To The Lighthouse

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

  look out. They would see then night flowing down in purple; his head

  crowned; his sceptre jewelled; and how in his eyes a child might look.

  And if they still faltered (Lily was tired out with travelling and

  slept almost at once; but Mr Carmichael read a book by candlelight), if

  they still said no, that it was vapour, this splendour of his, and the

  dew had more power than he, and they preferred sleeping; gently then

  without complaint, or argument, the voice would sing its song. Gently

  the waves would break (Lily heard them in her sleep); tenderly the

  light fell (it seemed to come through her eyelids). And it all looked,

  Mr Carmichael thought, shutting his book, falling asleep, much as it

  used to look.

  Indeed the voice might resume, as the curtains of dark wrapped

  themselves over the house, over Mrs Beckwith, Mr Carmichael, and Lily

  Briscoe so that they lay with several folds of blackness on their eyes,

  why not accept this, be content with this, acquiesce and resign? The

  sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them;

  the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds

  beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness, a

  cart grinding, a dog somewhere barking, the sun lifted the curtains,

  broke the veil on their eyes, and Lily Briscoe stirring in her sleep.

  She clutched at her blankets as a faller clutches at the turf on the

  edge of a cliff. Her eyes opened wide. Here she was again, she

  thought, sitting bold upright in bed. Awake.

  THE LIGHTHOUSE

  1

  What does it mean then, what can it all mean? Lily Briscoe asked

  herself, wondering whether, since she had been left alone, it behoved

  her to go to the kitchen to fetch another cup of coffee or wait here.

  What does it mean?--a catchword that was, caught up from some book,

  fitting her thought loosely, for she could not, this first morning with

  the Ramsays, contract her feelings, could only make a phrase resound to

  cover the blankness of her mind until these vapours had shrunk. For

  really, what did she feel, come back after all these years and Mrs

  Ramsay dead? Nothing, nothing--nothing that she could express at all.

  She had come late last night when it was all mysterious, dark. Now she

  was awake, at her old place at the breakfast table, but alone. It was

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

  going to the Lighthouse, Mr Ramsay, Cam, and James. They should have

  gone already--they had to catch the tide or something. And Cam was

  not ready and James was not ready and Nancy had forgotten to order the

  sandwiches and Mr Ramsay had lost his temper and banged out of the

  room.

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

  Nancy had vanished. There he was, marching up and down the terrace in

  a rage. One seemed to hear doors slamming and voices calling all over

  the house. Now Nancy burst in, and asked, looking round the room, in a

  queer half dazed, half desperate way, "What does one send to the

  Lighthouse?" as if she were forcing herself to do what she despaired of

  ever being able to do.

  What does one send to the Lighthouse indeed! At any other time Lily

  could have suggested reasonably tea, tobacco, newspapers. But this

  morning everything seemed so extraordinarily queer that a question like

  Nancy's--What does one send to the Lighthouse?--opened doors in one's

  mind that went banging and swinging to and fro and made one keep

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

  Why is one sitting here, after all?

  Sitting alone (for Nancy went out again) among the clean cups at the

  long table, she felt cut off from other people, and able only to go on

  watching, asking, wondering. The house, the place, the morning, all

  seemed strangers to her. She had no attachment here, she felt, no

  relations with it, anything might happen, and whatever did happen, a

  step outside, a voice calling ("It's not in the cupboard; it's on the

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

  bound things together had been cut, and they floated up here, down

  there, off, anyhow. How aimless it was,, how chaotic, how unreal it

  was, she thought, looking at her empty coffee cup. Mrs Ramsay dead;

  Andrew killed; Prue dead too--repeat it as she might, it roused no

  feeling in her. And we all get together in a house like this on a

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

  beautiful still day.

  Suddenly Mr Ramsay raised his head as he passed and looked straight at

  her, with his distraught wild gaze which was yet so penetrating, as if

  he saw you, for one second, for the first time, for ever; and she

  pretended to drink out of her empty coffee cup so as to escape him--to

  escape his demand on her, to put aside a moment longer that imperious

  need. And he shook his head at her, and strode on ("Alone" she heard

  him say, "Perished" she heard him say) and like everything else this

  strange morning the words became symbols, wrote themselves all over the

  grey-green walls. If only she could put them together, she felt, write

  them out in some sentence, then she would have got at the truth of

  things. Old Mr Carmichael came padding softly in, fetched his coffee,

  took his cup and made off to sit in the sun. The extraordinary

  unreality was frightening; but it was also exciting. Going to the

  Lighthouse. But what does one send to the Lighthouse? Perished. Alone.

  The grey-green light on the wall opposite. The empty places. Such were

  some of the parts, but how bring them together? she asked. As if any

  interruption would break the frail shape she was building on the table

  she turned her back to the window lest Mr Ramsay should see her. She

  must escape somewhere, be alone somewhere. Suddenly she remembered.

  When she had sat there last ten years ago there had been a little sprig

  or leaf pattern on the table-cloth, which she had looked at in a moment

  of revelation. There had been a problem about a foreground of a

  picture. Move the tree to the middle, she had said. She had never

  finished that picture. She would paint that picture now. It had been

  knocking about in her mind all these years. Where were her paints, she

  wondered? Her paints, yes. She had left them in the hall last night.

  She would start at once. She got up quickly, before Mr Ramsay turned.

  She fetched herself a chair. She pitched her easel with her precise

  old-maidish movements on the edge of the lawn, not too close to Mr

  Carmichael, but close enough for his protection. Yes, it must have

  been precisely here that she had stood ten years ago. There was the

  wall; the hedge; the tree. The question was of some relation between

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

  as if the solution had come to her: she knew now what she wanted to do.

  But with Mr Ramsay bearing down on her, she could do nothing. Every

  time he approached--he was walking up and down the terrace--ruin

  approac
hed, chaos approached. She could not paint. She stooped, she

  turned; she took up this rag; she squeezed that tube. But all she did

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

  anything. For if she gave him the least chance, if he saw her

  disengaged a moment, looking his way a moment, he would be on her,

  saying, as he had said last night, "You find us much changed." Last

  night he had got up and stopped before her, and said that. Dumb and

  staring though they had all sat, the six children whom they used to

  call after the Kings and Queens of England--the Red, the Fair, the

  Wicked, the Ruthless--she felt how they raged under it. Kind old Mrs

  Beckwith said something sensible. But it was a house full of unrelated

  passions--she had felt that all the evening. And on top of this chaos

  Mr Ramsay got up, pressed her hand, and said: "You will find us much

  changed" and none of them had moved or had spoken; but had sat there as

  if they were forced to let him say it. Only James (certainly the

  Sullen) scowled at the lamp; and Cam screwed her handkerchief round her

  finger. Then he reminded them that they were going to the Lighthouse

  tomorrow. They must be ready, with his hand on the door, he stopped;

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

  dared say No (he had some reason for wanting it) he would have flung

  himself tragically backwards into the bitter waters of depair. Such a

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

  James said yes. Cam stumbled more wretchedly. Yes, oh, yes, they'd

  both be ready, they said. And it struck her, this was tragedy--not

  palls, dust, and the shroud; but children coerced, their spirits

  subdued. James was sixteen, Cam, seventeen, perhaps. She had looked

  round for some one who was not there, for Mrs Ramsay, presumably. But

  there was only kind Mrs Beckwith turning over her sketches under the

  lamp. Then, being tired, her mind still rising and falling with the

  sea, the taste and smell that places have after long absence possessing

  her, the candles wavering in her eyes, she had lost herself and gone

  under. It was a wonderful night, starlit; the waves sounded as they

  went upstairs; the moon surprised them, enormous, pale, as they passed

  the staircase window. She had slept at once.

  She set her clean canvas firmly upon the easel, as a barrier, frail,

  but she hoped sufficiently substantial to ward off Mr Ramsay and his

  exactingness. She did her best to look, when his back was turned, at

  her picture; that line there, that mass there. But it was out of the

  question. Let him be fifty feet away, let him not even speak to you,

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

  himself. He changed everything. She could not see the colour; she

  could not see the lines; even with his back turned to her, she could

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

  she felt she could not give him. She rejected one brush; she chose

  another. When would those children come? When would they all be off?

  she fidgeted. That man, she thought, her anger rising in her, never

  gave; that man took. She, on the other hand, would be forced to give.

  Mrs Ramsay had given. Giving, giving, giving, she had died--and had

  left all this. Really, she was angry with Mrs Ramsay. With the brush

  slightly trembling in her fingers she looked at the hedge, the step,

  the wall. It was all Mrs Ramsay's doing. She was dead. Here was Lily,

  at forty-four, wasting her time, unable to do a thing, standing there,

  playing at painting, playing at the one thing one did not play at, and

  it was all Mrs Ramsay's fault. She was dead. The step where she used

  to sit was empty. She was dead.

  But why repeat this over and over again? Why be always trying to bring

  up some feeling she had not got? There was a kind of blasphemy in it.

  It was all dry: all withered: all spent. They ought not to have asked

  her; she ought not to have come. One can't waste one's time at forty-

  four, she thought. She hated playing at painting. A brush, the one

  dependable thing in a world of strife, ruin, chaos--that one should not

  play with, knowingly even: she detested it. But he made her. You

  shan't touch your canvas, he seemed to say, bearing down on her, till

  you've given me what I want of you. Here he was, close upon her again,

  greedy, distraught. Well, thought Lily in despair, letting her right

  hand fall at her side, it would be simpler then to have it over.

  Surely, she could imitate from recollection the glow, the rhapsody, the

  self-surrender, she had seen on so many women's faces (on Mrs Ramsay's,

  for instance) when on some occasion like this they blazed up--she could

  remember the look on Mrs Ramsay's face--into a rapture of sympathy, of

  delight in the reward they had, which, though the reason of it escaped

  her, evidently conferred on them the most supreme bliss of which human

  nature was capable. Here he was, stopped by her side. She would give

  him what she could.

  2

  She seemed to have shrivelled slightly, he thought. She looked a little

  skimpy, wispy; but not unattractive. He liked her. There had been some

  talk of her marrying William Bankes once, but nothing had come of it.

  His wife had been fond of her. He had been a little out of temper too

  at breakfast. And then, and then--this was one of those moments when

  an enormous need urged him, without being conscious what it was, to

  approach any woman, to force them, he did not care how, his need was so

  great, to give him what he wanted: sympathy.

  Was anybody looking after her? he said. Had she everything she

  wanted?

  "Oh, thanks, everything," said Lily Briscoe nervously. No; she could

  not do it. She ought to have floated off instantly upon some wave of

  sympathetic expansion: the pressure on her was tremendous. But she

  remained stuck. There was an awful pause. They both looked at the

  sea. Why, thought Mr Ramsay, should she look at the sea when I am

  here? She hoped it would be calm enough for them to land at the

  Lighthouse, she said. The Lighthouse! The Lighthouse! What's that

  got to do with it? he thought impatiently. Instantly, with the force

  of some primeval gust (for really he could not restrain himself any

  longer), there issued from him such a groan that any other woman in the

  whole world would have done something, said something--all except

  myself, thought Lily, girding at herself bitterly, who am not a woman,

  but a peevish, ill-tempered, dried-up old maid, presumably.

  [Mr Ramsay sighed to the full. He waited. Was she not going to say

  anything? Did she not see what he wanted from her? Then he said he

  had a particular reason for wanting to go to the Lighthouse. His boy

  with a tuberculous hip, the lightkeeper's son. He sighed profoundly.

  He sighed significantly. All Lily wished was that this enormous flood

  of grief, this insatiable hunger for sympathy, this demand that she

  should surrender herself up to him entirely, and even so he had sorrows

  enough to keep her supplied for ever, should leave her, sho
uld be

  diverted (she kept looking at the house, hoping for an interruption)

  before it swept her down in its flow.

  "Such expeditions," said Mr Ramsay, scraping the ground with his toe,

  "are very painful." Still Lily said nothing. (She is a stock, she is a

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

  looking, with a sickly look that nauseated her (he was acting, she

  felt, this great man was dramatising himself), at his beautiful hands.

  It was horrible, it was indecent. Would they never come, she asked,

  for she could not sustain this enormous weight of sorrow, support these

  heavy draperies of grief (he had assumed a pose of extreme

  decreptitude; he even tottered a little as he stood there) a moment

  longer.

  Still she could say nothing; the whole horizon seemed swept bare of

  objects to talk about; could only feel, amazedly, as Mr Ramsay stood

  there, how his gaze seemed to fall dolefully over the sunny grass and

  discolour it, and cast over the rubicund, drowsy, entirely contented

  figure of Mr Carmichael, reading a French novel on a deck-chair, a veil

  of crape, as if such an existence, flaunting its prosperity in a world

  of woe, were enough to provoke the most dismal thoughts of all. Look

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

  was feeling, Think of me, think of me. Ah, could that bulk only be

  wafted alongside of them, Lily wished; had she only pitched her easel a

  yard or two closer to him; a man, any man, would staunch this effusion,

  would stop these lamentations. A woman, she had provoked this horror;

  a woman, she should have known how to deal with it. It was immensely

  to her discredit, sexually, to stand there dumb. One said--what did

  one say?--Oh, Mr Ramsay! Dear Mr Ramsay! That was what that kind old

  lady who sketched, Mrs Beckwith, would have said instantly, and

  rightly. But, no. They stood there, isolated from the rest of the

  world. His immense self-pity, his demand for sympathy poured and

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

  that she was, was to draw her skirts a little closer round her ankles,

  lest she should get wet. In complete silence she stood there, grasping

  her paint brush.

  Heaven could never be sufficiently praised! She heard sounds in the

  house. James and Cam must be coming. But Mr Ramsay, as if he knew

  that his time ran short, exerted upon her solitary figure the immense

  pressure of his concentrated woe; his age; his frailty: his desolation;

  when suddenly, tossing his head impatiently, in his annoyance--for

  after all, what woman could resist him?--he noticed that his boot-laces

  were untied. Remarkable boots they were too, Lily thought, looking

  down at them: sculptured; colossal; like everything that Mr Ramsay

  wore, from his frayed tie to his half-buttoned waistcoat, his own

  indisputably. She could see them walking to his room of their own

  accord, expressive in his absence of pathos, surliness, ill-temper,

  charm.

  "What beautiful boots!" she exclaimed. She was ashamed of herself. To

  praise his boots when he asked her to solace his soul; when he had

  shown her his bleeding hands, his lacerated heart, and asked her to

  pity them, then to say, cheerfully, "Ah, but what beautiful boots you

  wear!" deserved, she knew, and she looked up expecting to get it in one

  of his sudden roars of ill-temper complete annihilation.

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

  fell from him. Ah, yes, he said, holding his foot up for her to look

  at, they were first-rate boots. There was only one man in England who

  could make boots like that. Boots are among the chief curses of

  mankind, he said. "Bootmakers make it their business," he exclaimed,

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

  obstinate and perverse of mankind. It had taken him the best part of

  his youth to get boots made as they should be made. He would have her