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

don’t read

Ruskin, Mrs. Hilbery.’ What DO you read, I wonder?—for you can’t

spend all your time going up in aeroplanes and burrowing into the

bowels of the earth.”

 

She looked benevolently at Denham, who said nothing articulate, and

then at Katharine, who smiled but said nothing either, upon which Mrs.

Hilbery seemed possessed by a brilliant idea, and exclaimed:

 

“I’m sure Mr. Denham would like to see our things, Katharine. I’m sure

he’s not like that dreadful young man, Mr. Ponting, who told me that

he considered it our duty to live exclusively in the present. After

all, what IS the present? Half of it’s the past, and the better half,

too, I should say,” she added, turning to Mr. Fortescue.

 

Denham rose, half meaning to go, and thinking that he had seen all

that there was to see, but Katharine rose at the same moment, and

saying, “Perhaps you would like to see the pictures,” led the way

across the drawing-room to a smaller room opening out of it.

 

The smaller room was something like a chapel in a cathedral, or a

grotto in a cave, for the booming sound of the traffic in the distance

suggested the soft surge of waters, and the oval mirrors, with their

silver surface, were like deep pools trembling beneath starlight. But

the comparison to a religious temple of some kind was the more apt of

the two, for the little room was crowded with relics.

 

As Katharine touched different spots, lights sprang here and there,

and revealed a square mass of red-and-gold books, and then a long

skirt in blue-and-white paint lustrous behind glass, and then a

mahogany writing-table, with its orderly equipment, and, finally, a

picture above the table, to which special illumination was accorded.

When Katharine had touched these last lights, she stood back, as much

as to say, “There!” Denham found himself looked down upon by the eyes

of the great poet, Richard Alardyce, and suffered a little shock which

would have led him, had he been wearing a hat, to remove it. The eyes

looked at him out of the mellow pinks and yellows of the paint with

divine friendliness, which embraced him, and passed on to contemplate

the entire world. The paint had so faded that very little but the

beautiful large eyes were left, dark in the surrounding dimness.

 

Katharine waited as though for him to receive a full impression, and

then she said:

 

“This is his writing-table. He used this pen,” and she lifted a quill

pen and laid it down again. The writing-table was splashed with old

ink, and the pen disheveled in service. There lay the gigantic gold-rimmed spectacles, ready to his hand, and beneath the table was a pair

of large, worn slippers, one of which Katharine picked up, remarking:

 

“I think my grandfather must have been at least twice as large as any

one is nowadays. This,” she went on, as if she knew what she had to

say by heart, “is the original manuscript of the ‘Ode to Winter.’ The

early poems are far less corrected than the later. Would you like to

look at it?”

 

While Mr. Denham examined the manuscript, she glanced up at her

grandfather, and, for the thousandth time, fell into a pleasant dreamy

state in which she seemed to be the companion of those giant men, of

their own lineage, at any rate, and the insignificant present moment

was put to shame. That magnificent ghostly head on the canvas, surely,

never beheld all the trivialities of a Sunday afternoon, and it did

not seem to matter what she and this young man said to each other, for

they were only small people.

 

“This is a copy of the first edition of the poems,” she continued,

without considering the fact that Mr. Denham was still occupied with

the manuscript, “which contains several poems that have not been

reprinted, as well as corrections.” She paused for a minute, and then

went on, as if these spaces had all been calculated.

 

“That lady in blue is my great-grandmother, by Millington. Here is my

uncle’s walking-stick—he was Sir Richard Warburton, you know, and

rode with Havelock to the Relief of Lucknow. And then, let me see—oh,

that’s the original Alardyce, 1697, the founder of the family

fortunes, with his wife. Some one gave us this bowl the other day

because it has their crest and initials. We think it must have been

given them to celebrate their silver wedding-day.”

 

Here she stopped for a moment, wondering why it was that Mr. Denham

said nothing. Her feeling that he was antagonistic to her, which had

lapsed while she thought of her family possessions, returned so keenly

that she stopped in the middle of her catalog and looked at him. Her

mother, wishing to connect him reputably with the great dead, had

compared him with Mr. Ruskin; and the comparison was in Katharine’s

mind, and led her to be more critical of the young man than was fair,

for a young man paying a call in a tail-coat is in a different element

altogether from a head seized at its climax of expressiveness, gazing

immutably from behind a sheet of glass, which was all that remained to

her of Mr. Ruskin. He had a singular face—a face built for swiftness

and decision rather than for massive contemplation; the forehead

broad, the nose long and formidable, the lips clean-shaven and at once

dogged and sensitive, the cheeks lean, with a deeply running tide of

red blood in them. His eyes, expressive now of the usual masculine

impersonality and authority, might reveal more subtle emotions under

favorable circumstances, for they were large, and of a clear, brown

color; they seemed unexpectedly to hesitate and speculate; but

Katharine only looked at him to wonder whether his face would not have

come nearer the standard of her dead heroes if it had been adorned

with side-whiskers. In his spare build and thin, though healthy,

cheeks, she saw tokens of an angular and acrid soul. His voice, she

noticed, had a slight vibrating or creaking sound in it, as he laid

down the manuscript and said:

 

“You must be very proud of your family, Miss Hilbery.”

 

“Yes, I am,” Katharine answered, and she added, “Do you think there’s

anything wrong in that?”

 

“Wrong? How should it be wrong? It must be a bore, though, showing

your things to visitors,” he added reflectively.

 

“Not if the visitors like them.”

 

“Isn’t it difficult to live up to your ancestors?” he proceeded.

 

“I dare say I shouldn’t try to write poetry,” Katharine replied.

 

“No. And that’s what I should hate. I couldn’t bear my grandfather to

cut me out. And, after all,” Denham went on, glancing round him

satirically, as Katharine thought, “it’s not your grandfather only.

You’re cut out all the way round. I suppose you come of one of the

most distinguished families in England. There are the Warburtons and

the Mannings—and you’re related to the Otways, aren’t you? I read it

all in some magazine,” he added.

 

“The Otways are my cousins,” Katharine replied.

 

“Well,” said Denham, in a final tone of voice, as if his argument were

proved.

 

“Well,” said Katharine, “I don’t see that you’ve proved anything.”

 

Denham smiled, in a peculiarly provoking way. He was amused and

gratified to find that he had the power to annoy his oblivious,

supercilious hostess, if he could not impress her; though he would

have preferred to impress her.

 

He sat silent, holding the precious little book of poems unopened in

his hands, and Katharine watched him, the melancholy or contemplative

expression deepening in her eyes as her annoyance faded. She appeared

to be considering many things. She had forgotten her duties.

 

“Well,” said Denham again, suddenly opening the little book of poems,

as though he had said all that he meant to say or could, with

propriety, say. He turned over the pages with great decision, as if he

were judging the book in its entirety, the printing and paper and

binding, as well as the poetry, and then, having satisfied himself of

its good or bad quality, he placed it on the writing-table, and

examined the malacca cane with the gold knob which had belonged to the

soldier.

 

“But aren’t you proud of your family?” Katharine demanded.

 

“No,” said Denham. “We’ve never done anything to be proud of—unless

you count paying one’s bills a matter for pride.”

 

“That sounds rather dull,” Katharine remarked.

 

“You would think us horribly dull,” Denham agreed.

 

“Yes, I might find you dull, but I don’t think I should find you

ridiculous,” Katharine added, as if Denham had actually brought that

charge against her family.

 

“No—because we’re not in the least ridiculous. We’re a respectable

middle-class family, living at Highgate.”

 

“We don’t live at Highgate, but we’re middle class too, I suppose.”

 

Denham merely smiled, and replacing the malacca cane on the rack, he

drew a sword from its ornamental sheath.

 

“That belonged to Clive, so we say,” said Katharine, taking up her

duties as hostess again automatically.

 

“Is it a lie?” Denham inquired.

 

“It’s a family tradition. I don’t know that we can prove it.”

 

“You see, we don’t have traditions in our family,” said Denham.

 

“You sound very dull,” Katharine remarked, for the second time.

 

“Merely middle class,” Denham replied.

 

“You pay your bills, and you speak the truth. I don’t see why you

should despise us.”

 

Mr. Denham carefully sheathed the sword which the Hilberys said

belonged to Clive.

 

“I shouldn’t like to be you; that’s all I said,” he replied, as if he

were saying what he thought as accurately as he could.

 

“No, but one never would like to be any one else.”

 

“I should. I should like to be lots of other people.”

 

“Then why not us?” Katharine asked.

 

Denham looked at her as she sat in her grandfather’s armchair,

drawing her great-uncle’s malacca cane smoothly through her fingers,

while her background was made up equally of lustrous blue-and-white

paint, and crimson books with gilt lines on them. The vitality and

composure of her attitude, as of a bright-plumed bird poised easily

before further flights, roused him to show her the limitations of her

lot. So soon, so easily, would he be forgotten.

 

“You’ll never know anything at first hand,” he began, almost savagely.

“It’s all been done for you. You’ll never know the pleasure of buying

things after saving up for them, or reading books for the first time,

or making discoveries.”

 

“Go on,” Katharine observed, as he paused, suddenly doubtful, when he

heard his voice proclaiming aloud these facts, whether there was any

truth in them.

 

“Of course, I don’t know how you spend your time,” he continued, a

little stiffly, “but I suppose you have to show people round. You are

writing a life of your grandfather, aren’t you? And this kind of

thing”—he nodded towards the other room, where they could hear bursts

of cultivated laughter—“must take up a lot of time.”

 

She looked at him expectantly, as if between them they were decorating

a small figure of herself, and she saw him hesitating in the

disposition of some bow or sash.

 

“You’ve got it very nearly right,” she said, “but I only help my

mother. I don’t write myself.”

 

“Do you do anything yourself?” he demanded.

 

“What do you mean?” she asked. “I don’t leave the house at ten and

come back at six.”

 

“I don’t mean that.”

 

Mr. Denham had recovered his self-control; he spoke with a quietness

which made Katharine rather anxious that he should explain himself,

but at the same time