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

gave her peace, in which she could think of

things that were far removed from what they talked about. Even now,

when he sat within a yard of her, how easily her mind ranged hither

and thither! Suddenly a picture presented itself before her, without

any effort on her part as pictures will, of herself in these very

rooms; she had come in from a lecture, and she held a pile of books in

her hand, scientific books, and books about mathematics and astronomy

which she had mastered. She put them down on the table over there. It

was a picture plucked from her life two or three years hence, when she

was married to William; but here she checked herself abruptly.

 

She could not entirely forget William’s presence, because, in spite of

his efforts to control himself, his nervousness was apparent. On such

occasions his eyes protruded more than ever, and his face had more

than ever the appearance of being covered with a thin crackling skin,

through which every flush of his volatile blood showed itself

instantly. By this time he had shaped so many sentences and rejected

them, felt so many impulses and subdued them, that he was a uniform

scarlet.

 

“You may say you don’t read books,” he remarked, “but, all the same,

you know about them. Besides, who wants you to be learned? Leave that

to the poor devils who’ve got nothing better to do. You—you—ahem!—”

 

“Well, then, why don’t you read me something before I go?” said

Katharine, looking at her watch.

 

“Katharine, you’ve only just come! Let me see now, what have I got to

show you?” He rose, and stirred about the papers on his table, as if

in doubt; he then picked up a manuscript, and after spreading it

smoothly upon his knee, he looked up at Katharine suspiciously. He

caught her smiling.

 

“I believe you only ask me to read out of kindness,” he burst out.

“Let’s find something else to talk about. Who have you been seeing?”

 

“I don’t generally ask things out of kindness,” Katharine observed;

“however, if you don’t want to read, you needn’t.”

 

William gave a queer snort of exasperation, and opened his manuscript

once more, though he kept his eyes upon her face as he did so. No face

could have been graver or more judicial.

 

“One can trust you, certainly, to say unpleasant things,” he said,

smoothing out the page, clearing his throat, and reading half a stanza

to himself. “Ahem! The Princess is lost in the wood, and she hears the

sound of a horn. (This would all be very pretty on the stage, but I

can’t get the effect here.) Anyhow, Sylvano enters, accompanied by the

rest of the gentlemen of Gratian’s court. I begin where he

soliloquizes.” He jerked his head and began to read.

 

Although Katharine had just disclaimed any knowledge of literature,

she listened attentively. At least, she listened to the first twenty-five lines attentively, and then she frowned. Her attention was only

aroused again when Rodney raised his finger—a sign, she knew, that

the meter was about to change.

 

His theory was that every mood has its meter. His mastery of meters

was very great; and, if the beauty of a drama depended upon the

variety of measures in which the personages speak, Rodney’s plays must

have challenged the works of Shakespeare. Katharine’s ignorance of

Shakespeare did not prevent her from feeling fairly certain that plays

should not produce a sense of chill stupor in the audience, such as

overcame her as the lines flowed on, sometimes long and sometimes

short, but always delivered with the same lilt of voice, which seemed

to nail each line firmly on to the same spot in the hearer’s brain.

Still, she reflected, these sorts of skill are almost exclusively

masculine; women neither practice them nor know how to value them; and

one’s husband’s proficiency in this direction might legitimately

increase one’s respect for him, since mystification is no bad basis

for respect. No one could doubt that William was a scholar. The

reading ended with the finish of the Act; Katharine had prepared a

little speech.

 

“That seems to me extremely well written, William; although, of

course, I don’t know enough to criticize in detail.”

 

“But it’s the skill that strikes you—not the emotion?”

 

“In a fragment like that, of course, the skill strikes one most.”

 

“But perhaps—have you time to listen to one more short piece? the

scene between the lovers? There’s some real feeling in that, I think.

Denham agrees that it’s the best thing I’ve done.”

 

“You’ve read it to Ralph Denham?” Katharine inquired, with surprise.

“He’s a better judge than I am. What did he say?”

 

“My dear Katharine,” Rodney exclaimed, “I don’t ask you for criticism,

as I should ask a scholar. I dare say there are only five men in

England whose opinion of my work matters a straw to me. But I trust

you where feeling is concerned. I had you in my mind often when I was

writing those scenes. I kept asking myself, ‘Now is this the sort of

thing Katharine would like?’ I always think of you when I’m writing,

Katharine, even when it’s the sort of thing you wouldn’t know about.

And I’d rather—yes, I really believe I’d rather—you thought well of

my writing than any one in the world.”

 

This was so genuine a tribute to his trust in her that Katharine was

touched.

 

“You think too much of me altogether, William,” she said, forgetting

that she had not meant to speak in this way.

 

“No, Katharine, I don’t,” he replied, replacing his manuscript in the

drawer. “It does me good to think of you.”

 

So quiet an answer, followed as it was by no expression of love, but

merely by the statement that if she must go he would take her to the

Strand, and would, if she could wait a moment, change his dressing-gown for a coat, moved her to the warmest feeling of affection for him

that she had yet experienced. While he changed in the next room, she

stood by the bookcase, taking down books and opening them, but reading

nothing on their pages.

 

She felt certain that she would marry Rodney. How could one avoid it?

How could one find fault with it? Here she sighed, and, putting the

thought of marriage away, fell into a dream state, in which she became

another person, and the whole world seemed changed. Being a frequent

visitor to that world, she could find her way there unhesitatingly. If

she had tried to analyze her impressions, she would have said that

there dwelt the realities of the appearances which figure in our

world; so direct, powerful, and unimpeded were her sensations there,

compared with those called forth in actual life. There dwelt the

things one might have felt, had there been cause; the perfect

happiness of which here we taste the fragment; the beauty seen here in

flying glimpses only. No doubt much of the furniture of this world was

drawn directly from the past, and even from the England of the

Elizabethan age. However the embellishment of this imaginary world

might change, two qualities were constant in it. It was a place where

feelings were liberated from the constraint which the real world puts

upon them; and the process of awakenment was always marked by

resignation and a kind of stoical acceptance of facts. She met no

acquaintance there, as Denham did, miraculously transfigured; she

played no heroic part. But there certainly she loved some magnanimous

hero, and as they swept together among the leaf-hung trees of an

unknown world, they shared the feelings which came fresh and fast as

the waves on the shore. But the sands of her liberation were running

fast; even through the forest branches came sounds of Rodney moving

things on his dressing-table; and Katharine woke herself from this

excursion by shutting the cover of the book she was holding, and

replacing it in the bookshelf.

 

“William,” she said, speaking rather faintly at first, like one

sending a voice from sleep to reach the living. “William,” she

repeated firmly, “if you still want me to marry you, I will.”

 

Perhaps it was that no man could expect to have the most momentous

question of his life settled in a voice so level, so toneless, so

devoid of joy or energy. At any rate William made no answer. She

waited stoically. A moment later he stepped briskly from his

dressing-room, and observed that if she wanted to buy more oysters he

thought he knew where they could find a fishmonger’s shop still open.

She breathed deeply a sigh of relief.

 

Extract from a letter sent a few days later by Mrs. Hilbery to her

sister-in-law, Mrs. Milvain:

 

” … How stupid of me to forget the name in my telegram. Such a

nice, rich, English name, too, and, in addition, he has all the graces

of intellect; he has read literally EVERYTHING. I tell Katharine, I

shall always put him on my right side at dinner, so as to have him by

me when people begin talking about characters in Shakespeare. They

won’t be rich, but they’ll be very, very happy. I was sitting in my

room late one night, feeling that nothing nice would ever happen to me

again, when I heard Katharine outside in the passage, and I thought to

myself, ‘Shall I call her in?’ and then I thought (in that hopeless,

dreary way one does think, with the fire going out and one’s birthday

just over), ‘Why should I lay my troubles on HER?’ But my little self-control had its reward, for next moment she tapped at the door and

came in, and sat on the rug, and though we neither of us said

anything, I felt so happy all of a second that I couldn’t help crying,

‘Oh, Katharine, when you come to my age, how I hope you’ll have a

daughter, too!’ You know how silent Katharine is. She was so silent,

for such a long time, that in my foolish, nervous state I dreaded

something, I don’t quite know what. And then she told me how, after

all, she had made up her mind. She had written. She expected him

tomorrow. At first I wasn’t glad at all. I didn’t want her to marry

any one; but when she said, ‘It will make no difference. I shall

always care for you and father most,’ then I saw how selfish I was,

and I told her she must give him everything, everything, everything! I

told her I should be thankful to come second. But why, when

everything’s turned out just as one always hoped it would turn out,

why then can one do nothing but cry, nothing but feel a desolate old

woman whose life’s been a failure, and now is nearly over, and age is

so cruel? But Katharine said to me, ‘I am happy. I’m very happy.’ And

then I thought, though it all seemed so desperately dismal at the

time, Katharine had said she was happy, and I should have a son, and

it would all turn out so much more wonderfully than I could possibly

imagine, for though the sermons don’t say so, I do believe the world

is meant for us to be happy in. She told me that they would live quite

near us, and see us every day; and she would go on with the Life, and

we should finish it as we had meant to. And, after all, it would be

far more horrid if she didn’t marry—or suppose she married some one

we couldn’t endure? Suppose she had fallen in love with some one who

was married already?

 

“And though one never