"Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs Ramsay. "But you'll haveto be up with the lark," she added.

　　To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it weresettled, the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder towhich he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after anight's darkness and a day's sail, within touch. Since he belonged, evenat the age of six, to that great clan which cannot keep this feeling separatefrom that, but must let future prospects, with their joys and sorrows,cloud what is actually at hand, since to such people even in earliestchildhood any turn in the wheel of sensation has the power to crystalliseand transfix the moment upon which its gloom or radiance rests, JamesRamsay, sitting on the floor cutting out pictures from the illustrated catalogueof the Army and Navy stores, endowed the picture of a refrigerator,as his mother spoke, with heavenly bliss. It was fringed with joy. Thewheelbarrow, the lawnmower, the sound of poplar trees, leaves whiteningbefore rain, rooks cawing, brooms knocking, dresses rustling—allthese were so coloured and distinguished in his mind that he hadalready his private code, his secret language, though he appeared the imageof stark and uncompromising severity, with his high forehead andhis fierce blue eyes, impeccably candid and pure, frowning slightly at thesight of human frailty, so that his mother, watching him guide his scissorsneatly round the refrigerator, imagined him all red and ermine onthe Bench or directing a stern and momentous enterprise in some crisisof public affairs.

　　"But," said his father, stopping in front of the drawing-room window,"it won't be fine."Had there been an axe handy, a poker, or any weapon that wouldhave gashed a hole in his father's breast and killed him, there and then,James would have seized it. Such were the extremes of emotion that MrRamsay excited in his children's breasts by his mere presence; standing,as now, lean as a knife, narrow as the blade of one, grinning sarcastically,not only with the pleasure of disillusioning his son and casting ridiculeupon his wife, who was ten thousand times better in every way than hewas (James thought), but also with some secret conceit at his own accuracyof judgement. What he said was true. It was always true. He was incapableof untruth; never tampered with a fact; never altered a disagreeableword to suit the pleasure or convenience of any mortal being, leastof all of his own children, who, sprung from his loins, should be awarefrom childhood that life is difficult; facts uncompromising; and the passageto that fabled land where our brightest hopes are extinguished, ourfrail barks founder in darkness (here Mr Ramsay would straighten hisback and narrow his little blue eyes upon the horizon), one that needs,above all, courage, truth, and the power to endure.

　　"But it may be fine—I expect it will be fine," said Mrs Ramsay, makingsome little twist of the reddish brown stocking she was knitting, impatiently.

　　If she finished it tonight, if they did go to the Lighthouse after all,it was to be given to the Lighthouse keeper for his little boy, who wasthreatened with a tuberculous hip; together with a pile of old magazines,and some tobacco, indeed, whatever she could find lying about, notreally wanted, but only littering the room, to give those poor fellows,who must be bored to death sitting all day with nothing to do but polishthe lamp and trim the wick and rake about on their scrap of garden,something to amuse them. For how would you like to be shut up for awhole month at a time, and possibly more in stormy weather, upon arock the size of a tennis lawn? she would ask; and to have no letters ornewspapers, and to see nobody; if you were married, not to see yourwife, not to know how your children were,—if they were ill, if they hadfallen down and broken their legs or arms; to see the same dreary wavesbreaking week after week, and then a dreadful storm coming, and thewindows covered with spray, and birds dashed against the lamp, andthe whole place rocking, and not be able to put your nose out of doorsfor fear of being swept into the sea? How would you like that? she asked,addressing herself particularly to her daughters. So she added, ratherdifferently, one must take them whatever comforts one can.

　　"It's due west," said the atheist Tansley, holding his bony fingersspread so that the wind blew through them, for he was sharing MrRamsay's evening walk up and down, up and down the terrace. That isto say, the wind blew from the worst possible direction for landing at theLighthouse. Yes, he did say disagreeable things, Mrs Ramsay admitted; itwas odious of him to rub this in, and make James still more disappointed;but at the same time, she would not let them laugh at him. "Theatheist," they called him; "the little atheist." Rose mocked him; Pruemocked him; Andrew, Jasper, Roger mocked him; even old Badgerwithout a tooth in his head had bit him, for being (as Nancy put it) thehundred and tenth young man to chase them all the way up to theHebrides when it was ever so much nicer to be alone.

　　"Nonsense," said Mrs Ramsay, with great severity. Apart from thehabit of exaggeration which they had from her, and from the implication(which was true) that she asked too many people to stay, and had tolodge some in the town, she could not bear incivility to her guests, toyoung men in particular, who were poor as churchmice, "exceptionallyable," her husband said, his great admirers, and come there for a holiday.

　　Indeed, she had the whole of the other sex under her protection; for reasonsshe could not explain, for their chivalry and valour, for the fact thatthey negotiated treaties, ruled India, controlled finance; finally for an attitudetowards herself which no woman could fail to feel or to findagreeable, something trustful, childlike, reverential; which an old womancould take from a young man without loss of dignity, and woebetide the girl—pray Heaven it was none of her daughters!—who didnot feel the worth of it, and all that it implied, to the marrow of herbones!

　　She turned with severity upon Nancy. He had not chased them, shesaid. He had been asked.

　　They must find a way out of it all. There might be some simpler way,some less laborious way, she sighed. When she looked in the glass andsaw her hair grey, her cheek sunk, at fifty, she thought, possibly shemight have managed things better—her husband; money; his books. Butfor her own part she would never for a single second regret her decision,evade difficulties, or slur over duties. She was now formidable to behold,and it was only in silence, looking up from their plates, after she hadspoken so severely about Charles Tansley, that her daughters, Prue,Nancy, Rose—could sport with infidel ideas which they had brewed forthemselves of a life different from hers; in Paris, perhaps; a wilder life;not always taking care of some man or other; for there was in all theirminds a mute questioning of deference and chivalry, of the Bank of Englandand the Indian Empire, of ringed fingers and lace, though to themall there was something in this of the essence of beauty, which called outthe manliness in their girlish hearts, and made them, as they sat at tablebeneath their mother's eyes, honour her strange severity, her extremecourtesy, like a queen's raising from the mud to wash a beggar's dirtyfoot, when she admonished them so very severely about that wretchedatheist who had chased them—or, speaking accurately, been invited tostay with them—in the Isle of Skye.

　　"There'll be no landing at the Lighthouse tomorrow," said CharlesTansley, clapping his hands together as he stood at the window with herhusband. Surely, he had said enough. She wished they would both leaveher and James alone and go on talking. She looked at him. He was such amiserable specimen, the children said, all humps and hollows. Hecouldn't play cricket; he poked; he shuffled. He was a sarcastic brute,Andrew said. They knew what he liked best—to be for ever walking upand down, up and down, with Mr Ramsay, and saying who had wonthis, who had won that, who was a "first rate man" at Latin verses, whowas "brilliant but I think fundamentally unsound," who was undoubtedlythe "ablest fellow in Balliol," who had buried his light temporarilyat Bristol or Bedford, but was bound to be heard of later when hisProlegomena, of which Mr Tansley had the first pages in proof with himif Mr Ramsay would like to see them, to some branch of mathematics orphilosophy saw the light of day. That was what they talked about.

　　She could not help laughing herself sometimes. She said, the otherday, something about "waves mountains high." Yes, said Charles Tans-ley, it was a little rough. "Aren't you drenched to the skin?" she had said.

　　"Damp, not wet through," said Mr Tansley, pinching his sleeve, feelinghis socks.

　　But it was not that they minded, the children said. It was not his face;it was not his manners. It was him—his point of view. When they talkedabout something interesting, people, music, history, anything, even saidit was a fine evening so why not sit out of doors, then what they complainedof about Charles Tansley was that until he had turned the wholething round and made it somehow reflect himself and disparagethem—he was not satisfied. And he would go to picture galleries theysaid, and he would ask one, did one like his tie? God knows, said Rose,one did not.

　　Disappearing as stealthily as stags from the dinner-table directly themeal was over, the eight sons and daughters of Mr and Mrs Ramsaysought their bedrooms, their fastness in a house where there was no otherprivacy to debate anything, everything; Tansley's tie; the passing ofthe Reform Bill; sea birds and butterflies; people; while the sun pouredinto those attics, which a plank alone separated from each other so thatevery footstep could be plainly heard and the Swiss girl sobbing for herfather who was dying of cancer in a valley of the Grisons, and lit up bats,flannels, straw hats, ink-pots, paint-pots, beetles, and the skulls of smallbirds, while it drew from the long frilled strips of seaweed pinned to thewall a smell of salt and weeds, which was in the towels too, gritty withsand from bathing.

　　Strife, divisions, difference of opinion, prejudices twisted into the veryfibre of being, oh, that they should begin so early, Mrs Ramsay deplored.

　　They were so critical, her children. They talked such nonsense. She wentfrom the dining-room, holding James by the hand, since he would not gowith the others. It seemed to her such nonsense—inventing differences,when people, heaven knows, were different enough without that. Thereal differences, she thought, standing by the drawing-room window,are enough, quite enough. She had in mind at the moment, rich andpoor, high and low; the great in birth receiving from her, half grudging,some respect, for had she not in her veins the blood of that very noble, ifslightly mythical, Italian house, whose daughters, scattered aboutEnglish drawing-rooms in the nineteenth century, had lisped so charmingly,had stormed so wildly, and all her wit and her bearing and hertemper came from them, and not from the sluggish English, or the coldScotch; but more profoundly, she ruminated the other problem, of richand poor, and the things she saw with her own eyes, weekly, daily, hereor in London, when she visited this widow, or that struggling wife inperson with a bag on her arm, and a note-book and pencil with whichshe wrote down in columns carefully ruled for the purpose wages andspendings, employment and unemployment, in the hope that thus shewould cease to be a private woman whose charity was half a sop to herown indignation, half a relief to her own curiosity, and become whatwith her untrained mind she greatly admired, an investigator, elucidatingthe social problem.

　　Insoluble questions they were, it seemed to her, standing there, holdingJames by the hand. He had followed her into the drawing-room, thatyoung man they laughed at; he was standing by the table, fidgeting withsomething, awkwardly, feeling himself out of things, as she knewwithout looking round. They had all gone—the children; Minta Doyleand Paul Rayley; Augustus Carmichael; her husband—they had all gone.

　　So she turned with a sigh and said, "Would it bore you to come with me,Mr Tansley?"She had a dull errand in the town; she had a letter or two to write; shewould be ten minutes perhaps; she would put on her hat. And, with herbasket and her parasol, there she was again, ten minutes later, giving outa sense of being ready, of being equipped for a jaunt, which, however,she must interrupt for a moment, as they passed the tennis lawn, to askMr Carmichael, who was basking with his yellow cat's eyes ajar, so thatlike a cat's they seemed to reflect the branches moving or the cloudspassing, but to give no inkling of any inner thoughts or emotion whatsoever,if he wanted anything.

　　For they were making the great expedition, she said, laughing. Theywere going to the town. "Stamps, writing-paper, tobacco?" she suggested,stopping by his side. But no, he wanted nothing. His hands claspedthemselves over his capacious paunch, his eyes blinked, as if he wouldhave liked to reply kindly to these blandishments (she was seductive buta little nervous) but could not, sunk as he was in a grey-green somnolencewhich embraced them all, without need of words, in a vast and benevolentlethargy of well-wishing; all the house; all the world; all thepeople in it, for he had slipped into his glass at lunch a few drops ofsomething, which accounted, the children thought, for the vivid streak ofcanary-yellow in moustache and beard that were otherwise milk white.

　　No, nothing, he murmured.

　　He should have been a great philosopher, said Mrs Ramsay, as theywent down the road to the fishing village, but he had made an unfortunatemarriage. Holding her black parasol very erect, and moving with anindescribable air of expectation, as if she were going to meet some oneround the corner, she told the story; an affair at Oxford with some girl;an early marriage; poverty; going to India; translating a little poetry"very beautifully, I believe," being willing to teach the boys Persian orHindustanee, but what really was the use of that?—and then lying, asthey saw him, on the lawn.

　　It flattered him; snubbed as he had been, it soothed him that Mrs Ram-say should tell him this. Charles Tansley revived. Insinuating, too, as shedid the greatness of man's intellect, even in its decay, the subjection of allwives—not that she blamed the girl, and the marriage had been happyenough, she believed—to their husband's labours, she made him feel betterpleased with himself than he had done yet, and he would have liked,had they taken a cab, for example, to have paid the fare. As for her littlebag, might he not carry that? No, no, she said, she always carried THATherself. She did too. Yes, he felt that in her. He felt many things,something in particular that excited him and disturbed him for reasonswhich he could not give. He would like her to see him, gowned andhooded, walking in a procession. A fellowship, a professorship, he feltcapable of anything and saw himself—but what was she looking at? At aman pasting a bill. The vast flapping sheet flattened itself out, and eachshove of the brush revealed fresh legs, hoops, horses, glistening reds andblues, beautifully smooth, until half the wall was covered with the advertisementof a circus; a hundred horsemen, twenty performing seals,lions, tigers… Craning forwards, for she was short-sighted, she read itout… "will visit this town," she read. It was terribly dangerous work fora one-armed man, she exclaimed, to stand on top of a ladder likethat—his left arm had been cut off in a reaping machine two years ago.

　　"Let us all go!" she cried, moving on, as if all those riders and horseshad filled her with childlike exultation and made her forget her pity.

　　"Let's go," he said, repeating her words, clicking them out, however,with a self-consciousness that made her wince. "Let us all go to the circus."No. He could not say it right. He could not feel it right. But whynot? she wondered. What was wrong with him then? She liked himwarmly, at the moment. Had they not been taken, she asked, to circuseswhen they were children? Never, he answered, as if she asked the verything he wanted; had been longing all these days to say, how they didnot go to circuses. It was a large family, nine brothers and sisters, and hisfather was a working man. "My father is a chemist, Mrs Ramsay. Hekeeps a shop." He himself had paid his own way since he was thirteen.

　　Often he went without a greatcoat in winter. He could never "return hospitality"(those were his parched stiff words) at college. He had to makethings last twice the time other people did; he smoked the cheapest tobacco;shag; the same the old men did in the quays. He workedhard—seven hours a day; his subject was now the influence ofsomething upon somebody—they were walking on and Mrs Ramsay didnot quite catch the meaning, only the words, here and there… dissertation…fellowship… readership… lectureship. She could not follow theugly academic jargon, that rattled itself off so glibly, but said to herselfthat she saw now why going to the circus had knocked him off his perch,poor little man, and why he came out, instantly, with all that about hisfather and mother and brothers and sisters, and she would see to it thatthey didn't laugh at him any more; she would tell Prue about it. What hewould have liked, she supposed, would have been to say how he hadgone not to the circus but to Ibsen with the Ramsays. He was an awfulprig—oh yes, an insufferable bore. For, though they had reached thetown now and were in the main street, with carts grinding past on thecobbles, still he went on talking, about settlements, and teaching, andworking men, and helping our own class, and lectures, till she gatheredthat he had got back entire self-confidence, had recovered from the circus,and was about (and now again she liked him warmly) to tellher—but here, the houses falling away on both sides, they came out onthe quay, and the whole bay spread before them and Mrs Ramsay couldnot help exclaiming, "Oh, how beautiful!" For the great plateful of bluewater was before her; the hoary Lighthouse, distant, austere, in themidst; and on the right, as far as the eye could see, fading and falling, insoft low pleats, the green sand dunes with the wild flowing grasses onthem, which always seemed to be running away into some moon country,uninhabited of men.

　　That was the view, she said, stopping, growing greyer-eyed, that herhusband loved.

　　She paused a moment. But now, she said, artists had come here. Thereindeed, only a few paces off, stood one of them, in Panama hat and yellowboots, seriously, softly, absorbedly, for all that he was watched byten little boys, with an air of profound contentment on his round red facegazing, and then, when he had gazed, dipping; imbuing the tip of hisbrush in some soft mound of green or pink. Since Mr Paunceforte hadbeen there, three years before, all the pictures were like that, she said,green and grey, with lemon-coloured sailing-boats, and pink women onthe beach.

　　But her grandmother's friends, she said, glancing discreetly as theypassed, took the greatest pains; first they mixed their own colours, andthen they ground them, and then they put damp cloths to keep themmoist.

　　So Mr Tansley supposed she meant him to see that that man's picturewas skimpy, was that what one said? The colours weren't solid? Wasthat what one said? Under the influence of that extraordinary emotionwhich had been growing all the walk, had begun in the garden when hehad wanted to take her bag, had increased in the town when he hadwanted to tell her everything about himself, he was coming to see himself,and everything he had ever known gone crooked a little. It was awfullystrange.

　　There he stood in the parlour of the poky little house where she hadtaken him, waiting for her, while she went upstairs a moment to see awoman. He heard her quick step above; heard her voice cheerful, thenlow; looked at the mats, tea-caddies, glass shades; waited quite impatiently;looked forward eagerly to the walk home; determined to carryher bag; then heard her come out; shut a door; say they must keep thewindows open and the doors shut, ask at the house for anything theywanted (she must be talking to a child) when, suddenly, in she came,stood for a moment silent (as if she had been pretending up there, andfor a moment let herself be now), stood quite motionless for a momentagainst a picture of Queen Victoria wearing the blue ribbon of the Garter;when all at once he realised that it was this: it was this:—she was themost beautiful person he had ever seen.

　　With stars in her eyes and veils in her hair, with cyclamen and wild violets—what nonsense was he thinking? She was fifty at least; she hadeight children. Stepping through fields of flowers and taking to herbreast buds that had broken and lambs that had fallen; with the stars inher eyes and the wind in her hair—He had hold of her bag.

　　"Good-bye, Elsie," she said, and they walked up the street, she holdingher parasol erect and walking as if she expected to meet some one roundthe corner, while for the first time in his life Charles Tansley felt an extraordinarypride; a man digging in a drain stopped digging and lookedat her, let his arm fall down and looked at her; for the first time in his lifeCharles Tansley felt an extraordinary pride; felt the wind and the cyclamenand the violets for he was walking with a beautiful woman. He hadhold of her bag.