To The Lighthouse

by Virginia Woolf

window, in the cadaverous early morning light, and the carpet had a

  hole in it. But what did they say? Lily asked herself, as if by

  looking she could hear them. Minta went on eating her sandwich,

  annoyingly, while he spoke something violent, abusing her, in a mutter

  so as not to wake the children, the two little boys. He was withered,

  drawn; she flamboyant, careless. For things had worked loose after the

  first year or so; the marriage had turned out rather badly.

  And this, Lily thought, taking the green paint on her brush, this

  making up scenes about them, is what we call "knowing" people,

  "thinking" of them, "being fond" of them! Not a word of it was true;

  she had made it up; but it was what she knew them by all the same. She

  went on tunnelling her way into her picture, into the past.

  Another time, Paul said he "played chess in coffee-houses." She had

  built up a whole structure of imagination on that saying too. She

  remembered how, as he said it, she thought how he rang up the servant,

  and she said, "Mrs Rayley's out, sir," and he decided that he would not

  come home either. She saw him sitting in the corner of some lugubrious

  place where the smoke attached itself to the red plush seats, and the

  waitresses got to know you, and he played chess with a little man who

  was in the tea trade and lived at Surbiton, but that was all Paul knew

  about him. And then Minta was out when he came home and then there was

  that scene on the stairs, when he got the poker in case of burglars (no

  doubt to frighten her too) and spoke so bitterly, saying she had ruined

  his life. At any rate when she went down to see them at a cottage near

  Rickmansworth, things were horribly strained. Paul took her down the

  garden to look at the Belgian hares which he bred, and Minta followed

  them, singing, and put her bare arm on his shoulder, lest he should

  tell her anything.

  Minta was bored by hares, Lily thought. But Minta never gave herself

  away. She never said things like that about playing chess in coffee-

  houses. She was far too conscious, far too wary. But to go on with

  their story--they had got through the dangerous stage by now. She had

  been staying with them last summer some time and the car broke down and

  Minta had to hand him his tools. He sat on the road mending the car,

  and it was the way she gave him the tools--business-like,

  straightforward, friendly--that proved it was all right now. They were

  "in love" no longer; no, he had taken up with another woman, a serious

  woman, with her hair in a plait and a case in her hand (Minta had

  described her gratefully, almost admiringly), who went to meetings and

  shared Paul's views (they had got more and more pronounced) about the

  taxation of land values and a capital levy. Far from breaking up the

  marriage, that alliance had righted it. They were excellent friends,

  obviously, as he sat on the road and she handed him his tools.

  So that was the story of the Rayleys, Lily thought. She imagined

  herself telling it to Mrs Ramsay, who would be full of curiosity to

  know what had become of the Rayleys. She would feel a little

  triumphant, telling Mrs Ramsay that the marriage had not been a

  success.

  But the dead, thought Lily, encountering some obstacle in her design

  which made her pause and ponder, stepping back a foot or so, oh, the

  dead! she murmured, one pitied them, one brushed them aside, one had

  even a little contempt for them. They are at our mercy. Mrs Ramsay

  has faded and gone, she thought. We can over-ride her wishes, improve

  away her limited, old-fashioned ideas. She recedes further and further

  from us. Mockingly she seemed to see her there at the end of the

  corridor of years saying, of all incongruous things, "Marry, marry!"

  (sitting very upright early in the morning with the birds beginning to

  cheep in the garden outside). And one would have to say to her, It has

  all gone against your wishes. They're happy like that; I'm happy like

  this. Life has changed completely. At that all her being, even her

  beauty, became for a moment, dusty and out of date. For a moment Lily,

  standing there, with the sun hot on her back, summing up the Rayleys,

  triumphed over Mrs Ramsay, who would never know how Paul went to

  coffee-houses and had a mistress; how he sat on the ground and Minta

  handed him his tools; how she stood here painting, had never married,

  not even William Bankes.

  Mrs Ramsay had planned it. Perhaps, had she lived, she would have

  compelled it. Already that summer he was "the kindest of men." He was

  "the first scientist of his age, my husband says." He was also "poor

  William--it makes me so unhappy, when I go to see him, to find nothing

  nice in his house--no one to arrange the flowers." So they were sent

  for walks together, and she was told, with that faint touch of irony

  that made Mrs Ramsay slip through one's fingers, that she had a

  scientific mind; she liked flowers; she was so exact. What was this

  mania of hers for marriage? Lily wondered, stepping to and fro from

  her easel.

  (Suddenly, as suddenly as a star slides in the sky, a reddish light

  seemed to burn in her mind, covering Paul Rayley, issuing from him. It

  rose like a fire sent up in token of some celebration by savages on a

  distant beach. She heard the roar and the crackle. The whole sea for

  miles round ran red and gold. Some winey smell mixed with it and

  intoxicated her, for she felt again her own headlong desire to throw

  herself off the cliff and be drowned looking for a pearl brooch on a

  beach. And the roar and the crackle repelled her with fear and

  disgust, as if while she saw its splendour and power she saw too how it

  fed on the treasure of the house, greedily, disgustingly, and she

  loathed it. But for a sight, for a glory it surpassed everything in

  her experience, and burnt year after year like a signal fire on a

  desert island at the edge of the sea, and one had only to say "in love"

  and instantly, as happened now, up rose Paul's fire again. And it sank

  and she said to herself, laughing, "The Rayleys"; how Paul went to

  coffee-houses and played chess.)

  She had only escaped by the skin of her teeth though, she thought. She

  had been looking at the table-cloth, and it had flashed upon her that

  she would move the tree to the middle, and need never marry anybody,

  and she had felt an enormous exultation. She had felt, now she could

  stand up to Mrs Ramsay--a tribute to the astonishing power that Mrs

  Ramsay had over one. Do this, she said, and one did it. Even her

  shadow at the window with James was full of authority. She remembered

  how William Bankes had been shocked by her neglect of the significance

  of mother and son. Did she not admire their beauty? he said. But

  William, she remembered, had listened to her with his wise child's eyes

  when she explained how it was not irreverence: how a light there needed

  a shadow there and so on. She did not intend to disparage a subject

  which, they agreed, Raphael had treated divinely. She was not cynical.

  Quite the contrary. Thanks to his scientific mind he understood
--a

  proof of disinterested intelligence which had pleased her and comforted

  her enormously. One could talk of painting then seriously to a man.

  Indeed, his friendship had been one of the pleasures of her life. She

  loved William Bankes.

  They went to Hampton Court and he always left her, like the perfect

  gentleman he was, plenty of time to wash her hands, while he strolled

  by the river. That was typical of their relationship. Many things were

  left unsaid. Then they strolled through the courtyards, and admired,

  summer after summer, the proportions and the flowers, and he would tell

  her things, about perspective, about architecture, as they walked, and

  he would stop to look at a tree, or the view over the lake, and admire

  a child--(it was his great grief--he had no daughter) in the spent so

  much time in laboratories that the world when he came out seemed to

  dazzle him, so that he walked slowly, lifted his hand to screen his

  eyes and paused, with his head thrown back, merely to breathe the air.

  Then he would tell her how his housekeeper was on her holiday; he must

  buy a new carpet for the staircase. Perhaps she would go with him to

  buy a new carpet for the staircase. And once something led him to talk

  about the Ramsays and he had said how when he first saw her she had

  been wearing a grey hat; she was not more than nineteen or twenty. She

  was astonishingly beautiful. There he stood looking down the avenue at

  Hampton Court as if he could see her there among the fountains.

  She looked now at the drawing-room step. She saw, through William's

  eyes, the shape of a woman, peaceful and silent, with downcast eyes.

  She sat musing, pondering (she was in grey that day, Lily thought).

  Her eyes were bent. She would never lift them. Yes, thought Lily,

  looking intently, I must have seen her look like that, but not in grey;

  nor so still, nor so young, nor so peaceful. The figure came readily

  enough. She was astonishingly beautiful, as William said. But beauty

  was not everything. Beauty had this penalty--it came too readily, came

  too completely. It stilled life--froze it. One forgot the little

  agitations; the flush, the pallor, some queer distortion, some light or

  shadow, which made the face unrecognisable for a moment and yet added a

  quality one saw for ever after. It was simpler to smooth that all out

  under the cover of beauty. But what was the look she had, Lily

  wondered, when she clapped her deer-stalkers's hat on her head, or ran

  across the grass, or scolded Kennedy, the gardener? Who could tell

  her? Who could help her?

  Against her will she had come to the surface, and found herself half

  out of the picture, looking, little dazedly, as if at unreal things, at

  Mr Carmichael. He lay on his chair with his hands clasped above his

  paunch not reading, or sleeping, but basking like a creature gorged

  with existence. His book had fallen on to the grass.

  She wanted to go straight up to him and say, "Mr Carmichael!" Then he

  would look up benevolently as always, from his smoky vague green eyes.

  But one only woke people if one knew what one wanted to say to them.

  And she wanted to say not one thing, but everything. Little words that

  broke up the thought and dismembered it said nothing. "About life,

  about death; about Mrs Ramsay"--no, she thought, one could say

  nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark.

  Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low. Then

  one gave it up; then the idea sunk back again; then one became like

  most middle-aged people, cautious, furtive, with wrinkles between the

  eyes and a look of perpetual apprehension. For how could one express

  in words these emotions of the body? express that emptiness there?

  (She was looking at the drawing-room steps; they looked extraordinarily

  empty.) It was one's body feeling, not one's mind. The physical

  sensations that went with the bare look of the steps had become

  suddenly extremely unpleasant. To want and not to have, sent all up

  her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not

  to have--to want and want--how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again

  and again! Oh, Mrs Ramsay! she called out silently, to that essence

  which sat by the boat, that abstract one made of her, that woman in

  grey, as if to abuse her for having gone, and then having gone, come

  back again. It had seemed so safe, thinking of her. Ghost, air,

  nothingness, a thing you could play with easily and safely at any time

  of day or night, she had been that, and then suddenly she put her hand

  out and wrung the heart thus. Suddenly, the empty drawing-room steps,

  the frill of the chair inside, the puppy tumbling on the terrace, the

  whole wave and whisper of the garden became like curves and arabesques

  flourishing round a centre of complete emptiness.

  "What does it mean? How do you explain it all?" she wanted to say,

  turning to Mr Carmichael again. For the whole world seemed to have

  dissolved in this early morning hour into a pool of thought, a deep

  basin of reality, and one could almost fancy that had Mr Carmichael

  spoken, for instance, a little tear would have rent the surface pool.

  And then? Something would emerge. A hand would be shoved up, a blade

  would be flashed. It was nonsense of course.

  A curious notion came to her that he did after all hear the things she

  could not say. He was an inscrutable old man, with the yellow stain on

  his beard, and his poetry, and his puzzles, sailing serenely through a

  world which satisfied all his wants, so that she thought he had only to

  put down his hand where he lay on the lawn to fish up anything he

  wanted. She looked at her picture. That would have been his answer,

  presumably--how "you" and "I" and "she" pass and vanish; nothing stays;

  all changes; but not words, not paint. Yet it would be hung in the

  attics, she thought; it would be rolled up and flung under a sofa; yet

  even so, even of a picture like that, it was true. One might say, even

  of this scrawl, not of that actual picture, perhaps, but of what it

  attempted, that it "remained for ever," she was going to say, or, for

  the words spoken sounded even to herself, too boastful, to hint,

  wordlessly; when, looking at the picture, she was surprised to find

  that she could not see it. Her eyes were full of a hot liquid (she did

  not think of tears at first) which, without disturbing the firmness of

  her lips, made the air thick, rolled down her cheeks. She had perfect

  control of herself--Oh, yes!--in every other way. Was she crying then

  for Mrs Ramsay, without being aware of any unhappiness? She addressed

  old Mr Carmichael again. What was it then? What did it mean? Could

  things thrust their hands up and grip one; could the blade cut; the

  fist grasp? Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of

  the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from

  the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly

  people, that this was life?--startling, unexpected, unknown? For one

  moment she felt that if they both got up, here, now on
the lawn, and

  demanded an explanation, why was it so short, why was it so

  inexplicable, said it with violence, as two fully equipped human beings

  from whom nothing should be hid might speak, then, beauty would roll

  itself up; the space would fill; those empty flourishes would form into

  shape; if they shouted loud enough Mrs Ramsay would return. "Mrs

  Ramsay!" she said aloud, "Mrs Ramsay!" The tears ran down her face.

  6

  [Macalister's boy took one of the fish and cut a square out of its side

  to bait his hook with. The mutilated body (it was alive still) was

  thrown back into the sea.]

  7

  "Mrs Ramsay!" Lily cried, "Mrs Ramsay!" But nothing happened. The pain

  increased. That anguish could reduce one to such a pitch of

  imbecility, she thought! Anyhow the old man had not heard her. He

  remained benignant, calm--if one chose to think it, sublime. Heaven be

  praised, no one had heard her cry that ignominious cry, stop pain,

  stop! She had not obviously taken leave of her senses. No one had

  seen her step off her strip of board into the waters of annihilation.

  She remained a skimpy old maid, holding a paint-brush.

  And now slowly the pain of the want, and the bitter anger (to be called

  back, just as she thought she would never feel sorrow for Mrs Ramsay

  again. Had she missed her among the coffee cups at breakfast? not in

  the least) lessened; and of their anguish left, as antidote, a relief

  that was balm in itself, and also, but more mysteriously, a sense of

  some one there, of Mrs Ramsay, relieved for a moment of the weight that

  the world had put on her, staying lightly by her side and then (for

  this was Mrs Ramsay in all her beauty) raising to her forehead a wreath

  of white flowers with which she went. Lily squeezed her tubes again.

  She attacked that problem of the hedge. It was strange how clearly she

  saw her, stepping with her usual quickness across fields among whose

  folds, purplish and soft, among whose flowers, hyacinth or lilies, she

  vanished. It was some trick of the painter's eye. For days after she

  had heard of her death she had seen her thus, putting her wreath to her

  forehead and going unquestioningly with her companion, a shade across

  the fields. The sight, the phrase, had its power to console. Wherever

  she happened to be, painting, here, in the country or in London, the

  vision would come to her, and her eyes, half closing, sought something

  to base her vision on. She looked down the railway carriage, the

  omnibus; took a line from shoulder or cheek; looked at the windows

  opposite; at Piccadilly, lamp-strung in the evening. All had been part

  of the fields of death. But always something--it might be a face, a

  voice, a paper boy crying STANDARD, NEWS--thrust through, snubbed her,

  waked her, required and got in the end an effort of attention, so that

  the vision must be perpetually remade. Now again, moved as she was by

  some instinctive need of distance and blue, she looked at the bay

  beneath her, making hillocks of the blue spaces, again she was roused

  as usual by something incongruous. There was a brown spot in the

  middle of the bay. It was a boat. Yes, she realised that after a

  second. But whose boat? Mr Ramsay's boat, she replied. Mr Ramsay;

  the man who had marched past her, with his hand raised, aloof, at the

  head of a procession, in his beautiful boots, asking her for sympathy,

  which she had refused. The boat was now half way across the bay.

  So fine was the morning except for a streak of wind here and there that

  the sea and sky looked all one fabric, as if sails were stuck high up

  in the sky, or the clouds had dropped down into the sea. A steamer far

  out at sea had drawn in the air a great scroll of smoke which stayed

  there curving and circling decoratively, as if the air were a fine

  gauze which held things and kept them softly in its mesh, only gently

  swaying them this way and that. And as happens sometimes when the

  weather is very fine, the cliffs looked as if they were conscious of