Yes, that is their boat, Lily Briscoe decided1, standing2 on the edge of thelawn. It was the boat with greyish-brown sails, which she saw now flattenitself upon the water and shoot off across the bay. There he sits, shethought, and the children are quite silent still. And she could not reachhim either. The sympathy she had not given him weighed her down. Itmade it difficult for her to paint.
She had always found him difficult. She never had been able to praisehim to his face, she remembered. And that reduced their relationship tosomething neutral, without that element of sex in it which made hismanner to Minta so gallant3, almost gay. He would pick a flower for her,lend her his books. But could he believe that Minta read them? Shedragged them about the garden, sticking in leaves to mark the place.
"D'you remember, Mr Carmichael?" she was inclined to ask, looking atthe old man. But he had pulled his hat half over his forehead; he wasasleep, or he was dreaming, or he was lying there catching4 words, shesupposed.
"D'you remember?" she felt inclined to ask him as she passed him,thinking again of Mrs Ramsay on the beach; the cask bobbing up anddown; and the pages flying. Why, after all these years had that survived,ringed round, lit up, visible to the last detail, with all before it blank andall after it blank, for miles and miles?
"Is it a boat? Is it a cork5?" she would say, Lily repeated, turning back,reluctantly again, to her canvas. Heaven be praised for it, the problem ofspace remained, she thought, taking up her brush again. It glared at her.
The whole mass of the picture was poised6 upon that weight. Beautifuland bright it should be on the surface, feathery and evanescent, one col-our melting into another like the colours on a butterfly's wing; but beneaththe fabric7 must be clamped together with bolts of iron. It was to bea thing you could ruffle8 with your breath; and a thing you could not dislodgewith a team of horses. And she began to lay on a red, a grey, and she began to model her way into the hollow there. At the same time, sheseemed to be sitting beside Mrs Ramsay on the beach.
"Is it a boat? Is it a cask?" Mrs Ramsay said. And she began huntinground for her spectacles. And she sat, having found them, silent, lookingout to sea. And Lily, painting steadily9, felt as if a door had opened, andone went in and stood gazing silently about in a high cathedral-likeplace, very dark, very solemn. Shouts came from a world far away.
Steamers vanished in stalks of smoke on the horizon. Charles threwstones and sent them skipping.
Mrs Ramsay sat silent. She was glad, Lily thought, to rest in silence,uncommunicative; to rest in the extreme obscurity of human relationships.
Who knows what we are, what we feel? Who knows even at themoment of intimacy10, This is knowledge? Aren't things spoilt then, MrsRamsay may have asked (it seemed to have happened so often, this silenceby her side) by saying them? Aren't we more expressive11 thus? Themoment at least seemed extraordinarily12 fertile. She rammed13 a little holein the sand and covered it up, by way of burying in it the perfection ofthe moment. It was like a drop of silver in which one dipped and illuminedthe darkness of the past.
Lily stepped back to get her canvas—so—into perspective. It was anodd road to be walking, this of painting. Out and out one went, further,until at last one seemed to be on a narrow plank14, perfectly15 alone, overthe sea. And as she dipped into the blue paint, she dipped too into thepast there. Now Mrs Ramsay got up, she remembered. It was time to goback to the house—time for luncheon16. And they all walked up from thebeach together, she walking behind with William Bankes, and there wasMinta in front of them with a hole in her stocking. How that little roundhole of pink heel seemed to flaunt17 itself before them! How WilliamBankes deplored18 it, without, so far as she could remember, saying anythingabout it! It meant to him the annihilation of womanhood, and dirtand disorder19, and servants leaving and beds not made at mid-day—allthe things he most abhorred20. He had a way of shuddering21 and spreadinghis fingers out as if to cover an unsightly object which he didnow—holding his hand in front of him. And Minta walked on ahead,and presumably Paul met her and she went off with Paul in the garden.
The Rayleys, thought Lily Briscoe, squeezing her tube of green paint.
She collected her impressions of the Rayleys. Their lives appeared to herin a series of scenes; one, on the staircase at dawn. Paul had come in andgone to bed early; Minta was late. There was Minta, wreathed, tinted, garish on the stairs about three o'clock in the morning. Paul came out inhis pyjamas22 carrying a poker23 in case of burglars. Minta was eating asandwich, standing half-way up by a window, in the cadaverous earlymorning light, and the carpet had a hole in it. But what did they say?
Lily asked herself, as if by looking she could hear them. Minta went oneating her sandwich, annoyingly, while he spoke24 something violent, abusingher, in a mutter so as not to wake the children, the two little boys.
He was withered25, drawn26; she flamboyant27, careless. For things hadworked loose after the first year or so; the marriage had turned outrather badly.
And this, Lily thought, taking the green paint on her brush, this makingup scenes about them, is what we call "knowing" people, "thinking"of them, "being fond" of them! Not a word of it was true; she had made itup; but it was what she knew them by all the same. She went on tunnellingher way into her picture, into the past.
Another time, Paul said he "played chess in coffee-houses." She hadbuilt up a whole structure of imagination on that saying too. She rememberedhow, as he said it, she thought how he rang up the servant,and she said, "Mrs Rayley's out, sir," and he decided that he would notcome home either. She saw him sitting in the corner of some lugubriousplace where the smoke attached itself to the red plush seats, and thewaitresses got to know you, and he played chess with a little man whowas in the tea trade and lived at Surbiton, but that was all Paul knewabout him. And then Minta was out when he came home and then therewas that scene on the stairs, when he got the poker in case of burglars(no doubt to frighten her too) and spoke so bitterly, saying she hadruined his life. At any rate when she went down to see them at a cottagenear Rickmansworth, things were horribly strained. Paul took her downthe garden to look at the Belgian hares which he bred, and Minta followedthem, singing, and put her bare arm on his shoulder, lest heshould tell her anything.
Minta was bored by hares, Lily thought. But Minta never gave herselfaway. She never said things like that about playing chess in coffeehouses.
She was far too conscious, far too wary28. But to go on with theirstory—they had got through the dangerous stage by now. She had beenstaying with them last summer some time and the car broke down andMinta had to hand him his tools. He sat on the road mending the car,and it was the way she gave him the tools—business-like, straightforward,friendly—that proved it was all right now. They were "in love" nolonger; no, he had taken up with another woman, a serious woman, with her hair in a plait and a case in her hand (Minta had described her gratefully,almost admiringly), who went to meetings and shared Paul's views(they had got more and more pronounced) about the taxation30 of landvalues and a capital levy31. Far from breaking up the marriage, that alliancehad righted it. They were excellent friends, obviously, as he sat onthe road and she handed him his tools.
So that was the story of the Rayleys, Lily thought. She imagined herselftelling it to Mrs Ramsay, who would be full of curiosity to knowwhat had become of the Rayleys. She would feel a little triumphant,telling Mrs Ramsay that the marriage had not been a success.
But the dead, thought Lily, encountering some obstacle in her designwhich made her pause and ponder, stepping back a foot or so, oh, thedead! she murmured, one pitied them, one brushed them aside, one hadeven a little contempt for them. They are at our mercy. Mrs Ramsay hasfaded and gone, she thought. We can over-ride her wishes, improveaway her limited, old-fashioned ideas. She recedes32 further and furtherfrom us. Mockingly she seemed to see her there at the end of the corridorof years saying, of all incongruous things, "Marry, marry!" (sitting veryupright early in the morning with the birds beginning to cheep in thegarden outside). And one would have to say to her, It has all goneagainst your wishes. They're happy like that; I'm happy like this. Life haschanged completely. At that all her being, even her beauty, became for amoment, dusty and out of date. For a moment Lily, standing there, withthe sun hot on her back, summing up the Rayleys, triumphed over MrsRamsay, who would never know how Paul went to coffee-houses andhad a mistress; how he sat on the ground and Minta handed him histools; how she stood here painting, had never married, not even WilliamBankes.
Mrs Ramsay had planned it. Perhaps, had she lived, she would havecompelled it. Already that summer he was "the kindest of men." He was"the first scientist of his age, my husband says." He was also "poor William—it makes me so unhappy, when I go to see him, to find nothing nicein his house—no one to arrange the flowers." So they were sent for walkstogether, and she was told, with that faint touch of irony33 that made MrsRamsay slip through one's fingers, that she had a scientific mind; sheliked flowers; she was so exact. What was this mania34 of hers for marriage?
Lily wondered, stepping to and fro from her easel.
(Suddenly, as suddenly as a star slides in the sky, a reddish lightseemed to burn in her mind, covering Paul Rayley, issuing from him. It rose like a fire sent up in token of some celebration by savages35 on a distantbeach. She heard the roar and the crackle. The whole sea for milesround ran red and gold. Some winey smell mixed with it and intoxicatedher, for she felt again her own headlong desire to throw herself off thecliff and be drowned looking for a pearl brooch on a beach. And the roarand the crackle repelled36 her with fear and disgust, as if while she saw itssplendour and power she saw too how it fed on the treasure of thehouse, greedily, disgustingly, and she loathed37 it. But for a sight, for aglory it surpassed everything in her experience, and burnt year after yearlike a signal fire on a desert island at the edge of the sea, and one hadonly to say "in love" and instantly, as happened now, up rose Paul's fireagain. And it sank and she said to herself, laughing, "The Rayleys"; howPaul went to coffee-houses and played chess.)She had only escaped by the skin of her teeth though, she thought. Shehad been looking at the table-cloth, and it had flashed upon her that shewould move the tree to the middle, and need never marry anybody, andshe had felt an enormous exultation38. She had felt, now she could standup to Mrs Ramsay—a tribute to the astonishing power that Mrs Ramsayhad over one. Do this, she said, and one did it. Even her shadow at thewindow with James was full of authority. She remembered how WilliamBankes had been shocked by her neglect of the significance of motherand son. Did she not admire their beauty? he said. But William, she remembered,had listened to her with his wise child's eyes when she explainedhow it was not irreverence39: how a light there needed a shadowthere and so on. She did not intend to disparage40 a subject which, theyagreed, Raphael had treated divinely. She was not cynical41. Quite the contrary.
Thanks to his scientific mind he understood—a proof of disinterestedintelligence which had pleased her and comforted her enormously.
One could talk of painting then seriously to a man. Indeed, his friendshiphad been one of the pleasures of her life. She loved William Bankes.
They went to Hampton Court and he always left her, like the perfectgentleman he was, plenty of time to wash her hands, while he strolled bythe river. That was typical of their relationship. Many things were leftunsaid. Then they strolled through the courtyards, and admired, summerafter summer, the proportions and the flowers, and he would tellher things, about perspective, about architecture, as they walked, and hewould stop to look at a tree, or the view over the lake, and admire achild—(it was his great grief—he had no daughter) in the vague aloofway that was natural to a man who spent spent so much time in laboratoriesthat the world when he came out seemed to dazzle him, so that he walked slowly, lifted his hand to screen his eyes and paused, with hishead thrown back, merely to breathe the air. Then he would tell her howhis housekeeper42 was on her holiday; he must buy a new carpet for thestaircase. Perhaps she would go with him to buy a new carpet for thestaircase. And once something led him to talk about the Ramsays and hehad said how when he first saw her she had been wearing a grey hat; shewas not more than nineteen or twenty. She was astonishingly beautiful.
There he stood looking down the avenue at Hampton Court as if hecould see her there among the fountains.
She looked now at the drawing-room step. She saw, through William'seyes, the shape of a woman, peaceful and silent, with downcast eyes. Shesat musing43, pondering (she was in grey that day, Lily thought). Her eyeswere bent44. She would never lift them. Yes, thought Lily, looking intently,I must have seen her look like that, but not in grey; nor so still, nor soyoung, nor so peaceful. The figure came readily enough. She was astonishinglybeautiful, as William said. But beauty was not everything.
Beauty had this penalty—it came too readily, came too completely. Itstilled life—froze it. One forgot the little agitations45; the flush, the pallor,some queer distortion, some light or shadow, which made the face unrecognisablefor a moment and yet added a quality one saw for ever after.
It was simpler to smooth that all out under the cover of beauty. But whatwas the look she had, Lily wondered, when she clapped her deerstalkers'shat on her head, or ran across the grass, or scolded Kennedy,the gardener? Who could tell her? Who could help her?
Against her will she had come to the surface, and found herself halfout of the picture, looking, little dazedly46, as if at unreal things, at MrCarmichael. He lay on his chair with his hands clasped above his paunchnot reading, or sleeping, but basking47 like a creature gorged48 with existence.
His book had fallen on to the grass.
She wanted to go straight up to him and say, "Mr Carmichael!" Thenhe would look up benevolently49 as always, from his smoky vague greeneyes. But one only woke people if one knew what one wanted to say tothem. And she wanted to say not one thing, but everything. Little wordsthat broke up the thought and dismembered it said nothing. "About life,about death; about Mrs Ramsay"—no, she thought, one could say nothingto nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark.
Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low. Then onegave it up; then the idea sunk back again; then one became like mostmiddle-aged people, cautious, furtive50, with wrinkles between the eyesand a look of perpetual apprehension51. For how could one express in words these emotions of the body? express that emptiness there? (Shewas looking at the drawing-room steps; they looked extraordinarilyempty.) It was one's body feeling, not one's mind. The physical sensationsthat went with the bare look of the steps had become suddenly extremelyunpleasant. To want and not to have, sent all up her body ahardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have—towant and want—how that wrung52 the heart, and wrung it again andagain! Oh, Mrs Ramsay! she called out silently, to that essence which satby the boat, that abstract one made of her, that woman in grey, as if toabuse her for having gone, and then having gone, come back again. Ithad seemed so safe, thinking of her. Ghost, air, nothingness, a thing youcould play with easily and safely at any time of day or night, she hadbeen that, and then suddenly she put her hand out and wrung the heartthus. Suddenly, the empty drawing-room steps, the frill of the chair inside,the puppy tumbling on the terrace, the whole wave and whisper ofthe garden became like curves and arabesques53 flourishing round a centreof complete emptiness.
"What does it mean? How do you explain it all?" she wanted to say,turning to Mr Carmichael again. For the whole world seemed to havedissolved in this early morning hour into a pool of thought, a deep basinof reality, and one could almost fancy that had Mr Carmichael spoken,for instance, a little tear would have rent the surface pool. And then? Somethingwould emerge. A hand would be shoved up, a blade would beflashed. It was nonsense of course.
A curious notion came to her that he did after all hear the things shecould not say. He was an inscrutable old man, with the yellow stain onhis beard, and his poetry, and his puzzles, sailing serenely54 through aworld which satisfied all his wants, so that she thought he had only toput down his hand where he lay on the lawn to fish up anything hewanted. She looked at her picture. That would have been his answer,presumably—how "you" and "I" and "she" pass and vanish; nothingstays; all changes; but not words, not paint. Yet it would be hung in theattics, she thought; it would be rolled up and flung under a sofa; yeteven so, even of a picture like that, it was true. One might say, even ofthis scrawl55, not of that actual picture, perhaps, but of what it attempted,that it "remained for ever," she was going to say, or, for the wordsspoken sounded even to herself, too boastful, to hint, wordlessly; when,looking at the picture, she was surprised to find that she could not see it.
Her eyes were full of a hot liquid (she did not think of tears at first)which, without disturbing the firmness of her lips, made the air thick, rolled down her cheeks. She had perfect control of herself—Oh, yes!—inevery other way. Was she crying then for Mrs Ramsay, without beingaware of any unhappiness? She addressed old Mr Carmichael again.
What was it then? What did it mean? Could things thrust their hands upand grip one; could the blade cut; the fist grasp? Was there no safety? Nolearning by heart of the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but allwas miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle56 of a tower into the air? Couldit be, even for elderly people, that this was life?—startling, unexpected,unknown? For one moment she felt that if they both got up, here, nowon the lawn, and demanded an explanation, why was it so short, whywas it so inexplicable57, said it with violence, as two fully29 equipped humanbeings from whom nothing should be hid might speak, then, beautywould roll itself up; the space would fill; those empty flourishes wouldform into shape; if they shouted loud enough Mrs Ramsay would return.
"Mrs Ramsay!" she said aloud, "Mrs Ramsay!" The tears ran down herface.
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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cork
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| n.软木，软木塞 | |
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poised
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| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
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fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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ruffle
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| v.弄皱，弄乱；激怒，扰乱；n.褶裥饰边 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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rammed
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| v.夯实（土等）( ram的过去式和过去分词 )；猛撞；猛压；反复灌输 | |
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plank
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| n.板条，木板，政策要点，政纲条目 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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flaunt
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| vt.夸耀，夸饰 | |
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deplored
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| v.悲叹，痛惜，强烈反对( deplore的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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abhorred
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| v.憎恶( abhor的过去式和过去分词 )；（厌恶地）回避；拒绝；淘汰 | |
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shuddering
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| v.战栗( shudder的现在分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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pyjamas
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| n.（宽大的）睡衣裤 | |
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poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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flamboyant
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| adj.火焰般的，华丽的，炫耀的 | |
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wary
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| adj.谨慎的，机警的，小心的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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taxation
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| n.征税，税收，税金 | |
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levy
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| n.征收税或其他款项，征收额 | |
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recedes
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的第三人称单数 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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mania
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| n.疯狂；躁狂症，狂热，癖好 | |
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savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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repelled
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| v.击退( repel的过去式和过去分词 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
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loathed
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| v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的过去式和过去分词 )；极不喜欢 | |
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exultation
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| n.狂喜，得意 | |
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irreverence
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| n.不尊敬 | |
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disparage
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| v.贬抑，轻蔑 | |
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cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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housekeeper
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| n.管理家务的主妇，女管家 | |
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musing
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| n. 沉思，冥想 adj. 沉思的, 冥想的 动词muse的现在分词形式 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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agitations
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| （液体等的）摇动( agitation的名词复数 )； 鼓动； 激烈争论； （情绪等的）纷乱 | |
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dazedly
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| 头昏眼花地，眼花缭乱地，茫然地 | |
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basking
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| v.晒太阳，取暖( bask的现在分词 )；对…感到乐趣；因他人的功绩而出名；仰仗…的余泽 | |
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gorged
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| v.（用食物把自己）塞饱，填饱( gorge的过去式和过去分词 )；作呕 | |
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benevolently
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| adv.仁慈地，行善地 | |
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furtive
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| adj.鬼鬼崇崇的，偷偷摸摸的 | |
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apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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wrung
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| 绞( wring的过去式和过去分词 )； 握紧（尤指别人的手）； 把（湿衣服）拧干； 绞掉（水） | |
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53
arabesques
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| n.阿拉伯式花饰( arabesque的名词复数 )；错综图饰；阿拉伯图案；阿拉贝斯克芭蕾舞姿（独脚站立，手前伸，另一脚一手向后伸） | |
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54
serenely
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| adv.安详地，宁静地，平静地 | |
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55
scrawl
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| vt.潦草地书写；n.潦草的笔记，涂写 | |
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56
pinnacle
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| n.尖塔，尖顶，山峰；(喻)顶峰 | |
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57
inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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