Night and Day - Virginia Woolf (best novels for beginners txt) 📗
- Author: Virginia Woolf
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fond of, he has the kindest, truest instincts, I’m sure, and though he
seems nervous and his manner is not commanding, I only think these
things because it’s Katharine. And now I’ve written this, it comes
over me that, of course, all the time, Katharine has what he hasn’t.
She does command, she isn’t nervous; it comes naturally to her to rule
and control. It’s time that she should give all this to some one who
will need her when we aren’t there, save in our spirits, for whatever
people say, I’m sure I shall come back to this wonderful world where
one’s been so happy and so miserable, where, even now, I seem to see
myself stretching out my hands for another present from the great
Fairy Tree whose boughs are still hung with enchanting toys, though
they are rarer now, perhaps, and between the branches one sees no
longer the blue sky, but the stars and the tops of the mountains.
“One doesn’t know any more, does one? One hasn’t any advice to give
one’s children. One can only hope that they will have the same vision
and the same power to believe, without which life would be so
meaningless. That is what I ask for Katharine and her husband.”
Is Mr. Hilbery at home, or Mrs. Hilbery?” Denham asked, of the parlor-maid in Chelsea, a week later.
“No, sir. But Miss Hilbery is at home,” the girl answered.
Ralph had anticipated many answers, but not this one, and now it was
unexpectedly made plain to him that it was the chance of seeing
Katharine that had brought him all the way to Chelsea on pretence of
seeing her father.
He made some show of considering the matter, and was taken upstairs to
the drawing-room. As upon that first occasion, some weeks ago, the
door closed as if it were a thousand doors softly excluding the world;
and once more Ralph received an impression of a room full of deep
shadows, firelight, unwavering silver candle flames, and empty spaces
to be crossed before reaching the round table in the middle of the
room, with its frail burden of silver trays and china teacups. But
this time Katharine was there by herself; the volume in her hand
showed that she expected no visitors.
Ralph said something about hoping to find her father.
“My father is out,” she replied. “But if you can wait, I expect him
soon.”
It might have been due merely to politeness, but Ralph felt that she
received him almost with cordiality. Perhaps she was bored by drinking
tea and reading a book all alone; at any rate, she tossed the book on
to a sofa with a gesture of relief.
“Is that one of the moderns whom you despise?” he asked, smiling at
the carelessness of her gesture.
“Yes,” she replied. “I think even you would despise him.”
“Even I?” he repeated. “Why even I?”
“You said you liked modern things; I said I hated them.”
This was not a very accurate report of their conversation among the
relics, perhaps, but Ralph was flattered to think that she remembered
anything about it.
“Or did I confess that I hated all books?” she went on, seeing him
look up with an air of inquiry. “I forget—”
“Do you hate all books?” he asked.
“It would be absurd to say that I hate all books when I’ve only read
ten, perhaps; but—’ Here she pulled herself up short.
“Well?”
“Yes, I do hate books,” she continued. “Why do you want to be for ever
talking about your feelings? That’s what I can’t make out. And
poetry’s all about feelings—novels are all about feelings.”
She cut a cake vigorously into slices, and providing a tray with bread
and butter for Mrs. Hilbery, who was in her room with a cold, she rose
to go upstairs.
Ralph held the door open for her, and then stood with clasped hands in
the middle of the room. His eyes were bright, and, indeed, he scarcely
knew whether they beheld dreams or realities. All down the street and
on the doorstep, and while he mounted the stairs, his dream of
Katharine possessed him; on the threshold of the room he had dismissed
it, in order to prevent too painful a collision between what he dreamt
of her and what she was. And in five minutes she had filled the shell
of the old dream with the flesh of life; looked with fire out of
phantom eyes. He glanced about him with bewilderment at finding
himself among her chairs and tables; they were solid, for he grasped
the back of the chair in which Katharine had sat; and yet they were
unreal; the atmosphere was that of a dream. He summoned all the
faculties of his spirit to seize what the minutes had to give him; and
from the depths of his mind there rose unchecked a joyful recognition
of the truth that human nature surpasses, in its beauty, all that our
wildest dreams bring us hints of.
Katharine came into the room a moment later. He stood watching her
come towards him, and thought her more beautiful and strange than his
dream of her; for the real Katharine could speak the words which
seemed to crowd behind the forehead and in the depths of the eyes, and
the commonest sentence would be flashed on by this immortal light. And
she overflowed the edges of the dream; he remarked that her softness
was like that of some vast snowy owl; she wore a ruby on her finger.
“My mother wants me to tell you,” she said, “that she hopes you have
begun your poem. She says every one ought to write poetry… . All
my relations write poetry,” she went on. “I can’t bear to think of it
sometimes—because, of course, it’s none of it any good. But then one
needn’t read it—”
“You don’t encourage me to write a poem,” said Ralph.
“But you’re not a poet, too, are you?” she inquired, turning upon him
with a laugh.
“Should I tell you if I were?”
“Yes. Because I think you speak the truth,” she said, searching him
for proof of this apparently, with eyes now almost impersonally
direct. It would be easy, Ralph thought, to worship one so far
removed, and yet of so straight a nature; easy to submit recklessly to
her, without thought of future pain.
“Are you a poet?” she demanded. He felt that her question had an
unexplained weight of meaning behind it, as if she sought an answer to
a question that she did not ask.
“No. I haven’t written any poetry for years,” he replied. “But all the
same, I don’t agree with you. I think it’s the only thing worth
doing.”
“Why do you say that?” she asked, almost with impatience, tapping her
spoon two or three times against the side of her cup.
“Why?” Ralph laid hands on the first words that came to mind.
“Because, I suppose, it keeps an ideal alive which might die
otherwise.”
A curious change came over her face, as if the flame of her mind were
subdued; and she looked at him ironically and with the expression
which he had called sad before, for want of a better name for it.
“I don’t know that there’s much sense in having ideals,” she said.
“But you have them,” he replied energetically. “Why do we call them
ideals? It’s a stupid word. Dreams, I mean—”
She followed his words with parted lips, as though to answer eagerly
when he had done; but as he said, “Dreams, I mean,” the door of the
drawing-room swung open, and so remained for a perceptible instant.
They both held themselves silent, her lips still parted.
Far off, they heard the rustle of skirts. Then the owner of the skirts
appeared in the doorway, which she almost filled, nearly concealing
the figure of a very much smaller lady who accompanied her.
“My aunts!” Katharine murmured, under her breath. Her tone had a hint
of tragedy in it, but no less, Ralph thought, than the situation
required. She addressed the larger lady as Aunt Millicent; the smaller
was Aunt Celia, Mrs. Milvain, who had lately undertaken the task of
marrying Cyril to his wife. Both ladies, but Mrs. Cosham (Aunt
Millicent) in particular, had that look of heightened, smoothed,
incarnadined existence which is proper to elderly ladies paying calls
in London about five o’clock in the afternoon. Portraits by Romney,
seen through glass, have something of their pink, mellow look, their
blooming softness, as of apricots hanging upon a red wall in the
afternoon sun. Mrs. Cosham was so appareled with hanging muffs,
chains, and swinging draperies that it was impossible to detect the
shape of a human being in the mass of brown and black which filled the
armchair. Mrs. Milvain was a much slighter figure; but the same doubt
as to the precise lines of her contour filled Ralph, as he regarded
them, with dismal foreboding. What remark of his would ever reach
these fabulous and fantastic characters?—for there was something
fantastically unreal in the curious swayings and noddings of Mrs.
Cosham, as if her equipment included a large wire spring. Her voice
had a high-pitched, cooing note, which prolonged words and cut them
short until the English language seemed no longer fit for common
purposes. In a moment of nervousness, so Ralph thought, Katharine had
turned on innumerable electric lights. But Mrs. Cosham had gained
impetus (perhaps her swaying movements had that end in view) for
sustained speech; and she now addressed Ralph deliberately and
elaborately.
“I come from Woking, Mr. Popham. You may well ask me, why Woking? and
to that I answer, for perhaps the hundredth time, because of the
sunsets. We went there for the sunsets, but that was five-and-twenty
years ago. Where are the sunsets now? Alas! There is no sunset now
nearer than the South Coast.” Her rich and romantic notes were
accompanied by a wave of a long white hand, which, when waved, gave
off a flash of diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. Ralph wondered whether
she more resembled an elephant, with a jeweled head-dress, or a superb
cockatoo, balanced insecurely upon its perch, and pecking capriciously
at a lump of sugar.
“Where are the sunsets now?” she repeated. “Do you find sunsets now,
Mr. Popham?”
“I live at Highgate,” he replied.
“At Highgate? Yes, Highgate has its charms; your Uncle John lived at
Highgate,” she jerked in the direction of Katharine. She sank her head
upon her breast, as if for a moment’s meditation, which past, she
looked up and observed: “I dare say there are very pretty lanes in
Highgate. I can recollect walking with your mother, Katharine, through
lanes blossoming with wild hawthorn. But where is the hawthorn now?
You remember that exquisite description in De Quincey, Mr. Popham?—
but I forget, you, in your generation, with all your activity and
enlightenment, at which I can only marvel”—here she displayed both
her beautiful white hands—“do not read De Quincey. You have your
Belloc, your Chesterton, your Bernard Shaw—why should you read De
Quincey?”
“But I do read De Quincey,” Ralph protested, “more than Belloc and
Chesterton, anyhow.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Cosham, with a gesture of surprise and relief
mingled. “You are, then, a ‘rara avis’ in your generation. I am
delighted to meet anyone who reads De Quincey.”
Here she hollowed her hand into a screen, and, leaning towards
Katharine, inquired, in a very audible whisper, “Does your friend
WRITE?”
“Mr. Denham,” said Katharine, with more than her
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