TO THE LIGHTHOUSEseeing their own prepossessions disappear, andclutch at them vanishing. Charles Tansley didthat too: it was part of the reason why one dis-liked him. He upset the proportions of one’sworld. And what had happened to him, shewondered, idly stirring the plantains with herbrush. He had got his fellowship. He hadmarried; he lived at Golder’s Green.

She had gone one day into a Hall and heardhim speaking during the war. He was denouncingsomething: he was condemning somebody. Hewas preaching brotherly love. And all she feltwas how could he love his kind who did not knowone picture from another, who had stood behindher smoking shag ("fivepence an ounce, MissBriscoe") and making it his business to tell herwom[e over a]ncan’t write, women can’t paint, not somuch that he believed it, as that for some oddreason he wished it? There he was lean and redand raucous, preaching love from a platform(there were ants crawling about among theplantains which she disturbed with her brush—red,energetic, shiny ants, rather like Charles Tansley).She had looked at him ironically from her seat inthe half-empty hall, pumping love into that chillyspace, and suddenly, there was the old cask orwhatever it was bobbing up and down among thewaves and Mrs. Ramsay looking for her spectacle304FIRST PROOFTHE LIGHTHOUSEfather, standing up very stiff and straight on aplatform in the city (to get there they must dineearly and drive eternally), proved conclusively(but they could none of them listen) how there isno God; one must be brave; for there is no God,he said, while rows and rows of the ugliest peoplein the world gaped up at him, in that greenishhall, hung with brown pictures of great men. Ifshe had been there now, what would she havedone? he wondered. Laughed? Even she mighthave found it difficult to tell the truth. He couldonly see her twitching her cloak round her, feelingthe cold. But she was dead by that time. Thewar was beginning. Andrew was killed. Pruedied. Still his father lectured. Even when hishall was full of fog, and only sprinkled withelderly women whose heads rose and fell, likehens sipping, as they listened and wrote down,about being brave, and there is no God, still helectured.

Often they quarrelled among themselves after-wards, what could one say to him? How couldone appease him? For he wanted praise. Hewanted sympathy. He wanted them to go withhim and listen to him, and to say how good itwas; how it was the greatest success. Rose said it,forced herself to say it, but she said it wronglyand he was angry; he was depressed. And James[%]T289R. & R CLARK, LTD.12 FEB. 1927EDINBURGH.
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