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. Anyhow 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?
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 extraordi
nary. 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 tea set
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
"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 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.
11
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
sa
id, 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. 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