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

pillar-box between us.”

 

“And what did she look like?” Mrs. Hilbery demanded.

 

“One could see how the poor boy had been deluded,” was all that Mrs.

Milvain vouchsafed by way of description.

 

“Poor thing!” Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed.

 

“Poor Cyril!” Mrs. Milvain said, laying a slight emphasis upon Cyril.

 

“But they’ve got nothing to live upon,” Mrs. Hilbery continued. “If

he’d come to us like a man,” she went on, “and said, ‘I’ve been a

fool,’ one would have pitied him; one would have tried to help him.

There’s nothing so disgraceful after all— But he’s been going about

all these years, pretending, letting one take it for granted, that he

was single. And the poor deserted little wife—”

 

“She is NOT his wife,” Aunt Celia interrupted.

 

“I’ve never heard anything so detestable!” Mrs. Hilbery wound up,

striking her fist on the arm of her chair. As she realized the facts

she became thoroughly disgusted, although, perhaps, she was more hurt

by the concealment of the sin than by the sin itself. She looked

splendidly roused and indignant; and Katharine felt an immense relief

and pride in her mother. It was plain that her indignation was very

genuine, and that her mind was as perfectly focused upon the facts as

any one could wish—more so, by a long way, than Aunt Celia’s mind,

which seemed to be timidly circling, with a morbid pleasure, in these

unpleasant shades. She and her mother together would take the

situation in hand, visit Cyril, and see the whole thing through.

 

“We must realize Cyril’s point of view first,” she said, speaking

directly to her mother, as if to a contemporary, but before the words

were out of her mouth, there was more confusion outside, and Cousin

Caroline, Mrs. Hilbery’s maiden cousin, entered the room. Although she

was by birth an Alardyce, and Aunt Celia a Hilbery, the complexities

of the family relationship were such that each was at once first and

second cousin to the other, and thus aunt and cousin to the culprit

Cyril, so that his misbehavior was almost as much Cousin Caroline’s

affair as Aunt Celia’s. Cousin Caroline was a lady of very imposing

height and circumference, but in spite of her size and her handsome

trappings, there was something exposed and unsheltered in her

expression, as if for many summers her thin red skin and hooked nose

and reduplication of chins, so much resembling the profile of a

cockatoo, had been bared to the weather; she was, indeed, a single

lady; but she had, it was the habit to say, “made a life for herself,”

and was thus entitled to be heard with respect.

 

“This unhappy business,” she began, out of breath as she was. “If the

train had not gone out of the station just as I arrived, I should have

been with you before. Celia has doubtless told you. You will agree

with me, Maggie. He must be made to marry her at once for the sake of

the children—”

 

“But does he refuse to marry her?” Mrs. Hilbery inquired, with a

return of her bewilderment.

 

“He has written an absurd perverted letter, all quotations,” Cousin

Caroline puffed. “He thinks he’s doing a very fine thing, where we

only see the folly of it… . The girl’s every bit as infatuated as

he is—for which I blame him.”

 

“She entangled him,” Aunt Celia intervened, with a very curious

smoothness of intonation, which seemed to convey a vision of threads

weaving and interweaving a close, white mesh round their victim.

 

“It’s no use going into the rights and wrongs of the affair now,

Celia,” said Cousin Caroline with some acerbity, for she believed

herself the only practical one of the family, and regretted that,

owing to the slowness of the kitchen clock, Mrs. Milvain had already

confused poor dear Maggie with her own incomplete version of the

facts. “The mischief’s done, and very ugly mischief too. Are we to

allow the third child to be born out of wedlock? (I am sorry to have

to say these things before you, Katharine.) He will bear your name,

Maggie—your father’s name, remember.”

 

“But let us hope it will be a girl,” said Mrs. Hilbery.

 

Katharine, who had been looking at her mother constantly, while the

chatter of tongues held sway, perceived that the look of

straightforward indignation had already vanished; her mother was

evidently casting about in her mind for some method of escape, or

bright spot, or sudden illumination which should show to the

satisfaction of everybody that all had happened, miraculously but

incontestably, for the best.

 

“It’s detestable—quite detestable!” she repeated, but in tones of no

great assurance; and then her face lit up with a smile which,

tentative at first, soon became almost assured. “Nowadays, people

don’t think so badly of these things as they used to do,” she began.

“It will be horribly uncomfortable for them sometimes, but if they are

brave, clever children, as they will be, I dare say it’ll make

remarkable people of them in the end. Robert Browning used to say that

every great man has Jewish blood in him, and we must try to look at it

in that light. And, after all, Cyril has acted on principle. One may

disagree with his principle, but, at least, one can respect it—like

the French Revolution, or Cromwell cutting the King’s head off. Some

of the most terrible things in history have been done on principle,”

she concluded.

 

“I’m afraid I take a very different view of principle,” Cousin

Caroline remarked tartly.

 

“Principle!” Aunt Celia repeated, with an air of deprecating such a

word in such a connection. “I will go tomorrow and see him,” she

added.

 

“But why should you take these disagreeable things upon yourself,

Celia?” Mrs. Hilbery interposed, and Cousin Caroline thereupon

protested with some further plan involving sacrifice of herself.

 

Growing weary of it all, Katharine turned to the window, and stood

among the folds of the curtain, pressing close to the window-pane, and

gazing disconsolately at the river much in the attitude of a child

depressed by the meaningless talk of its elders. She was much

disappointed in her mother—and in herself too. The little tug which

she gave to the blind, letting it fly up to the top with a snap,

signified her annoyance. She was very angry, and yet impotent to give

expression to her anger, or know with whom she was angry. How they

talked and moralized and made up stories to suit their own version of

the becoming, and secretly praised their own devotion and tact! No;

they had their dwelling in a mist, she decided; hundreds of miles away

—away from what? “Perhaps it would be better if I married William,”

she thought suddenly, and the thought appeared to loom through the

mist like solid ground. She stood there, thinking of her own destiny,

and the elder ladies talked on, until they had talked themselves into

a decision to ask the young woman to luncheon, and tell her, very

friendlily, how such behavior appeared to women like themselves, who

knew the world. And then Mrs. Hilbery was struck by a better idea.