Then the children began scrambling down off their chairs; the meal was over. She began to fish under the table for her gloves.
“These them?” said Jo, picking them up off the floor. She took them and crumpled them up in her hand.
He cast one quick sulky look at her as she stood in the doorway. She’s a stunner, he said to himself, but my word, she gives herself airs!
Mrs Robson ushered her into the little room where, before tea, she had looked in the glass. It was crowded with objects. There were bamboo tables; velvet books with brass hinges; marble gladiators askew on the mantelpiece and innumerable pictures. . . . But Mrs Robson, with a gesture that was exactly like Mrs Malone’s when she pointed to the Gainsborough that was not quite certainly a Gainsborough, was displaying a huge silver salver with an inscription.
“The salver my husband’s pupils gave him,” Mrs Robson began, pointing to the inscription. Kitty began to spell out the inscription.
“And this . . .” said Mrs Robson, when she had done, pointing to a document framed like a text on the wall.
But here Sam, who stood in the background fiddling with his watch-chain, stepped forward and indicated with his stubby forefinger the picture of an old woman looking rather over life size in the photographer’s chair.
“My mother,” he said and stopped. He gave a queer little chuckle.
“Your mother?” Kitty repeated, stooping to look. The unwieldy old lady, posed in all the stiffness of her best clothes, was plain in the extreme. And yet Kitty felt that admiration was expected.
“You’re very like her, Mr Robson,” was all she could find to say. Indeed they had something of the same sturdy look; the same piercing eyes; and they were both very plain. He gave an odd little chuckle.
“Glad you think so,” he said. “Brought us all up. Not one of them a patch on her though.” He gave his odd little chuckle again.
Then he turned to his daughter, who had come in and was standing there in her overall.
“Not a patch on her,” he repeated, pinching Nell on the shoulder. As she stood there with her father’s hand on her shoulder under the portrait of her grandmother, a sudden rush of self-pity came over Kitty. If she had been the daughter of people like the Robsons, she thought; if she had lived in the north — but it was clear they wanted her to go. Nobody ever sat down in this room. They were all standing up. Nobody pressed her to stay. When she said that she must go, they all came out into the little hall with her. They were all about to go on with what they were doing, she felt. Nell was about to go into the kitchen and wash up the tea things; Jo was about to return to his hencoops; the children were about to be put to bed by their mother; and Sam — what was he about to do? She looked at him standing there with his heavy watch-chain, like a schoolboy’s. You are the nicest man I have ever met, she thought, holding out her hand.
“Pleased to have made your acquaintance,” said Mrs Robson in her stately way.
“Hope you’ll come again soon,” said Mr Robson, grasping her hand very hard.
“Oh, I should love to!” she exclaimed, pressing their hands as hard as she could. Did they know how much she admired them? she wanted to say. Would they accept her in spite of her hat and her gloves? she wanted to ask. But they were all going off to their work. And I am going home to dress for dinner, she thought as she walked down the little front steps, pressing her pale kid gloves in her hands.
The sun was shining again; the damp pavements gleamed; a gust of wind tossed up the wet branches of the almond trees in the villa gardens; little twigs and tufts of blossom whirled onto the pavement and stuck there. As she stood still for a second at a crossing she too seemed to be tossed aloft out of her usual surroundings. She forgot where she was. The sky, blown into a blue open space, seemed to be looking down not here upon streets and houses, but upon open country, where the wind brushed the moors, and sheep, with grey fleeces ruffled, sheltered under stone walls. She could almost see the moors brighten and darken as the clouds passed over them.
But then in two strides the unfamiliar street became the street she had always known. Here she was again in the paved alley; there were the old curiosity shops with their blue china and their brass warming-pans; and next moment she was out in the famous crooked street with all the domes and steeples. The sun lay in broad stripes across it. There were the cabs and the awnings and the book-shops; the old men in black gowns billowing; the young women in pink and blue dresses flowing; and the young men in straw hats carrying cushions under their arms. But for a moment all seemed to her obsolete, frivolous, inane. The usual undergraduate in cap and gown with books under his arm looked silly. And the portentous old men with their exaggerated features, looked like gargoyles, carved, mediaeval, unreal. They were all like people dressed up and acting parts, she thought. Now she stood at her own door and waited for Hiscock, the butler, to take his feet off the fender and waddle upstairs. Why can’t you talk like a human being? she thought, as he took her umbrella and mumbled his usual remark about the weather.
Slowly, as if a weight had got into her feet too, she went upstairs, seeing through open windows and open doors the smooth lawn, the recumbent tree and the faded chintzes. Down she sank on the edge of her bed. It was very stuffy. A bluebottle buzzed round and round; a lawn mower squeaked in the garden below. Far away pigeons were cooing — Take two coos, Taffy. Take two coos. Tak. . . . Her eyes half shut. It seemed to her that she was sitting on the terrace of an Italian inn. There was her father pressing gentians on to a rough sheet of blotting paper. The lake below lapped and dazzled. She plucked up courage and said to her father: “Father . . .” He looked up very kindly over his spectacles. He held the little blue flower between his thumb and finger. “I want . . .” she began slipping off the balustrade upon which she was sitting. But here a bell struck. She rose and crossed to the washing-table. What would Nell think of this, she thought, tilting up the beautifully polished brass jug and dipping her hands in the hot water. Another bell tolled. She crossed to the dressing-table. The air from the garden outside was full of murmurings and cooings. Wood shavings, she said as she took up her brush and comb — he had wood shavings in his hair. A servant passed with a pile of tin dishes on his head. The pigeons were cooing Take two coos, Taffy. Take two coos. . . . But there was the dinner bell. In a moment she had pinned her hair up, hooked her dress on, and ran down the slippery stairs, sliding her palm along the banisters as she used to do when she was a child in a hurry. And there they all were.
Her parents were standing in the hall. A tall man was with them. His gown was thrown back and one last ray of sunshine lit up his genial, authoritative face. Who was he? Kitty could not remember.
“My word!” he exclaimed, looking up at her with admiration.
“It is Kitty, isn’t it?” he said. Then he took her hand and pressed it.
“How you’ve grown!” he exclaimed. He looked at her as if he were looking not at her but at his own past.
“You don’t remember me?” he added.
“Chingachgook!” she exclaimed, recalling some childish memory.
“But he is now Sir Richard Norton,” said her mother, giving him a proud little pat on the shoulder; and they turned away, for the gentlemen were dining in Hall.
It was dull fish, Kitty thought; the plates were half cold. It was stale bread she thought, cut in meagre little squares; the colour, the gaiety of Prestwich Terrace was still in her eyes, in her ears. She granted, as she looked round, the superiority of the Lodge china and silver; and the Japanese plates and the picture had been hideous; but this dining-room with its hanging creepers and its vast cracked canvases was so dark. At Prestwich Terrace the room was full of light; the sound of hammer, hammer, hammer still rang in her ears. She looked out at the fading greens in the garden. For the thousandth time she echoed her childish wish that the tree would either lie down or stand up instead of doing neither. It was not actually raining, but gusts of whiteness seemed to blow about the garden as the wind stirred the
thick leaves on the laurels.
“Didn’t you notice it?” Mrs Malone suddenly appealed to her.
“What, Mama?” Kitty asked. She had not been attending.
“The odd taste in the fish,” said her mother.
“I don’t think I did,” she said; and Mrs Malone went on talking to the butler. The plates were changed; another dish was brought in. But Kitty was not hungry. She bit one of the green sweets that were provided for her, and then the modest dinner, retrieved for the ladies from the relics of last night’s party, was over and she followed her mother into the drawing-room.
It was too big when they were alone, but they always sat there. The pictures seemed to be looking down at the empty chairs, and the empty chairs seemed to be looking up at the pictures. The old gentleman who had ruled the college over a hundred years ago seemed to vanish in the daytime, but he came back when the lamps were lit. The face was placid, solid and smiling, and singularly like Dr. Malone, who, had a frame been set round him, might have hung over the fireplace too.
“It’s nice to have a quiet evening once in a way,” Mrs Malone was saying, “though the Fripps . . .” Her voice tailed off as she put on her spectacles and took up The Times. This was her moment of relaxation and recuperation after the day’s work. She suppressed a little yawn as she glanced up and down the columns of the newspaper.
“What a charming man he was,” she observed casually, as she looked at the births and deaths. “One would hardly have taken him for an American.”
Kitty recalled her thoughts. She was thinking of the Robsons. Her mother was talking about the Fripps.
“And I liked her too,” she said rashly. “Wasn’t she lovely?”
“Hum — m — m. A little overdressed for my taste,” said Mrs Malone dryly. “And that accent—” she went on, looking through the paper, “I sometimes hardly understood what she said.”
Kitty was silent. Here they differed; as they did about so many things.
Suddenly Mrs Malone looked up:
“Yes, just what I was saying to Bigge this morning,” she said, laying down the paper.
“What, Mama?” said Kitty.
“This man — in the leading article,” said Mrs Malone. She touched it with her finger.
“‘With the best flesh, fish and fowl in the world,’” she read, “‘we shall not be able to turn them to account because we have none to cook them’ — what I was saying to Bigge this morning.” She gave her quick little sigh. Just when one wanted to impress people, like those Americans, something went wrong. It had been the fish this time. She foraged for her work things, and Kitty took up the paper.
“It’s the leading article,” said Mrs Malone. That man almost always said the very thing that she was thinking, which comforted her, and gave her a sense of security in a world which seemed to her to be changing for the worse.
“‘Before the rigid and now universal enforcement of school attendance . . . ?’” Kitty read out.
“Yes. That’s it,” said Mrs Malone, opening her work-box and looking for her scissors.
“‘. . . the children saw a good deal of cooking which, poor as it was, yet gave them some taste and inkling of knowledge. They now see nothing and they do nothing but read, write, sum, sew or knit,’” Kitty read out.
“Yes, yes,” said Mrs Malone. She unrolled the long strip of embroidery upon which she was working a design of birds pecking at fruit copied from a tomb at Ravenna. It was for the spare bedroom.
The leading article bored Kitty with its pompous fluency. She searched the paper for some little piece of news that might interest her mother. Mrs Malone liked someone to talk to her or read aloud to her as she worked. Night after night her embroidery served to weave the after-dinner talk into a pleasant harmony. One said something and stitched; looked at the design, chose another coloured silk, and stitched again. Sometimes Dr Malone read poetry aloud — Pope: Tennyson. Tonight she would have liked Kitty to talk to her. But she was becoming increasingly conscious of difficulty with Kitty. Why? She glanced at her. What was wrong? she wondered. She gave her quick little sigh.
Kitty turned over the large pages. Sheep had the fluke; Turks wanted religious liberty; there was the General Election.
“Mr Gladstone—” she began.
Mrs Malone had lost her scissors. It annoyed her.
“Who can have taken them again?” she began. Kitty went down on the floor to look for them. Mrs Malone ferreted in the work-box; then she plunged her hand into the fissure between the cushion and the chair frame and brought up not only the scissors but also a little mother-of-pearl paper-knife that had been missing for ever so long. The discovery annoyed her. It proved Ellen never shook up the cushions properly.
“Here they are, Kitty,” she said. They were silent. There was always some constraint between them now.
“Did you enjoy your party at the Robsons’, Kitty?” she asked, resuming her embroidery. Kitty did not answer. She turned the paper.
“There’s been an experiment,” she said. “An experiment with electric light. ‘A brilliant light,’” she read, “‘was seen to shoot forth suddenly shooting out a profound ray across the water to the Rock. Everything was lit up as if by daylight.’” She paused. She saw the bright light from the ships on the drawing-room chair. But here the door opened and Hiscock came in with a note on a salver.
Mrs Malone took it and read it in silence.
“No answer,” she said. From the tone of her mother’s voice Kitty knew that something had happened. She sat holding the note in her hand. Hiscock shut the door.
“Rose is dead!” said Mrs Malone. “Cousin Rose.”
The note lay open on her knee.
“It’s from Edward,” she said.
“Cousin Rose is dead?” said Kitty. A moment before she had been thinking of a bright light on a red rock. Now everything looked dingy. There was a pause. There was silence. Tears stood in her mother’s eyes.
“Just when the children most wanted her,” she said, sticking the needle into her embroidery. She began to roll it up very slowly. Kitty folded The Times and laid it on a little table, slowly, so that it should not crackle. She had only seen Cousin Rose once or twice. She felt awkward.
“Fetch me my engagement book,” said her mother at last. Kitty brought it.
“We must put off our dinner on Monday,” said Mrs Malone, looking through her engagements.
“And the Lathoms’ party on Wednesday,” Kitty murmured, looking over her mother’s shoulder.
“We can’t put off everything,” said her mother sharply, and Kitty felt rebuked.
But there were notes to be written. She wrote them at her mother’s dictation.
Why is she so ready to put off all our engagements? thought Mrs Malone, watching her write. Why doesn’t she enjoy going out with me any more? She glanced through the notes that her daughter brought her.
“Why don’t you take more interest in things here, Kitty?” she said irritably, pushing the letters away.
“Mama, dear—” Kitty began, deprecating the usual argument.
“But what is it you want to do?” her mother persisted. She had put away her embroidery; she was sitting upright, she was looking rather formidable.
“Your father and I only want you to do what you want to do,” she continued.
“Mama, dear—” Kitty repeated.
“You could help your father if it bores you helping me,” said Mrs Malone. “Papa told me the other day that you never come to him now.” She referred, Kitty knew, to his history of the college. He had suggested that she should help him. Again she saw the ink flowing — she had made an awkward brush with her arm — over five generations of Oxford men, obliterating hours of her father’s exquisite penmanship; and could hear him say with his usual courteous irony, “Nature did not intend you to be a scholar, my dear,” as he applied the blotting-paper.
“I know,” she said guiltily. “I haven’t been to Papa lately. But then there’s always something
—” She hesitated.
“Naturally,” said Mrs Malone, “with a man in your father’s position . . .” Kitty sat silent. They both sat silent. They both disliked this petty bickering; they both detested these recurring scenes; and yet they seemed inevitable. Kitty got up, took the letters she had written and put them in the hall.
What does she want? Mrs Malone asked herself, looking up at the picture without seeing it. When I was her age . . . she thought, and smiled. How well she remembered sitting at home on a spring evening like this up in Yorkshire, miles from anywhere. You could hear the beat of a horse’s hoof on the road miles away. She could remember flinging up her bedroom window and looking down on the dark shrubs in the garden and crying out, “Is this life?” And in the winter there was the snow. She could still hear the snow flopping off the trees in the garden. And here was Kitty, living in Oxford, in the midst of everything.
Kitty came back into the drawing-room and yawned very slightly. She raised her hand to her face with an unconscious gesture of fatigue that touched her mother.
“Tired, Kitty?” she said. “It’s been a long day; you look pale.”
“And you look tired too,” said Kitty.
The bells came pushing forth one after another, one on top of another, through the damp, heavy air.
“Go to bed, Kitty,” said Mrs Malone. “There! It’s striking ten.”
“But aren’t you coming too, Mama?” said Kitty, standing beside her chair.
“Your father won’t be back just yet,” said Mrs Malone, putting on her spectacles again.
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 210