As usual, Lily thought. There was always something that had to be done
at that precise moment, something that Mrs Ramsay had decided for
reasons of her own to do instantly, it might be with every one standing
about making jokes, as now, not being able to decide whether they were
going into the smoking-room, into the drawing-room, up to the attics.
Then one saw Mrs Ramsay in the midst of this hubbub standing there
with Minta's arm in hers, bethink her, "Yes, it is time for that now," and
so make off at once with an air of secrecy to do something alone. And
directly she went a sort of disintegration set in; they wavered about,
went different ways, Mr Bankes took Charles Tansley by the arm and
went off to finish on the terrace the discussion they had begun at dinner
about politics, thus giving a turn to the whole poise of the evening, making
the weight fall in a different direction, as if, Lily thought, seeing them
go, and hearing a word or two about the policy of the Labour Party, they
had gone up on to the bridge of the ship and were taking their bearings;
the change from poetry to politics struck her like that; so Mr Bankes and
Charles Mrs Ramsay going upstairs in the lamplight alone. Where, Lily
wondered, was she going so quickly?
Not that she did in fact run or hurry; she went indeed rather slowly.
She felt rather inclined just for a moment to stand still after all that chatter,
and pick out one particular thing; the thing that mattered; to detach
it; separate it off; clean it of all the emotions and odds and ends of things,
and so hold it before her, and bring it to the tribunal where, ranged
about in conclave, sat the judges she had set up to decide these things. Is
it good, is it bad, is it right or wrong? Where are we all going to? and so
on. So she righted herself after the shock of the event, and quite unconsciously
and incongruously, used the branches of the elm trees outside to
help her to stabilise her position. Her world was changing: they were
still. The event had given her a sense of movement. All must be in order.
She must get that right and that right, she thought, insensibly approving
of the dignity of the trees' stillness, and now again of the superb upward
rise (like the beak of a ship up a wave) of the elm branches as the wind
91
raised them. For it was windy (she stood a moment to look out). It was
windy, so that the leaves now and then brushed open a star, and the
stars themselves seemed to be shaking and darting light and trying to
flash out between the edges of the leaves. Yes, that was done then, accomplished;
and as with all things done, became solemn. Now one
thought of it, cleared of chatter and emotion, it seemed always to have
been, only was shown now and so being shown, struck everything into
stability. They would, she thought, going on again, however long they
lived, come back to this night; this moon; this wind; this house: and to
her too. It flattered her, where she was most susceptible of flattery, to
think how, wound about in their hearts, however long they lived she
would be woven; and this, and this, and this, she thought, going upstairs,
laughing, but affectionately, at the sofa on the landing (her
mother's); at the rocking-chair (her father's); at the map of the Hebrides.
All that would be revived again in the lives of Paul and Minta; "the Rayleys"—
she tried the new name over; and she felt, with her hand on the
nursery door, that community of feeling with other people which emotion
gives as if the walls of partition had become so thin that practically
(the feeling was one of relief and happiness) it was all one stream, and
chairs, tables, maps, were hers, were theirs, it did not matter whose, and
Paul and Minta would carry it on when she was dead.
She turned the handle, firmly, lest it should squeak, and went in, pursing
her lips slightly, as if to remind herself that she must not speak
aloud. But directly she came in she saw, with annoyance, that the precaution
was not needed. The children were not asleep. It was most annoying.
Mildred should be more careful. There was James wide awake
and Cam sitting bolt upright, and Mildred out of bed in her bare feet,
and it was almost eleven and they were all talking. What was the matter?
It was that horrid skull again. She had told Mildred to move it, but Mildred,
of course, had forgotten, and now there was Cam wide awake, and
James wide awake quarreling when they ought to have been asleep
hours ago. What had possessed Edward to send them this horrid skull?
She had been so foolish as to let them nail it up there. It was nailed fast,
Mildred said, and Cam couldn't go to sleep with it in the room, and
James screamed if she touched it.
