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

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contempt for the people who had yielded to her.

 

The committee now rose, gathered together their papers, shook them

straight, placed them in their attache-cases, snapped the locks firmly

together, and hurried away, having, for the most part, to catch

trains, in order to keep other appointments with other committees, for

they were all busy people. Mary, Mrs. Seal, and Mr. Clacton were left

alone; the room was hot and untidy, the pieces of pink blotting-paper

were lying at different angles upon the table, and the tumbler was

half full of water, which some one had poured out and forgotten to

drink.

 

Mrs. Seal began preparing the tea, while Mr. Clacton retired to his

room to file the fresh accumulation of documents. Mary was too much

excited even to help Mrs. Seal with the cups and saucers. She flung up

the window and stood by it, looking out. The street lamps were already

lit; and through the mist in the square one could see little figures

hurrying across the road and along the pavement, on the farther side.

In her absurd mood of lustful arrogance, Mary looked at the little

figures and thought, “If I liked I could make you go in there or stop

short; I could make you walk in single file or in double file; I could

do what I liked with you.” Then Mrs. Seal came and stood by her.

 

“Oughtn’t you to put something round your shoulders, Sally?” Mary

asked, in rather a condescending tone of voice, feeling a sort of pity

for the enthusiastic ineffective little woman. But Mrs. Seal paid no

attention to the suggestion.

 

“Well, did you enjoy yourself?” Mary asked, with a little laugh.

 

Mrs. Seal drew a deep breath, restrained herself, and then burst

out, looking out, too, upon Russell Square and Southampton Row, and

at the passers-by, “Ah, if only one could get every one of those

people into this room, and make them understand for five minutes!

But they MUST see the truth some day… . If only one could MAKE

them see it… .”

 

Mary knew herself to be very much wiser than Mrs. Seal, and when Mrs.

Seal said anything, even if it was what Mary herself was feeling, she

automatically thought of all that there was to be said against it. On

this occasion her arrogant feeling that she could direct everybody

dwindled away.

 

“Let’s have our tea,” she said, turning back from the window and

pulling down the blind. “It was a good meeting—didn’t you think so,

Sally?” she let fall, casually, as she sat down at the table. Surely

Mrs. Seal must realize that Mary had been extraordinarily efficient?

 

“But we go at such a snail’s pace,” said Sally, shaking her head

impatiently.

 

At this Mary burst out laughing, and all her arrogance was dissipated.

 

“You can afford to laugh,” said Sally, with another shake of her head,

“but I can’t. I’m fifty-five, and I dare say I shall be in my grave by

the time we get it—if we ever do.”

 

“Oh, no, you won’t be in your grave,” said Mary, kindly.

 

“It’ll be such a great day,” said Mrs. Seal, with a toss of her locks.

“A great day, not only for us, but for civilization. That’s what I

feel, you know, about these meetings. Each one of them is a step

onwards in the great march—humanity, you know. We do want the people

after us to have a better time of it—and so many don’t see it. I

wonder how it is that they don’t see it?”

 

She was carrying plates and cups from the cupboard as she spoke, so

that her sentences were more than usually broken apart. Mary could not

help looking at the odd little priestess of humanity with something

like admiration. While she had been thinking about herself, Mrs. Seal

had thought of nothing but her vision.

 

“You mustn’t wear yourself out, Sally, if you want to see the great

day,” she said, rising and trying to take a plate of biscuits from

Mrs. Seal’s hands.

 

“My dear child, what else is my old body good for?” she exclaimed,

clinging more tightly than before to her plate of biscuits. “Shouldn’t

I be proud to give everything I have to the cause?—for I’m not an

intelligence like you. There were domestic circumstances—I’d like to

tell you one of these days—so I say foolish things. I lose my head,

you know. You don’t. Mr. Clacton doesn’t. It’s a great mistake, to

lose one’s head. But my heart’s in the right place. And I’m so glad

Kit has a big dog, for I didn’t think her looking well.”

 

They had their tea, and went over many of the points that had been

raised in the committee rather more intimately than had been possible

then; and they all felt an agreeable sense of being in some way behind

the scenes; of having their hands upon strings which, when pulled,

would completely change the pageant exhibited daily to those who read

the newspapers. Although their views were very different, this sense

united them and made them almost cordial in their manners to each

other.

 

Mary, however, left the tea-party rather early, desiring both to be

alone, and then to hear some music at the Queen’s Hall. She fully

intended to use her loneliness to think out her position with regard

to Ralph; but although she walked back to the Strand with this end in

view, she found her mind uncomfortably full of different trains of

thought. She started one and then another. They seemed even to take

their color from the street she happened to be in. Thus the vision of

humanity appeared to be in some way connected with Bloomsbury, and

faded distinctly by the time she crossed the main road; then a belated

organ-grinder in Holborn set her thoughts dancing incongruously; and

by the time she was crossing the great misty square of Lincoln’s Inn

Fields, she was cold and depressed again, and horribly clear-sighted.

The dark removed the stimulus of human companionship, and a tear

actually slid down her cheek, accompanying a sudden conviction within

her that she loved Ralph, and that he didn’t love her. All dark and

empty now was the path where they had walked that morning, and the

sparrows silent in the bare trees. But the lights in her own building

soon cheered her; all these different states of mind were submerged in

the deep flood of desires, thoughts, perceptions, antagonisms, which

washed perpetually at the base of her being, to rise into prominence

in turn when the conditions of the upper world were favorable. She put

off the hour of clear thought until Christmas, saying to herself, as

she lit her fire, that it is impossible to think anything out in

London; and, no doubt, Ralph wouldn’t come at Christmas, and she would

take long walks into the heart of the country, and decide this

question and all the others that puzzled her. Meanwhile, she thought,

drawing her feet up on to the fender, life was full of complexity;

life was a thing one must love to the last fiber of it.

 

She had sat there for five minutes or so, and her thoughts had had

time to grow dim, when there came a ring at her bell. Her eye

brightened; she felt immediately convinced that Ralph had come to

visit her. Accordingly, she waited a moment before opening the door;

she wanted to feel her hands secure upon the reins of all the

troublesome emotions which the sight of Ralph would certainly arouse.

She composed herself unnecessarily, however, for she had to admit, not

Ralph, but Katharine and William Rodney. Her first impression was that

they were both extremely well dressed. She felt herself shabby and

slovenly beside them, and did not know how she should entertain them,

nor could she guess why they had come. She had heard nothing of their

engagement. But after the first disappointment, she was pleased, for

she felt instantly that Katharine was a personality, and, moreover,

she need not now exercise her self-control.

 

“We were passing and saw a light in your window, so we came up,”

Katharine explained, standing and looking very tall and distinguished

and rather absent-minded.

 

“We have been to see some pictures,” said William. “Oh, dear,” he

exclaimed, looking about him, “this room reminds me of one of the

worst hours in my existence—when I read a paper, and you all sat

round and jeered at me. Katharine was the worst. I could feel her

gloating over every mistake I made. Miss Datchet was kind. Miss

Datchet just made it possible for me to get through, I remember.”

 

Sitting down, he drew off his light yellow gloves, and began slapping

his knees with them. His vitality was pleasant, Mary thought, although

he made her laugh. The very look of him was inclined to make her

laugh. His rather prominent eyes passed from one young woman to the

other, and his lips perpetually formed words which remained unspoken.

 

“We have been seeing old masters at the Grafton Gallery,” said

Katharine, apparently paying no attention to William, and accepting a

cigarette which Mary offered her. She leant back in her chair, and the

smoke which hung about her face seemed to withdraw her still further

from the others.

 

“Would you believe it, Miss Datchet,” William continued, “Katharine

doesn’t like Titian. She doesn’t like apricots, she doesn’t like

peaches, she doesn’t like green peas. She likes the Elgin marbles, and

gray days without any sun. She’s a typical example of the cold

northern nature. I come from Devonshire—”

 

Had they been quarreling, Mary wondered, and had they, for that

reason, sought refuge in her room, or were they engaged, or had

Katharine just refused him? She was completely baffled.

 

Katharine now reappeared from her veil of smoke, knocked the ash from

her cigarette into the fireplace, and looked, with an odd expression

of solicitude, at the irritable man.

 

“Perhaps, Mary,” she said tentatively, “you wouldn’t mind giving us

some tea? We did try to get some, but the shop was so crowded, and in

the next one there was a band playing; and most of the pictures, at

any rate, were very dull, whatever you may say, William.” She spoke

with a kind of guarded gentleness.

 

Mary, accordingly, retired to make preparations in the pantry.

 

“What in the world are they after?” she asked of her own reflection in

the little looking-glass which hung there. She was not left to doubt

much longer, for, on coming back into the sitting-room with the tea-things, Katharine informed her, apparently having been instructed so

to do by William, of their engagement.

 

“William,” she said, “thinks that perhaps you don’t know. We are going

to be married.”

 

Mary found herself shaking William’s hand, and addressing her

congratulations to him, as if Katharine were inaccessible; she had,

indeed, taken hold of the tea-kettle.

 

“Let me see,” Katharine said, “one puts hot water into the cups first,

doesn’t one? You have some dodge of your own, haven’t you, William,

about making tea?”

 

Mary was half inclined to suspect that this was said in order to

conceal nervousness, but if so, the concealment was unusually perfect.

Talk of marriage was dismissed. Katharine might have been seated in

her own drawing-room, controlling a situation which presented no sort

of difficulty to her trained mind. Rather to her surprise, Mary found

herself making conversation with William about old Italian pictures,

while Katharine poured out tea, cut cake, kept William’s plate

supplied, without joining more than was necessary in the conversation.

She seemed to have taken possession of Mary’s room, and to handle the

cups as if they belonged to her. But