Night and Day

V >> Virginia Woolf >> Night and Day

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38

"Oughtn't you to put something round your shoulders, Sally?" Mary
asked, in rather a condescending tone of voice, feeling a sort of pity
for the enthusiastic ineffective little woman. But Mrs. Seal paid no
attention to the suggestion.

"Well, did you enjoy yourself?" Mary asked, with a little laugh.

Mrs. Seal drew a deep breath, restrained herself, and then burst
out, looking out, too, upon Russell Square and Southampton Row, and
at the passers-by, "Ah, if only one could get every one of those
people into this room, and make them understand for five minutes!
But they MUST see the truth some day. . . . If only one could MAKE
them see it. . . ."

Mary knew herself to be very much wiser than Mrs. Seal, and when Mrs.
Seal said anything, even if it was what Mary herself was feeling, she
automatically thought of all that there was to be said against it. On
this occasion her arrogant feeling that she could direct everybody
dwindled away.

"Let's have our tea," she said, turning back from the window and
pulling down the blind. "It was a good meeting--didn't you think so,
Sally?" she let fall, casually, as she sat down at the table. Surely
Mrs. Seal must realize that Mary had been extraordinarily efficient?

"But we go at such a snail's pace," said Sally, shaking her head
impatiently.

At this Mary burst out laughing, and all her arrogance was dissipated.

"You can afford to laugh," said Sally, with another shake of her head,
"but I can't. I'm fifty-five, and I dare say I shall be in my grave by
the time we get it--if we ever do."

"Oh, no, you won't be in your grave," said Mary, kindly.

"It'll be such a great day," said Mrs. Seal, with a toss of her locks.
"A great day, not only for us, but for civilization. That's what I
feel, you know, about these meetings. Each one of them is a step
onwards in the great march--humanity, you know. We do want the people
after us to have a better time of it--and so many don't see it. I
wonder how it is that they don't see it?"

She was carrying plates and cups from the cupboard as she spoke, so
that her sentences were more than usually broken apart. Mary could not
help looking at the odd little priestess of humanity with something
like admiration. While she had been thinking about herself, Mrs. Seal
had thought of nothing but her vision.

"You mustn't wear yourself out, Sally, if you want to see the great
day," she said, rising and trying to take a plate of biscuits from
Mrs. Seal's hands.

"My dear child, what else is my old body good for?" she exclaimed,
clinging more tightly than before to her plate of biscuits. "Shouldn't
I be proud to give everything I have to the cause?--for I'm not an
intelligence like you. There were domestic circumstances--I'd like to
tell you one of these days--so I say foolish things. I lose my head,
you know. You don't. Mr. Clacton doesn't. It's a great mistake, to
lose one's head. But my heart's in the right place. And I'm so glad
Kit has a big dog, for I didn't think her looking well."

They had their tea, and went over many of the points that had been
raised in the committee rather more intimately than had been possible
then; and they all felt an agreeable sense of being in some way behind
the scenes; of having their hands upon strings which, when pulled,
would completely change the pageant exhibited daily to those who read
the newspapers. Although their views were very different, this sense
united them and made them almost cordial in their manners to each
other.

Mary, however, left the tea-party rather early, desiring both to be
alone, and then to hear some music at the Queen's Hall. She fully
intended to use her loneliness to think out her position with regard
to Ralph; but although she walked back to the Strand with this end in
view, she found her mind uncomfortably full of different trains of
thought. She started one and then another. They seemed even to take
their color from the street she happened to be in. Thus the vision of
humanity appeared to be in some way connected with Bloomsbury, and
faded distinctly by the time she crossed the main road; then a belated
organ-grinder in Holborn set her thoughts dancing incongruously; and
by the time she was crossing the great misty square of Lincoln's Inn
Fields, she was cold and depressed again, and horribly clear-sighted.
The dark removed the stimulus of human companionship, and a tear
actually slid down her cheek, accompanying a sudden conviction within
her that she loved Ralph, and that he didn't love her. All dark and
empty now was the path where they had walked that morning, and the
sparrows silent in the bare trees. But the lights in her own building
soon cheered her; all these different states of mind were submerged in
the deep flood of desires, thoughts, perceptions, antagonisms, which
washed perpetually at the base of her being, to rise into prominence
in turn when the conditions of the upper world were favorable. She put
off the hour of clear thought until Christmas, saying to herself, as
she lit her fire, that it is impossible to think anything out in
London; and, no doubt, Ralph wouldn't come at Christmas, and she would
take long walks into the heart of the country, and decide this
question and all the others that puzzled her. Meanwhile, she thought,
drawing her feet up on to the fender, life was full of complexity;
life was a thing one must love to the last fiber of it.

She had sat there for five minutes or so, and her thoughts had had
time to grow dim, when there came a ring at her bell. Her eye
brightened; she felt immediately convinced that Ralph had come to
visit her. Accordingly, she waited a moment before opening the door;
she wanted to feel her hands secure upon the reins of all the
troublesome emotions which the sight of Ralph would certainly arouse.
She composed herself unnecessarily, however, for she had to admit, not
Ralph, but Katharine and William Rodney. Her first impression was that
they were both extremely well dressed. She felt herself shabby and
slovenly beside them, and did not know how she should entertain them,
nor could she guess why they had come. She had heard nothing of their
engagement. But after the first disappointment, she was pleased, for
she felt instantly that Katharine was a personality, and, moreover,
she need not now exercise her self-control.

"We were passing and saw a light in your window, so we came up,"
Katharine explained, standing and looking very tall and distinguished
and rather absent-minded.

"We have been to see some pictures," said William. "Oh, dear," he
exclaimed, looking about him, "this room reminds me of one of the
worst hours in my existence--when I read a paper, and you all sat
round and jeered at me. Katharine was the worst. I could feel her
gloating over every mistake I made. Miss Datchet was kind. Miss
Datchet just made it possible for me to get through, I remember."

Sitting down, he drew off his light yellow gloves, and began slapping
his knees with them. His vitality was pleasant, Mary thought, although
he made her laugh. The very look of him was inclined to make her
laugh. His rather prominent eyes passed from one young woman to the
other, and his lips perpetually formed words which remained unspoken.

"We have been seeing old masters at the Grafton Gallery," said
Katharine, apparently paying no attention to William, and accepting a
cigarette which Mary offered her. She leant back in her chair, and the
smoke which hung about her face seemed to withdraw her still further
from the others.

"Would you believe it, Miss Datchet," William continued, "Katharine
doesn't like Titian. She doesn't like apricots, she doesn't like
peaches, she doesn't like green peas. She likes the Elgin marbles, and
gray days without any sun. She's a typical example of the cold
northern nature. I come from Devonshire--"

Had they been quarreling, Mary wondered, and had they, for that
reason, sought refuge in her room, or were they engaged, or had
Katharine just refused him? She was completely baffled.

Katharine now reappeared from her veil of smoke, knocked the ash from
her cigarette into the fireplace, and looked, with an odd expression
of solicitude, at the irritable man.

"Perhaps, Mary," she said tentatively, "you wouldn't mind giving us
some tea? We did try to get some, but the shop was so crowded, and in
the next one there was a band playing; and most of the pictures, at
any rate, were very dull, whatever you may say, William." She spoke
with a kind of guarded gentleness.

Mary, accordingly, retired to make preparations in the pantry.

"What in the world are they after?" she asked of her own reflection in
the little looking-glass which hung there. She was not left to doubt
much longer, for, on coming back into the sitting-room with the tea-
things, Katharine informed her, apparently having been instructed so
to do by William, of their engagement.

"William," she said, "thinks that perhaps you don't know. We are going
to be married."

Mary found herself shaking William's hand, and addressing her
congratulations to him, as if Katharine were inaccessible; she had,
indeed, taken hold of the tea-kettle.

"Let me see," Katharine said, "one puts hot water into the cups first,
doesn't one? You have some dodge of your own, haven't you, William,
about making tea?"

Mary was half inclined to suspect that this was said in order to
conceal nervousness, but if so, the concealment was unusually perfect.
Talk of marriage was dismissed. Katharine might have been seated in
her own drawing-room, controlling a situation which presented no sort
of difficulty to her trained mind. Rather to her surprise, Mary found
herself making conversation with William about old Italian pictures,
while Katharine poured out tea, cut cake, kept William's plate
supplied, without joining more than was necessary in the conversation.
She seemed to have taken possession of Mary's room, and to handle the
cups as if they belonged to her. But it was done so naturally that it
bred no resentment in Mary; on the contrary, she found herself putting
her hand on Katharine's knee, affectionately, for an instant. Was
there something maternal in this assumption of control? And thinking
of Katharine as one who would soon be married, these maternal airs
filled Mary's mind with a new tenderness, and even with awe. Katharine
seemed very much older and more experienced than she was.

Meanwhile Rodney talked. If his appearance was superficially against
him, it had the advantage of making his solid merits something of a
surprise. He had kept notebooks; he knew a great deal about pictures.
He could compare different examples in different galleries, and his
authoritative answers to intelligent questions gained not a little,
Mary felt, from the smart taps which he dealt, as he delivered them,
upon the lumps of coal. She was impressed.

"Your tea, William," said Katharine gently.

He paused, gulped it down, obediently, and continued.

And then it struck Mary that Katharine, in the shade of her
broad-brimmed hat, and in the midst of the smoke, and in the obscurity
of her character, was, perhaps, smiling to herself, not altogether in
the maternal spirit. What she said was very simple, but her words,
even "Your tea, William," were set down as gently and cautiously and
exactly as the feet of a Persian cat stepping among China ornaments.
For the second time that day Mary felt herself baffled by something
inscrutable in the character of a person to whom she felt herself much
attracted. She thought that if she were engaged to Katharine, she,
too, would find herself very soon using those fretful questions with
which William evidently teased his bride. And yet Katharine's voice
was humble.

"I wonder how you find the time to know all about pictures as well as
books?" she asked.

"How do I find the time?" William answered, delighted, Mary guessed,
at this little compliment. "Why, I always travel with a notebook. And
I ask my way to the picture gallery the very first thing in the
morning. And then I meet men, and talk to them. There's a man in my
office who knows all about the Flemish school. I was telling Miss
Datchet about the Flemish school. I picked up a lot of it from him--
it's a way men have--Gibbons, his name is. You must meet him. We'll
ask him to lunch. And this not caring about art," he explained,
turning to Mary, "it's one of Katharine's poses, Miss Datchet. Did you
know she posed? She pretends that she's never read Shakespeare. And
why should she read Shakespeare, since she IS Shakespeare--Rosalind,
you know," and he gave his queer little chuckle. Somehow this
compliment appeared very old-fashioned and almost in bad taste. Mary
actually felt herself blush, as if he had said "the sex" or "the
ladies." Constrained, perhaps, by nervousness, Rodney continued in the
same vein.

"She knows enough--enough for all decent purposes. What do you women
want with learning, when you have so much else--everything, I should
say--everything. Leave us something, eh, Katharine?"

"Leave you something?" said Katharine, apparently waking from a brown
study. "I was thinking we must be going--"

"Is it to-night that Lady Ferrilby dines with us? No, we mustn't be
late," said Rodney, rising. "D'you know the Ferrilbys, Miss Datchet?
They own Trantem Abbey," he added, for her information, as she looked
doubtful. "And if Katharine makes herself very charming to-night,
perhaps'll lend it to us for the honeymoon."

"I agree that may be a reason. Otherwise she's a dull woman," said
Katharine. "At least," she added, as if to qualify her abruptness, "I
find it difficult to talk to her."

"Because you expect every one else to take all the trouble. I've seen
her sit silent a whole evening," he said, turning to Mary, as he had
frequently done already. "Don't you find that, too? Sometimes when
we're alone, I've counted the time on my watch"--here he took out a
large gold watch, and tapped the glass--"the time between one remark
and the next. And once I counted ten minutes and twenty seconds, and
then, if you'll believe me, she only said 'Um!'"

"I'm sure I'm sorry," Katharine apologized. "I know it's a bad habit,
but then, you see, at home--"

The rest of her excuse was cut short, so far as Mary was concerned, by
the closing of the door. She fancied she could hear William finding
fresh fault on the stairs. A moment later, the door-bell rang again,
and Katharine reappeared, having left her purse on a chair. She soon
found it, and said, pausing for a moment at the door, and speaking
differently as they were alone:

"I think being engaged is very bad for the character." She shook her
purse in her hand until the coins jingled, as if she alluded merely to
this example of her forgetfulness. But the remark puzzled Mary; it
seemed to refer to something else; and her manner had changed so
strangely, now that William was out of hearing, that she could not
help looking at her for an explanation. She looked almost stern, so
that Mary, trying to smile at her, only succeeded in producing a
silent stare of interrogation.

As the door shut for the second time, she sank on to the floor in
front of the fire, trying, now that their bodies were not there to
distract her, to piece together her impressions of them as a whole.
And, though priding herself, with all other men and women, upon an
infallible eye for character, she could not feel at all certain that
she knew what motives inspired Katharine Hilbery in life. There was
something that carried her on smoothly, out of reach--something, yes,
but what?--something that reminded Mary of Ralph. Oddly enough, he
gave her the same feeling, too, and with him, too, she felt baffled.
Oddly enough, for no two people, she hastily concluded, were more
unlike. And yet both had this hidden impulse, this incalculable force
--this thing they cared for and didn't talk about--oh, what was it?

CHAPTER XV

The village of Disham lies somewhere on the rolling piece of
cultivated ground in the neighborhood of Lincoln, not so far inland
but that a sound, bringing rumors of the sea, can be heard on summer
nights or when the winter storms fling the waves upon the long beach.
So large is the church, and in particular the church tower, in
comparison with the little street of cottages which compose the
village, that the traveler is apt to cast his mind back to the Middle
Ages, as the only time when so much piety could have been kept alive.
So great a trust in the Church can surely not belong to our day, and
he goes on to conjecture that every one of the villagers has reached
the extreme limit of human life. Such are the reflections of the
superficial stranger, and his sight of the population, as it is
represented by two or three men hoeing in a turnip-field, a small
child carrying a jug, and a young woman shaking a piece of carpet
outside her cottage door, will not lead him to see anything very much
out of keeping with the Middle Ages in the village of Disham as it is
to-day. These people, though they seem young enough, look so angular
and so crude that they remind him of the little pictures painted by
monks in the capital letters of their manuscripts. He only half
understands what they say, and speaks very loud and clearly, as
though, indeed, his voice had to carry through a hundred years or more
before it reached them. He would have a far better chance of
understanding some dweller in Paris or Rome, Berlin or Madrid, than
these countrymen of his who have lived for the last two thousand years
not two hundred miles from the City of London.

The Rectory stands about half a mile beyond the village. It is a large
house, and has been growing steadily for some centuries round the
great kitchen, with its narrow red tiles, as the Rector would point
out to his guests on the first night of their arrival, taking his
brass candlestick, and bidding them mind the steps up and the steps
down, and notice the immense thickness of the walls, the old beams
across the ceiling, the staircases as steep as ladders, and the
attics, with their deep, tent-like roofs, in which swallows bred, and
once a white owl. But nothing very interesting or very beautiful had
resulted from the different additions made by the different rectors.

The house, however, was surrounded by a garden, in which the Rector
took considerable pride. The lawn, which fronted the drawing-room
windows, was a rich and uniform green, unspotted by a single daisy,
and on the other side of it two straight paths led past beds of tall,
standing flowers to a charming grassy walk, where the Rev. Wyndham
Datchet would pace up and down at the same hour every morning, with a
sundial to measure the time for him. As often as not, he carried a
book in his hand, into which he would glance, then shut it up, and
repeat the rest of the ode from memory. He had most of Horace by
heart, and had got into the habit of connecting this particular walk
with certain odes which he repeated duly, at the same time noting the
condition of his flowers, and stooping now and again to pick any that
were withered or overblown. On wet days, such was the power of habit
over him, he rose from his chair at the same hour, and paced his study
for the same length of time, pausing now and then to straighten some
book in the bookcase, or alter the position of the two brass
crucifixes standing upon cairns of serpentine stone upon the
mantelpiece. His children had a great respect for him, credited him
with far more learning than he actually possessed, and saw that his
habits were not interfered with, if possible. Like most people who do
things methodically, the Rector himself had more strength of purpose
and power of self-sacrifice than of intellect or of originality. On
cold and windy nights he rode off to visit sick people, who might need
him, without a murmur; and by virtue of doing dull duties punctually,
he was much employed upon committees and local Boards and Councils;
and at this period of his life (he was sixty-eight) he was beginning
to be commiserated by tender old ladies for the extreme leanness of
his person, which, they said, was worn out upon the roads when it
should have been resting before a comfortable fire. His elder
daughter, Elizabeth, lived with him and managed the house, and already
much resembled him in dry sincerity and methodical habit of mind; of
the two sons one, Richard, was an estate agent, the other,
Christopher, was reading for the Bar. At Christmas, naturally, they
met together; and for a month past the arrangement of the Christmas
week had been much in the mind of mistress and maid, who prided
themselves every year more confidently upon the excellence of their
equipment. The late Mrs. Datchet had left an excellent cupboard of
linen, to which Elizabeth had succeeded at the age of nineteen, when
her mother died, and the charge of the family rested upon the
shoulders of the eldest daughter. She kept a fine flock of yellow
chickens, sketched a little, certain rose-trees in the garden were
committed specially to her care; and what with the care of the house,
the care of the chickens, and the care of the poor, she scarcely knew
what it was to have an idle minute. An extreme rectitude of mind,
rather than any gift, gave her weight in the family. When Mary wrote
to say that she had asked Ralph Denham to stay with them, she added,
out of deference to Elizabeth's character, that he was very nice,
though rather queer, and had been overworking himself in London. No
doubt Elizabeth would conclude that Ralph was in love with her, but
there could be no doubt either that not a word of this would be spoken
by either of them, unless, indeed, some catastrophe made mention of it
unavoidable.

Mary went down to Disham without knowing whether Ralph intended to
come; but two or three days before Christmas she received a telegram
from Ralph, asking her to take a room for him in the village. This was
followed by a letter explaining that he hoped he might have his meals
with them; but quiet, essential for his work, made it necessary to
sleep out.

Mary was walking in the garden with Elizabeth, and inspecting the
roses, when the letter arrived.

"But that's absurd," said Elizabeth decidedly, when the plan was
explained to her. "There are five spare rooms, even when the boys are
here. Besides, he wouldn't get a room in the village. And he oughtn't
to work if he's overworked."

"But perhaps he doesn't want to see so much of us," Mary thought to
herself, although outwardly she assented, and felt grateful to
Elizabeth for supporting her in what was, of course, her desire. They
were cutting roses at the time, and laying them, head by head, in a
shallow basket.

"If Ralph were here, he'd find this very dull," Mary thought, with a
little shiver of irritation, which led her to place her rose the wrong
way in the basket. Meanwhile, they had come to the end of the path,
and while Elizabeth straightened some flowers, and made them stand
upright within their fence of string, Mary looked at her father, who
was pacing up and down, with his hand behind his back and his head
bowed in meditation. Obeying an impulse which sprang from some desire
to interrupt this methodical marching, Mary stepped on to the grass
walk and put her hand on his arm.

"A flower for your buttonhole, father," she said, presenting a rose.

"Eh, dear?" said Mr. Datchet, taking the flower, and holding it at an
angle which suited his bad eyesight, without pausing in his walk.

"Where does this fellow come from? One of Elizabeth's roses--I hope
you asked her leave. Elizabeth doesn't like having her roses picked
without her leave, and quite right, too."

He had a habit, Mary remarked, and she had never noticed it so clearly
before, of letting his sentences tail away in a continuous murmur,
whereupon he passed into a state of abstraction, presumed by his
children to indicate some train of thought too profound for utterance.

"What?" said Mary, interrupting, for the first time in her life,
perhaps, when the murmur ceased. He made no reply. She knew very well
that he wished to be left alone, but she stuck to his side much as she
might have stuck to some sleep-walker, whom she thought it right
gradually to awaken. She could think of nothing to rouse him with
except:

"The garden's looking very nice, father."

"Yes, yes, yes," said Mr. Datchet, running his words together in the
same abstracted manner, and sinking his head yet lower upon his
breast. And suddenly, as they turned their steps to retrace their way,
he jerked out:

"The traffic's very much increased, you know. More rolling-stock
needed already. Forty trucks went down yesterday by the 12.15--counted
them myself. They've taken off the 9.3, and given us an 8.30 instead--
suits the business men, you know. You came by the old 3.10 yesterday,
I suppose?"

She said "Yes," as he seemed to wish for a reply, and then he looked
at his watch, and made off down the path towards the house, holding
the rose at the same angle in front of him. Elizabeth had gone round
to the side of the house, where the chickens lived, so that Mary found
herself alone, holding Ralph's letter in her hand. She was uneasy. She
had put off the season for thinking things out very successfully, and
now that Ralph was actually coming, the next day, she could only
wonder how her family would impress him. She thought it likely that
her father would discuss the train service with him; Elizabeth would
be bright and sensible, and always leaving the room to give messages
to the servants. Her brothers had already said that they would give
him a day's shooting. She was content to leave the problem of Ralph's
relations to the young men obscure, trusting that they would find some
common ground of masculine agreement. But what would he think of HER?
Would he see that she was different from the rest of the family? She
devised a plan for taking him to her sitting-room, and artfully
leading the talk towards the English poets, who now occupied prominent
places in her little bookcase. Moreover, she might give him to
understand, privately, that she, too, thought her family a queer one--
queer, yes, but not dull. That was the rock past which she was bent on
steering him. And she thought how she would draw his attention to
Edward's passion for Jorrocks, and the enthusiasm which led
Christopher to collect moths and butterflies though he was now twenty-
two. Perhaps Elizabeth's sketching, if the fruits were invisible,
might lend color to the general effect which she wished to produce of
a family, eccentric and limited, perhaps, but not dull. Edward, she
perceived, was rolling the lawn, for the sake of exercise; and the
sight of him, with pink cheeks, bright little brown eyes, and a
general resemblance to a clumsy young cart-horse in its winter coat of
dusty brown hair, made Mary violently ashamed of her ambitious
scheming. She loved him precisely as he was; she loved them all; and
as she walked by his side, up and down, and down and up, her strong
moral sense administered a sound drubbing to the vain and romantic
element aroused in her by the mere thought of Ralph. She felt quite
certain that, for good or for bad, she was very like the rest of her
family.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38