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 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 ove
r 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. 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 BOEUF 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<
br />
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, more 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, 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
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