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

	To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it
were settled, the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to
which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a
night's darkness and a day's sail, within touch. Since he belonged, even
at the age of six, to that great clan which cannot keep this feeling
separate from that, but must let future prospects, with their joys and
sorrows, cloud what is actually at hand, since to such people even in
earliest childhood any turn in the wheel of sensation has the power to
crystallise and transfix the moment upon which its gloom or radiance
rests, James Ramsay, sitting on the floor cutting out pictures from the
illustrated catalogue of the Army and Navy stores, endowed the picture of
a refrigerator, as his mother spoke, with heavenly bliss. It was fringed
with joy. The wheelbarrow, the lawnmower, the sound of poplar trees,
leaves whitening before rain, rooks cawing, brooms knocking, dresses
rustling--all these were so coloured and distinguished in his mind that he
had already his private code, his secret language, though he appeared the
image of stark and uncompromising severity, with his high forehead and his
fierce blue eyes, impeccably candid and pure, frowning slightly at the
sight of human frailty, so that his mother, watching him guide his
scissors neatly round the refrigerator, imagined him all red and ermine on
the Bench or directing a stern and momentous enterprise in some crisis of
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 would
have 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 Mr
Ramsay 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 ridicule upon his wife, who was ten thousand times better in every
way than he was (James thought), but also with some secret conceit at his
own accuracy of judgement. What he said was true. It was always true. He
was incapable of untruth; never tampered with a fact; never altered a
disagreeable word to suit the pleasure or convenience of any mortal being,
least of all of his own children, who, sprung from his loins, should be
aware from childhood that life is difficult; facts uncompromising; and the
passage to that fabled land where our brightest hopes are extinguished,
our frail barks founder in darkness (here Mr Ramsay would straighten his
back and narrow his little blue eyes upon the horizon), one that needs,
above all, courage, truth, and the power to endure.

                                      * * *

	It was a splendid mind. For if thought is like the keyboard of a
piano, divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is ranged in
twenty-six letters all in order, then his splendid mind had one by one,
firmly and accurately, until it had reached, say, the letter Q. He reached
Q. Very few people in the whole of England ever reach Q. Here, stopping
for one moment by the stone urn which held the geraniums, he saw, but now
far, far away, like children picking up shells, divinely innocent and
occupied with little trifles at their feet and somehow entirely
defenceless against a doom which he perceived, his wife and son, together,
in the window. They needed his protection; he gave it them. But after Q?
What comes next? After Q there are a number of letters the last of which
is scarcely visible to mortal eyes, but glimmers red in the distance. Z is
only reached once by one man in a generation. Still, if he could reach R
it would be something. Here at least was Q. He dug his heels in at Q. Q he
was sure of. Q he could demonstrate. If Q then is Q--R--. Here he knocked
his pipe out, with two or three resonant taps on the handle of the urn,
and proceeded. "Then R ..."  He braced himself. He clenched himself.

	Qualities that would have saved a ship's company exposed on a
broiling sea with six biscuits and a flask of water--endurance and
justice, foresight, devotion, skill, came to his help. R is then--what is
R?

	A shutter, like the leathern eyelid of a lizard, flickered over
the intensity of his gaze and obscured the letter R. In that flash of
darkness he heard people saying--he was a failure--that R was beyond him.
He would never reach R. On to R, once more. R--

	Qualities that in a desolate expedition across the icy solitudes
of the Polar region would have made him the leader, the guide, the
counsellor, whose temper, neither sanguine nor despondent, surveys with
equanimity what is to be and faces it, came to his help again. R--

	The lizard's eye flickered once more. The veins on his forehead
bulged. The geranium in the urn became startlingly visible and, displayed
among its leaves, he could see, without wishing it, that old, that obvious
distinction between the two classes of men; on the one hand the steady
goers of superhuman strength who, plodding and persevering, repeat the
whole alphabet in order, twenty-six letters in all, from start to finish;
on the other the gifted, the inspired who, miraculously, lump all the
letters together in one flash--the way of genius. He had not genius; he
laid no claim to that: but he had, or might have had, the power to repeat
every letter of the alphabet from A to Z accurately in order. Meanwhile,
he stuck at Q. On, then, on to R.

	Feelings that would not have disgraced a leader who, now that the
snow has begun to fall and the mountain top is covered in mist, knows that
he must lay himself down and die before morning comes, stole upon him,
paling the colour of his eyes, giving him, even in the two minutes of his
turn on the terrace, the bleached look of withered old age. Yet he would
not die lying down; he would find some crag of rock, and there, his eyes
fixed on the storm, trying to the end to pierce the darkness, he would die
standing. He would never reach R.

	He stood stock-still, by the urn, with the geranium flowing over
it. How many men in a thousand million, he asked himself, reach Z after
all? Surely the leader of a forlorn hope may ask himself that, and answer,
without treachery to the expedition behind him, "One perhaps."  One in a
generation. Is he to be blamed then if he is not that one? provided he has
toiled honestly, given to the best of his power, and till he has no more
left to give? And his fame lasts how long? It is permissible even for a
dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter.
His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand
years? (asked Mr Ramsay ironically, staring at the hedge).  What, indeed,
if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very
stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare.  His own little
light would shine, not very brightly, for a year or two, and would then be
merged in some bigger light, and that in a bigger still. (He looked into
the hedge, into the intricacy of the twigs.)  Who then could blame the
leader of that forlorn party which after all has climbed high enough to
see the waste of the years and the perishing of the stars, if before death
stiffens his limbs beyond the power of movement he does a little
consciously raise his numbed fingers to his brow, and square his
shoulders, so that when the search party comes they will find him dead at
his post, the fine figure of a soldier? Mr Ramsay squared his shoulders
and stood very upright by the urn.

	Who shall blame him, if, so standing for a moment he dwells upon
fame, upon search parties, upon cairns raised by grateful followers over
his bones? Finally, who shall blame the leader of the doomed expedition,
if, having adventured to the uttermost, and used his strength wholly to
the last ounce and fallen asleep not much caring if he wakes or not, he
now perceives by some pricking in his toes that he lives, and does not on
the whole object to live, but requires sympathy, and whisky, and some one
to tell the story of his suffering to at once? Who shall blame him? Who
will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by
the window and gazes at his wife and son, who, very distant at first,
gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly
before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his
isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and
finally putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent head
before her--who will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the
world?

                                     * * *

	Mr Bankes expected her to answer. And she was about to say
something criticizing Mrs Ramsay, how she was alarming, too, in her way,
high-handed, or words to that effect, when Mr Bankes made it entirely
unnecessary for her to speak by his rapture. For such it was considering
his age, turned sixty, and his cleanliness and his impersonality, and the
white scientific coat which seemed to clothe him. For him to gaze as Lily
saw him gazing at Mrs Ramsay was a rapture, equivalent, Lily felt, to the
loves of dozens of young men (and perhaps Mrs Ramsay had never excited the
loves of dozens of young men). It was love, she thought, pretending to
move her canvas, distilled and filtered; love that never attempted to
clutch its object; but, like the love which mathematicians bear their
symbols, or poets their phrases, was meant to be spread over the world and
become part of the human gain. So it was indeed. The world by all means
should have shared it, could Mr Bankes have said why that woman pleased
him so; why the sight of her reading a fairy tale to her boy had upon him
precisely the same effect as the solution of a scientific problem, so that
he rested in contemplation of it, and felt, as he felt when he had proved
something absolute about the digestive system of plants, that barbarity
was tamed, the reign of chaos subdued.

	Such a rapture--for by what other name could one call it?--made
Lily Briscoe forget entirely what she had been about to say. It was
nothing of importance; something about Mrs Ramsay. It paled beside this
"rapture," this silent stare, for which she felt intense gratitude; for
nothing so solaced her, eased her of the perplexity of life, and
miraculously raised its burdens, as this sublime power, this heavenly
gift, and one would no more disturb it, while it lasted, than break up the
shaft of sunlight, lying level across the floor.

	That people should love like this, that Mr Bankes should feel this
for Mrs Ramsey (she glanced at him musing) was helpful, was exalting. She
wiped one brush after another upon a piece of old rag, menially, on
purpose. She took shelter from the reverence which covered all women; she
felt herself praised. Let him gaze; she would steal a look at her picture.

                                     * * *


	How, then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or
another thing about people, sealed as they were? Only like a bee, drawn by
some sweetness or sharpness in the air intangible to touch or taste, one
haunted the dome-shaped hive, ranged the wastes of the air over the
countries of the world alone, and then haunted the hives with their
murmurs and their stirrings; the hives, which were people.

                                     * * *

	Oh, but she never wanted James to grow a day older! or Cam either.  
These two she would have liked to keep for ever just as they were, demons
of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into
long-legged monsters. Nothing made up up for the loss. 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 with the
others, and sometimes now, at night especially, she took one's breath away
with her beauty. Andrew--even her husband admitted that his gift for
mathematics was extraordinary. And Nancy and Roger, they were both wild
creatures now, 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; made everything; liked best
arranging tables, flowers, anything. She did not like it that Jasper
should shoot birds; but it was only a stage; they all went through stages.
Why, she asked, pressing her chin on James's head, should they grow up so
fast? Why should they go to school? She would have liked always to have
had a baby. She was happiest carrying one in her arms. Then people might
say she was tyrannical, domineering, masterful, if they chose; she did not
mind. And, touching his hair with her lips, she thought, he will never be
so happy again, but stopped herself, remembering how it angered her
husband that she should say that. Still, it was true. They were happier
now than they would ever be again. A tenpenny tea set made Cam happy for
days. She heard them stamping and crowing on the floor above her head the
moment they awoke. They came bustling along the passage. Then the door
sprang open and in they came, fresh as roses, staring, wide awake, as if
this coming into the dining-room after breakfast, which they did every day
of their lives, was a positive event to them, and so on, with one thing
after another, all day long, until she went up to say good-night to them,
and found them netted in their cots like birds among cherries and
raspberries, still making up stories about some little bit of
rubbish--something they had heard, something they had picked up in the
garden. 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.

                                     * * *