To The Lighthouse

by Virginia Woolf

them sit still there and not come floundering out to talk to her.

  Mercifully, whoever it was stayed still inside; had settled by some

  stroke of luck so as to throw an odd-shaped triangular shadow over the

  step. It altered the composition of the picture a little. It was

  interesting. It might be useful. Her mood was coming back to her. One

  must keep on looking without for a second relaxing the intensity of

  emotion, the determination not to be put off, not to be bamboozled.

  One must hold the scene--so--in a vise and let nothing come in and

  spoil it. One wanted, she thought, dipping her brush deliberately, to

  be on a level with ordinary experience, to feel simply that's a chair,

  that's a table, and yet at the same time, It's a miracle, it's an

  ecstasy. The problem might be solved after all. Ah, but what had

  happened? Some wave of white went over the window pane. The air must

  have stirred some flounce in the room. Her heart leapt at her and

  seized her and tortured her.

  "Mrs Ramsay! Mrs Ramsay!" she cried, feeling the old horror come

  back--to want and want and not to have. Could she inflict that still?

  And then, quietly, as if she refrained, that too became part of

  ordinary experience, was on a level with the chair, with the table.

  Mrs Ramsay--it was part of her perfect goodness--sat there quite

  simply, in the chair, flicked her needles to and fro, knitted her

  reddish-brown stocking, cast her shadow on the step. There she sat.

  And as if she had something she must share, yet could hardly leave her

  easel, so full her mind was of what she was thinking, of what she was

  seeing, Lily went past Mr Carmichael holding her brush to the edge of

  the lawn. Where was that boat now? And Mr Ramsay? She wanted him.

  12

  Mr Ramsay had almost done reading. One hand hovered over the page as

  if to be in readiness to turn it the very instant he had finished it.

  He sat there bareheaded with the wind blowing his hair about,

  extraordinarily exposed to everything. He looked very old. He looked,

  James thought, getting his head now against the Lighthouse, now against

  the waste of waters running away into the open, like some old stone

  lying on the sand; he looked as if he had become physically what was

  always at the back of both of their minds--that loneliness which was

  for both of them the truth about things.

  He was reading very quickly, as if he were eager to get to the end.

  Indeed they were very close to the Lighthouse now. There it loomed up,

  stark and straight, glaring white and black, and one could see the

  waves breaking in white splinters like smashed glass upon the rocks.

  One could see lines and creases in the rocks. One could see the

  windows clearly; a dab of white on one of them, and a little tuft of

  green on the rock. A man had come out and looked at them through a

  glass and gone in again. So it was like that, James thought, the

  Lighthouse one had seen across the bay all these years; it was a stark

  tower on a bare rock. It satisfied him. It confirmed some obscure

  feeling of his about his own character. The old ladies, he thought,

  thinking of the garden at home, went dragging their chairs about on the

  lawn. Old Mrs Beckwith, for example, was always saying how nice it was

  and how sweet it was and how they ought to be so proud and they ought

  to be so happy, but as a matter of fact, James thought, looking at the

  Lighthouse stood there on its rock, it's like that. He looked at his

  father reading fiercely with his legs curled tight. They shared that

  knowledge. "We are driving before a gale--we must sink," he began

  saying to himself, half aloud, exactly as his father said it.

  Nobody seemed to have spoken for an age. Cam was tired of looking at

  the sea. Little bits of black cork had floated past; the fish were

  dead in the bottom of the boat. Still her father read, and James

  looked at him and she looked at him, and they vowed that they would

  fight tyranny to the death, and he went on reading quite unconscious of

  what they thought. It was thus that he escaped, she thought. Yes,

  with his great forehead and his great nose, holding his little mottled

  book firmly in front of him, he escaped. You might try to lay hands on

  him, but then like a bird, he spread his wings, he floated off to

  settle out of your reach somewhere far away on some desolate stump.

  She gazed at the immense expanse of the sea. The island had grown so

  small that it scarcely looked like a leaf any longer. It looked like

  the top of a rock which some wave bigger than the rest would cover.

  Yet in its frailty were all those paths, those terraces, those bedrooms--

  all those innumberable things. But as, just before sleep, things

  simplify themselves so that only one of all the myriad details has

  power to assert itself, so, she felt, looking drowsily at the island,

  all those paths and terraces and bedrooms were fading and disappearing,

  and nothing was left but a pale blue censer swinging rhythmically this

  way and that across her mind. It was a hanging garden; it was a

  valley, full of birds, and flowers, and antelopes... She was falling

  asleep.

  "Come now," said Mr Ramsay, suddenly shutting his book.

  Come where? To what extraordinary adventure? She woke with a start.

  To land somewhere, to climb somewhere? Where was he leading them? For

  after his immense silence the words startled them. But it was absurd.

  He was hungry, he said. It was time for lunch. Besides, look, he

  said. "There's the Lighthouse. We're almost there."

  "He's doing very well," said Macalister, praising James. "He's keeping

  her very steady."

  But his father never praised him, James thought grimly.

  Mr Ramsay opened the parcel and shared out the sandwiches among them.

  Now he was happy, eating bread and cheese with these fishermen. He

  would have liked to live in a cottage and lounge about in the harbour

  spitting with the other old men, James thought, watching him slice his

  cheese into thin yellow sheets with his penknife.

  This is right, this is it, Cam kept feeling, as she peeled her hard-

  boiled egg. Now she felt as she did in the study when the old men were

  reading THE TIMES. Now I can go on thinking whatever I like, and I

  shan't fall over a precipice or be drowned, for there he is, keeping

  his eye on me, she thought.

  At the same time they were sailing so fast along by the rocks that it

  was very exciting--it seemed as if they were doing two things at once;

  they were eating their lunch here in the sun and they were also making

  for safety in a great storm after a shipwreck. Would the water last?

  Would the provisions last? she asked herself, telling herself a story

  but knowing at the same time what was the truth.

  They would soon be out of it, Mr Ramsay was saying to old Macalister;

  but their children would see some strange things. Macalister said he

  was seventy-five last March; Mr Ramsay was seventy-one. Macalister said

  he had never seen a doctor; he had never lost a tooth. And that's the

  way I'd like my children to live--Cam was sure that her father was

  t
hinking that, for he stopped her throwing a sandwich into the sea and

  told her, as if he were thinking of the fishermen and how they lived,

  that if she did not want it she should put it back in the parcel. She

  should not waste it. He said it so wisely, as if he knew so well all

  the things that happened in the world that she put it back at once, and

  then he gave her, from his own parcel, a gingerbread nut, as if he were

  a great Spanish gentleman, she thought, handing a flower to a lady at a

  window (so courteous his manner was). He was shabby, and simple,

  eating bread and cheese; and yet he was leading them on a great

  expedition where, for all she knew, they would be drowned.

  "That was where she sunk," said Macalister's boy suddenly.

  Three men were drowned where we are now, the old man said. He had seen

  them clinging to the mast himself. And Mr Ramsay taking a look at the

  spot was about, James and Cam were afraid, to burst out:

  But I beneath a rougher sea,

  and if he did, they could not bear it; they would shriek aloud; they

  could not endure another explosion of the passion that boiled in him;

  but to their surprise all he said was "Ah" as if he thought to himself.

  But why make a fuss about that? Naturally men are drowned in a storm,

  but it is a perfectly straightforward affair, and the depths of the sea

  (he sprinkled the crumbs from his sandwich paper over them) are only

  water after all. Then having lighted his pipe he took out his watch.

  He looked at it attentively; he made, perhaps, some mathematical

  calculation. At last he said, triumphantly:

  "Well done!" James had steered them like a born sailor.

  There! Cam thought, addressing herself silently to James. You've got

  it at last. For she knew that this was what James had been wanting,

  and she knew that now he had got it he was so pleased that he would not

  look at her or at his father or at any one. There he sat with his hand

  on the tiller sitting bolt upright, looking rather sulky and frowning

  slightly. He was so pleased that he was not going to let anybody share

  a grain of his pleasure. His father had praised him. They must think

  that he was perfectly indifferent. But you've got it now, Cam thought.

  buoyantly on long rocking waves which handed them on from one to

  another with an extraordinary lilt and exhilaration beside the reef.

  On the left a row of rocks showed brown through the water which thinned

  and became greener and on one, a higher rock, a wave incessantly broke

  and spurted a little column of drops which fell down in a shower. One

  could hear the slap of the water and the patter of falling drops and a

  kind of hushing and hissing sound from the waves rolling and gambolling

  and slapping the rocks as if they were wild creatures who were

  perfectly free and tossed and tumbled and sported like this for ever.

  Now they could see two men on the Lighthouse, watching them and making

  ready to meet them.

  Mr Ramsay buttoned his coat, and turned up his trousers. He took the

  large, badly packed, brown paper parcel which Nancy had got ready and

  sat with it on his knee. Thus in complete readiness to land he sat

  looking back at the island. With his long-sighted eyes perhaps he

  could see the dwindled leaf-like shape standing on end on a plate of

  gold quite clearly. What could he see? Cam wondered. It was all a

  blur to her. What was he thinking now? she wondered. What was it he

  sought, so fixedly, so intently, so silently? They watched him, both

  of them, sitting bareheaded with his parcel on his knee staring and

  staring at the frail blue shape which seemed like the vapour of

  something that had burnt itself away. What do you want? they both

  wanted to ask. They both wanted to say, Ask us anything and we will

  give it you. But he did not ask them anything. He sat and looked at

  the island and he might be thinking, We perished, each alone, or he

  might be thinking, I have reached it. I have found it; but he said

  nothing.

  Then he put on his hat.

  "Bring those parcels," he said, nodding his head at the things Nancy

  had done up for them to take to the Lighthouse. "The parcels for the

  Lighthouse men," he said. He rose and stood in the bow of the boat,

  very straight and tall, for all the world, James thought, as if he were

  saying, "There is no God," and Cam thought, as if he were leaping into

  space, and they both rose to follow him as he sprang, lightly like a

  young man, holding his parcel, on to the rock.

  13

  "He must have reached it," said Lily Briscoe aloud, feeling suddenly

  completely tired out. For the Lighthouse had become almost invisible,

  had melted away into a blue haze, and the effort of looking at it and

  the effort of thinking of him landing there, which both seemed to be

  one and the same effort, had stretched her body and mind to the utmost.

  Ah, but she was relieved. Whatever she had wanted to give him, when he

  left her that morning, she had given him at last.

  "He has landed," she said aloud. "It is finished." Then, surging up,

  puffing slightly, old Mr Carmichael stood beside her, looking like an

  old pagan god, shaggy, with weeds in his hair and the trident (it was

  only a French novel) in his hand. He stood by her on the edge of the

  lawn, swaying a little in his bulk and said, shading his eyes with his

  hand: "They will have landed," and she felt that she had been right.

  They had not needed to speak. They had been thinking the same things

  and he had answered her without her asking him anything. He stood

  there as if he were spreading his hands over all the weakness and

  suffering of mankind; she thought he was surveying, tolerantly and

  compassionately, their final destiny. Now he has crowned the occasion,

  she thought, when his hand slowly fell, as if she had seen him let fall

  from his great height a wreath of violets and asphodels which,

  fluttering slowly, lay at length upon the earth.

  Quickly, as if she were recalled by something over there, she turned to

  her canvas. There it was--her picture. Yes, with all its greens and

  blues, its lines running up and across, its attempt at something. It

  would be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be destroyed. But

  what did that matter? she asked herself, taking up her brush again.

  She looked at the steps; they were empty; she looked at her canvas; it

  was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a

  second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was

  finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue,

  I have had my vision.

  End of this Project Gutenberg of Australia etext of To the Lighthouse,

  by Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

 

 

 
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