"And even if it isn't fine tomorrow," said Mrs Ramsay, raising her eyes toglance at William Bankes and Lily Briscoe as they passed, "it will be anotherday. And now," she said, thinking that Lily's charm was herChinese eyes, aslant in her white, puckered little face, but it would take aclever man to see it, "and now stand up, and let me measure your leg,"for they might go to the Lighthouse after all, and she must see if thestocking did not need to be an inch or two longer in the leg.
Smiling, for it was an admirable idea, that had flashed upon her thisvery second—William and Lily should marry—she took the heather-mixture stocking, with its criss-cross of steel needles at the mouth of it,and measured it against James's leg.
"My dear, stand still," she said, for in his jealousy, not liking to serve asmeasuring block for the Lighthouse keeper's little boy, James fidgetedpurposely; and if he did that, how could she see, was it too long, was ittoo short? she asked.
She looked up—what demon possessed him, her youngest, her cherished?—and saw the room, saw the chairs, thought them fearfullyshabby. Their entrails, as Andrew said the other day, were all over thefloor; but then what was the point, she asked, of buying good chairs tolet them spoil up here all through the winter when the house, with onlyone old woman to see to it, positively dripped with wet? Never mind,the rent was precisely twopence half-penny; the children loved it; it didher husband good to be three thousand, or if she must be accurate, threehundred miles from his libraries and his lectures and his disciples; andthere was room for visitors. Mats, camp beds, crazy ghosts of chairs andtables whose London life of service was done—they did well enoughhere; and a photograph or two, and books. Books, she thought, grew ofthemselves. She never had time to read them. Alas! even the books thathad been given her and inscribed by the hand of the poet himself: "Forher whose wishes must be obeyed"… "The happier Helen of our days"…disgraceful to say, she had never read them. And Croom on the Mind and Bates on the Savage Customs of Polynesia ("My dear, stand still," shesaid)—neither of those could one send to the Lighthouse. At a certainmoment, she supposed, the house would become so shabby thatsomething must be done. If they could be taught to wipe their feet andnot bring the beach in with them—that would be something. Crabs, shehad to allow, if Andrew really wished to dissect them, or if Jasper believedthat one could make soup from seaweed, one could not prevent it;or Rose's objects—shells, reeds, stones; for they were gifted, her children,but all in quite different ways. And the result of it was, she sighed, takingin the whole room from floor to ceiling, as she held the stockingagainst James's leg, that things got shabbier and got shabbier summerafter summer. The mat was fading; the wall-paper was flapping. Youcouldn't tell any more that those were roses on it. Still, if every door in ahouse is left perpetually open, and no lockmaker in the whole of Scotlandcan mend a bolt, things must spoil. What was the use of flinging agreen Cashemere shawl over the edge of a picture frame? In two weeks itwould be the colour of pea soup. But it was the doors that annoyed her;every door was left open. She listened. The drawing-room door wasopen; the hall door was open; it sounded as if the bedroom doors wereopen; and certainly the window on the landing was open, for that shehad opened herself. That windows should be open, and doorsshut—simple as it was, could none of them remember it? She would gointo the maids' bedrooms at night and find them sealed like ovens, exceptfor Marie's, the Swiss girl, who would rather go without a bath thanwithout fresh air, but then at home, she had said, "the mountains are sobeautiful." She had said that last night looking out of the window withtears in her eyes. "The mountains are so beautiful." Her father was dyingthere, Mrs Ramsay knew. He was leaving them fatherless. Scolding anddemonstrating (how to make a bed, how to open a window, with handsthat shut and spread like a Frenchwoman's) all had folded itself quietlyabout her, when the girl spoke, as, after a flight through the sunshine thewings of a bird fold themselves quietly and the blue of its plumagechanges from bright steel to soft purple. She had stood there silent forthere was nothing to be said. He had cancer of the throat. At the recolection—how she had stood there, how the girl had said, "At home themountains are so beautiful," and there was no hope, no hope whatever,she had a spasm of irritation, and speaking sharply, said to James:
"Stand still. Don't be tiresome," so that he knew instantly that herseverity was real, and straightened his leg and she measured it.
The stocking was too short by half an inch at least, making allowancefor the fact that Sorley's little boy would be less well grown than James.
"It's too short," she said, "ever so much too short."Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, half-way down, inthe darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhapsa tear formed; a tear fell; the waters swayed this way and that, receivedit, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad.
But was it nothing but looks, people said? What was there behindit—her beauty and splendour? Had he blown his brains out, they asked,had he died the week before they were married—some other, earlier lover,of whom rumours reached one? Or was there nothing? nothing but anincomparable beauty which she lived behind, and could do nothing todisturb? For easily though she might have said at some moment of intimacywhen stories of great passion, of love foiled, of ambition thwartedcame her way how she too had known or felt or been through it herself,she never spoke. She was silent always. She knew then—she knewwithout having learnt. Her simplicity fathomed what clever people falsified.
Her singleness of mind made her drop plumb like a stone, alight exactas a bird, gave her, naturally, this swoop and fall of the spirit upontruth which delighted, eased, sustained—falsely perhaps.
("Nature has but little clay," said Mr Bankes once, much moved by hervoice on the telephone, though she was only telling him a fact about atrain, "like that of which she moulded you." He saw her at the end of theline, Greek, blue-eyed, straight-nosed. How incongruous it seemed to betelephoning to a woman like that. The Graces assembling seemed tohave joined hands in meadows of asphodel to compose that face. Yes, hewould catch the 10:30 at Euston.
"But she's no more aware of her beauty than a child," said Mr Bankes,replacing the receiver and crossing the room to see what progress theworkmen were making with an hotel which they were building at theback of his house. And he thought of Mrs Ramsay as he looked at thatstir among the unfinished walls. For always, he thought, there wassomething incongruous to be worked into the harmony of her face. Sheclapped a deer-stalker's hat on her head; she ran across the lawn ingaloshes to snatch a child from mischief. So that if it was her beautymerely that one thought of, one must remember the quivering thing, theliving thing (they were carrying bricks up a little plank as he watchedthem), and work it into the picture; or if one thought of her simply as awoman, one must endow her with some freak of idiosyncrasy—she did not like admiration—or suppose some latent desire to doff her royalty ofform as if her beauty bored her and all that men say of beauty, and shewanted only to be like other people, insignificant. He did not know. Hedid not know. He must go to his work.)Knitting her reddish-brown hairy stocking, with her head outlined absurdlyby the gilt frame, the green shawl which she had tossed over theedge of the frame, and the authenticated masterpiece by Michael Angelo,Mrs Ramsay smoothed out what had been harsh in her manner a momentbefore, raised his head, and kissed her little boy on the forehead.
"Let us find another picture to cut out," she said.