She seemed to have shrivelled slightly, he thought. She looked a little
skimpy, wispy; but not unattractive. He liked her. There had been some
talk of her marrying William Bankes once, but nothing had come of it.
His wife had been fond of her. He had been a little out of temper too at
breakfast. And then, and then—this was one of those moments when an
enormous need urged him, without being conscious what it was, to approach
any woman, to force them, he did not care how, his need was so
great, to give him what he wanted: sympathy.
Was anybody looking after her? he said. Had she everything she
wanted?
"Oh, thanks, everything," said Lily Briscoe nervously. No; she could
not do it. She ought to have floated off instantly upon some wave of
sympathetic expansion: the pressure on her was tremendous. But she remained
stuck. There was an awful pause. They both looked at the sea.
Why, thought Mr Ramsay, should she look at the sea when I am here?
She hoped it would be calm enough for them to land at the Lighthouse,
she said. The Lighthouse! The Lighthouse! What's that got to do with it?
he thought impatiently. Instantly, with the force of some primeval gust
(for really he could not restrain himself any longer), there issued from
him such a groan that any other woman in the whole world would have
done something, said something—all except myself, thought Lily, girding
at herself bitterly, who am not a woman, but a peevish, ill-tempered,
dried-up old maid, presumably.
[Mr Ramsay sighed to the full. He waited. Was she not going to say
anything? Did she not see what he wanted from her? Then he said he
had a particular reason for wanting to go to the Lighthouse. His wife
used to send the men things. There was a poor boy with a tuberculous
hip, the lightkeeper's son. He sighed profoundly. He sighed significantly.
All Lily wished was that this enormous flood of grief, this insatiable hunger
for sympathy, this demand that she should surrender herself up to
him entirely, and even so he had sorrows enough to keep her supplied
127
for ever, should leave her, should be diverted (she kept looking at the
house, hoping for an interruption) before it swept her down in its flow.
"Such expeditions," said Mr Ramsay, scraping the ground with his toe,
"are very painful." Still Lily said nothing. (She is a stock, she is a stone, he
said to himself.) "They are very exhausting," he said, looking, with a
sickly look that nauseated her (he was acting, she felt, this great man was
dramatising himself), at his beautiful hands. It was horrible, it was indecent.
Would they never come, she asked, for she could not sustain this
enormous weight of sorrow, support these heavy draperies of grief (he
had assumed a pose of extreme decreptitude; he even tottered a little as
he stood there) a moment longer.
Still she could say nothing; the whole horizon seemed swept bare of
objects to talk about; could only feel, amazedly, as Mr Ramsay stood
there, how his gaze seemed to fall dolefully over the sunny grass and
discolour it, and cast over the rubicund, drowsy, entirely contented figure
of Mr Carmichael, reading a French novel on a deck-chair, a veil of
crape, as if such an existence, flaunting its prosperity in a world of woe,
were enough to provoke the most dismal thoughts of all. Look at him, he
seemed to be saying, look at me; and indeed, all the time he was feeling,
Think of me, think of me. Ah, could that bulk only be wafted alongside
of them, Lily wished; had she only pitched her easel a yard or two closer
to him; a man, any man, would staunch this effusion, would stop these
lamentations. A woman, she had provoked this horror; a woman, she
should have known how to deal with it. It was immensely to her discredit,
sexually, to stand there dumb. One said—what did one say?—Oh, Mr
Ramsay! Dear Mr Ramsay! That was what that kind old lady who
sketched, Mrs Beckwith, would have said instantly, and rightly. But, no.
They stood there, isolated from the rest of the world. His immense selfpity,
his demand for sympathy poured and spread itself in pools at ther
feet, and all she did, miserable sinner that she was, was to draw her
skirts a little closer round her ankles, lest she should get wet. In complete
silence she stood there, grasping her paint brush.
