On, then, on to R.

Feelings that would not have disgraced a leader who, now that the snow has begun to fal and the mountain top is covered in mist, knows that he must lay himself down and die before morning comes, stole upon him, paling the colour of his eyes, giving him, even in the two minutes of his turn on the terrace, the bleached look of withered old age. Yet he would not die lying down; he would find some crag of rock, and there, his eyes fixed on the storm, trying to the end to pierce the darkness, he would die standing. He would never reach R. He stood stock-stil , by the urn, with the geranium flowing over it. How many men in a thousand mil ion, he asked himself, reach Z after al ? Surely the leader of a forlorn hope may ask himself that, and answer, without treachery to the expedition behind him, “One perhaps.” One in a generation. Is he to be blamed then if he is not that one? provided he has toiled honestly, given to the best of his power, and til he has no more left to give? And his fame lasts how long? It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men wil speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years? (asked Mr Ramsay ironical y, staring at the hedge). What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one’s boot wil outlast Shakespeare. His own little light would shine, not very brightly, for a year or two, and would then be merged in some bigger light, and that in a bigger stil . (He looked into the hedge, into the intricacy of the twigs.) Who then could blame the leader of that forlorn party which after al has climbed high enough to see the waste of the years and the perishing of the stars, if before death stiffens his limbs beyond the power of movement he does a little consciously raise his numbed fingers to his brow, and square his shoulders, so that when the search party comes they wil find him dead at his post, the fine figure of a soldier? Mr Ramsay squared his shoulders and stood very upright by the urn. Who shal blame him, if, so standing for a moment he dwel s upon fame, upon search parties, upon cairns raised by grateful fol owers over his bones? Final y, who shal blame the 14

leader of the doomed expedition, if, having adventured to the uttermost, and used his strength whol y to the last ounce and fal en asleep not much caring if he wakes or not, he now perceives by some pricking in his toes that he lives, and does not on the whole object to live, but requires sympathy, and whisky, and some one to tel the story of his suffering to at once? Who shal blame him? Who wil not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by the window and gazes at his wife and son, who, very distant at first, gradual y come closer and closer, til lips and book and head are clearly before him, though stil lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and final y putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent head before her—who wil blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the world?

7

But his son hated him. He hated him for coming up to them, for stopping and looking down on them; he hated him for interrupting them; he hated him for the exaltation and sublimity of his gestures; for the magnificence of his head; for his exactingness and egotism (for there he stood, commanding them to attend to him) but most of al he hated the twang and twitter of his father’s emotion which, vibrating round them, disturbed the perfect simplicity and good sense of his relations with his mother. By looking fixedly at the page, he hoped to make him move on; by pointing his finger at a word, he hoped to recal his mother’s attention, which, he knew angrily, wavered instantly his father stopped. But, no. Nothing would make Mr Ramsay move on. There he stood, demanding sympathy. Mrs Ramsay, who had been sitting loosely, folding her son in her arm, braced herself, and, half turning, seemed to raise herself with an effort, and at once to pour erect into the air a rain of energy, a column of spray, looking at the same time animated and alive as if al her energies were being fused into force, burning and il uminating (quietly though she sat, taking up her stocking again), and into this delicious fecundity, this fountain and spray of life, the fatal sterility of the male plunged itself, like a beak of brass, barren and bare. He wanted sympathy. He was a failure, he said. Mrs Ramsay flashed her needles. Mr Ramsay repeated, never taking his eyes from her face, that he was a failure. She blew the words back at him. “Charles Tansley...” she said. But he must have more than that. It was sympathy he wanted, to be assured of his genius, first of al , and then to be taken within the circle of life, warmed and soothed, to have his senses restored to him, his barrenness made fertile, and al the rooms of the house made ful of life—the drawing-room; behind the drawingroom the kitchen; above the kitchen the bedrooms; and beyond them the nurseries; they must be furnished, they must be fil ed with life.

Charles Tansley thought him the greatest metaphysician of the time, she said. But he must have more than that. He must have sympathy.