Night and Day - Virginia Woolf (best novels for beginners txt) 📗

his hand, which he was reading aloud.

 

“Salford’s affiliated,” he said.

 

“Well done, Salford!” Mrs. Seal exclaimed enthusiastically, thumping

the teapot which she held upon the table, in token of applause.

 

“Yes, these provincial centers seem to be coming into line at last,”

said Mr. Clacton, and then Mary introduced him to Miss Hilbery, and he

asked her, in a very formal manner, if she were interested “in our

work.”

 

“And the proofs still not come?” said Mrs. Seal, putting both her

elbows on the table, and propping her chin on her hands, as Mary began

to pour out tea. “It’s too bad—too bad. At this rate we shall miss

the country post. Which reminds me, Mr. Clacton, don’t you think we

should circularize the provinces with Partridge’s last speech? What?

You’ve not read it? Oh, it’s the best thing they’ve had in the House

this Session. Even the Prime Minister—”

 

But Mary cut her short.

 

“We don’t allow shop at tea, Sally,” she said firmly. “We fine her a

penny each time she forgets, and the fines go to buying a plum cake,”

she explained, seeking to draw Katharine into the community. She had

given up all hope of impressing her.

 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Mrs. Seal apologized. “It’s my misfortune to

be an enthusiast,” she said, turning to Katharine. “My father’s

daughter could hardly be anything else. I think I’ve been on as many

committees as most people. Waifs and Strays, Rescue Work, Church Work,

C. O. S.—local branch—besides the usual civic duties which fall to

one as a householder. But I’ve given them all up for our work here,

and I don’t regret it for a second,” she added. “This is the root

question, I feel; until women have votes—”

 

“It’ll be sixpence, at least, Sally,” said Mary, bringing her fist

down on the table. “And we’re all sick to death of women and their

votes.”

 

Mrs. Seal looked for a moment as though she could hardly believe her

ears, and made a deprecating “tut-tut-tut” in her throat, looking

alternately at Katharine and Mary, and shaking her head as she did so.

Then she remarked, rather confidentially to Katharine, with a little

nod in Mary’s direction:

 

“She’s doing more for the cause than any of us. She’s giving her youth

—for, alas! when I was young there were domestic circumstances—” she

sighed, and stopped short.

 

Mr. Clacton hastily reverted to the joke about luncheon, and explained

how Mrs. Seal fed on a bag of biscuits under the trees, whatever the

weather might be, rather, Katharine thought, as though Mrs. Seal were

a pet dog who had convenient tricks.

 

“Yes, I took my little bag into the square,” said Mrs. Seal, with the

self-conscious guilt of a child owning some fault to its elders. “It

was really very sustaining, and the bare boughs against the sky do one

so much GOOD. But I shall have to give up going into the square,” she

proceeded, wrinkling her forehead. “The injustice of it! Why should I

have a beautiful square all to myself, when poor women who need rest

have nowhere at all to sit?” She looked fiercely at Katharine, giving

her short locks a little shake. “It’s dreadful what a tyrant one still

is, in spite of all one’s efforts. One tries to lead a decent life,

but one can’t. Of course, directly one thinks of it, one sees that ALL

squares should be open to EVERY ONE. Is there any society with that

object, Mr. Clacton? If not, there should be, surely.”

 

“A most excellent object,” said Mr. Clacton in his professional

manner. “At the same time, one must deplore the ramification of

organizations, Mrs. Seal. So much excellent effort thrown away, not to

speak of pounds, shillings, and pence. Now how many organizations of a

philanthropic nature do you suppose there are in the City of London

itself, Miss Hilbery?” he added, screwing his mouth into a queer

little smile, as if to show that the question had its frivolous side.

 

Katharine smiled, too. Her unlikeness to the rest of them had, by this

time, penetrated to Mr. Clacton, who was not naturally observant, and

he was wondering who she was; this same unlikeness had subtly

stimulated Mrs. Seal to try and make a convert of her. Mary, too,

looked at her almost as if she begged her to make things easy. For

Katharine had shown no disposition to make things easy. She had

scarcely spoken, and her silence, though grave and even thoughtful,

seemed to Mary the silence of one who criticizes.

 

“Well, there are more in this house than I’d any notion of,” she said.

“On the ground floor you protect natives, on the next you emigrate

women and tell people to eat nuts—”

 

“Why do you say that ‘we’ do these things?” Mary interposed, rather

sharply. “We’re not responsible for all the cranks who choose to lodge

in the same house with us.”

 

Mr. Clacton cleared his throat and looked at each of the young ladies

in turn. He was a good deal struck by the appearance and manner of

Miss Hilbery, which seemed to him to place her among those cultivated

and luxurious people of whom he used to dream. Mary, on the other

hand, was more of his own sort, and a little too much inclined to

order him about. He picked up crumbs of dry biscuit and put them into

his mouth with incredible rapidity.

 

“You don’t belong to our society, then?” said Mrs. Seal.

 

“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” said Katharine, with such ready candor that

Mrs. Seal was nonplussed, and stared at her with a puzzled expression,

as if she could not classify her among the varieties of human beings

known to her.

 

“But surely ” she began.

 

“Mrs. Seal is an enthusiast in these matters,” said Mr. Clacton,

almost apologetically. “We have to remind her sometimes that others

have a right to their views even if they differ from our own… .

“Punch” has a very funny picture this week, about a Suffragist and an

agricultural laborer. Have you seen this week’s “Punch,” Miss

Datchet?”

 

Mary laughed, and said “No.”

 

Mr. Clacton then told them the substance of the joke, which, however,

depended a good deal for its success upon the expression which the

artist had put into the people’s faces. Mrs. Seal sat all the time

perfectly grave. Directly he had done speaking she burst out:

 

“But surely, if you care about the welfare of your sex at all, you

must wish them to have the vote?”

 

“I never said I didn’t wish them to have the vote,” Katharine

protested.

 

“Then why aren’t you a member of our society?” Mrs. Seal demanded.

 

Katharine stirred her spoon round and round, stared into the swirl of

the tea, and remained silent. Mr. Clacton, meanwhile, framed a

question which, after a moment’s hesitation, he put to Katharine.

 

“Are you in any way related, I wonder, to the poet Alardyce? His

daughter, I believe, married a Mr. Hilbery.”

 

“Yes; I’m the poet’s granddaughter,” said Katharine, with a little

sigh, after a pause; and for a moment they were all silent.

 

“The poet’s granddaughter!” Mrs. Seal repeated, half to herself, with

a shake of her head, as if that explained what was otherwise

inexplicable.

 

The light kindled in Mr. Clacton’s eye.

 

“Ah, indeed. That interests me very much,” he said. “I owe a great

debt to your grandfather, Miss Hilbery. At one time I could have

repeated the greater part of him by heart. But one gets out of the way

of reading poetry, unfortunately. You don’t remember him, I suppose?”

 

A sharp rap at the door made Katharine’s answer inaudible. Mrs. Seal

looked up with renewed hope in her eyes, and exclaiming:

 

“The proofs at last!” ran to open the door. “Oh, it’s only Mr.

Denham!” she cried, without any attempt to conceal her disappointment.

Ralph, Katharine supposed, was a frequent visitor, for the only person

he thought it necessary to greet was herself, and Mary at once

explained the strange fact of her being there by saying:

 

“Katharine has come to see how one runs an office.”

 

Ralph felt himself stiffen uncomfortably, as he said:

 

“I hope Mary hasn’t persuaded you that she knows how to run an

office?”

 

“What, doesn’t she?” said Katharine, looking from one to the other.

 

At these remarks Mrs. Seal began to exhibit signs of discomposure,

which displayed themselves by a tossing movement of her head, and, as

Ralph took a letter from his pocket, and placed his finger upon a

certain sentence, she forestalled him by exclaiming in confusion:

 

“Now, I know what you’re going to say, Mr. Denham! But it was the day

Kit Markham was here, and she upsets one so—with her wonderful

vitality, always thinking of something new that we ought to be doing

and aren’t—and I was conscious at the time that my dates were mixed.

It had nothing to do with Mary at all, I assure you.”

 

“My dear Sally, don’t apologize,” said Mary, laughing. “Men are such

pedants—they don’t know what things matter, and what things don’t.”

 

“Now, Denham, speak up for our sex,” said Mr. Clacton in a jocular

manner, indeed, but like most insignificant men he was very quick to

resent being found fault with by a woman, in argument with whom he was

fond of calling himself “a mere man.” He wished, however, to enter

into a literary conservation with Miss Hilbery, and thus let the

matter drop.

 

“Doesn’t it seem strange to you, Miss Hilbery,” he said, “that the

French, with all their wealth of illustrious names, have no poet who

can compare with your grandfather? Let me see. There’s Chenier and

Hugo and Alfred de Musset—wonderful men, but, at the same time,

there’s a richness, a freshness about Alardyce—”

 

Here the telephone bell rang, and he had to absent himself with a

smile and a bow which signified that, although literature is

delightful, it is not work. Mrs. Seal rose at the same time, but

remained hovering over the table, delivering herself of a tirade

against party government. “For if I were to tell you what I know of

back-stairs intrigue, and what can be done by the power of the purse,

you wouldn’t credit me, Mr. Denham, you wouldn’t, indeed. Which is why

I feel that the only work for my father’s daughter—for he was one of

the pioneers, Mr. Denham, and on his tombstone I had that verse from

the Psalms put, about the sowers and the seed… . And what wouldn’t

I give that he should be alive now, seeing what we’re going to see—”

but reflecting that the glories of the future depended in part upon

the activity of her typewriter, she bobbed her head, and hurried back

to the seclusion of her little room, from which immediately issued

sounds of enthusiastic, but obviously erratic, composition.

 

Mary made it clear at once, by starting a fresh topic of general

interest, that though she saw the humor of her colleague, she did not

intend to have her laughed at.

 

“The standard of morality seems to me frightfully low,” she observed

reflectively, pouring out a second cup of tea, “especially among women

who aren’t well educated. They don’t see that small things matter, and

that’s where the leakage begins, and then we find ourselves in

difficulties—I very nearly lost my temper yesterday,” she went on,

looking at Ralph with a little smile, as though he knew what happened

when she lost her temper. “It makes me very angry when people tell me

lies—doesn’t it make you angry?” she asked Katharine.

 

“But considering that every