He had been to Amsterdam, Mr Bankes was saying as he strolled across
the lawn with Lily Briscoe. He had seen the Rembrandts. He had been to
Madrid. Unfortunately, it was Good Friday and the Prado was shut. He
had been to Rome. Had Miss Briscoe never been to Rome? Oh, she
should—It would be a wonderful experience for her—the Sistine Chapel;
Michael Angelo; and Padua, with its Giottos. His wife had been in bad
health for many years, so that their sight-seeing had been on a modest
scale.
She had been to Brussels; she had been to Paris but only for a flying
visit to see an aunt who was ill. She had been to Dresden; there were
masses of pictures she had not seen; however, Lily Briscoe reflected, perhaps
it was better not to see pictures: they only made one hopelessly discontented
with one's own work. Mr Bankes thought one could carry that
point of view too far. We can't all be Titians and we can't all be Darwins,
he said; at the same time he doubted whether you could have your Darwin
and your Titian if it weren't for humble people like ourselves. Lily
would have liked to pay him a compliment; you're not humble, Mr
Bankes, she would have liked to have said. But he did not want compliments
(most men do, she thought), and she was a little ashamed of her
impulse and said nothing while he remarked that perhaps what he was
saying did not apply to pictures. Anyhow, said Lily, tossing off her little
insincerity, she would always go on painting, because it interested her.
Yes, said Mr Bankes, he was sure she would, and, as they reached the
end of the lawn he was asking her whether she had difficulty in finding
subjects in London when they turned and saw the Ramsays. So that is
marriage, Lily thought, a man and a woman looking at a girl throwing a
ball. That is what Mrs Ramsay tried to tell me the other night, she
thought. For she was wearing a green shawl, and they were standing
close together watching Prue and Jasper throwing catches. And suddenly
the meaning which, for no reason at all, as perhaps they are stepping
out of the Tube or ringing a doorbell, descends on people, making
them symbolical, making them representative, came upon them, and
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made them in the dusk standing, looking, the symbols of marriage, husband
and wife. Then, after an instant, the symbolical outline which transcended
the real figures sank down again, and they became, as they met
them, Mr and Mrs Ramsay watching the children throwing catches. But
still for a moment, though Mrs Ramsay greeted them with her usual
smile (oh, she's thinking we're going to get married, Lily thought) and
said, "I have triumphed tonight," meaning that for once Mr Bankes had
agreed to dine with them and not run off to his own lodging where his
man cooked vegetables properly; still, for one moment, there was a sense
of things having been blown apart, of space, of irresponsibility as the ball
soared high, and they followed it and lost it and saw the one star and the
draped branches. In the failing light they all looked sharp-edged and ethereal
and divided by great distances. Then, darting backwards over the
vast space (for it seemed as if solidity had vanished altogether), Prue ran
full tilt into them and caught the ball brilliantly high up in her left hand,
and her mother said, "Haven't they come back yet?" whereupon the spell
was broken. Mr Ramsay felt free now to laugh out loud at the thought
that Hume had stuck in a bog and an old woman rescued him on condition
he said the Lord's Prayer, and chuckling to himself he strolled off to
his study. Mrs Ramsay, bringing Prue back into throwing catches again,
from which she had escaped, asked,
"Did Nancy go with them?"
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