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Night and Day

Virginia Woolf

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Virginia Woolf

Night and Day

occupied faculties. A single glance was enough to show

that Mrs. Hilbery was so rich in the gifts which make tea-

parties of elderly distinguished people successful, that

she scarcely needed any help from her daughter, provided

that the tiresome business of teacups and bread and but-

ter was discharged for her.

Considering that the little party had been seated round

the tea-table for less than twenty minutes, the anima-

tion observable on their faces, and the amount of sound

they were producing collectively, were very creditable to

the hostess. It suddenly came into Katharine’s mind that

if some one opened the door at this moment he would

think that they were enjoying themselves; he would think,

“What an extremely nice house to come into!” and in-

stinctively she laughed, and said something to increase

the noise, for the credit of the house presumably, since

she herself had not been feeling exhilarated. At the very

same moment, rather to her amusement, the door was

flung open, and a young man entered the room. Katharine,

as she shook hands with him, asked him, in her own

mind, “Now, do you think we’re enjoying ourselves enor-

Virginia Woolf

CHAPTER I

It was a Sunday evening in October, and in common with

many other young ladies of her class, Katharine Hilbery

was pouring out tea. Perhaps a fifth part of her mind was

thus occupied, and the remaining parts leapt over the

little barrier of day which interposed between Monday

morning and this rather subdued moment, and played

with the things one does voluntarily and normally in the

daylight. But although she was silent, she was evidently

mistress of a situation which was familiar enough to her,

and inclined to let it take its way for the six hundredth

time, perhaps, without bringing into play any of her un-

Night and Day

mously?” … “Mr. Denham, mother,” she said aloud, for

she saw that her mother had forgotten his name.

That fact was perceptible to Mr. Denham also, and in-

creased the awkwardness which inevitably attends the

entrance of a stranger into a room full of people much at

their ease, and all launched upon sentences. At the same

time, it seemed to Mr. Denham as if a thousand softly

padded doors had closed between him and the street

outside. A fine mist, the etherealized essence of the fog,

hung visibly in the wide and rather empty space of the

drawing-room, all silver where the candles were grouped

on the tea-table, and ruddy again in the firelight. With

the omnibuses and cabs still running in his head, and his

body still tingling with his quick walk along the streets

and in and out of traffic and foot-passengers, this draw-

ing-room seemed very remote and still; and the faces of

the elderly people were mellowed, at some distance from

each other, and had a bloom on them owing to the fact

that the air in the drawing-room was thickened by blue

grains of mist. Mr. Denham had come in as Mr. Fortescue,

the eminent novelist, reached the middle of a very long

sentence. He kept this suspended while the newcomer

sat down, and Mrs. Hilbery deftly joined the severed parts

by leaning towards him and remarking:

“Now, what would you do if you were married to an

engineer, and had to live in Manchester, Mr. Denham?”

“Surely she could learn Persian,” broke in a thin, eld-

erly gentleman. “Is there no retired schoolmaster or man

of letters in Manchester with whom she could read Per-

sian?”

“A cousin of ours has married and gone to live in

Manchester,” Katharine explained. Mr. Denham muttered

something, which was indeed all that was required of

him, and the novelist went on where he had left off.

Privately, Mr. Denham cursed himself very sharply for

having exchanged the freedom of the street for this so-

phisticated drawing-room, where, among other

disagreeables, he certainly would not appear at his best.

He glanced round him, and saw that, save for Katharine,

they were all over forty, the only consolation being that

Mr. Fortescue was a considerable celebrity, so that to-

morrow one might be glad to have met him.

Virginia Woolf

“Have you ever been to Manchester?” he asked

Katharine.

“Never,” she replied.

“Why do you object to it, then?”

Katharine stirred her tea, and seemed to speculate, so

Denham thought, upon the duty of filling somebody else’s

cup, but she was really wondering how she was going to

keep this strange young man in harmony with the rest.

She observed that he was compressing his teacup, so

that there was danger lest the thin china might cave

inwards. She could see that he was nervous; one would

expect a bony young man with his face slightly reddened

by the wind, and his hair not altogether smooth, to be

nervous in such a party. Further, he probably disliked this

kind of thing, and had come out of curiosity, or because

her father had invited him—anyhow, he would not be

easily combined with the rest.

“I should think there would be no one to talk to in

Manchester,” she replied at random. Mr. Fortescue had

been observing her for a moment or two, as novelists are

inclined to observe, and at this remark he smiled, and

made it the text for a little further speculation.

“In spite of a slight tendency to exaggeration, Katharine

decidedly hits the mark,” he said, and lying back in his

chair, with his opaque contemplative eyes fixed on the

ceiling, and the tips of his fingers pressed together, he

depicted, first the horrors of the streets of Manchester,

and then the bare, immense moors on the outskirts of the

town, and then the scrubby little house in which the girl

would live, and then the professors and the miserable young

students devoted to the more strenuous works of our

younger dramatists, who would visit her, and how her ap-

pearance would change by degrees, and how she would fly

to London, and how Katharine would have to lead her about,

as one leads an eager dog on a chain, past rows of clamor-

ous butchers’ shops, poor dear creature.

“Oh, Mr. Fortescue,” exclaimed Mrs. Hilbery, as he fin-

ished, “I had just written to say how I envied her! I was

thinking of the big gardens and the dear old ladies in

mittens, who read nothing but the “Spectator,” and snuff

the candles. Have they ALL disappeared? I told her she

would find the nice things of London without the horrid

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