How then did it work out, all this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that it was liking one felt or disliking? And to those words, what meaning attached, after all? Standing now, apparently transfixed, by the pear tree, impressions poured in upon her of those two men, and to follow her thought was like following a voice which speaks too quickly to be taken down by ones pencil, and the voice was her own voice saying without prompting undeniable, everlasting, contradictory things, so that even the fissures and humps on the bark of the pear tree were irrevocably fixed there for eternity. You have greatness, she continued, but Mr Ramsay has none of it. He is petty, selfish, vain, egotistical; he is spoilt; he is a tyrant; he wears Mrs Ramsay to death; but he has what you (she addressed Mr Bankes) have not; a fiery unworldliness; he knows nothing about trifles; he loves dogs and his children. He has eight. Mr Bankes has none. Did he not come down in two coats the other night and let Mrs Ramsay trim his hair into a pudding basin? All of this danced up and down, like a company of gnats, each separate but all marvellously controlled in an invisible elastic net danced up and down in Lilys mind, in and about the branches of the pear tree, where still hung in effigy the scrubbed kitchen table, symbol of her profound respect for Mr Ramsays mind, until her thought which had spun quicker and quicker exploded of its own intensity; she felt released; a shot went off close at hand, and there came, flying from its fragments, frightened, effusive, tumultuous, a flock of starlings.
Jasper! said Mr Bankes. They turned the way the starlings flew, over the terrace. Following the scatter of swift-flying birds in the sky they stepped through the gap in the high hedge straight into Mr Ramsay, who boomed tragically at them, Some one had blundered!
His eyes, glazed with emotion, defiant with tragic intensity, met theirs for a second, and trembled on the verge of recognition; but then, raising his hand, half-way to his face as if to avert, to brush off, in an agony of peevish shame, their normal gaze, as if he begged them to withhold for a moment what he knew to be inevitable, as if he impressed upon them his own child-like resentment of interruption, yet even in the moment of discovery was not to be routed utterly, but was determined to hold fast to something of this delicious emotion, this impure rhapsody of which he was ashamed, but in which he revelled he turned abruptly, slammed his private door on them; and, Lily Briscoe and Mr Bankes, looking uneasily up into the sky, observed that the flock of starlings which Jasper had routed with his gun had settled on the tops of the elm trees.
5
And even if it isnt fine tomorrow, said Mrs Ramsay, raising her eyes to glance at William Bankes and Lily Briscoe as they passed, it will be another day. And now, she said, thinking that Lilys charm was her Chinese eyes, aslant in her white, puckered little face, but it would take a clever man to see it, and now stand up, and let me measure your leg, for they might go to the Lighthouse after all, and she must see if the stocking did not need to be an inch or two longer in the leg.
Smiling, for it was an admirable idea, that had flashed upon her this very second William and Lily should marry she took the heather-mixture stocking, with its criss-cross of steel needles at the mouth of it, and measured it against Jamess leg.
My dear, stand still, she said, for in his jealousy, not liking to serve as measuring block for the Lighthouse keepers little boy, James fidgeted purposely; and if he did that, how could she see, was it too long, was it too short? she asked.
She looked up what demon possessed him, her youngest, her cherished? and saw the room, saw the chairs, thought them fearfully shabby. Their entrails, as Andrew said the other day, were all over the floor; but then what was the point, she asked, of buying good chairs to let them spoil up here all through the winter when the house, with only one old woman to see to it, positively dripped with wet? Never mind, the rent was precisely twopence half-penny; the children loved it; it did her husband good to be three thousand, or if she must be accurate, three hundred miles from his libraries and his lectures and his disciples; and there was room for visitors. Mats, camp beds, crazy ghosts of chairs and tables whose London life of service was done they did well enough here; and a photograph or two, and books. Books, she thought, grew of themselves. She never had time to read them. Alas! even the books that had been given her and inscribed by the hand of the poet himself: For her whose wishes must be obeyed The happier Helen of our days disgraceful to say, she had never read them. And Croom on the Mind and Bates on the Savage Customs of Polynesia (My dear, stand still, she said) neither of those could one send to the Lighthouse. At a certain moment, she supposed, the house would become so shabby that something must be done. If they could be taught to wipe their feet and not bring the beach[5] in with them that would be something. Crabs, she had to allow, if Andrew really wished to dissect them, or if Jasper believed that one could make soup from seaweed, one could not prevent it; or Roses objects shells, reeds, stones; for they were gifted, her children, but all in quite different ways. And the result of it was, she sighed, taking in the whole room from floor to ceiling, as she held the stocking against Jamess leg, that things got shabbier and got shabbier summer after summer. The mat was fading; the wall-paper was flapping. You couldnt tell any more that those were roses on it. Still, if every door in a house is left perpetually open, and no lockmaker in the whole of Scotland can mend a bolt, things must spoil. What was the use of flinging a green Cashemere shawl over the edge of a picture frame? In two weeks it would be the colour of pea soup. But it was the doors that annoyed her; every door was left open. She listened. The drawing-room door was open; the hall door was open; it sounded as if the bedroom doors were open; and certainly the window on the landing was open, for that she had opened herself. That windows should be open, and doors shut simple as it was, could none of them remember it? She would go into the maids bedrooms at night and find them sealed like ovens, except for Maries, the Swiss girl, who would rather go without a bath than without fresh air, but then at home, she had said, the mountains are so beautiful. She had said that last night looking out of the window with tears in her eyes. The mountains are so beautiful. Her father was dying there, Mrs Ramsay knew. He was leaving them fatherless. Scolding and demonstrating (how to make a bed, how to open a window, with hands that shut and spread like a Frenchwomans) all had folded itself quietly about her, when the girl spoke, as, after a flight through the sunshine the wings of a bird fold themselves quietly and the blue of its plumage changes from bright steel to soft purple. She had stood there silent for there was nothing to be said. He had cancer of the throat. At the recolection how she had stood there, how the girl had said, At home the mountains are so beautiful, and there was no hope, no hope whatever, she had a spasm of irritation, and speaking sharply, said to James:
Stand still. Dont be tiresome, so that he knew instantly that her severity was real, and straightened his leg and she measured it.
The stocking was too short by half an inch at least, making allowance for the fact that Sorleys little boy would be less well grown than James.