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moved and took Minta's arm and left the room, it changed, it shaped itself differently; it had
become, she knew, giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already the past.
18
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 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
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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.
Then Cam must go to sleep (it had great horns said Cam)--must go to sleep and dream of lovely
bed by her side. She could see the horns, Cam said, all over the room. It was true. Wherever they
put the light (and James could not sleep without a light) there was always a shadow somewhere.
"But think, Cam, it's only an old pig," said Mrs Ramsay, "a nice black pig like the pigs at the
farm." But Cam thought it was a horrid thing, branching at her all over the room.
"Well then," said Mrs Ramsay, "we will cover it up," and they all watched her go to the chest of
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