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somewhere; and be free then. Both of them, looking at each other for a moment, had a sense of
escape and exaltation, what with the speed and the change. But the breeze bred in Mr Ramsay too
the same excitement, and, as old Macalister turned to fling his line overboard, he cried out aloud,
"We perished," and then again, "each alone." And then with his usual spasm of repentance or
shyness, pulled himself up, and waved his hand towards the shore.
"See the little house," he said pointing, wishing Cam to look. She raised herself reluctantly and
looked. But which was it? She could no longer make out, there on the hillside, which was their
house. All looked distant and peaceful and strange. The shore seemed refined, far away, unreal.
Already the little distance they had sailed had put them far from it and given it the changed look,
the composed look, of something receding in which one has no longer any part. Which was their
house? She could not see it.
"But I beneath a rougher sea," Mr Ramsay murmured. He had found the house and so seeing it,
he had also seen himself there; he had seen himself walking on the terrace, alone. He was walking
up and down between the urns; and he seemed to himself very old and bowed. Sitting in the boat,
he bowed, he crouched himself, acting instantly his part-- the part of a desolate man, widowed,
bereft; and so called up before him in hosts people sympathising with him; staged for himself as he
sat in the boat, a little drama; which required of him decrepitude and exhaustion and sorrow (he
raised his hands and looked at the thinness of them, to confirm his dream) and then there was given
him in abundance women's sympathy, and he imagined how they would soothe him and sympathise
with him, and so getting in his dream some reflection of the exquisite pleasure women's sympathy
was to him, he sighed and said gently and mournfully,
But I beneath a rougher sea Was whelmed in deeper gulfs than he,
so that the mournful words were heard quite clearly by them all. Cam half started on her seat. It
shocked her--it outraged her. The movement roused her father; and he shuddered, and broke off,
exclaiming: "Look! Look!" so urgently that James also turned his head to look over his shoulder at
the island. They all looked. They looked at the island.
But Cam could see nothing. She was thinking how all those paths and the lawn, thick and
knotted with the lives they had lived there, were gone: were rubbed out; were past; were unreal, and
now this was real; the boat and the sail with its patch; Macalister with his earrings; the noise of the
waves--all this was real. Thinking this, she was murmuring to herself, "We perished, each alone,"
for her father's words broke and broke again in her mind, when her father, seeing her gazing so
vaguely, began to tease her. Didn't she know the points of the compass? he asked. Didn't she know
the North from the South? Did she really think they lived right out there? And he pointed again, and
showed her where their house was, there, by those trees. He wished she would try to be more
accurate, he said: "Tell me--which is East, which is West?" he said, half laughing at her, half
scolding her, for he could not understand the state of mind of any one, not absolutely imbecile, who
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did not know the points of the compass. Yet she did not know. And seeing her gazing, with her
vague, now rather frightened, eyes fixed where no house was Mr Ramsay forgot his dream; how he
walked up and down between the urns on the terrace; how the arms were stretched out to him. He
thought, women are always like that; the vagueness of their minds is hopeless; it was a thing he had
never been able to understand; but so it was. It had been so with her--his wife. They could not keep
anything clearly fixed in their minds. But he had been wrong to be angry with her; moreover, did he
not rather like this vagueness in women? It was part of their extraordinary charm. I will make her
smile at me, he thought. She looks frightened. She was so silent. He clutched his fingers, and
determined that his voice and his face and all the quick expressive gestures which had been at his
command making people pity him and praise him all these years should subdue themselves. He
would make her smile at him. He would find some simple easy thing to say to her. But what? For,
wrapped up in his work as he was, he forgot the sort of thing one said. There was a puppy. They
had a puppy. Who was looking after the puppy today? he asked. Yes, thought James pitilessly,
seeing his sister's head against the sail, now she will give way. I shall be left to fight the tyrant
alone. The compact would be left to him to carry out. Cam would never resist tyranny to the death,
he thought grimly, watching her face, sad, sulky, yielding. And as sometimes happens when a cloud
falls on a green hillside and hills is gloom and sorrow, and it seems as if the hills themselves must
ponder the fate of the clouded, the darkened, either in pity, or maliciously rejoicing in her dismay:
so Cam now felt herself overcast, as she sat there among calm, resolute people and wondered how
to answer her father about the puppy; how to resist his entreaty--forgive me, care for me; while
James the lawgiver, with the tablets of eternal wisdom laid open on his knee (his hand on the tiller
had become symbolical to her), said, Resist him. Fight him. He said so rightly; justly. For they must
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