TO THE LIGHTHOUSEhimself wanted to say it, for there he stood verystraight and very stiff, facing that dismal group ofpeople; one could not help admiring him; andliking him; as he stood there doggedly stickingit out about God and being brave. So that some-times James would have liked to say it himself;how he admired him; what a brain he had; andwould have done so, only his father found himonce with a book of his and sneered at him for“it wasn't the kind of thing to interest him,” hesaid; whereupon James made a vow; he wouldnever praise his father as long as he lived.[^]But all the time he thought of how he was Paragraph at top of page struck out by VW and substitute passage added at foot of page.conscious of his father following his thought,surveying it, making it shiver and falter.At last he ceased to think.There he sat with his hand on the tiller in thesun, staring at the Lighthouse, powerless to move,powerless to flick off these grains of misery whichsettled on his mind one after another. A ropeseemed to bind him there, and his father hadknotted it and he could only escape by taking aknife and plunging it. . . . But at that momentthe sail swung slowly round, filled slowly out, theboat seemed to shake herself awake, and then tomove off half conscious in her sleep, and then shewoke and shot through the waves. The relief wasextraordinary. They all seemed to fall away fromeach other again and to be at their ease and thefishing-lines slanted taut across the side of theboat. But his father did not rouse himself. Heonly raised his right hand mysteriously high in290THE LIGHTHOUSEwent off to the town, to the poor there, to sit insome stuffy little bedroom. Often and often Lilyhad seen her go silently in the midst of somegame, some discussion, with her basket on herarm, very upright. She had noted her return.She had thought, half laughing (she was somethodical with the tea cups) half moved (herbeauty took one’s breath away) eyes that areclosing in pain have looked on you. You havebeen with them there.And then Mrs. Ramsay would be annoyedbecause somebody was late, or the butter notfresh, or the teapot chipped. And all the timeshe was saying that the butter was not fresh onewould be thinking of anemones and Greektemples, and how beauty had been with themthere in that stuffy little room. She never talkedof it—she went, punctually, directly. It was herinstinct to go, an instinct like the swallows forthe south, the artichokes for the sun, turning herinfallibly to the human race, making hernest Peter Shillingsburg:inits heart. And this, like all instincts, was a littledistressing to people who did not share it; toMr. Carmichael perhaps, to herself certainly.Some notion was in both of them about theineffectiveness of action, the supremacy of thought,Her going was a reproach to them, gave a differenttwist to the world, so that they were led to protest,303
