farther down the stairs, as if his visitor had decided to
withdraw. He rose, opened the door with unnecessary
abruptness, and waited on the landing. The person stopped
simultaneously half a flight downstairs.
20
Virginia Woolf
“Ralph?” said a voice, inquiringly.
“Joan?”
“I was coming up, but I saw your notice.”
“Well, come along in, then.” He concealed his desire
beneath a tone as grudging as he could make it.
Joan came in, but she was careful to show, by standing
upright with one hand upon the mantelpiece, that she
was only there for a definite purpose, which discharged,
she would go.
She was older than Ralph by some three or four years.
Her face was round but worn, and expressed that tolerant
but anxious good humor which is the special attribute of
elder sisters in large families. Her pleasant brown eyes
resembled Ralph’s, save in expression, for whereas he
seemed to look straightly and keenly at one object, she
appeared to be in the habit of considering everything
from many different points of view. This made her appear
his elder by more years than existed in fact between them.
Her gaze rested for a moment or two upon the rook. She
then said, without any preface:
“It’s about Charles and Uncle John’s offer… . Mother’s
been talking to me. She says she can’t afford to pay for
him after this term. She says she’ll have to ask for an
overdraft as it is.”
“That’s simply not true,” said Ralph.
“No. I thought not. But she won’t believe me when I
say it.”
Ralph, as if he could foresee the length of this familiar
argument, drew up a chair for his sister and sat down
himself.
“I’m not interrupting?” she inquired.
Ralph shook his head, and for a time they sat silent.
The lines curved themselves in semicircles above their
eyes.
“She doesn’t understand that one’s got to take risks,”
he observed, finally.
“I believe mother would take risks if she knew that
Charles was the sort of boy to profit by it.”
“He’s got brains, hasn’t he?” said Ralph. His tone had
taken on that shade of pugnacity which suggested to his
sister that some personal grievance drove him to take
the line he did. She wondered what it might be, but at
21
Night and Day
once recalled her mind, and assented.
“In some ways he’s fearfully backward, though, compared
with what you were at his age. And he’s difficult at
home, too. He makes Molly slave for him.”
Ralph made a sound which belittled this particular argument.
It was plain to Joan that she had struck one of
her brother’s perverse moods, and he was going to oppose
whatever his mother said. He called her “she,” which
was a proof of it. She sighed involuntarily, and the sigh
annoyed Ralph, and he exclaimed with irritation:
“It’s pretty hard lines to stick a boy into an office at
seventeen!”
“Nobody wants to stick him into an office,” she said.
She, too, was becoming annoyed. She had spent the
whole of the afternoon discussing wearisome details of
education and expense with her mother, and she had come
to her brother for help, encouraged, rather irrationally,
to expect help by the fact that he had been out somewhere,
she didn’t know and didn’t mean to ask where, all
the afternoon.
Ralph was fond of his sister, and her irritation made
him think how unfair it was that all these burdens should
be laid on her shoulders.
“The truth is,” he observed gloomily, “that I ought to
have accepted Uncle John’s offer. I should have been
making six hundred a year by this time.”
“I don’t think that for a moment,” Joan replied quickly,
repenting of her annoyance. “The question, to my mind, is,
whether we couldn’t cut down our expenses in some way.”
“A smaller house?”
“Fewer servants, perhaps.”
Neither brother nor sister spoke with much conviction,
and after reflecting for a moment what these proposed
reforms in a strictly economical household meant, Ralph
announced very decidedly:
“It’s out of the question.”
It was out of the question that she should put any
more household work upon herself. No, the hardship must
fall on him, for he was determined that his family should
have as many chances of distinguishing themselves as
other families had—as the Hilberys had, for example. He
believed secretly and rather defiantly, for it was a fact
22
Virginia Woolf
not capable of proof, that there was something very re
markable about his family.
“If mother won’t run risks—”
“You really can’t expect her to sell out again.”
“She ought to look upon it as an investment; but if she
won’t, we must find some other way, that’s all.”
A threat was contained in this sentence, and Joan knew,
without asking, what the threat was. In the course of his
professional life, which now extended over six or seven
years, Ralph had saved, perhaps, three or four hundred
pounds. Considering the sacrifices he had made in order
to put by this sum it always amazed Joan to find that he
used it to gamble with, buying shares and selling them
again, increasing it sometimes, sometimes diminishing
it, and always running the risk of losing every penny of it
in a day’s disaster. But although she wondered, she could
not help loving him the better for his odd combination of
Spartan self-control and what appeared to her romantic
and childish folly. Ralph interested her more than any
one else in the world, and she often broke off in the
middle of one of these economic discussions, in spite of
their gravity, to consider some fresh aspect of his character.
“I think you’d be foolish to risk your money on poor old
Charles,” she observed. “Fond as I am of him, he doesn’t
seem to me exactly brilliant… . Besides, why should you
be sacrificed?”
“My dear Joan,” Ralph exclaimed, stretching himself
out with a gesture of impatience, “don’t you see that
we’ve all got to be sacrificed? What’s the use of denying
it? What’s the use of struggling against it? So it always
has been, so it always will be. We’ve got no money and
we never shall have any money. We shall just turn round
in the mill every day of our lives until we drop and die,
worn out, as most people do, when one comes to think
of it.”
Joan looked at him, opened her lips as if to speak, and
closed them again. Then she said, very tentatively:
“Aren’t you happy, Ralph?”
“No. Are you? Perhaps I’m as happy as most people,
though. God knows whether I’m happy or not. What is
happiness?”
23
Night and Day
He glanced with half a smile, in spite of his gloomy
irritation, at his sister. She looked, as usual, as if she
were weighing one thing with another, and balancing
them together before she made up her mind.
“Happiness,” she remarked at length enigmatically,
rather as if she were sampling the word, and then she
paused. She paused for a considerable space, as if she
were considering happiness in all its bearings. “Hilda was
here to-day,” she suddenly resumed, as if they had never
mentioned happiness. “She brought Bobbie—he’s a fine
boy now.” Ralph observed, with an amusement that had
a tinge of irony in it, that she was now going to sidle
away quickly from this dangerous approach to intimacy
on to topics of general and family interest. Nevertheless,
he reflected, she was the only one of his family with
whom he found it possible to discuss happiness, although
he might very well have discussed happiness with Miss
Hilbery at their first meeting. He looked critically at Joan,
and wished that she did not look so provincial or suburban
in her high green dress with the faded trimming, so
patient, and almost resigned. He began to wish to tell
her about the Hilberys in order to abuse them, for in the
miniature battle which so often rages between two quickly
following impressions of life, the life of the Hilberys was
getting the better of the life of the Denhams in his mind,
and he wanted to assure himself that there was some
quality in which Joan infinitely surpassed Miss Hilbery.
He should have felt that his own sister was more original,
and had greater vitality than Miss Hilbery had; but
his main impression of Katharine now was of a person of
great vitality and composure; and at the moment he could
not perceive what poor dear Joan had gained from the
fact that she was the granddaughter of a man who kept a
shop, and herself earned her own living. The infinite
dreariness and sordidness of their life oppressed him in
spite of his fundamental belief that, as a family, they
were somehow remarkable.
“Shall you talk to mother?” Joan inquired. “Because,
you see, the thing’s got to be settled, one way or another.
Charles must write to Uncle John if he’s going
there.”
Ralph sighed impatiently.
24
Virginia Woolf
“I suppose it doesn’t much matter either way,” he exclaimed.
“He’s doomed to misery in the long run.”
A slight flush came into Joan’s cheek.
“You know you’re talking nonsense,” she said. “It doesn’t
hurt any one to have to earn their own living. I’m very
glad I have to earn mine.”
Ralph was pleased that she should feel this, and wished
her to continue, but he went on, perversely enough.
“Isn’t that only because you’ve forgotten how to enjoy
yourself? You never have time for anything decent—”
“As for instance?”
“Well, going for walks, or music, or books, or seeing
interesting people. You never do anything that’s really
worth doing any more than I do.”
“I always think you could make this room much nicer, if
you liked,” she observed.
“What does it matter what sort of room I have when
I’m forced to spend all the best years of my life drawing
up deeds in an office?”
“You said two days ago that you found the law so interesting.”
“So it is if one could afford to know anything about it.”
(“That’s Herbert only just going to bed now,” Joan interposed,
as a door on the landing slammed vigorously.
“And then he won’t get up in the morning.”)
Ralph looked at the ceiling, and shut his lips closely
together. Why, he wondered, could Joan never for one
moment detach her mind from the details of domestic
life? It seemed to him that she was getting more and
more enmeshed in them, and capable of shorter and less
frequent flights into the outer world, and yet she was
only thirty-three.
“D’you ever pay calls now?” he asked abruptly.
“I don’t often have the time. Why do you ask?”
“It might be a good thing, to get to know new people,
that’s all.”
“Poor Ralph!” said Joan suddenly, with a smile. “You
think your sister’s getting very old and very dull—that’s
it, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think anything of the kind,” he said stoutly,
but he flushed. “But you lead a dog’s life, Joan. When
you’re not working in an office, you’re worrying over the
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Night and Day
rest of us. And I’m not much good to you, I’m afraid.”
Joan rose, and stood for a moment warming her hands,
and, apparently, meditating as to whether she should say
anything more or not. A feeling of great intimacy united
the brother and sister, and the semicircular lines above
their eyebrows disappeared. No, there was nothing more
to be said on either side. Joan brushed her brother’s head
with her hand as she passed him, murmured good night,
and left the room. For some minutes after she had gone
Ralph lay quiescent, resting his head on his hand, but
gradually his eyes filled with thought, and the line reappeared
on his brow, as the pleasant impression of companionship
and ancient sympathy waned, and he was left
to think on alone.
After a time he opened his book, and read on steadily,
glancing once or twice at his watch, as if he had set
himself a task to be accomplished in a certain measure of
time. Now and then he heard voices in the house, and the
closing of bedroom doors, which showed that the building,
at the top of which he sat, was inhabited in every
one of its cells. When midnight struck, Ralph shut his
book, and with a candle in his hand, descended to the
ground floor, to ascertain that all lights were extinct and
all doors locked. It was a threadbare, well-worn house
that he thus examined, as if the inmates had grazed down
all luxuriance and plenty to the verge of decency; and in
the night, bereft of life, bare places and ancient blemishes
were unpleasantly visible. Katharine Hilbery, he
thought, would condemn it off-hand.
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Virginia Woolf
CHAPTER III
Denham had accused Katharine Hilbery of belonging to
one of the most distinguished families in England, and if
any one will take the trouble to consult Mr. Galton’s “Hereditary
Genius,” he will find that this assertion is not far
from the truth. The Alardyces, the Hilberys, the
Millingtons, and the Otways seem to prove that intellect
is a possession which can be tossed from one member of
a certain group to another almost indefinitely, and with
apparent certainty that the brilliant gift will be safely
caught and held by nine out of ten of the privileged race.
They had been conspicuous judges and admirals, lawyers
and servants of the State for some years before the richness
of the soil culminated in the rarest flower that any
family can boast, a great writer, a poet eminent among
the poets of England, a Richard Alardyce; and having produced
him, they proved once more the amazing virtues of
their race by proceeding unconcernedly again with their
usual task of breeding distinguished men. They had sailed
with Sir John Franklin to the North Pole, and ridden with
Havelock to the Relief of Lucknow, and when they were
not lighthouses firmly based on rock for the guidance of
their generation, they were steady, serviceable candles,
illuminating the ordinary chambers of daily life. Whatever
