Chapter VIII

by Virginia Woolf

　　She took her letters up to her room with her, having persuaded hermother to go to bed directly Mr. Hilbery left them, for so long as shesat in the same room as her mother, Mrs. Hilbery might, at any moment,ask for a sight of the post. A very hasty glance through many sheetshad shown Katharine that, by some coincidence, her attention had to bedirected to many different anxieties simultaneously. In the firstplace, Rodney had written a very full account of his state of mind,which was illustrated by a sonnet, and he demanded a reconsiderationof their position, which agitated Katharine more than she liked. Thenthere were two letters which had to be laid side by side and comparedbefore she could make out the truth of their story, and even when sheknew the facts she could not decide what to make of them; and finallyshe had to reflect upon a great many pages from a cousin who foundhimself in financial difficulties, which forced him to the uncongenialoccupation of teaching the young ladies of Bungay to play upon theviolin.But the two letters which each told the same story differently werethe chief source of her perplexity. She was really rather shocked tofind it definitely established that her own second cousin, CyrilAlardyce, had lived for the last four years with a woman who was nothis wife, who had borne him two children, and was now about to bearhim another. This state of things had been discovered by Mrs. Milvain,her aunt Celia, a zealous inquirer into such matters, whose letter wasalso under consideration. Cyril, she said, must be made to marry thewoman at once; and Cyril, rightly or wrongly, was indignant with suchinterference with his affairs, and would not own that he had any causeto be ashamed of himself. Had he any cause to be ashamed of himself,Katharine wondered; and she turned to her aunt again."Remember," she wrote, in her profuse, emphatic statement, "that hebears your grandfather's name, and so will the child that is to beborn. The poor boy is not so much to blame as the woman who deludedhim, thinking him a gentleman, which he is, and having money, which hehas not.""What would Ralph Denham say to this?" thought Katharine, beginning topace up and down her bedroom. She twitched aside the curtains, sothat, on turning, she was faced by darkness, and looking out, couldjust distinguish the branches of a plane-tree and the yellow lights ofsome one else's windows."What would Mary Datchet and Ralph Denham say?" she reflected, pausingby the window, which, as the night was warm, she raised, in order tofeel the air upon her face, and to lose herself in the nothingness ofnight. But with the air the distant humming sound of far-off crowdedthoroughfares was admitted to the room. The incessant and tumultuoushum of the distant traffic seemed, as she stood there, to representthe thick texture of her life, for her life was so hemmed in with theprogress of other lives that the sound of its own advance wasinaudible. People like Ralph and Mary, she thought, had it all theirown way, and an empty space before them, and, as she envied them, shecast her mind out to imagine an empty land where all this pettyintercourse of men and women, this life made up of the dense crossingsand entanglements of men and women, had no existence whatever. Evennow, alone, at night, looking out into the shapeless mass of London,she was forced to remember that there was one point and here anotherwith which she had some connection. William Rodney, at this verymoment, was seated in a minute speck of light somewhere to the east ofher, and his mind was occupied, not with his book, but with her. Shewished that no one in the whole world would think of her. However,there was no way of escaping from one's fellow-beings, she concluded,and shut the window with a sigh, and returned once more to herletters.She could not doubt but that William's letter was the most genuine shehad yet received from him. He had come to the conclusion that he couldnot live without her, he wrote. He believed that he knew her, andcould give her happiness, and that their marriage would be unlikeother marriages. Nor was the sonnet, in spite of its accomplishment,lacking in passion, and Katharine, as she read the pages throughagain, could see in what direction her feelings ought to flow,supposing they revealed themselves. She would come to feel a humoroussort of tenderness for him, a zealous care for his susceptibilities,and, after all, she considered, thinking of her father and mother,what is love?Naturally, with her face, position, and background, she had experienceof young men who wished to marry her, and made protestations of love,but, perhaps because she did not return the feeling, it remainedsomething of a pageant to her. Not having experience of it herself,her mind had unconsciously occupied itself for some years in dressingup an image of love, and the marriage that was the outcome of love,and the man who inspired love, which naturally dwarfed any examplesthat came her way. Easily, and without correction by reason, herimagination made pictures, superb backgrounds casting a rich thoughphantom light upon the facts in the foreground. Splendid as the watersthat drop with resounding thunder from high ledges of rock, and plungedownwards into the blue depths of night, was the presence of love shedreamt, drawing into it every drop of the force of life, and dashingthem all asunder in the superb catastrophe in which everything wassurrendered, and nothing might be reclaimed. The man, too, was somemagnanimous hero, riding a great horse by the shore of the sea. Theyrode through forests together, they galloped by the rim of the sea.But waking, she was able to contemplate a perfectly loveless marriage,as the thing one did actually in real life, for possibly the peoplewho dream thus are those who do the most prosaic things.At this moment she was much inclined to sit on into the night,spinning her light fabric of thoughts until she tired of theirfutility, and went to her mathematics; but, as she knew very well, itwas necessary that she should see her father before he went to bed.The case of Cyril Alardyce must be discussed, her mother's illusionsand the rights of the family attended to. Being vague herself as towhat all this amounted to, she had to take counsel with her father.She took her letters in her hand and went downstairs. It was pasteleven, and the clocks had come into their reign, the grandfather'sclock in the hall ticking in competition with the small clock on thelanding. Mr. Hilbery's study ran out behind the rest of the house, onthe ground floor, and was a very silent, subterranean place, the sunin daytime casting a mere abstract of light through a skylight uponhis books and the large table, with its spread of white papers, nowillumined by a green reading-lamp. Here Mr. Hilbery sat editing hisreview, or placing together documents by means of which it could beproved that Shelley had written "of" instead of "and," or that the innin which Byron had slept was called the "Nag's Head" and not the"Turkish Knight," or that the Christian name of Keats's uncle had beenJohn rather than Richard, for he knew more minute details about thesepoets than any man in England, probably, and was preparing an editionof Shelley which scrupulously observed the poet's system ofpunctuation. He saw the humor of these researches, but that did notprevent him from carrying them out with the utmost scrupulosity.He was lying back comfortably in a deep arm-chair smoking a cigar, andruminating the fruitful question as to whether Coleridge had wished tomarry Dorothy Wordsworth, and what, if he had done so, would have beenthe consequences to him in particular, and to literature in general.When Katharine came in he reflected that he knew what she had comefor, and he made a pencil note before he spoke to her. Having donethis, he saw that she was reading, and he watched her for a momentwithout saying anything. She was reading "Isabella and the Pot ofBasil," and her mind was full of the Italian hills and the bluedaylight, and the hedges set with little rosettes of red and whiteroses. Feeling that her father waited for her, she sighed and said,shutting her book:"I've had a letter from Aunt Celia about Cyril, father. . . . It seemsto be true--about his marriage. What are we to do?""Cyril seems to have been behaving in a very foolish manner," said Mr.Hilbery, in his pleasant and deliberate tones.Katharine found some difficulty in carrying on the conversation, whileher father balanced his finger-tips so judiciously, and seemed toreserve so many of his thoughts for himself."He's about done for himself, I should say," he continued. Withoutsaying anything, he took Katharine's letters out of her hand, adjustedhis eyeglasses, and read them through.At length he said "Humph!" and gave the letters back to her."Mother knows nothing about it," Katharine remarked. "Will you tellher?""I shall tell your mother. But I shall tell her that there is nothingwhatever for us to do.""But the marriage?" Katharine asked, with some diffidence.Mr. Hilbery said nothing, and stared into the fire."What in the name of conscience did he do it for?" he speculated atlast, rather to himself than to her.Katharine had begun to read her aunt's letter over again, and she nowquoted a sentence. "Ibsen and Butler. . . . He has sent me a letterfull of quotations--nonsense, though clever nonsense.""Well, if the younger generation want to carry on its life on thoselines, it's none of our affair," he remarked."But isn't it our affair, perhaps, to make them get married?"Katharine asked rather wearily."Why the dickens should they apply to me?" her father demanded withsudden irritation."Only as the head of the family--""But I'm not the head of the family. Alfred's the head of the family.Let them apply to Alfred," said Mr. Hilbery, relapsing again into hisarm-chair. Katharine was aware that she had touched a sensitive spot,however, in mentioning the family."I think, perhaps, the best thing would be for me to go and see them,"she observed."I won't have you going anywhere near them," Mr. Hilbery replied withunwonted decision and authority. "Indeed, I don't understand whythey've dragged you into the business at all--I don't see that it'sgot anything to do with you.""I've always been friends with Cyril," Katharine observed."But did he ever tell you anything about this?" Mr. Hilbery askedrather sharply.Katharine shook her head. She was, indeed, a good deal hurt that Cyrilhad not confided in her--did he think, as Ralph Denham or Mary Datchetmight think, that she was, for some reason, unsympathetic--hostileeven?"As to your mother," said Mr. Hilbery, after a pause, in which heseemed to be considering the color of the flames, "you had better tellher the facts. She'd better know the facts before every one begins totalk about it, though why Aunt Celia thinks it necessary to come, I'msure I don't know. And the less talk there is the better."Granting the assumption that gentlemen of sixty who are highlycultivated, and have had much experience of life, probably think ofmany things which they do not say, Katharine could not help feelingrather puzzled by her father's attitude, as she went back to her room.What a distance he was from it all! How superficially he smoothedthese events into a semblance of decency which harmonized with his ownview of life! He never wondered what Cyril had felt, nor did thehidden aspects of the case tempt him to examine into them. He merelyseemed to realize, rather languidly, that Cyril had behaved in a waywhich was foolish, because other people did not behave in that way. Heseemed to be looking through a telescope at little figures hundreds ofmiles in the distance.Her selfish anxiety not to have to tell Mrs. Hilbery what had happenedmade her follow her father into the hall after breakfast the nextmorning in order to question him."Have you told mother?" she asked. Her manner to her father was almoststern, and she seemed to hold endless depths of reflection in the darkof her eyes.Mr. Hilbery sighed."My dear child, it went out of my head." He smoothed his silk hatenergetically, and at once affected an air of hurry. "I'll send a noteround from the office. . . . I'm late this morning, and I've anyamount of proofs to get through.""That wouldn't do at all," Katharine said decidedly. "She must be told--you or I must tell her. We ought to have told her at first."Mr. Hilbery had now placed his hat on his head, and his hand was onthe door-knob. An expression which Katharine knew well from herchildhood, when he asked her to shield him in some neglect of duty,came into his eyes; malice, humor, and irresponsibility were blendedin it. He nodded his head to and fro significantly, opened the doorwith an adroit movement, and stepped out with a lightness unexpectedat his age. He waved his hand once to his daughter, and was gone. Leftalone, Katharine could not help laughing to find herself cheated asusual in domestic bargainings with her father, and left to do thedisagreeable work which belonged, by rights, to him.