Well then, Nancy had gone with them, Mrs Ramsay supposed, wondering,
as she put down a brush, took up a comb, and said "Come in" to a
tap at the door (Jasper and Rose came in), whether the fact that Nancy
was with them made it less likely or more likely that anything would
happen; it made it less likely, somehow, Mrs Ramsay felt, very irrationally,
except that after all holocaust on such a scale was not probable.
They could not all be drowned. And again she felt alone in the presence
of her old antagonist, life.
Jasper and Rose said that Mildred wanted to know whether she should wait dinner.
"Not for the Queen of England," said Mrs. Ramsay emphatically.
"Not for the Empress of Mexico," she added, laughing at Jasper; for he shared his mother's vice: he, too, exaggerated.
And if Rose liked, she said, while Jasper took the message, she might
choose which jewels she was to wear. When there are fifteen people sitting
down to dinner, one cannot keep things waiting for ever. She was
now beginning to feel annoyed with them for being so late; it was inconsiderate
of them, and it annoyed her on top of her anxiety about them,
that they should choose this very night to be out late, when, in fact, she
wished the dinner to be particularly nice, since William Bankes had at
last consented to dine with them; and they were having Mildred's masterpiece—
BOEUF EN DAUBE. Everything depended upon things being
served up to the precise moment they were ready. The beef, the bayleaf,
and the wine—all must be done to a turn. To keep it waiting was out of
the question. Yet of course tonight, of all nights, out they went, and they
came in late, and things had to be sent out, things had to be kept hot; the
BOEUF EN DAUBE would be entirely spoilt.
Jasper offered her an opal necklace; Rose a gold necklace. Which
looked best against her black dress? Which did indeed, said Mrs Ramsay
absent-mindedly, looking at her neck and shoulders (but avoiding her
face) in the glass. And then, while the children rummaged among her
things, she looked out of the window at a sight which always amused
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her—the rooks trying to decide which tree to settle on. Every time, they
seemed to change their minds and rose up into the air again, because,
she thought, the old rook, the father rook, old Joseph was her name for
him, was a bird of a very trying and difficult disposition. He was a disreputable
old bird, with half his wing feathers missing. He was like some
seedy old gentleman in a top hat she had seen playing the horn in front
of a public house.
"Look!" she said, laughing. They were actually fighting. Joseph and
Mary were fighting. Anyhow they all went up again, and the air was
shoved aside by their black wings and cut into exquisite scimitar shapes.
The movements of the wings beating out, out, out—she could never describe
it accurately enough to please herself—was one of the loveliest of
all to her. Look at that, she said to Rose, hoping that Rose would see it
more clearly than she could. For one's children so often gave one's own
perceptions a little thrust forwards.
But which was it to be? They had all the trays of her jewel-case open.
The gold necklace, which was Italian, or the opal necklace, which Uncle
James had brought her from India; or should she wear her amethysts?
"Choose, dearests, choose," she said, hoping that they would make haste.
But she let them take their time to choose: she let Rose, particularly,
take up this and then that, and hold her jewels against the black dress,
for this little ceremony of choosing jewels, which was gone through
every night, was what Rose liked best, she knew. She had some hidden
reason of her own for attaching great importance to this choosing what
her mother was to wear. What was the reason, Mrs Ramsay wondered,
standing still to let her clasp the necklace she had chosen, divining,
through her own past, some deep, some buried, some quite speechless
feeling that one had for one's mother at Rose's age. Like all feelings felt
for oneself, Mrs Ramsay thought, it made one sad. It was so inadequate,
what one could give in return; and what Rose felt was quite out of proportion
to anything she actually was. And Rose would grow up; and
Rose would suffer, she supposed, with these deep feelings, and she said
she was ready now, and they would go down, and Jasper, because he
was the gentleman, should give her his arm, and Rose, as she was the
lady, should carry her handkerchief (she gave her the handkerchief), and
what else? oh, yes, it might be cold: a shawl. Choose me a shawl, she
said, for that would please Rose, who was bound to suffer so. "There,"
she said, stopping by the window on the landing, "there they are again."
Joseph had settled on another tree- top. "Don't you think they mind," she
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said to Jasper, "having their wings broken?" Why did he want to shoot
poor old Joseph and Mary? He shuffled a little on the stairs, and felt rebuked,
but not seriously, for she did not understand the fun of shooting
birds; and they did not feel; and being his mother she lived away in another
division of the world, but he rather liked her stories about Mary
and Joseph. She made him laugh. But how did she know that those were
Mary and Joseph? Did she think the same birds came to the same trees
every night? he asked. But here, suddenly, like all grown-up people, she
ceased to pay him the least attention. She was listening to a clatter in the hall.
"They've come back!" she exclaimed, and at once she felt much more
annoyed with them than relieved. Then she wondered, had it happened?
She would go down and they would tell her—but no. They could not tell
her anything, with all these people about. So she must go down and begin
dinner and wait. And, like some queen who, finding her people
gathered in the hall, looks down upon them, and descends among them,
and acknowledges their tributes silently, and accepts their devotion and
their prostration before her (Paul did not move a muscle but looked
straight before him as she passed) she went down, and crossed the hall
and bowed her head very slightly, as if she accepted what they could not
say: their tribute to her beauty.
But she stopped. There was a smell of burning. Could they have let the
BOEUF EN DAUBE overboil? she wondered, pray heaven not! when the
great clangour of the gong announced solemnly, authoritatively, that all
those scattered about, in attics, in bedrooms, on little perches of their
own, reading, writing, putting the last smooth to their hair, or fastening
dresses, must leave all that, and the little odds and ends on their
washing-tables and dressing tables, and the novels on the bed- tables,
and the diaries which were so private, and assemble in the dining-room
for dinner.
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