Night and Day, Virginia Woolf [electronic book reader .txt] 📗

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 someone 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 motorcars; 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.

She took the cluster of green stones and turned it round and round, but she did not know what to say next.

“That poor old ring was a sad disappointment to me when I first had it,” Lady Otway mused. “I’d set my heart on a diamond ring, but I never liked to tell Frank, naturally. He bought it at Simla.”

Katharine turned the ring round once more, and gave it back to her aunt without speaking. And while she turned it round her lips set themselves firmly together, and it seemed to her that she could satisfy William as these women had satisfied their husbands; she could pretend to like emeralds when she preferred diamonds. Having replaced her ring, Lady Otway remarked that it was chilly, though not more so than one must expect at this time of year. Indeed, one ought to be thankful to see the sun at all, and she advised them both to dress warmly for their drive. Her aunt’s stock of commonplaces, Katharine sometimes suspected, had been laid in on purpose to fill silences with, and had little to do with her private thoughts. But at this moment they seemed terribly in keeping with her own conclusions, so that she took up her knitting again and listened, chiefly with a view to confirming herself in the belief that to be engaged to marry someone with whom you are not in love is an inevitable step in a world where the existence of passion is only a traveller’s story brought from the heart of deep forests and told so rarely that wise people doubt whether the story can be true. She did her best to listen to her mother asking for news of John, and to her aunt replying with the authentic history of Hilda’s engagement to an officer in the Indian Army, but she cast her mind alternately towards forest paths and starry blossoms, and towards pages of neatly written mathematical signs. When her mind took this turn her marriage seemed no more than an archway through which it was necessary to pass in order to have her desire. At such times the current of her nature ran in its deep narrow channel with great force and with an alarming lack of consideration for the feelings of others. Just as the two elder ladies had finished their survey of the family prospects, and Lady Otway was nervously anticipating some general statement as to life and death from her sister-in-law, Cassandra burst into the room with the news that the carriage was at the door.

“Why didn’t Andrews tell me himself?” said Lady Otway, peevishly, blaming her servants for not living up to her ideals.

When Mrs. Hilbery and Katharine arrived in the hall, ready dressed for their drive, they found that the usual discussion was going forward as to the plans of the rest of the family. In token of this, a great many doors were opening and shutting, two or three people stood irresolutely on the stairs, now going a few steps up, and now a few