To The Lighthouse

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.

  12

  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 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 carelessly 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!

  13

  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 s
hut. 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 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?"

  14

  (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.