"Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs Ramsay. "But you'll
have to be up with the lark," she added.
To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were
settled, the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which
he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night's
darkness and a day's sail, within touch.
Since he belonged, even at the
age of six, to that great clan which cannot keep this feeling separate
from that, but must let future prospects, with their joys and sorrows,
cloud what is actually at hand, since to such people even in earliest
childhood any turn in the wheel of sensation has the power to crystallise
and transfix the moment upon which its gloom or radiance rests, James
Ramsay, sitting on the floor cutting out pictures from the illustrated
catalogue of the Army and Navy stores, endowed the picture of a
refrigerator, as his mother spoke, with heavenly bliss. It was fringed
with joy.
The wheelbarrow, the lawnmower, the sound of poplar trees,
leaves whitening before rain, rooks cawing, brooms knocking, dresses
rustling--all these were so coloured and distinguished in his mind that he
had already his private code, his secret language, though he appeared the
image of stark and uncompromising severity, with his high forehead and his
fierce blue eyes, impeccably candid and pure, frowning slightly at the
sight of human frailty, so that his mother, watching him guide his
scissors neatly round the refrigerator, imagined him all red and ermine on
the Bench or directing a stern and momentous enterprise in some crisis of
public affairs.
"But," said his father, stopping in front of the drawing-room window, "it
won't be fine.".................................
