Virginia Woolf: Night and Day

8. CHAPTER VIII (continued)

He was lying back comfortably in a deep arm-chair smoking a cigar, and ruminating the fruitful question as to whether Coleridge had wished to marry Dorothy Wordsworth, and what, if he had done so, would have been the consequences to him in particular, and to literature in general. When Katharine came in he reflected that he knew what she had come for, and he made a pencil note before he spoke to her. Having done this, he saw that she was reading, and he watched her for a moment without saying anything. She was reading "Isabella and the Pot of Basil," and her mind was full of the Italian hills and the blue daylight, and the hedges set with little rosettes of red and white roses. 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 seems to 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, while her father balanced his finger-tips so judiciously, and seemed to reserve so many of his thoughts for himself.

"He's about done for himself, I should say," he continued. Without saying anything, he took Katharine's letters out of her hand, adjusted his 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 tell her?"

"I shall tell your mother. But I shall tell her that there is nothing whatever 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 at last, rather to himself than to her.