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

and cousins, who had defended the

Empire and left their bones on many frontiers, looked at the world

through a film of yellow which the morning light seemed to have drawn

across their photographs. Lady Otway sighed, it may be at the faded

relics, and turned, with resignation, to her balls of wool, which,

curiously and characteristically, were not an ivory-white, but rather

a tarnished yellow-white. She had called her niece in for a little

chat. She had always trusted her, and now more than ever, since her

engagement to Rodney, which seemed to Lady Otway extremely suitable,

and just what one would wish for one’s own daughter. Katharine

unwittingly increased her reputation for wisdom by asking to be given

knitting-needles too.

 

“It’s so very pleasant,” said Lady Otway, “to knit while one’s

talking. And now, my dear Katharine, tell me about your plans.”

 

The emotions of the night before, which she had suppressed in such a

way as to keep her awake till dawn, had left Katharine a little jaded,

and thus more matter-of-fact than usual. She was quite ready to

discuss her plans—houses and rents, servants and economy—without

feeling that they concerned her very much. As she spoke, knitting

methodically meanwhile, Lady Otway noted, with approval, the upright,

responsible bearing of her niece, to whom the prospect of marriage had

brought some gravity most becoming in a bride, and yet, in these days,

most rare. Yes, Katharine’s engagement had changed her a little.

 

“What a perfect daughter, or daughter-in-law!” she thought to herself,

and could not help contrasting her with Cassandra, surrounded by

innumerable silkworms in her bedroom.

 

“Yes,” she continued, glancing at Katharine, with the round, greenish

eyes which were as inexpressive as moist marbles, “Katharine is like

the girls of my youth. We took the serious things of life seriously.”

But just as she was deriving satisfaction from this thought, and was

producing some of the hoarded wisdom which none of her own daughters,

alas! seemed now to need, the door opened, and Mrs. Hilbery came in,

or rather, did not come in, but stood in the doorway and smiled,

having evidently mistaken the room.

 

“I never SHALL know my way about this house!” she exclaimed. “I’m on

my way to the library, and I don’t want to interrupt. You and

Katharine were having a little chat?”

 

The presence of her sister-in-law made Lady Otway slightly uneasy. How

could she go on with what she was saying in Maggie’s presence? for she

was saying something that she had never said, all these years, to

Maggie herself.

 

“I was telling Katharine a few little commonplaces about marriage,”

she said, with a little laugh. “Are none of my children looking after

you, Maggie?”

 

“Marriage,” said Mrs. Hilbery, coming into the room, and nodding her

head once or twice, “I always say marriage is a school. And you don’t

get the prizes unless you go to school. Charlotte has won all the

prizes,” she added, giving her sister-in-law a little pat, which made

Lady Otway more uncomfortable still. She half laughed, muttered

something, and ended on a sigh.

 

“Aunt Charlotte was saying that it’s no good being married unless you

submit to your husband,” said Katharine, framing her aunt’s words into

a far more definite shape than they had really worn; and when she

spoke thus she did not appear at all old-fashioned. Lady Otway looked

at her and paused for a moment.

 

“Well, I really don’t advise a woman who wants to have things her own

way to get married,” she said, beginning a fresh row rather

elaborately.

 

Mrs. Hilbery knew something of the circumstances which, as she

thought, had inspired this remark. In a moment her face was clouded

with sympathy which she did not quite know how to express.

 

“What a shame it was!” she exclaimed, forgetting that her train of

thought might not be obvious to her listeners. “But, Charlotte, it

would have been much worse if Frank had disgraced himself in any way.

And it isn’t what our husbands GET, but what they ARE. I used to dream

of white horses and palanquins, too; but still, I like the ink-pots

best. And who knows?” she concluded, looking at Katharine, “your

father may be made a baronet tomorrow.”

 

Lady Otway, who was Mr. Hilbery’s sister, knew quite well that, in

private, the Hilberys called Sir Francis “that old Turk,” and though

she did not follow the drift of Mrs. Hilbery’s remarks, she knew what

prompted them.

 

“But if you can give way to your husband,” she said, speaking to

Katharine, as if there were a separate understanding between them, “a

happy marriage is the happiest thing in the world.”

 

“Yes,” said Katharine, “but—” She did not mean to finish her

sentence, she merely wished to induce her mother and her aunt to go on

talking about marriage, for she was in the mood to feel that other

people could help her if they would. She went on knitting, but her

fingers worked with a decision that was oddly unlike the smooth and

contemplative sweep of Lady Otway’s plump hand. Now and then she

looked swiftly at her mother, then at her aunt. Mrs. Hilbery held a

book in her hand, and was on her way, as Katharine guessed, to the

library, where another paragraph was to be added to that varied

assortment of paragraphs, the Life of Richard Alardyce. Normally,

Katharine would have hurried her mother downstairs, and seen that no

excuse for distraction came her way. Her attitude towards the poet’s

life, however, had changed with other changes; and she was content to

forget all about her scheme of hours. Mrs. Hilbery was secretly

delighted. Her relief at finding herself excused manifested itself in

a series of sidelong glances of sly humor in her daughter’s direction,

and the indulgence put her in the best of spirits. Was she to be

allowed merely to sit and talk? It was so much pleasanter to sit in a

nice room filled with all sorts of interesting odds and ends which she

hadn’t looked at for a year, at least, than to seek out one date which

contradicted another in a dictionary.

 

“We’ve all had perfect husbands,” she concluded, generously forgiving

Sir Francis all his faults in a lump. “Not that I think a bad temper

is really a fault in a man. I don’t mean a bad temper,” she corrected

herself, with a glance obviously in the direction of Sir Francis. “I

should say a quick, impatient temper. Most, in fact ALL great men have

had bad tempers—except your grandfather, Katharine,” and here she

sighed, and suggested that, perhaps, she ought to go down to the

library.

 

“But in the ordinary marriage, is it necessary to give way to one’s

husband?” said Katharine, taking no notice of her mother’s suggestion,

blind even to the depression which had now taken possession of her at

the thought of her own inevitable death.

 

“I should say yes, certainly,” said Lady Otway, with a decision most

unusual for her.

 

“Then one ought to make up one’s mind to that before one is married,”

Katharine mused, seeming to address herself.

 

Mrs. Hilbery was not much interested in these remarks, which seemed to

have a melancholy tendency, and to revive her spirits she had recourse

to an infallible remedy—she looked out of the window.

 

“Do look at that lovely little blue bird!” she exclaimed, and her eye

looked with extreme pleasure at the soft sky. at the trees, at the

green fields visible behind those trees, and at the leafless branches

which surrounded the body of the small blue tit. Her sympathy with

nature was exquisite.

 

“Most women know by instinct whether they can give it or not,” Lady

Otway slipped in quickly, in rather a low voice, as if she wanted to

get this said while her sister-in-law’s attention was diverted. “And

if not—well then, my advice would be—don’t marry.”

 

“Oh, but marriage is the happiest life for a woman,” said Mrs.

Hilbery, catching the word marriage, as she brought her eyes back to

the room again. Then she turned her mind to what she had said.

 

“It’s the most INTERESTING life,” she corrected herself. She looked at

her daughter with a look of vague alarm. It was the kind of maternal

scrutiny which suggests that, in looking at her daughter a mother is

really looking at herself. She was not altogether satisfied; but she

purposely made no attempt to break down the reserve which, as a matter

of fact, was a quality she particularly admired and depended upon in

her daughter. But when her mother said that marriage was the most

interesting life, Katharine felt, as she was apt to do suddenly, for

no definite reason, that they understood each other, in spite of

differing in every possible way. Yet the wisdom of the old seems to

apply more to feelings which we have in common with the rest of the

human race than to our feelings as individuals, and Katharine knew

that only some one of her own age could follow her meaning. Both these

elderly women seemed to her to have been content with so little

happiness, and at the moment she had not sufficient force to feel

certain that their version of marriage was the wrong one. In London,

certainly, this temperate attitude toward her own marriage had seemed

to her just. Why had she now changed? Why did it now depress her? It

never occurred to her that her own conduct could be anything of a

puzzle to her mother, or that elder people are as much affected by the

young as the young are by them. And yet it was true that love—passion

—whatever one chose to call it, had played far less part in Mrs.

Hilbery’s life than might have seemed likely, judging from her

enthusiastic and imaginative temperament. She had always been more

interested by other things. Lady Otway, strange though it seemed,

guessed more accurately at Katharine’s state of mind than her mother

did.

 

“Why don’t we all live in the country?” exclaimed Mrs. Hilbery, once

more looking out of the window. “I’m sure one would think such

beautiful things if one lived in the country. No horrid slum houses to

depress one, no trams or motor-cars; and the people all looking so

plump and cheerful. Isn’t there some little cottage near you,

Charlotte, which would do for us, with a spare room, perhaps, in case

we asked a friend down? And we should save so much money that we

should be able to travel—”

 

“Yes. You would find it very nice for a week or two, no doubt,” said

Lady Otway. “But what hour would you like the carriage this morning?”

she continued, touching the bell.

 

“Katharine shall decide,” said Mrs. Hilbery, feeling herself unable to

prefer one hour to another. “And I was just going to tell you,

Katharine, how, when I woke this morning, everything seemed so clear

in my head that if I’d had a pencil I believe I could have written

quite a long chapter. When we’re out on our drive I shall find us a

house. A few trees round it, and a little garden, a pond with a

Chinese duck, a study for your father, a study for me, and a sitting

room for Katharine, because then she’ll be a married lady.”

 

At this Katharine shivered a little, drew up to the fire, and warmed

her hands by spreading them over the topmost peak of the coal. She

wished to bring the talk back to marriage again, in order to hear Aunt

Charlotte’s views, but she did not know how to do this.

 

“Let me look at your engagement-ring, Aunt Charlotte,” she said,

noticing her own.