Lighthouse by Woolf Virginia

Lighthouse by Woolf Virginia

Author:Woolf, Virginia
Language: eng
Format: epub


Lighthouse

But the voice had stopped. She looked round. She made herself get up. Augustus Carmichael had risen and, holding his table napkin so that it looked like a long white robe he stood chanting:

To see the Kings go riding by Over lawn and daisy lea With their palm leaves and cedar sheaves Luriana, Lurilee

and as she passed him, he turned slightly towards her repeating the last words:

Luriana, Lurilee

and bowed to her as if he did her homage. Without knowing why, she felt that he liked her better than he ever had done before; and with a feeling of relief and gratitude she returned his bow and passed through the door which he held open for her.

It was necessary now to carry everything a step further. With her foot on the threshold she waited a moment longer in a scene which was vanishing even as she looked, and then, as she 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.

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 Tansley went off, while the others stood looking at 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.



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