country, even if Nancy were with them (she

tried again, unsuccessfully, to visualize their backs

going down the path, and to count them). She was

responsible to Minta's parents -- the Owl and the

Poker. Her nicknames for them shot into her mind

as she read. The Owl and the Poker -- yes, they

would be annoyed if they heard -- and they were

certain to hear -- that Minta, staying with the

Ramsays, had been seen etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

" He wore a wig in the House of Commons and she ably

assisted him at the head of the stairs, " she repeated,

 

fishing them up out of her mind by a phrase which,

coming back from some party, she had made to

amuse her husband. Dear, dear, Mrs. Ramsay said

to herself, how did they produce this incongruous

daughter? this tomboy Minta, with a hole in her

stocking? How did she exist in that portentous

atmosphere where the maid was always removing in

a dust-pan the sand that the parrot had scattered,

and conversation was almost entirely reduced to the

exploits -- interesting  perhaps, but limited after all

-- of that bird? Naturally, one had asked her to

lunch, tea, dinner, finally to stay with them up at

Finlay, which had resulted in some friction with

the Owl, her mother, and more calling, and more

conversation, and more sand, and really at the end

of it, she had told enough lies about parrots to last

her a lifetime (so she had said to her husband that

night, coming back from the party). However,

Minta came.... Yes, she came, Mrs. Ramsay

thought, suspecting some thorn in the tangle of this

thought; and disengaging it found it to be this: a

woman had once accused her of " robbing her of her

daughter's affections "; something Mrs. Doyle had

said made her remember that charge again. Wishing to

dominate, wishing to interfere, making people do

what she wished -- that was the charge against her, and

she thought it most unjust. How could she help

 

being " like that " to look at? No one could accuse

her of taking pains to impress. She was often

ashamed of her own shabbiness. Nor was she

domineering, nor was she tyrannical. It was more true

about hospitals and drains and the dairy. About

things like that she did feel passionately, and would,

if she had the chance, have liked to take people

by the scruff of their necks and make them see. No

hospital on the whole island. It was a disgrace.

Milk delivered at your door in London positively

brown with dirt. It should be made illegal. A model

dairy and a hospital up here -- those two things she

would have liked to do, herself. But how? With all

these children? When they were older, then perhaps

she would have time; when they were all at school.

 

   Oh, but she never wanted James to grow a day

older! or Cam either. These two she would have

liked to keep for ever just as they were, demons of

wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them

grow up into long-legged monsters. Nothing made up

up for the loss. When she read just now to James,

" and there were numbers of soldiers with kettledrums

and trumpets, " and his eyes darkened, she

thought, why should they grow up and lose all

that? He was the most gifted, the most sensitive of

her children. But all, she thought, were full of

 

promise. Prue, a perfect angel with the others, and

sometimes now, at night especially, she took one's

breath away with her beauty. Andrew -- even her

husband admitted that his gift for mathematics was

extraordinary. And Nancy and Roger, they were

both wild creatures now, scampering about over the

country all day long. As for Rose, her mouth was

too big, but she had a wonderful gift with her hands.

If they had charades, Rose made the dresses; made

everything; liked best arranging tables, flowers,

anything. She did not like it that Jasper should shoot

birds; but it was only a stage; they all went through

stages. Why, she asked, pressing her chin on James's

head, should they grow up so fast? Why should they

go to school? She would have liked always to have

had a baby. She was happiest carrying one in her

arms. Then people might say she was tyrannical,

domineering, masterful, if they chose; she did not

mind. And, touching his hair with her lips, she

thought, he will never be so happy again, but

stopped herself, remembering how it angered her

husband that she should say that. Still, it was true.

They were happier now than they would ever be

again. A tenpenny teaset made Cam happy for days.

She heard them stamping and crowing on the floor

above her head the moment they awoke. They came

bustling along the passage. Then the door sprang

 

open and in they came, fresh as roses, staring, wide

awake, as if this coming into the dining-room after

breakfast, which they did every day of their lives,

was a positive event to them, and so on, with one

thing after another, all day long, until she went up

to say good-night to them, and found them netted

in their cots like birds among cherries and

raspberries, still making up stories about some little bit

of rubbish -- something they had heard, something

they had picked up in the garden. They all had their

little treasures.... And so she went down and said

to her husband, Why must they grow up and lose

it all? Never will they be so happy again. And he

was angry. Why take such a gloomy view of life?

he said. It is not sensible. For it was odd; and she

believed it to be true; that with all his gloom and

desperation he was happier, more hopeful on the

whole, than she was. Less exposed to human worries --

perhaps that was it. He had always his work

to fall back on. Not that she herself was " pessimistic, "

as he accused her of being. Only she thought life

-- and a little strip of time presented itself to her

eyes -- her fifty years. There it was before her -- life.

Life, she thought -- but she did not finish her

thought. She took a look at life, for she had a clear

sense of it there, something real, something private,

which she shared neither with her children nor with

 

her husband. A sort of transaction went on between

them, in which she was on one side, and

life was on another, and she was always trying to

get the better of it, as it was of her; and sometimes

they parleyed (when she sat alone); there were, she

remembered, great reconciliation scenes; but for the

most part, oddly enough, she must admit that she

felt this thing that she called life terrible, hostile,

and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a chance.

There were eternal problems: suffering; death;

the poor. There was always a woman dying of

cancer even here. And yet she had said to all these

children, You shall go through it all. To eight people she

had said relentlessly that (and the bill for the

greenhouse would be fifty pounds). For that

reason, knowing what was before them -- love and

ambition and being wretched alone in dreary places --

she had often the feeling, Why must they grow up

and lose it all?  And then she said to herself,

brandishing her sword at life, Nonsense. They will be

perfectly happy. And here she was, she reflected,

feeling life rather sinister again, making Minta

marry Paul Rayley; because whatever she might feel

about her own transaction, she had had experiences

which need not happen to every one (she

did not name them to herself); she was driven on,

too quickly she knew, almost as if it were an escape

 

for her too, to say that people must marry;

people must have children.

 

     Was she wrong in this, she asked herself,

reviewing her conduct for the past week or two, and

wondering if she had indeed put any pressure upon

Minta, who was only twenty-four, to make up her

mind.  She was uneasy.  Had she not laughed about

it?  Was she not forgetting again how strongly she

influenced people?  Marriage needed -- oh, all sorts of

qualities (the bill for the greenhouse would be fifty

pounds); one -- she need not name it -- that was

essential; the thing she had with her husband.  Had

they that?

 

     " Then he put on his trousers and ran away like

a madman, " she read.  " But outside a great storm

was raging and blowing so hard that he could

scarcely keep his feet; houses and trees toppled

over, the mountains trembled, rocks rolled into the

sea, the sky was pitch black, and it thundered and

lightened, and the sea came in with black waves as

high as church towers and mountains, and all with

white foam at the top..  "

     She turned the page; there were only a few lines

more, so that she would finish the story, though it

was past bed-time.  It was getting late.  The light in

the garden told her that; and the whitening of the

flowers and something grey in the leaves conspired

 

together, to rouse in her a feeling of anxiety.  What it

was about she could not think at first.  Then she

remembered; Paul and Minta and Andrew had not

come back.  She summoned before her again the little

group on the terrace in front of the hall door, standing

looking up into the sky.  Andrew had his net and

basket.  That meant he was going to catch crabs and

things.  That meant he would climb out on to a rock;

he would be cut off.  Or coming back single file on

one of those little paths above the cliff one of them

might slip.  He would roll and then crash.  It was

growing quite dark.

 

     But she did not let her voice change in the least

as she finished the story, and added, shutting the

 book, and speaking the last words as if she had made

them up herself, looking into James's eyes: " And

there they are living still at this very time. "

     " And that's the end, " she said, and she saw in his

eyes, as the interest of the story died away in them,

something else take its place; something wondering,

pale, like the reflection of a light, which at once

made him gaze and marvel.  Turning, she looked

across the bay, and there, sure enough, coming

regularly across the waves first two quick strokes and

then one long steady stroke, was the light of the

Lighthouse.  It had been lit.

 

     In a moment he would ask her, " Are we going

 

to the Lighthouse? "  And she would have to say,

" No: not tomorrow; your father says not. "  Happily,

Mildred came in to fetch them, and the bustle

distracted them.  But he kept looking back over his

shoulder as Mildred carried him out, and she was

certain that he was thinking, we are not going to

the Lighthouse tomorrow; and she thought, he will

remember that all his life.

 

 

     No, she thought, putting together some of the

pictures he had cut out -- a refrigerator, a mowing

machine, a gentleman in evening dress -- children

never forget.  For this reason, it was so important

what one said, and what one did, and it was a relief

when they went to bed.  For now she need not think

about anybody.  She could be herself, by herself.

And that was what now she often felt the need of --

to think; well, not even to think.  To be silent; to be

alone.  All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering,

vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of

solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped

core of darkness, something invisible to others. Although

she continued to knit, and sat upright, it was

thus that she felt herself; and this self having

shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.

 

When life sank down for a moment, the range

of experience seemed limitless.  And to everybody

there was always this sense of unlimited resources,

she supposed; one after another, she, Lily, Augustus

Carmichael, must feel, our apparitions, the

things you know us by, are simply childish.  Beneath

it is all  dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably

deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and

that is what you see us by.  Her horizon seemed to her

limitless. There were all the places she had not

seen; the Indian plains; she felt herself pushing

aside the thick leather curtain of a church in Rome.

This core of darkness could go anywhere, for no one

saw it.  They could not stop it, she thought, exulting.

There was freedom, there was peace, there was,

most welcome of all, a summoning together, a resting

on a platform of stability.  Not as oneself did one

find rest ever, in her experience (she accomplished

here something dexterous with her needles) but as

a wedge of darkness.  Losing personality, one

lost the fret, the hurry, the stir; and there rose to

her lips always some exclamation of triumph over

life when things came together in this peace, this

rest, this eternity; and pausing there she looked out

to meet that stroke of the Lighthouse, the long

steady stroke, the last of the three, which was

her stroke, for watching them in this mood

 

always at this hour one could not help attaching

oneself to one thing especially of the things one

saw; and this thing, the long steady stroke, was her

stroke.  Often she found herself sitting and looking,

sitting and looking, with her work in her hands

until she became the thing she looked at -- that light,

for example.  And it would lift up on it some little

phrase or other which had been lying in her mind

like that -- " Children don't forget, children don't

forget " -- which she would repeat and begin adding

to it, It will end, it will end, she said.  It will come, it

will come, when suddenly she added, We are in the

hands of the Lord.

 

     But instantly she was annoyed with herself for

saying that.  Who had said it?  Not she; she had been

trapped into saying something she did not mean.

She looked up over her knitting and met the third

stroke and it seemed to her like her own eyes meeting

her own eyes, searching as she alone could search

into her mind and her heart, purifying out of

existence that lie, any lie.  She praised herself in

praising the light, without vanity, for she was stern, she

was searching, she was beautiful like that light.  It

was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one

leant to inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers;

felt they expressed one; felt they became one; felt

they knew one, in a sense were one; felt an irrational

 

tenderness thus (she looked at that long

steady light) as for oneself.  There rose, and she

looked and looked with her needles suspended, there

curled up off the floor of the mind, rose from the

lake of one's being, a mist, a bride to meet her

lover.

 

     What brought her to say that: " We are in the

hands of the Lord? " she wondered.  The insincerity

slipping in among the truths roused her, annoyed

her.  She returned to her knitting again.   How could

any Lord have made this world? she asked.  With her

mind she had always seized the fact that there

is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the

poor.  There was no treachery too base for the world

to commit; she knew that.  No happiness lasted;

she knew that.  She knitted with firm composure,

slightly pursing her lips and, without being aware

of it, so stiffened and composed the lines of her

face in a habit of sternness that when her husband

passed, though he was chuckling at the thought

that Hume, the philosopher, grown enormously fat,

had stuck in a bog, he could not help noting, as he

passed, the sternness at the heart of her beauty.  It

saddened him, and her remoteness pained him, and

he felt, as he passed, that he could not protect her,

and, when he reached the hedge, he was sad.  He

could do nothing to help her.  He must stand by and

 

watch her.  Indeed, the infernal truth was, he made

things worse for her.  He was irritable -- he was

touchy.  He had lost his temper over the Lighthouse.

He looked into the hedge, into its intricacy, its

darkness.

 

     Always, Mrs. Ramsay felt, one helped oneself

out of solitude reluctantly by laying hold of some

little odd or end, some sound, some sight.  She

listened, but it was all very still; cricket was over;

the children were in their baths; there was only

the sound of the sea.  She stopped knitting; she

held the long reddish-brown stocking dangling in

her hands a moment.  She saw the light again.  With

some irony in her interrogation, for when one woke

at all, one's relations changed, she looked at the

steady light, the pitiless, the remorseless, which was

so much her, yet so little her, which had her at its

beck and call (she woke in the night and saw it

bent across their bed, stroking the floor), but for

all that she thought, watching it with fascination,

hypnotised, as if it were stroking with its silver

fingers some sealed vessel in her brain whose

bursting would flood her with delight, she had known

happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness,

and it silvered the rough waves a little more

brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out

of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon

 

which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach

and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure

delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt,

It is enough! It is enough!

 

     He turned and saw her.  Ah!  She was lovely, lovelier

now than ever he thought.  But he could not

speak to her.  He could not interrupt her.  He wanted

urgently to speak to her now that James was gone

and she was alone at last.  But he resolved, no; he

would not interrupt her.  She was aloof from him

now in her beauty, in her sadness.  He would let

her be, and he passed her without a word, though

it hurt him that she should look so distant, and he

could not reach her, he could do nothing to help

her.  And again he would have passed her without

a word had she not, at that very moment, given

him of her own free will what she knew he would

never ask, and called to him and taken the green

shawl off the picture frame, and gone to him.  For

he wished, she knew, to protect her.

 

 

     She folded the green shawl about her shoulders.

She took his arm. His beauty was so great, she said,

beginning to speak of Kennedy the gardener, at once

he was so awfully handsome, that she couldn't dismiss

 

him. There was a ladder against the greenhouse,

and little lumps of putty stuck about, for

they were beginning to mend the greenhouse. Yes,

but as she strolled along with her husband, she felt

that that particular source of worry had been

placed. She had it on the tip of her tongue to say,

as they strolled, " It'll cost fifty pounds, " but instead,

for her heart failed her about money, she talked

about Jasper shooting birds, and he said, at once,

soothing her instantly, that it was natural in a boy,

and he trusted he would find better ways of amusing

himself before long. Her husband was so sensible, so

just. And so she said, " Yes; all children go through

stages, " and began considering the dahlias in the

big bed, and wondering what about next year's

flowers, and had he heard the children's nickname

for Charles Tansley, she asked. The atheist, they

called him, the little atheist. " He's not a polished

specimen, " said Mr. Ramsay. " Far from it, " said

Mrs. Ramsay.

 

     She supposed it was all right leaving him to

his own devices, Mrs. Ramsay said, wondering

whether it was any use sending down bulbs; did

they plant them? " Oh, he has his dissertation to

write, " said Mr. Ramsay. She knew all about that#,

said Mrs. Ramsay. He talked of nothing else. It

was about the influence of somebody upon something.

 

" Well, it's all he has to count on, " said Mr.

Ramsay. " Pray Heaven he won't fall in love with

Prue, " said Mrs. Ramsay. He'd disinherit her if she

married him, said Mr. Ramsay. He did not look at the

flowers, which his wife was considering, but at a

spot about a foot or so above them. There was no

harm in him, he added, and was just about to say

that anyhow he was the only young man in England

who admired his -- when he choked it back. He

would not bother her again about his books. These

flowers seemed creditable, Mr. Ramsay said, lowering

his gaze and noticing something red, something brown.

Yes, but then these she had put in with her

own hands, said Mrs. Ramsay. The question

was, what happened if she sent bulbs down; did

Kennedy plant them? It was his incurable laziness;

she added, moving on. If she stood over him all day

long with a spade in her hand, he did sometimes

do a stroke of work. So they strolled along, towards

the red-hot pokers. " You're teaching your daughters

to exaggerate, " said Mr. Ramsay, reproving her.

Her Aunt Camilla was far worse than she was, Mrs.

Ramsay remarked. " Nobody ever held up your Aunt

Camilla as a model of virtue that I'm aware of, "

said Mr. Ramsay. " She was the most beautiful

woman I ever saw, " said Mrs. Ramsay. " Somebody

else was that, " said Mr. Ramsay. Prue was going

 

to be far more beautiful than she was, said Mrs.

Ramsay. He saw no trace of it, said Mr. Ramsay.

" Well, then, look tonight, " said Mrs. Ramsay. They

paused. He wished Andrew could be induced to work

harder. He would lose every chance of a scholarship

if he didn't. " Oh, scholarships! " she said.

Mr. Ramsay thought her foolish for saying that, about

a serious thing, like a scholarship. He should be

very proud of Andrew if he got a scholarship, he

said. She would be just as proud of him if he didn't,

she answered. They disagreed always about this,

but it did not matter. She liked him to believe in

scholarships, and he liked her to be proud of Andrew

whatever he did. Suddenly she remembered those

little paths on the edge of the cliffs.

 

     Wasn't it late? she asked. They hadn't come home

yet. He flicked his watch carlessly open. But it

was only just past seven. He held his watch open

for a moment, deciding that he would tell her what

he had felt on the terrace. To begin with, it was

not reasonable to be so nervous. Andrew could

look after himself. Then, he wanted to tell her that

when he was walking on the terrace just now --

here he became uncomfortable, as if he were breaking

into that solitude, that aloofness, that remoteness

of hers.... But she pressed him. What had

he wanted to tell her, she asked, thinking it was

 

about going to the Lighthouse; that he was sorry

he had said " Damn you. " But no. He did not like

to see her look so sad, he said. Only wool gathering,

she protested, flushing a little. They both felt

uncomfortable, as if they did not know whether to go

on or go back. She had been reading fairy tales to

James, she said. No, they could not share that;

they could not say that.

 

     They had reached the gap between the two

clumps of red-hot pokers, and there was the

Lighthouse again, but she would not let herself look

at it. Had she known that he was looking at her,

she thought, she would not have let herself sit there,

thinking. She disliked anything that reminded her

that she had been seen sitting thinking. So she looked

over her shoulder, at the town. The lights were

rippling and running as if they were drops of silver

water held firm in a wind. And all the poverty,

all the suffering had turned to that, Mrs. Ramsay

thought. The lights of the town and of the harbour

and of the boats seemed like a phantom net floating

there to mark something which had sunk. Well,

if he could not share her thoughts, Mr. Ramsay

said to himself, he would be off, then, on his own.

He wanted to go on thinking, telling himself the

story how Hume was stuck in a bog; he wanted

to laugh. But first it was nonsense to be anxious

 

about Andrew. When he was Andrew's age he used

to walk about the country all day long, with nothing

but a biscuit in his pocket and nobody bothered

about him, or thought that he had fallen over a

cliff. He said aloud he thought he would be off for

a day's walk if the weather held. He had had about

enough of Bankes and of Carmichael. He would like

a little solitude.  Yes, she said. It annoyed him that

she did not protest. She knew that he would never

do it. He was too old now to walk all day long with

a biscuit in his pocket. She worried about the boys,

but not about him. Years ago, before he had married,

he thought, looking across the bay, as they stood

between the clumps of red-hot pokers, he had

walked all day. He had made a meal off bread and

cheese in a public house. He had worked ten hours

at a stretch; an old woman just popped her head

in now and again and saw to the fire. That was the

country he liked best, over there; those sandhills

dwindling away into darkness. One could walk all

day without meeting a soul. There was not a house

scarcely, not a single village for miles on end. One

could worry things out alone. There were little

sandy beaches where no one had been since

the beginning of time. The seals sat up and looked

at you. It sometimes seemed to him that in a little

house out there, alone -- he broke off, sighing. He

 

had no right. The father of eight children -- he reminded

himself. And he would have been a beast

and a cur to wish a single thing altered. Andrew

would be a better man than he had been. Prue would

be a beauty, her mother said. They would stem the

flood a bit. That was a good bit of work on the

whole -- his eight children. They showed he did not

damn the poor little universe entirely, for on an

evening like this, he thought, looking at the land

dwindling away, the little island seemed pathetically

small, half swallowed up in the sea.

 

     " Poor little place, " he murmured with a sigh.

 

     She heard him. He said the most melancholy things,

but she noticed that directly he had said

them he always seemed more cheerful than usual.

All this phrase-making was a game, she thought, for

if she had said half what he said, she would have

blown her brains out by now.

 

     It annoyed her, this phrase-making, and she said

to him, in a matter-of-fact way, that it was a

perfectly lovely evening. And what was he groaning

about, she asked, half laughing, half complaining,

for she guessed what he was thinking -- he would

have written better books if he had not married.

 

     He was not complaining, he said. She knew that

he did not complain. She knew that he had nothing

whatever to complain of. And he seized her hand and

raised it to his lips and kissed it with an intensity

 

that brought the tears to her eyes, and quickly he

dropped it.

 

     They turned away from the view and began to

walk up the path where the silver-green spear-like

plants grew, arm in arm. His arm was almost like

a young man's arm, Mrs. Ramsay thought, thin and

hard, and she thought with delight how strong he

still was, though he was over sixty, and how

untamed and optimistic, and how strange it was that

being convinced, as he was, of all sorts of horrors,

seemed not to depress him, but to cheer him. Was

it not odd, she reflected? Indeed he seemed to her

sometimes made differently from other people, born

blind, deaf, and dumb, to the ordinary things, but

to the extraordinary things, with an eye like an

eagle's. His understanding often astonished her. But

did he notice the flowers? No. Did he notice the

view? No. Did he even notice his own daughter's

beauty, or whether there was pudding on his plate

or roast beef? He would sit at table with them like

a person in a dream. And his habit of talking aloud,

or saying poetry aloud, was growing on him, she was

afraid; for sometimes it was awkward --

               Best and brightest come away!

poor Miss Giddings, when he shouted that at her,

almost jumped out of her skin. But then, Mrs.

Ramsay, though instantly taking his side against all

 

the silly Giddingses in the world, then, she thought,

intimating by a little pressure on his arm that he

walked up hill too fast for her, and she must stop

for a moment to see whether those were fresh molehills

on the bank, then, she thought, stooping down

to look, a great mind like his must be different in

every way from ours. All the great men she had

ever known, she thought, deciding that a rabbit

must have got in, were like that, and it was good for

young men (though the atmosphere of lecture-rooms

was stuffy and depressing to her beyond endurance

almost) simply to hear him, simply to look at him.

But without shooting rabbits, how was one to keep

them down? she wondered. It might be a rabbit; it

might be a mole. Some creature anyhow was ruining

her Evening Primroses. And looking up, she saw

above the thin trees the first pulse of the full-throbbing

star, and wanted to make her husband

look at it; for the sight gave her such keen pleasure.

But she stopped herself. He never looked at things.

If he did, all he would say would be, Poor little

world, with one of his sighs.

 

     At that moment, he said, " Very fine, " to please

her, and pretended to admire the flowers. But she

knew quite well that he did not admire them, or

even realise that they were there. It was only to

please her.... Ah, but was that not Lily Briscoe

 

strolling along with William Bankes? She focussed

her short-sighted eyes upon the backs of a

retreating couple. Yes, indeed it was. Did that not mean

that they would marry? Yes, it must! What an

admirable idea! They must marry!

 

 

     He had been to Amsterdam, Mr. Bankes was

saying as he strolled across the lawn with Lily Briscoe.

He had seen the Rembrandts. He had been to Madrid.

Unfortunately, it was Good Friday and

the Prado was shut. He had been to Rome. Had

Miss Briscoe never been to Rome? Oh, she

should --  It would be a wonderful experience for

her -- the Sistine Chapel; Michael Angelo; and

Padua, with its Giottos. His wife had been in bad

health for many years, so that their sight-seeing

had been on a modest scale.

 

     She had been to Brussels; she had been to Paris

but only for a flying visit to see an aunt who was

ill. She had been to Dresden; there were masses

of pictures she had not seen; however, Lily Briscoe

reflected, perhaps it was better not to see pictures:

they only made one hopelessly discontented with

one's own work. Mr. Bankes thought one could

carry that point of view too far.  We can't all be

 

Titians and we can't all be Darwins, he said; at

the same time he doubted whether you could have

your Darwin and your Titian if it weren't for

humble people like ourselves.  Lily would have liked

to pay him a compliment; you're not humble, Mr.

Bankes, she would have liked to have said.  But he

did not want compliments (most men do, she

thought), and she was a little ashamed of her impulse

and said nothing while he remarked that

perhaps what he was saying did not apply to pictures.

Anyhow, said Lily, tossing off her little insincerity,

she would always go on painting, because it

interested her.  Yes, said Mr. Bankes, he was sure

she would, and, as they reached the end of the

lawn he was asking her whether she had difficulty in

finding subjects in London when they turned and

saw the Ramsays.  So that is marriage, Lily thought,

a man and a woman looking at a girl throwing a

ball.  That is what Mrs. Ramsay tried to tell me

the other night, she thought.  For Mrs. Ramsay was

wearing a green shawl, and they were standing close

together watching Prue and Jasper throwing catches.

And suddenly the meaning which, for no reason at

all, as perhaps they are stepping out of the Tube or

ringing a doorbell, descends on people, making them

symbolical, making them representative, came upon

them, and made them in the dusk standing, looking,

 

the symbols of marriage, husband and wife.  Then,

after an instant, the symbolical outline which

transcended the real figures sank down again, and they

became, as they met them, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay

watching the children throwing catches.  But still

for a moment, though Mrs. Ramsay greeted them

with her usual smile (oh, she's thinking we're going

to get married, Lily thought) and said, " I have

triumphed tonight, " meaning that for once Mr.

Bankes had agreed to dine with them and not run off

to his own lodging where his man cooked

vegetables properly; still, for one moment, there was

a sense of things having been blown apart, of space,

of irresponsibility as the ball soared high, and they

followed it and lost it and saw the one star and the

draped branches.  In the failing light they all looked

sharp-edged and ethereal and divided by great

distances.  Then, darting backwards over the vast space

(for it seemed as if solidity had vanished altogether),

Prue ran full tilt into them and caught the

ball brilliantly high up in her left hand, and her

mother said, " Haven't they come back yet? " whereupon

the spell was broken.  Mr. Ramsay felt free

now to laugh out loud at the thought that Hume

had stuck in a bog and an old woman rescued him

on condition he said the Lord's Prayer, and

chuckling to himself he strolled off to his study.  Mrs.

 

Ramsay, bringing Prue back into throwing

catches again, from which she had escaped,

asked,

     " Did Nancy go with them? "

 

 

     (Certainly Nancy had gone with them, since

Minta Doyle had asked it with her dumb look, holding

out her hand, as Nancy made off, after lunch,

to her attic, to  escape the horror of family life.  She

supposed she must go then.  She did not want to go.

She did not want to be drawn into it all.  For as

they walked along the road to the cliff Minta kept

on taking her hand.  Then she would let it go.  Then

she would take it again.  What was it she wanted?

Nancy asked herself.  There was something, of

course, that people wanted; for when Minta took

her hand and held it, Nancy, reluctantly, saw the

whole world spread out beneath her, as if it were

Constantinople seen through a mist, and then,

however heavy-eyed one might be, one must needs ask,

" Is that Santa Sofia? " " Is that the Golden Horn? "

So Nancy asked, when Minta took her hand.  " What

is it that she wants? Is it that? "  And what was that?

Here and there emerged from the mist (as Nancy

looked down upon life spread beneath her) a

 

pinnacle, a dome; prominent things, without names.

But when Minta dropped her hand, as she did when

they ran down the hillside, all that, the dome, the

pinnacle, whatever it was that had protruded

through the mist, sank down into it and disappeared.

Minta, Andrew observed, was rather a good walker.

She wore more sensible clothes that most women.

She wore very short skirts and black knickerbockers.

She would jump straight into a stream and

flounder across.  He liked her rashness, but he saw

that it would not do -- she would kill herself in some

idiotic way one of these days.  She seemed to be

afraid of nothing -- except bulls.  At the mere sight of

a bull in a field she would throw up her arms and

fly screaming, which was the very thing to enrage

a bull of course.  But she did not mind owning up

to it in the least; one must admit that.  She knew

she was an awful coward about bulls, she said.

She thought she must have been tossed in her

perambulator when she was a baby.  She didn't seem

to mind what she said or did.  Suddenly now she

pitched down on the edge of the cliff and began to

sing some song about

     Damn your eyes, damn your eyes.

They all had to join in and sing the chorus, and

shout out together:

 

     Damn your eyes, damn your eyes,

but it would be fatal to let the tide come in and

cover up all the good hunting-grounds before they

got on to the beach.

 

     " Fatal, " Paul agreed, springing up, and as they

went slithering down, he kept quoting the guide-book

about " these islands being justly celebrated

for their park-like prospects and the extent and

variety of their marine curiosities. "  But it would not

do altogether, this shouting and damning your eyes,

Andrew felt, picking his way down the cliff, this

clapping him on the back, and calling him " old

fellow " and all that; it would not altogether do.

It was the worst of taking women on walks.  Once

on the beach they separated, he going out on to the

Pope's Nose, taking his shoes off, and rolling his

socks in them and letting that couple look after

themselves; Nancy waded out to her own rocks and

searched her own pools and let that couple look

after themselves.  She crouched low down and

touched the smooth rubber-like sea anemones, who

were stuck like lumps of jelly to the side of the rock.

Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and

made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast

vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand

against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation,

 

like God himself, to millions of ignorant and

innocent creatures, and then took her hand away

suddenly and let the sun stream down.  Out on

the pale criss-crossed sand, high-stepping, fringed,

gauntleted, stalked some fantastic leviathan (she

was still enlarging the pool), and slipped into the

vast fissures of the mountain side.  And then, letting

her eyes slide imperceptibly above the pool and

rest on that wavering line of sea and sky, on the

tree trunks which the smoke of steamers made

waver on the horizon, she became with all that

power sweeping savagely in and inevitably withdrawing,

hypnotised, and the two senses of that vastness

and this tininess (the pool had diminished

again) flowering within it made her feel that she

was bound hand and foot and unable to move by

the intensity of feelings which reduced her own

body, her own life, and the lives of all the people

in the world, for ever, to nothingness.  So listening

to the waves, crouching over the pool, she brooded.

 

     And Andrew shouted that the sea was coming in,

so she leapt splashing through the shallow waves

on to the shore and ran up the beach and was carried by

her own impetuosity and her desire for rapid

movement right behind a rock and there -- oh,

heavens! in each other's arms, were Paul and Minta

kissing probably.  She was outraged, indignant.  She

 

and Andrew put on their shoes and stockings in dead

silence without saying a thing about it.  Indeed they

were rather sharp with each other.  She might have

called him when she saw the crayfish or whatever it

was, Andrew grumbled.  However, they both felt,

it's not our fault.  They had not wanted this horrid

nuisance to happen.  All the same it irritated Andrew

that Nancy should be a woman, and Nancy that

Andrew should be a man, and they tied their shoes

very neatly and drew the bows rather tight.

 

     It was not until they had climbed right up on to

the top of the cliff again that Minta cried out that

she had lost her grandmother's brooch -- her

grandmother's brooch, the sole ornament she possessed --

a weeping willow, it was (they must remember it)

set in pearls.  They must have seen it, she said, with

the tears running down her cheeks, the brooch which

her grandmother had fastened her cap with till the

last day of her life.  Now she had lost it.  She would

rather have lost anything than that!  She would go

back and look for it.  They all went back.  They

poked and peered and looked.  They kept their heads

very low, and said things shortly and gruffly.  Paul

Rayley searched like a madman all about the rock

where they had been sitting.  All this pother about a

brooch really didn't do at all, Andrew thought, as

Paul told him to make a " thorough search between

 

this point and that. "  The tide was coming in fast.

The sea would cover the place where they had sat in

a minute.  There was not a ghost of a chance of their

finding it now.  " We shall be cut off! " Minta

shrieked, suddenly terrified.  As if there were any

danger of that!  It was the same as the bulls all

over again -- she had no control over her emotions,

Andrew thought.  Women hadn't.  The wretched Paul

had to pacify her.  The men (Andrew and Paul at

once became manly, and different from usual) took

counsel briefly and decided that they would plant

Rayley's stick where they had sat and come back

at low tide again.  There was nothing more that could

be done now.  If the brooch was there, it would still

be there in the morning, they assured her, but Minta

still sobbed, all the way up to the top of the cliff.

It was her grandmother's brooch; she would rather

have lost anything but that, and yet Nancy felt, it

might be true that she minded losing her brooch, but

she wasn't crying only for that.  She was crying for

something else.  We might all sit down and cry, she

felt.  But she did not know what for.

 

     They drew ahead together, Paul and Minta, and

he comforted her, and said how famous he was for

finding things.  Once when he was a little boy he had

found a gold watch.  He would get up at daybreak

and he was positive he would find it.  It seemed to

 

him that it would be almost dark, and he would be

alone on the beach, and somehow it would be rather

dangerous.  He began telling her, however, that he

would certainly find it, and she said that she would

not hear of his getting up at dawn: it was lost: she

knew that: she had had a presentiment when she put

it on that afternoon.  And secretly he resolved that

he would not tell her, but he would slip out of the

house at dawn when they were all asleep and if he

could not find it he would go to Edinburgh and

buy her another, just like it but more beautiful.

He would prove what he could do.  And as they

came out on the hill and saw the lights of the town

beneath them, the lights coming out suddenly one

by one seemed like things that were going to happen

to him -- his marriage, his children, his house; and

again he thought, as they came out on to the high

road, which was shaded with high bushes, how they

would retreat into solitude together, and walk on

and on, he always leading her, and she pressing close

to his side (as she did now).  As they turned by the

cross roads he thought what an appalling experience

he had been through, and he must tell some one --

Mrs. Ramsay of course, for it took his breath away

to think what he had been and done.  It had been

far and away the worst moment of his life when he

asked Minta to marry him.  He would go straight to

Mrs. Ramsay, because he felt somehow that she

 

was the person who had made him do it.  She had

made him think he could do anything.  Nobody

else took him seriously.  But she made him believe

that he could do whatever he wanted.  He had felt her

eyes on him all day today, following him about

(though she never said a word) as if she were saying,

" Yes, you can do it.  I believe in you.  I expect it

of you. "  She had made him feel all that, and

directly they got back (he looked for the lights of

the house above the bay) he would go to her and

say, " I've done it, Mrs. Ramsay; thanks to you. "

And so turning into the lane that led to the house

he could see lights moving about in the upper

windows.  They must be awfully late then.  People

were getting ready for dinner.  The house was all

lit up, and the lights after the darkness made his

eyes feel full, and he said to himself, childishly, as

he walked up the drive, Lights, lights, lights, and

repeated in a dazed way, Lights, lights, lights, as

they came into the house staring about him with his

face quite stiff.  But, good heavens, he said to

himself, putting his hand to his tie, I must not make a

fool of myself..)

 

 

     " Yes, " said Prue, in her considering way,

answering her mother's question, " I think Nancy

did go with them. "

 

 

 

     Well then, Nancy had gone with them, Mrs. Ramsay

supposed, wondering, as she put down a brush ,

took up a comb, and said " Come in " to a tap at

the door (Jasper and Rose came in), whether the

fact that Nancy was with them made it less likely

or more likely that anything would happen; it made

it less likely, somehow, Mrs. Ramsay felt, very

irrationally, except that after all holocaust on such a

scale was not probable.  They could not all be

drowned.  And again she felt alone in the presence

of her old antagonist, life.

 

     Jasper and Rose said that Mildred wanted to

know whether she should wait dinner.

 

     " Not for the Queen of England, " said Mrs.

Ramsay emphatically.

 

     " Not for the Empress of Mexico, " she added,

laughing at Jasper; for he shared his mother's vice:

he, too, exaggerated.

 

     And if Rose liked, she said, while Jasper took the

message, she might choose which jewels she was to

wear.  When there are fifteen people sitting down to

dinner, one cannot keep things waiting for ever.

She was now beginning to feel annoyed with them

for being so late; it was inconsiderate of them, and

it annoyed her on top of her anxiety about them,

 

that they should choose this very night to be out

late, when, in fact, she wished the dinner to be

particularly nice, since William Bankes had at last

consented to dine with them; and they were having

Mildred's masterpiece -- B$oeuf en Daube.  Everything

depended upon things being served up to the precise

moment they were ready.  The beef, the bayleaf, and

the wine -- all must be done to a turn.  To keep it

waiting was out of the question.  Yet of course tonight,

of all nights, out they went, and they came in late,

and things had to be sent out , things had

to be kept hot; the B$oeuf en Daube would be

entirely spoilt.

 

     Jasper offered her an opal necklace; Rose a gold

necklace.  Which looked best against her black

dress? Which did indeed, said Mrs. Ramsay absent-mindedly,

looking at her neck and shoulders (but

avoiding her face) in the glass.  And then, while

the children rummaged among her things, she looked

out of the window at a sight which always amused

her -- the rooks trying to decide which tree to settle

on.  Every time, they seemed to change their minds

and rose up into the air again, because, she thought,

the old rook, the father rook, old Joseph was her

name for him, was a bird of a very trying and

difficult disposition.  He was a disreputable old

bird, with half his wing feathers missing.  He was like

 

some seedy old gentleman in a top hat she had seen

playing the horn in front of a public house.

 

     " Look! " she said, laughing.  They were actually

fighting.  Joseph and Mary were fighting.  Anyhow

they all went up again, and the air was shoved

aside by their black wings and cut into exquisite

scimitar shapes.  The movement of the wings beating

out, out, out -- she could never describe it accurately

enough to please herself -- was one of the loveliest of

all to her.  Look at that, she said to Rose, hoping

that Rose would see it more clearly than she could.

For one's children so often gave one's own

perceptions a little thrust forwards.

 

     But which was it to be?  They had all the trays

of her jewel-case open.  The gold necklace, which

was Italian, or the opal necklace, which Uncle

James had brought her from India; or should she

wear her amethysts?

 

     " Choose, dearests, choose, " she said, hoping that

they would make haste.

 

     But she let them take their time to choose: she

let Rose, particularly, take up this and then that,

and hold her jewels against the black dress, for this

little ceremony of choosing jewels, which was gone

through every night, was what Rose liked best, she

knew.  She had some hidden reason of her own for

attaching great importance to this choosing what her

 

mother was to wear.  What was the reason, Mrs.

Ramsay wondered, standing still to let her clasp the

necklace she had chosen, divining, through her own

past, some deep, some buried, some quite speechless

feeling that one had for one's mother at Rose's age.

Like all feelings felt for oneself, Mrs. Ramsay

thought, it made one sad.  It was so inadequate, what

one could give in return; and what Rose felt was

quite out of proportion to anything she actually

was.  And Rose would grow up; and Rose would

suffer, she supposed, with these deep feelings, and

she said she was ready now, and they would go

down, and Jasper, because he was the gentleman,

should give her his arm, and Rose, as she was the

lady, should carry her handkerchief (she gave her

the handkerchief), and what else? oh, yes, it might

be cold: a shawl.  Choose me a shawl, she said, for

that would please Rose, who was bound to suffer

so.  " There, " she said, stopping by the window on

the landing, " there they are again. "  Joseph had

settled on another tree-top.  " Don't you think they

mind, " she said to Jasper, " having their wings

broken? "  Why did he want to shoot poor old Joseph

and Mary?  He shuffled a little on the stairs, and

felt rebuked, but not seriously, for she did not

understand the fun of shooting birds; and they did

not feel; and being his mother she lived away in

 

another division of the world, but he rather liked

her stories about Mary and Joseph.  She made him

laugh.  But how did she know that those were Mary and

Joseph?  Did she think the same birds came to

the same trees every night? he asked.  But here,

suddenly, like all grown-up people, she ceased to

pay him the least attention.  She was listening to

a clatter in the hall.

 

     " They've come back! " she exclaimed, and at

once she felt much more annoyed with them than

relieved.  Then she wondered, had it happened?  She

would go down and they would tell her -- but no.

They could not tell her anything, with all these

people about.  So she must go down and begin dinner

and wait.  And, like some queen who, finding

her people gathered in the hall, looks down upon them,

and descends among them, and acknowledges their

tributes silently, and accepts their devotion and

their prostration before her (Paul did not move a

muscle but looked straight before him as she passed)

she went down, and crossed the hall and bowed her

head very slightly, as if she accepted what they

could not say: their tribute to her beauty.

 

     But she stopped.  There was a smell of burning.

Could they have let the B$oeuf en Daube overboil?

she wondered, pray heaven not! when the great

clangour of the gong announced solemnly, authoritatively,

 

that all those scattered about, in attics, in

bedrooms, on little perches of their own, reading,

writing, putting the last smooth to their hair, or

fastening dresses, must leave all that, and the little

odds and ends on their washing-tables and dressing tables,

and the novels on the bed-tables, and the diaries

which were so private, and assemble in the dining-room

for dinner.

 

 

     But what have I done with my life? thought Mrs.

Ramsay, taking her place at the head of the table,

and looking at all the plates making white circles on

it.  " William, sit by me, " she said.  " Lily, " she said,

wearily, " over there. "  They had that -- Paul Rayley

and Minta Doyle -- she, only this -- an infinitely long

table and plates and knives.  At the far end was her

husband, sitting down, all in a heap, frowning.  What

at?  She did not know.  She did not mind.  She could

not understand how she had ever felt any emotion

or affection for him.  She had a sense of being past

everything, through everything, out of everything,

as she helped the soup, as if there was an eddy --

there -- and one could be in it, or one could be out

of it, and she was out of it.  It's all come to an end,

she thought, while they came in one after another,

 

Charles Tansley -- " Sit there, please, " she said --

Augustus Carmichael -- and sat down.  And meanwhile

she waited, passively, for some one to answer

her, for something to happen.  But this is not a thing,

she thought, ladling out soup, that one says.

 

     Raising her eyebrows at the discrepancy -- that

was what she was thinking, this was what she was

doing -- ladling out soup -- she felt, more and more

strongly, outside that eddy; or as if a shade had

fallen, and, robbed of colour, she saw things truly.

The room (she looked round it) was very shabby.

There was no beauty anywhere.  She forebore to look

at Mr. Tansley.  Nothing seemed to have merged.

They all sat separate.  And the whole of the effort of

merging and flowing and creating rested on her.

Again she felt, as a fact without hostility, the

sterility of men, for if she did not do it nobody would

do it, and so, giving herself a little shake that one

gives a watch that has stopped, the old familiar

pulse began beating, as the watch begins ticking --

one, two, three, one, two, three.  And so on and

so on, she repeated, listening to it, sheltering and

fostering the still feeble pulse as one might guard a

weak flame with a newspaper.  And so then, she

concluded, addressing herself by bending silently in

his direction to William Bankes -- poor man! who

had no wife, and no children and dined alone in

 

lodgings except for tonight; and in pity for him,

life being now strong enough to bear her on again,

she began all this business, as a sailor not without

weariness sees the wind fill his sail and yet hardly

wants to be off again and thinks how, had the ship

sunk, he would have whirled round and round and

found rest on the floor of the sea.

 

     " Did you find your letters?  I told them to put

them in the hall for you, " she said to William

Bankes.

 

     Lily Briscoe watched her drifting into that

strange no-man's land where to follow people is

impossible and yet their going inflicts such a chill

on those who watch them that they always try at least

to follow them with their eyes as one follows a fading

ship until the sails have sunk beneath the horizon.

 

     How old she looks, how worn she looks, Lily

thought, and how remote.  Then when she turned to

William Bankes, smiling, it was as if the ship had

turned and the sun had struck its sails again, and

Lily thought with some amusement because she was

relieved, Why does she pity him?  For that was the

impression she gave, when she told him that his

letters were in the hall.  Poor William Bankes, she

seemed to be saying, as if her own weariness had

been partly pitying people, and the life in her, her

 

resolve to live again, had been stirred by pity.  And

it was not true, Lily thought; it was one of those

misjudgments of hers that seemed to be instinctive

and to arise from some need of her own rather than

of other people's.  He is not in the least pitiable.

He has his work, Lily said to herself.  She remembered,

all of a sudden as if she had found a treasure, that

she had her work.  In a flash she saw her picture,

and thought, Yes, I shall put the tree further in the

middle; then I shall avoid that awkward space.

That's what I shall do.  That's what has been puzzling

me.  She took up the salt cellar and put it

down again on a flower pattern in the table-cloth,

so as to remind herself to move the tree.

 

     " It's odd that one scarcely gets anything worth

having by post, yet one always wants one's letters, "

said Mr. Bankes.

 

     What damned rot they talk, thought Charles

Tansley, laying down his spoon precisely in the

middle of his plate, which he had swept clean, as if,

Lily thought (he sat opposite to her with his back

to the window precisely in the middle of view), he

were determined to make sure of his meals.  Everything

about him had that meagre fixity, that bare

unloveliness.  But nevertheless, the fact remained,

it was impossible to dislike any one if one

 

looked at them.  She liked his eyes; they were blue,

deep set, frightening.

 

     " Do you write many letters, Mr. Tansley? " asked

Mrs. Ramsay, pitying him too, Lily supposed; for

that was true of Mrs. Ramsay -- she pitied men

always as if they lacked something -- women never,

as if they had something.  He wrote to his mother;

otherwise he did not suppose he wrote one letter a

month, said Mr. Tansley, shortly.

 

     For he was not going to talk the sort of rot these

people wanted him to talk.  He was not going to be

condescended to by these silly women.  He had been

reading in his room, and now he came down and it

all seemed to him silly, superficial, flimsy.  Why did

they dress?  He had come down in his ordinary

clothes.  He had not got any dress clothes.  " One

never gets anything worth having by post " -- that

was the sort of thing they were always saying.  They

made men say that sort of thing.  Yes, it was pretty

well true, he thought.  They never got anything worth

having from one year's end to another.  They did

nothing but talk, talk, talk, eat, eat, eat.  It

was the women's fault.  Women made civilisation impossible

with all their " charm, " all their silliness.

 

     " No going to the Lighthouse tomorrow, Mrs.

Ramsay, " he said, asserting himself.  He liked her;

he admired her; he still thought of the man in the

 

drain-pipe looking up at her; but he felt it necessary

to assert himself.

 

     He was really, Lily Briscoe thought, in spite of

his eyes, but then look at his nose, look at his hands,

the most uncharming human being she had ever met.

Then why did she mind what he said?  Women can't

write, women can't paint -- what did that matter

coming from him, since clearly it was not true to

him but for some reason helpful to him, and that was

why he said it?  Why did her whole being bow, like

corn under a wind, and erect itself again from this

abasement only with a great and rather painful

effort?  She must make it once more.  There's the

sprig on the table-cloth; there's my painting; I must

move the tree to the middle; that matters -- nothing

else.  Could she not hold fast to that, she asked

herself, and not lose her temper, and not argue; and

if she wanted revenge take it by laughing at him?

 

     " Oh, Mr. Tansley, " she said, " do take me to the

Lighthouse with you.  I should so love it. "

 

     She was telling lies he could see.  She was saying

what she did not mean to annoy him, for some reason.

She was laughing at him.  He was in his old

flannel trousers.  He had no others.  He felt very

rough and isolated and lonely.  He knew that she was

trying to tease him for some reason; she didn't want

to go to the Lighthouse with him; she despised him:

 

so did Prue Ramsay; so did they all.  But he was not

going to be made a fool of by women, so he turned

deliberately in his chair and looked out of the

window and said, all in a jerk, very rudely, it would

be too rough for her tomorrow.  She would be sick.

 

     It annoyed him that she should have made him

speak like that, with Mrs. Ramsay listening.  If only

he could be alone in his room working, he thought,

among his books.  That was where he felt at his ease.

And he had never run a penny into debt; he had never

cost his father a penny since he was fifteen; he

had helped them at home out of his savings; he

was educating his sister.  Still, he wished he had

known how to answer Miss Briscoe properly; he

wished it had not come out all in a jerk like that.

" You'd be sick. "  He wished he could think of something

to say to Mrs. Ramsay, something which would

show her that he was not just a dry prig.  That

was what they all thought him.  He turned to her.

But Mrs. Ramsay was talking about people he had

never heard of to William Bankes.

 

     " Yes, take it away, " she said briefly, interrupting

what she was saying to William Bankes to speak to the maid.

" It must have been fifteen -- no, twenty years

ago -- that I last saw her, " she was saying, turning

back to him again as if she could not lose a moment

of their talk, for she was absorbed by what they

 

were saying.  So he had actually heard from her this

evening!  And was Carrie still living at Marlow, and

was everything still the same?  Oh, she could remember

as if it were yesterday -- going on the river, feeling

very cold.  But if the Mannings made a plan they

stuck to it.  Never should she forget Herbert killing

a wasp with a teaspoon on the bank!  And it was

still going on, Mrs. Ramsay mused, gliding like a

ghost among the chairs and tables of that drawing-room

on the banks of the Thames where she had been

so very, very cold twenty years ago; but now

she went among them like a ghost; and it fascinated

her, as if, while she had changed, that particular

day, now become very still and beautiful, had

remained there, all these years.  Had Carrie written

to him herself? she asked.

 

     " Yes.  She says they're building a new billiard

room, " he said.  No!  No!  That was out of the

question!  Building a new billiard room!  It seemed

to her impossible.

 

     Mr. Bankes could not see that there was anything

very odd about it.  They were very well off now.

Should he give her love to Carrie?

 

     " Oh, " said Mrs. Ramsay with a little start, " No,"

she added, reflecting that she did not know this Carrie

who built a new billiard room.  But how strange,

she repeated, to Mr. Bankes's amusement, that they

 

should be going on there still.  For it was extraordinary

to think that they had been capable of going

on living all these years when she had not thought of

them more than once all that time.  How

eventful her own life had been, during those same

years.  Yet perhaps Carrie had not thought about

her, either.  The thought was strange and distasteful.

 

     " People soon drift apart, " said Mr. Bankes,

feeling, however, some satisfaction when he thought

that after all he knew both the Mannings and the

Ramsays.  He had not drifted apart he thought, laying

down his spoon and wiping his clean-shaven lips

punctiliously.  But perhaps he was rather unusual, he

thought, in this; he never let himself get into a

groove.  He had friends in all circles....  Mrs.

Ramsay had to break off here to tell the maid

something about keeping food hot.  That was why he

preferred dining alone.  All those interruptions annoyed

him. Well, thought William Bankes, preserving

a demeanour of exquisite courtesy and merely

spreading the fingers of his left hand on the table-cloth

as a mechanic examines a tool beautifully

polished and ready for use in an interval of leisure,

such are the sacrifices one's friends ask of one.  It

would have hurt her if he had refused to come.  But

it was not worth it for him.  Looking at his hand he

 

thought that if he had been alone dinner would have

been almost over now; he would have been free

to work.  Yes, he thought, it is a terrible waste of

time.  The children were dropping in still.  " I wish

one of you would run up to Roger's room, " Mrs.

Ramsay was saying.  How trifling it all is, how

boring it all is, he thought, compared with the other

thing -- work.  Here he sat drumming his fingers on

the table-cloth when he might have been -- he took a

flashing bird's-eye view of his work.  What a waste

of time it all was to be sure!  Yet, he thought, she

is one of my oldest friends.  I am by way of being

devoted to her.  Yet now, at this moment her

presence meant absolutely nothing to him: her

beauty meant nothing to him; her sitting with

her little boy at the window -- nothing, nothing.

He wished only to be alone and to take

up that book.  He felt uncomfortable; he felt treacherous,

that he could sit by her side and feel nothing

for her.  The truth was that he did not enjoy

family life.  It was in this sort of state that one asked

oneself, What does one live for?  Why, one asked

oneself, does one take all these pains for the human race

to go on?  Is it so very desirable?  Are we attractive as a

species?  Not so very, he thought, looking at those

rather untidy boys.  His favourite, Cam, was in bed,

he supposed.  Foolish questions, vain questions, questions

 

one never asked if one was occupied. Is human

life this?  Is human life that?  One never had time

to think about it.  But here he was asking himself

that sort of question, because Mrs. Ramsay was

giving orders to servants, and also because it had

struck him, thinking how surprised Mrs. Ramsay

was that Carrie Manning should still exist, that

friendships, even the best of them, are frail things.

One drifts apart.  He reproached himself again.  He

was sitting beside Mrs. Ramsay and he had nothing

in the world to say to her.

 

     " I'm so sorry, " said Mrs. Ramsy, turning to him

at last.  He felt rigid and barren, like a pair of boots

that have been soaked and gone dry so that you

can hardly force your feet into them.  Yet he must

force his feet into them.  He must make himself talk.

Unless he were very careful, she would find out

this treachery of his; that he did not care a straw

for her, and that would not be at all pleasant, he

thought.  So he bent his head courteously in her

direction.

 

     " How you must detest dining in this bear garden, "

she said, making use, as she did when she was

distracted, of her social manner.  So, when there is a

strife of tongues, at some meeting, the chairman, to

obtain unity, suggests that every one shall speak in

French.  Perhaps it is bad French; French may not

 

contain the words that express the speaker's

thoughts; nevertheless speaking French imposes

some order, some uniformity.  Replying to her in the

same language, Mr. Bankes said, " No, not at all, "

and Mr. Tansley, who had no knowledge of this

language, even spoke thus in words of one syllable,

at once suspected its insincerity.  They did talk

nonsense, he thought, the Ramsays; and he pounced on

this fresh instance with joy, making a note which,

one of these days, he would read aloud, to one or

two friends.  There, in a society where one could say

what one liked he would sarcastically  describe " staying

with the Ramsays " and what nonsense they talked.

It was worth while doing it once, he would

say; but not again.  The women bored one so, he

would say.  Of course Ramsay had dished himself

by marrying a beautiful woman and having eight

children.  It would shape itself something like that,

but now, at this moment, sitting stuck there with

an empty seat beside him, nothing had shaped itself

at all.  It was all in scraps and fragments.  He felt

extremely, even physically, uncomfortable.  He wanted

somebody to give him a chance of asserting himself.

He wanted it so urgently that he fidgeted in his chair,

looked at this person, then at that person, tried to

break into their talk, opened his mouth and shut it

again.  They were talking about the fishing industry.

 

Why did no one ask him his opinion?  What did they

know about the fishing industry?

 

     Lily Briscoe knew all that.  Sitting opposite him,

could she not see, as in an X-ray photograph, the

ribs and thigh bones of the young man's desire to

impress himself, lying dark in the mist of his flesh --

that thin mist which convention had laid over his

burning desire to break into the conversation?  But,

she thought, screwing up her Chinese eyes, and

remembering how he sneered at women, " can't paint,

can't write, " why should I help him to relieve

himself?

 

     There is a code of behaviour, she knew, whose

seventh article (it may be) says that on occasions of

this sort it behoves the woman, whatever her own

occupation might be, to go to the help of the young

man opposite so that he may expose and relieve

the thigh bones, the ribs, of his vanity, of his urgent

desire to assert himself; as indeed it is their duty,

she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness, to help

us, suppose the Tube were to burst into flames.

Then, she thought, I should certainly expect Mr.

Tansley to get me out.  But how would it be, she

thought, if neither of us did either of these things?

So she sat there smiling.

 

     " You're not planning to go to the Lighthouse, are

you, Lily, " said Mrs. Ramsay.  " Remember poor Mr.

 

Langley; he had been round the world dozens of

times, but he told me he never suffered as he did

when my husband took him there. Are you a good

sailor, Mr. Tansley? " she asked.

 

     Mr. Tansley raised a hammer: swung it high in

air; but realising, as it descended, that he could not

smite that butterfly with such an instrument as this,

said only that he had never been sick in his life.  But

in that one sentence lay compact, like gunpowder,

that his grandfather was a fisherman; his father a

chemist; that he had worked his way up entirely

himself; that he was proud of it; that he was Charles

Tansley -- a fact that nobody there seemed to realise;

but one of these days every single person would

know it.  He scowled ahead of him.  He could almost

pity these mild cultivated people, who would be blown

sky high, like bales of wool and barrels of

apples, one of these days by the gunpowder that

was in him.

 

     " Will you take me, Mr. Tansley? " said Lily,

quickly, kindly, for, of course, if Mrs. Ramsay said

to her, as in effect she did, " I am drowning, my dear,

in seas of fire.  Unless you apply some balm to the

anguish of this hour and say something nice to that

young man there, life will run upon the rocks --

indeed I hear the grating and the growling at this

minute.  My nerves are taut as fiddle strings.  Another

 

touch and they will snap " -- when Mrs. Ramsay said

all this, as the glance in her eyes said it, of course

for the hundred and fiftieth time Lily Briscoe had

to renounce the experiment -- what happens if one is

not nice to that young man there -- and be nice.

 

     Judging the turn in her mood correctly -- that she

was friendly to him now -- he was relieved of his

egotism, and told her how he had been thrown out

of a boat when he was a baby; how his father used to

fish him out with a boat-hook; that was how he

had learnt to swim.  One of his uncles kept the light

on some rock or other off the Scottish coast, he said.

He had been there with him in a storm.  This was said

loudly in a pause.  They had to listen to him

when he said that he had been with his uncle in a

lighthouse in a storm.  Ah, thought Lily Briscoe, as

the conversation took this auspicious turn, and she

felt Mrs. Ramsay's gratitude (for Mrs. Ramsay was

free now to talk for a moment herself), ah, she

thought, but what haven't I paid to get it for you?

She had not been sincere.

 

     She had done the usual trick -- been nice.  She

would never know him.  He would never know her.

Human relations were all like that, she thought, and

the worst (if it had not been for Mr. Bankes) were

between men and women.  Inevitably these were

extremely insincere she thought.  Then her eye

 

caught the salt cellar, which she had placed there to

remind her, and she remembered that next morning

she would move the tree further towards the middle,

and her spirits rose so high at the thought of painting

tomorrow that she laughed out loud at what Mr.

Tansley was saying.  Let him talk all night if he

liked it.

 

     " But how long do they leave men on a Lighthouse? "

she asked.  He told her.  He was amazingly well

informed.  And as he was grateful, and as he

liked her, and as he was beginning to enjoy himself,

so now, Mrs. Ramsay thought, she could return to

that dream land, that unreal but fascinating place,

the Mannings' drawing-room at Marlow twenty

years ago; where one moved about without haste or

anxiety, for there was no future to worry about.  She

knew what had happened to them, what to her.  It was

like reading a good book again, for she knew the end

of that story, since it had happened twenty years ago,

and life, which shot down even from this dining-room

table in cascades, heaven knows where, was

sealed up there, and lay, like a lake, placidly

between its banks.  He said they had built a billiard

room -- was it possible?  Would William go on talking

about the Mannings?  She wanted him to.  But, no --

for some reason he was no longer in the mood.  She

 

tried.  He did not respond.  She could not force him.

She was disappointed.

 

     " The children are disgraceful, " she said, sighing.

He said something about punctuality being one of

the minor virtues which we do not acquire until

later in life.

 

     " If at all, " said Mrs. Ramsay merely to fill up

space, thinking what an old maid William was

becoming.  Conscious of his treachery, conscious of

her wish to talk about something more intimate, yet

out of mood for it at present, he felt come over him

the disagreeableness of life, sitting there, waiting.

Perhaps the others were saying something interesting?

What were they saying?

 

     That the fishing season was bad; that the men

were emigrating.  They were talking about wages

and unemployment.  The young man was abusing

the government.  William Bankes, thinking what a

relief it was to catch on to something of this sort

when private life was disagreeable, heard him say

something about " one of the most scandalous acts

of the present government. "  Lily was listening;

Mrs. Ramsay was listening; they were all listening.

But already bored, Lily felt that something

was lacking; Mr. Bankes felt that something

was lacking.  Pulling her shawl round her

Mrs. Ramsay felt that something was lacking.

 

All of them bending themselves to listen thought,

" Pray heaven that the inside of my mind may not

be exposed, " for each thought, " The others are

feeling this.  They are outraged and indignant with the

government about the fishermen.  Whereas, I feel

nothing at all. "  But perhaps, thought Mr. Bankes,

as he looked at Mr. Tansley, here is the man.  One

was always waiting for the man.  There was always

a chance.  At any moment the leader might arise;

the man of genius, in politics as in anything else.

Probably he will be extremely disagreeable to us

old fogies, thought Mr. Bankes, doing his best to

make allowances, for he knew by some curious

physical sensation, as of nerves erect in his spine,

that he was jealous, for himself partly, partly more

probably for his work, for his point of view, for his

science; and therefore he was not entirely open-minded

or altogether fair, for Mr. Tansley seemed to

be saying, You have wasted your lives.  You are

all of you wrong.  Poor old fogies, you're hopelessly

behind the times.  He seemed to be rather cocksure,

this young man; and his manners were bad.  But

Mr. Bankes bade himself observe, he had courage;

he had ability; he was extremely well up in the

facts.  Probably, Mr. Bankes thought, as Tansley

abused the government, there is a good deal in what

he says.

 

 

     " Tell me now.. "" he said.  So they argued about

politics, and Lily looked at the leaf on the table-cloth;

and Mrs. Ramsay, leaving the argument entirely

in the hands of the two men, wondered why

she was so bored by this talk, and wished, looking

at her husband at the other end of the table, that

he would say something.  One word, she said to

herself.  For if he said a thing, it would make all the

difference.  He went to the heart of things.  He cared

about fishermen and their wages.  He could not sleep

for thinking of them.  It was altogether different

when he spoke; one did not feel then, pray heaven

you don't see how little I care, because one did care.

Then, realising that it was because she admired him

so much that she was waiting for him to speak, she

felt as if somebody had been praising her husband

to her and their marriage, and she glowed all over

withiut realising that it was she herself who had

praised him.  She looked at him thinking to find this

in his face; he would be looking magnificent...

 

But not in the least!  He was screwing his face up,

he was scowling and frowning, and flushing with

anger.  What on earth was it about? she wondered.

What could be the matter?  Only that poor old

Augustus had asked for another plate of soup -- that

was all.  It was unthinkable, it was detestable (so he

signalled to her across the table) that Augustus

 

should be beginning his soup over again.  He loathed

people eating when he had finished.  She saw his

anger fly like a pack of hounds into his eyes, his

brow, and she knew that in a moment something

violent would explode, and then -- thank goodness!

she saw him clutch himself and clap a brake on the

wheel, and the whole of his body seemed to emit sparks

but not words.  He sat there scowling.  He

had said nothing, he would have her observe.  Let her

give him the credit for that!  But why after all should

poor Augustus not ask for another plate of soup?

He had merely touched Ellen's arm and said:

     " Ellen, please, another plate of soup, " and then

Mr. Ramsay scowled like that.

 

     And why not? Mrs. Ramsay demanded.  Surely

they could let Augustus have his soup if he

wanted it.  He hated people wallowing in food, Mr.

Ramsay frowned at her.  He hated everything

dragging on for hours like this.  But he had

controlled himself, Mr. Ramsay would have her observe,

disgusting though the sight was.  But why

show it so plainly, Mrs. Ramsay demanded (they

looked at each other down the long table sending

these questions and answers across, each knowing

exactly what the other felt).  Everybody could see,

Mrs. Ramsay thought.  There was Rose gazing at

her father, there was Roger gazing at his father;

 

both would be off in spasms of laughter in another

second, she knew, and so she said promptly (indeed

it was time):

     " Light the candles, " and they jumped up

instantly and went and fumbled at the sideboard.

 

     Why could he never conceal his feelings? Mrs.

Ramsay wondered, and she wondered if Augustus

Carmichael had noticed.  Perhaps he had; perhaps

he had not.  She could not help respecting the

composure with which he sat there, drinking his

soup.  If he wanted soup, he asked for soup.

Whether people laughed at him or were angry with

him he was the same.  He did not like her, she knew

that; but partly for that very reason she respected

him, and looking at him, drinking soup, very large

and calm in the failing light, and monumental, and

contemplative, she wondered what he did feel then,

and why he was always content and dignified; and

she thought how devoted he was to Andrew, and

would call him into his room, and Andrew said,

" show him things. "  And there he would lie all day

long on the lawn brooding presumably over his

poetry, till he reminded one of a cat watching birds,

and then he clapped his paws together when he had

found the word, and her husband said, " Poor old

Augustus -- he's a true poet, " which was high praise

from her husband.

 

 

     Now eight candles were stood down the table, and

after the first stoop the flames stood upright and

drew with them into visibility the long table entire,

and in the middle a yellow and purple dish of fruit.

What had she done with it, Mrs. Ramsay wondered,

for Rose's arrangement of the grapes and pears, of

the horny pink-lined shell, of the bananas, made her

think of a trophy fetched from the bottom of the

sea, of Neptune's banquet, of the bunch that hangs

with vine leaves over the shoulder of Bacchus (in

some picture), among the leopard skins and the

torches lolloping red and gold....  Thus brought up

suddenly into the light it seemed possessed of great

size and depth, was like a world in which one could

take one's staff and climb hills, she thought, and go

down into valleys, and to her pleasure (for

it brought them into sympathy momentarily) she

saw that Augustus too feasted his eyes on the same

plate of fruit, plunged in, broke off a bloom there,

a tassel here, and returned, after feasting, to his

hive.  That was his way of looking, different from

hers.  But looking together united them.

 

     Now all the candles were lit up, and the faces

on both sides of the table were brought nearer by

the candle light, and composed, as they had not been

in the twilight, into a party round a table, for the

 

night was now shut off by panes of glass, which, far

from giving any accurate view of the outside world,

rippled it so strangely that here, inside the room,

seemed to be order and dry land; there, outside, a

reflection in which things waved and vanished,

waterily.

 

     Some change at once went through them all, as

if this had really happened, and they were all

conscious of making a party together in a hollow, on

an island; had their common cause against that

fluidity out there.  Mrs. Ramsay, who had been

uneasy, waiting for Paul and Minta to come in, and

unable, she felt, to settle to things, now felt her

uneasiness changed to expectation.  For now they must

come, and Lily Briscoe, trying to analyse the cause

of the sudden exhilaration, compared it with that

moment on the tennis lawn, when solidity suddenly

vanished, and such vast spaces lay between them;

and now the same effect was got by the many candles

in the sparely furnished room, and the uncurtained

windows, and the bright mask-like look of faces

seen by candlelight.  Some weight was taken off

them; anything might happen, she felt.  They must

come now, Mrs. Ramsay thought, looking at the

door, and at that instant, Minta Doyle, Paul Rayley,

and a maid carrying a great dish in her hands came

 

in together.  They were awfully late; they were

horribly late, Minta said, as they found their way to

different ends of the table.

 

     " I lost my brooch -- my grandmother's brooch, "

said Minta with a sound of lamentation in her voice,

and a suffusion in her large brown eyes, looking

down, looking up, as she sat by Mr. Ramsay, which

roused his chivalry so that he bantered her.

 

     How could she be such a goose, he asked, as to

scramble about the rocks in jewels?

 

     She was by way of being terrified of him -- he was

so fearfully clever, and the first night when she had

sat by him, and he talked about George Eliot,

she had been really frightened, for she had left

the third volume of Middlemarch# in the train and

she never knew what happened in the end; but

afterwards she got on perfectly, and made herself

out even more ignorant than she was, because he

liked telling her she was a fool.  And so tonight,

directly he laughed at her, she was not frightened.

Besides, she knew, directly she came into the room

that the miracle had happened; she wore her golden

haze.  Sometimes she had it; sometimes not.  She

never knew why it came or why it went, or if she

had it until she came into the room and then she

knew instantly by the way some man looked at her.

Yes, tonight she had it, tremendously; she knew

 

that by the way Mr. Ramsay told her not to be a

fool.  She sat beside him, smiling.

 

     It must have happened then, thought Mrs. Ramsay;

they are engaged.  And for a moment she felt

what she had never expected to feel again -- jealousy.

For he, her husband, felt it too -- Minta's glow; he

liked these girls, these golden-reddish girls, with

something flying, something a little wild and

harum-scarum about them, who didn't " scrape their hair

off, " weren't, as he said about poor Lily Briscoe,

"... skimpy. "  There was some quality which she

herself had not, some lustre, some richness, which

attracted him, amused him, led him to make favourites

of girls like Minta.  They might cut his hair

from him, plait him watch-chains, or interrupt him

at his work, hailing him (she heard them), " Come

along, Mr. Ramsay; it's our turn to beat them now, "

and out he came to play tennis.

 

     But indeed she was not jealous, only, now and

then, when she made herself look in her glass, a

little resentful that she had grown old, perhaps,

by her own fault.  (The bill for the greenhouse and

all the rest of it.)  She was grateful to them for

laughing at him.  (" How many pipes have you

smoked today, Mr. Ramsay? " and so on), till he

seemed a young man; a man very attractive to

women, not burdened, not weighed down with the

greatness of his labours and the sorrows of the

 

world and his fame or his failure, but again as she

had first known him, gaunt but gallant; helping

her out of a boat, she remembered; with delightful

ways, like that (she looked at him, and he looked

astonishingly young, teasing Minta).  For herself --

" Put it down there, " she said, helping the Swiss girl

to place gently before her the huge brown pot in which

was the B$oeuf en Daube -- for her own part, she

liked her boobies.  Paul must sit by her.  She had

kept a place for him.  Really, she sometimes thought

she liked the boobies best.  They did not bother one

with their dissertations.  How much they missed,

after all, these very clever men!  How dried up they

did become, to be sure.  There was something, she

thought as he sat down, very charming about Paul.

His manners were delightful to her, and his sharp-cut

nose and his bright blue eyes.  He was so considerate.

Would he tell her -- now that they were all talking

again -- what had happened?

 

     " We went back to look for Minta's brooch, " he

said, sitting down by her.  " We " -- that was enough.

She knew from the effort, the rise in his voice to

surmount a difficult word that it was the first time

he had said " we. "  " We did this, we did that. "

They'll say that all their lives, she thought, and an

exquisite scent of olives and oil and juice rose from

the great brown dish as Marthe, with a little

 

flourish, took the cover off.  The cook had spent three

days over that dish.  And she must take great care,

Mrs. Ramsay thought, diving into the soft mass, to

choose a specially tender piece for William Bankes.

And she peered into the dish, with its shiny walls

and its confusion of savoury brown and yellow

meats and its bay leaves and its wine, and thought.

This will celebrate the occasion -- a curious sense

rising in her, at once freakish and tender, of

celebrating a festival, as if two emotions were called up

in her, one profound -- for what could be more serious

than the love of man for woman, what more

commanding, mor impressive, bearing in its bosom

the seeds of death; at the same time these lovers,

these people entering into illusion glittering eyed,

must be danced round with mockery, decorated with

garlands.

 

     " It is a triumph, " said Mr. Bankes, laying his

knife down for a moment.  He had eaten attentively.

It was rich; it was tender.  It was perfectly cooked.

How did she manage these things in the depths of

the country? he asked her.  She was a wonderful

woman.  All his love, all his reverence, had returned;

and she knew it.

 

     " It is a French recipe of my grandmother's, "

said Mrs. Ramsay, speaking with a ring of great

pleasure in her voice.  Of course it was French.  What

 

passes for cookery in England is an abomination

(they agreed).  It is putting cabbages in water.  It is

roasting meat till it is like leather.  It is cutting

off the delicious skins of vegetables.  " In which, "

said Mr. Bankes, " all the virtue of the vegetable is

contained. "  And the waste, said Mrs. Ramsay.  A

whole French family could live on what an English

cook throws away.  Spurred on by her sense that

William's affection had come back to her, and that

everything was all right again, and that her suspense

was over, and that now she was free both to triumph

and to mock, she laughed, she gesticulated, till Lily

thought, How childlike, how absurd she was, sitting

up there with all her beauty opened again in her,

talking about the skins of vegetables.  There was

something frightening about her.  She was irresistible.

Always she got her own way in the end, Lily

thought.  Now she had brought this off -- Paul and

Minta, one might suppose, were engaged.  Mr.

Bankes was dining here.  She put a spell on them all,

by wishing, so simply, so directly, and Lily

contrasted that abundance with her own poverty of

spirit, and supposed that it was partly that belief

(for her face was all lit up -- without looking young,

she looked radiant) in this strange, this terrifying

thing, which made Paul Rayley, sitting at her side,

all of a tremor, yet abstract, absorbed, silent.  Mrs.

 

Ramsay, Lily felt, as she talked about the skins of

vegetables, exalted that, worshipped that; held her

hands over it to warm them, to protect it, and yet,

having brought it all about, somehow laughed, led

her victims, Lily felt, to the altar.  It came over

her too now -- the emotion, the vibration, of love.

How inconspicuous she felt herself by Paul's side!

He, glowing, burning; she, aloof, satirical; he,

bound for adventure; she, moored to the shore; he,

launched, incautious; she, solitary, left out -- and,

ready to implore a share, if it were a disaster, in his

disaster, she said shyly:

     " When did Minta lose her brooch? "

 

     He smiled the most exquisite smile, veiled by

memory, tinged by dreams.  He shook his head.  " On

the beach, " he said.

 

     " I'm going to find it, " he said, " I'm getting

up early. "  This being kept secret from Minta, he

lowered his voice, and turned his eyes to where she sat,

laughing, beside Mr. Ramsay.

 

     Lily wanted to protest violently and outrageously

her desire to help him, envisaging how in the dawn

on the beach she would be the one to pounce on the

brooch half-hidden by some stone, and thus herself

be included among the sailors and adventurers.  But

what did he reply to her offer?  She actually said

with an emotion that she seldom let appear, " Let

 

me come with you, " and he laughed.  He meant yes

or no -- either perhaps.  But it was not his meaning --

it was the odd chuckle he gave, as if he had said,

Throw yourself over the cliff if you like, I don't

care.  He turned on her cheek the heat of love, its

horror, its cruelty, its unscrupulosity.  It scorched

her, and Lily, looking at Minta, being charming to

Mr. Ramsay at the other end of the table, flinched

for her exposed to these fangs, and was thankful.

For at any rate, she said to herself, catching sight

of the salt cellar on the pattern, she need not marry,

thank Heaven: she need not undergo that degradation.

She was saved from that dilution.  She would

move the tree rather more to the middle.

 

     Such was the complexity of things.  For what

happened to her, especially staying with the Ramsays,

was to be made to feel violently two opposite things

at the same time; that's what you feel, was one;

that's what I feel, was the other, and then they

fought together in her mind, as now.  It is so

beautiful, so exciting, this love, that I tremble on the

verge of it, and offer, quite out of my own habit,

to look for a brooch on a beach; also it is the

stupidest, the most barbaric of human passions, and turns

a nice young man with a profile like a gem's (Paul's

was exquisite)  into a bully with a crowbar (he was

swaggering, he was insolent) in the Mile End Road.

 

Yet, she said to herself, from the dawn of time odes

have been sung to love; wreaths heaped and roses;

and if you asked nine people out of ten they would

say they wanted nothing but this -- love; while the

women, judging from her own experience, would all

the time be feeling, This is not what we want; there

is nothing more tedious, puerile, and inhumane than

this; yet it is also beautiful and necessary.  Well

then, well then? she asked, somehow expecting the

others to go on with the argument, as if in an argument

like this one threw one's own little bolt which

fell short obviously and left the others to carry it

on.  So she listened again to what they were saying

in case they should throw any light upon the question

of love.

 

     " Then, " said Mr. Bankes, " there is that liquid

the English call coffee. "

 

     " Oh, coffee! " said Mrs. Ramsay.  But it was much

rather a question (she was thoroughly roused, Lily

could see, and talked very emphatically) of real

butter and clean milk.  Speaking with warmth and

eloquence, she described the iniquity of the English

dairy system, and in what state milk was delivered

at the door, and was about to prove her charges, for

she had gone into the matter, when all round the

table, beginning with Andrew in the middle, like

a fire leaping from tuft to tuft of furze, her children

 

laughed; her husband laughed; she was laughed at,

fire-encircled, and forced to veil her crest, dismount

her batteries, and only retaliate by displaying the

raillery and ridicule of the table to Mr. Bankes

as an example of what one suffered if one attacked the

prejudices of the British Public.

 

     Purposely, however, for she had it on her mind

that Lily, who had helped her with Mr. Tansley, was

out of things, she exempted her from the rest; said

" Lily anyhow agrees with me, " and so drew her in,

a little fluttered, a little startled.  (For she was

thinking about love.)  They were both out of things, Mrs.

Ramsay had been thinking, both Lily and Charles

Tansley.  Both suffered from the glow of the other

two.  He, it was clear, felt himself utterly in the

cold; no woman would look at him with Paul Rayley

in the room.  Poor fellow!  Still, he had his dissertation,

the influence of somebody upon something: he

could take care of himself.  With Lily it was different.

She faded, under Minta's glow; became more

inconspicuous than ever, in her little grey dress

with her little puckered face and her little Chinese

eyes.  Everything about her was so small.  Yet,

thought Mrs. Ramsay, comparing her with Minta,