Of course, she said to herself, coming into the room, she had to comehere to get something she wanted. First she wanted to sit down in a particularchair under a particular lamp. But she wanted something more,though she did not know, could not think what it was that she wanted.
She looked at her husband (taking up her stocking and beginning toknit), and saw that he did not want to be interrupted— that was clear.
He was reading something that moved him very much. He was halfsmiling and then she knew he was controlling his emotion. He was tossingthe pages over. He was acting it—perhaps he was thinking himselfthe person in the book. She wondered what book it was. Oh, it was oneof old Sir Walter's she saw, adjusting the shade of her lamp so that thelight fell on her knitting. For Charles Tansley had been saying (shelooked up as if she expected to hear the crash of books on the floorabove), had been saying that people don't read Scott any more. Then herhusband thought, "That's what they'll say of me;" so he went and got oneof those books. And if he came to the conclusion "That's true" whatCharles Tansley said, he would accept it about Scott. (She could see thathe was weighing, considering, putting this with that as he read.) But notabout himself. He was always uneasy about himself. That troubled her.
He would always be worrying about his own books—will they be read,are they good, why aren't they better, what do people think of me? Notliking to think of him so, and wondering if they had guessed at dinnerwhy he suddenly became irritable when they talked about fame andbooks lasting, wondering if the children were laughing at that, shetwitched the stockings out, and all the fine gravings came drawn withsteel instruments about her lips and forehead, and she grew still like atree which has been tossing and quivering and now, when the breezefalls, settles, leaf by leaf, into quiet.
It didn't matter, any of it, she thought. A great man, a great book,fame—who could tell? She knew nothing about it. But it was his waywith him, his truthfulness—for instance at dinner she had been thinking quite instinctively, If only he would speak! She had complete trust inhim. And dismissing all this, as one passes in diving now a weed, now astraw, now a bubble, she felt again, sinking deeper, as she had felt in thehall when the others were talking, There is somethingwant—something I have come to get, and she fell deeper and deeperwithout knowing quite what it was, with her eyes closed. And shewaited a little, knitting, wondering, and slowly rose those words theyhad said at dinner, "the China rose is all abloom and buzzing with thehoney bee," began washing from side to side of her mind rhythmically,and as they washed, words, like little shaded lights, one red, one blue,one yellow, lit up in the dark of her mind, and seemed leaving theirperches up there to fly across and across, or to cry out and to be echoed;so she turned and felt on the table beside her for a book.
And all the lives we ever livedAnd all the lives to be,Are full of trees and changing leaves,she murmured, sticking her needles into the stocking. And she openedthe book and began reading here and there at random, and as she did so,she felt that she was climbing backwards, upwards, shoving her way upunder petals that curved over her, so that she only knew this is white, orthis is red. She did not know at first what the words meant at all.
Steer, hither steer your winged pines, all beaten Marinersshe read and turned the page, swinging herself, zigzagging this wayand that, from one line to another as from one branch to another, fromone red and white flower to another, until a little sound roused her—herhusband slapping his thighs. Their eyes met for a second; but they didnot want to speak to each other. They had nothing to say, but somethingseemed, nevertheless, to go from him to her. It was the life, it was thepower of it, it was the tremendous humour, she knew, that made himslap his thighs. Don't interrupt me, he seemed to be saying, don't sayanything; just sit there. And he went on reading. His lips twitched. Itfilled him. It fortified him. He clean forgot all the little rubs and digs ofthe evening, and how it bored him unutterably to sit still while peopleate and drank interminably, and his being so irritable with his wife andso touchy and minding when they passed his books over as if they didn'texist at all. But now, he felt, it didn't matter a damn who reached Z (ifthought ran like an alphabet from A to Z). Somebody would reach it—ifnot he, then another. This man's strength and sanity, his feeling forstraight forward simple things, these fishermen, the poor old crazed creature in Mucklebackit's cottage made him feel so vigorous, so relievedof something that he felt roused and triumphant and could not chokeback his tears. Raising the book a little to hide his face, he let them falland shook his head from side to side and forgot himself completely (butnot one or two reflections about morality and French novels and Englishnovels and Scott's hands being tied but his view perhaps being as true asthe other view), forgot his own bothers and failures completely in poorSteenie's drowning and Mucklebackit's sorrow (that was Scott at his best)and the astonishing delight and feeling of vigour that it gave him.
Well, let them improve upon that, he thought as he finished thechapter. He felt that he had been arguing with somebody, and had gotthe better of him. They could not improve upon that, whatever theymight say; and his own position became more secure. The lovers werefiddlesticks, he thought, collecting it all in his mind again. That's fiddlesticks,that's first-rate, he thought, putting one thing beside another. Buthe must read it again. He could not remember the whole shape of thething. He had to keep his judgement in suspense. So he returned to theother thought—if young men did not care for this, naturally they did notcare for him either. One ought not to complain, thought Mr Ramsay, tryingto stifle his desire to complain to his wife that young men did not admirehim. But he was determined; he would not bother her again. Herehe looked at her reading. She looked very peaceful, reading. He li............