paint, women can’t write.”
She now remembered what she wanted say about Mrs. Ramsay. She was annoyed by some highhandedness. She thought of Mr. Bankes. She thought that no woman could worship another woman in the way he worshipped. Mrs. Ramsay was unquestionably the loveliest of people; the best perhaps; but also, different. But why different, and how different? she asked herself. She scraped her palette of all those mounds of blue and green. How did she differ? What was the spirit in her? She was like a bird, an arrow. She was willful; she was commanding. She opened bedroom windows. She shut doors. The house was full of children.
Oh, but there was her father; her home; even her painting. But all this seemed so little, so virginal, against the other. She liked to be alone; she liked to be herself.
Lily Briscoe looked up at last. She saw Mrs. Ramsay, still presiding.
Was it wisdom? Was it knowledge? Was it, once more, the deceptiveness of beauty? Did she lock up within her some secret? She was sitting on the floor with her arms round Mrs. Ramsay’s knees. She was smiling to think that Mrs. Ramsay would never know the reason of that pressure. She imagined how in the chambers of the mind and heart of the woman were tablets with sacred inscriptions. What was the key to those secret chambers? Can love, as people called it, make her and Mrs. Ramsay one? It was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge. And she put her head on Mrs. Ramsay’s knee.
Nothing happened. Nothing! Nothing! as she leant her head against Mrs. Ramsay’s knee.
And yet, she knew knowledge and wisdom were stored up in Mrs. Ramsay’s heart. Mrs. Ramsay rose. Lily rose. Mrs. Ramsay went. A ray passed Mr. Bankes’s eyes. He put on his spectacles. He stepped back. He raised his hand. He slightly narrowed his clear blue eyes,
Lily winced like a dog that sees a hand raised to strike it. Mr. Bankes was less alarming than another.
Mr. Bankes took out a pen-knife and tapped the canvas with the bone handle. What did she wish to indicate by the triangular purple shape, “just there”? he asked.
It was Mrs. Ramsay reading to James, she said.
Mother and child are the objects of universal veneration. The mother was famous for her beauty. But the picture was not of them, she said. Or, not in this sense. There were other senses too.
A picture must be a tribute. A mother and child can be reduced to a shadow without irreverence. A light here required a shadow there. He considered. He was interested. The truth was that all his prejudices were on the other side, he explained. The largest picture in his drawing-room was of the cherry trees in blossom on the banks of the Kennet. He had spent his honeymoon on the banks of the Kennet, he said. Lily must come and see that picture, he said.
10
Cam grazed the easel by an inch[9]. She did not stop for Mr. Bankes and Lily Briscoe; though Mr. Bankes held out his hand. She did not stop for her father, whom she grazed also by an inch; nor for her mother, who called
“Cam! I want you a moment!”
She flew like a bird, bullet, or arrow. But when Mrs. Ramsay called “Cam!” a second time, Cam turned to her mother. She shifted from foot to foot, and said,
“They are not here, and I’ve told Ellen to wait.”
Minta Doyle and Paul Rayley had not come back then. That meant, Mrs. Ramsay thought, one thing. She must accept him, or she must refuse him. Mrs. Ramsay was very, very fond of Minta. But she read,
“Next morning the wife awoke first, and it was just daybreak. From her bed she saw the beautiful country. Her husband was still stretching himself[10]…”
But how will Minta refuse him? She read on:
“Ah, wife,” said the man, “why 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.
“And when he came to the sea, it was quite dark grey. 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 you, 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. She was reading and thinking at the same time. The story of the Fisherman and his Wife was like the melody.
If nothing happens, she will speak seriously to Minta. She was responsible to Minta’s parents – the Owl and the Poker. She remembered her nicknames for them. The Owl and the Poker – yes.
Dear, dear, Mrs. Ramsay said to herself, how did they produce this incongruous daughter? this tomboy Minta, with a hole in her stocking?
How did she exist in that portentous atmosphere? Naturally, one must ask her to lunch, tea, dinner, finally to stay with them. That resulted in some friction with the Owl, her mother. However, Minta came… Yes, she came, Mrs. Ramsay thought. Mrs. Doyle accused her. Wishing to dominate, wishing to interfere, making people do what she wished – that was the charge against her. She thought it most unjust.
She was often ashamed of her own shabbiness. Nor was she domineering, nor was she tyrannical.
She never wanted James to grow older! or Cam either. 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, a real beauty. Andrew – even her husband admitted that his gift for mathematics was extraordinary. And Nancy and Roger, they were both wild creatures now. They were 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. She made everything.
Why should they go to school? She always wanted to have a baby. She liked to carry one in her arms. Then people say she was tyrannical, domineering, masterful. They are happier now than they will ever be again. 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. She believed it to be true. He had always his work. Not that she herself was “pessimistic”. She thought of her life, her fifty years. There it was before her – life. The life is terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you give it a chance. There were eternal problems: suffering; death; the poor. There was always a woman dying of cancer even here.
She knew what was before them – love and ambition. Why must they grow up and lose it all? And then she said to herself, Nonsense. They will be perfectly happy.
She was making Minta marry Paul Rayley. People must marry; people must have children.
Was she wrong in this? she asked herself. She was uneasy.
“Then he put on his trousers and ran away like a madman,” she read. “But outside a great storm was raging and blowing so hard that he could scarcely keep his feet. Houses and trees toppled over, the mountains trembled, rocks rolled into the sea. The sky was black, and it thundered and lightened. 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. She will finish the story. It was getting late. The light in the garden told her that. Then she remembered; Paul and Minta and Andrew had not come back. Andrew had his net and basket. That meant he was going to catch crabs. It was growing quite