Night and Day by Virginia Woolf (websites to read books for free .TXT) đź“–
- Author: Virginia Woolf
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No doubt the actors and the authors would have been surprised to learn
in what shape their efforts reached those particular eyes and ears;
but they could not have denied that the effect as a whole was
tremendous. The hall resounded with brass and strings, alternately of
enormous pomp and majesty, and then of sweetest lamentation. The reds
and creams of the background, the lyres and harps and urns and skulls,
the protuberances of plaster, the fringes of scarlet plush, the
sinking and blazing of innumerable electric lights, could scarcely
have been surpassed for decorative effect by any craftsman of the
ancient or modern world.
Then there was the audience itself, bare-shouldered, tufted and
garlanded in the stalls, decorous but festal in the balconies, and
frankly fit for daylight and street life in the galleries. But,
however they differed when looked at separately, they shared the same
huge, lovable nature in the bulk, which murmured and swayed and
quivered all the time the dancing and juggling and love-making went on
in front of it, slowly laughed and reluctantly left off laughing, and
applauded with a helter-skelter generosity which sometimes became
unanimous and overwhelming. Once William saw Katharine leaning forward
and clapping her hands with an abandonment that startled him. Her
laugh rang out with the laughter of the audience.
For a second he was puzzled, as if this laughter disclosed something
that he had never suspected in her. But then Cassandra’s face caught
his eye, gazing with astonishment at the buffoon, not laughing, too
deeply intent and surprised to laugh at what she saw, and for some
moments he watched her as if she were a child.
The performance came to an end, the illusion dying out first here and
then there, as some rose to put on their coats, others stood upright
to salute “God Save the King,” the musicians folded their music and
encased their instruments, and the lights sank one by one until the
house was empty, silent, and full of great shadows. Looking back over
her shoulder as she followed Ralph through the swing doors, Cassandra
marveled to see how the stage was already entirely without romance.
But, she wondered, did they really cover all the seats in brown
holland every night?
The success of this entertainment was such that before they separated
another expedition had been planned for the next day. The next day was
Saturday; therefore both William and Ralph were free to devote the
whole afternoon to an expedition to Greenwich, which Cassandra had
never seen, and Katharine confused with Dulwich. On this occasion
Ralph was their guide. He brought them without accident to Greenwich.
What exigencies of state or fantasies of imagination first gave birth
to the cluster of pleasant places by which London is surrounded is
matter of indifference now that they have adapted themselves so
admirably to the needs of people between the ages of twenty and thirty
with Saturday afternoons to spend. Indeed, if ghosts have any interest
in the affections of those who succeed them they must reap their
richest harvests when the fine weather comes again and the lovers, the
sightseers, and the holiday-makers pour themselves out of trains and
omnibuses into their old pleasure-grounds. It is true that they go,
for the most part, unthanked by name, although upon this occasion
William was ready to give such discriminating praise as the dead
architects and painters received seldom in the course of the year.
They were walking by the river bank, and Katharine and Ralph, lagging
a little behind, caught fragments of his lecture. Katharine smiled at
the sound of his voice; she listened as if she found it a little
unfamiliar, intimately though she knew it; she tested it. The note of
assurance and happiness was new. William was very happy. She learnt
every hour what sources of his happiness she had neglected. She had
never asked him to teach her anything; she had never consented to read
Macaulay; she had never expressed her belief that his play was second
only to the works of Shakespeare. She followed dreamily in their wake,
smiling and delighting in the sound which conveyed, she knew, the
rapturous and yet not servile assent of Cassandra.
Then she murmured, “How can Cassandra—” but changed her sentence to
the opposite of what she meant to say and ended, “how could she
herself have been so blind?” But it was unnecessary to follow out such
riddles when the presence of Ralph supplied her with more interesting
problems, which somehow became involved with the little boat crossing
the river, the majestic and careworn City, and the steamers homecoming
with their treasury, or starting in search of it, so that infinite
leisure would be necessary for the proper disentanglement of one from
the other. He stopped, moreover, and began inquiring of an old boatman
as to the tides and the ships. In thus talking he seemed different,
and even looked different, she thought, against the river, with the
steeples and towers for background. His strangeness, his romance, his
power to leave her side and take part in the affairs of men, the
possibility that they should together hire a boat and cross the river,
the speed and wildness of this enterprise filled her mind and inspired
her with such rapture, half of love and half of adventure, that
William and Cassandra were startled from their talk, and Cassandra
exclaimed, “She looks as if she were offering up a sacrifice! Very
beautiful,” she added quickly, though she repressed, in deference to
William, her own wonder that the sight of Ralph Denham talking to a
boatman on the banks of the Thames could move any one to such an
attitude of adoration.
That afternoon, what with tea and the curiosities of the Thames tunnel
and the unfamiliarity of the streets, passed so quickly that the only
method of prolonging it was to plan another expedition for the
following day. Hampton Court was decided upon, in preference to
Hampstead, for though Cassandra had dreamt as a child of the brigands
of Hampstead, she had now transferred her affections completely and
for ever to William III. Accordingly, they arrived at Hampton Court
about lunch-time on a fine Sunday morning. Such unity marked their
expressions of admiration for the red-brick building that they might
have come there for no other purpose than to assure each other that
this palace was the stateliest palace in the world. They walked up and
down the Terrace, four abreast, and fancied themselves the owners of
the place, and calculated the amount of good to the world produced
indubitably by such a tenancy.
“The only hope for us,” said Katharine, “is that William shall die,
and Cassandra shall be given rooms as the widow of a distinguished
poet.”
“Or—” Cassandra began, but checked herself from the liberty of
envisaging Katharine as the widow of a distinguished lawyer. Upon
this, the third day of junketing, it was tiresome to have to restrain
oneself even from such innocent excursions of fancy. She dared not
question William; he was inscrutable; he never seemed even to follow
the other couple with curiosity when they separated, as they
frequently did, to name a plant, or examine a fresco. Cassandra was
constantly studying their backs. She noticed how sometimes the impulse
to move came from Katharine, and sometimes from Ralph; how, sometimes,
they walked slow, as if in profound intercourse, and sometimes fast,
as if in passionate. When they came together again nothing could be
more unconcerned than their manner.
“We have been wondering whether they ever catch a fish …” or, “We
must leave time to visit the Maze.” Then, to puzzle her further,
William and Ralph filled in all interstices of meal-times or railway
journeys with perfectly good-tempered arguments; or they discussed
politics, or they told stories, or they did sums together upon the
backs of old envelopes to prove something. She suspected that
Katharine was absent-minded, but it was impossible to tell. There were
moments when she felt so young and inexperienced that she almost
wished herself back with the silkworms at Stogdon House, and not
embarked upon this bewildering intrigue.
These moments, however, were only the necessary shadow or chill which
proved the substance of her bliss, and did not damage the radiance
which seemed to rest equally upon the whole party. The fresh air of
spring, the sky washed of clouds and already shedding warmth from its
blue, seemed the reply vouchsafed by nature to the mood of her chosen
spirits. These chosen spirits were to be found also among the deer,
dumbly basking, and among the fish, set still in mid-stream, for they
were mute sharers in a benignant state not needing any exposition by
the tongue. No words that Cassandra could come by expressed the
stillness, the brightness, the air of expectancy which lay upon the
orderly beauty of the grass walks and gravel paths down which they
went walking four abreast that Sunday afternoon. Silently the shadows
of the trees lay across the broad sunshine; silence wrapt her heart in
its folds. The quivering stillness of the butterfly on the half-opened
flower, the silent grazing of the deer in the sun, were the sights her
eye rested upon and received as the images of her own nature laid open
to happiness and trembling in its ecstasy.
But the afternoon wore on, and it became time to leave the gardens. As
they drove from Waterloo to Chelsea, Katharine began to have some
compunction about her father, which, together with the opening of
offices and the need of working in them on Monday, made it difficult
to plan another festival for the following day. Mr. Hilbery had taken
their absence, so far, with paternal benevolence, but they could not
trespass upon it indefinitely. Indeed, had they known it, he was
already suffering from their absence, and longing for their return.
He had no dislike of solitude, and Sunday, in particular, was
pleasantly adapted for letter-writing, paying calls, or a visit to his
club. He was leaving the house on some such suitable expedition
towards tea-time when he found himself stopped on his own doorstep by
his sister, Mrs. Milvain. She should, on hearing that no one was at
home, have withdrawn submissively, but instead she accepted his
half-hearted invitation to come in, and he found himself in the
melancholy position of being forced to order tea for her and sit in
the drawing-room while she drank it. She speedily made it plain that
she was only thus exacting because she had come on a matter of
business. He was by no means exhilarated at the news.
“Katharine is out this afternoon,” he remarked. “Why not come round
later and discuss it with her—with us both, eh?”
“My dear Trevor, I have particular reasons for wishing to talk to you
alone… . Where is Katharine?”
“She’s out with her young man, naturally. Cassandra plays the part of
chaperone very usefully. A charming young woman that—a great favorite
of mine.” He turned his stone between his fingers, and conceived
different methods of leading Celia away from her obsession, which, he
supposed, must have reference to the domestic affairs of Cyril as
usual.
“With Cassandra,” Mrs. Milvain repeated significantly. “With
Cassandra.”
“Yes, with Cassandra,” Mr. Hilbery agreed urbanely, pleased at the
diversion. “I think they said they were going to Hampton Court, and I
rather believe they were taking a protege of mine, Ralph Denham, a
very clever fellow, too, to amuse Cassandra. I thought the arrangement
very suitable.” He was prepared to dwell at some length upon this safe
topic, and trusted that Katharine would come in before he had done
with it.
“Hampton Court always seems to me an ideal spot for engaged couples.
There’s
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