Virginia Woolf: Night and Day

24. CHAPTER XXIV (continued)

"Katharine! I've hit upon a brilliant idea!" Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed--"to lay out, say, a hundred pounds or so on copies of Shakespeare, and give them to working men. Some of your clever friends who get up meetings might help us, Katharine. And that might lead to a playhouse, where we could all take parts. You'd be Rosalind--but you've a dash of the old nurse in you. Your father's Hamlet, come to years of discretion; and I'm--well, I'm a bit of them all; I'm quite a large bit of the fool, but the fools in Shakespeare say all the clever things. Now who shall William be? A hero? Hotspur? Henry the Fifth? No, William's got a touch of Hamlet in him, too. I can fancy that William talks to himself when he's alone. Ah, Katharine, you must say very beautiful things when you're together!" she added wistfully, with a glance at her daughter, who had told her nothing about the dinner the night before.

"Oh, we talk a lot of nonsense," said Katharine, hiding her slip of paper as her mother stood by her, and spreading the old letter about Shelley in front of her.

"It won't seem to you nonsense in ten years' time," said Mrs. Hilbery. "Believe me, Katharine, you'll look back on these days afterwards; you'll remember all the silly things you've said; and you'll find that your life has been built on them. The best of life is built on what we say when we're in love. It isn't nonsense, Katharine," she urged, "it's the truth, it's the only truth."

Katharine was on the point of interrupting her mother, and then she was on the point of confiding in her. They came strangely close together sometimes. But, while she hesitated and sought for words not too direct, her mother had recourse to Shakespeare, and turned page after page, set upon finding some quotation which said all this about love far, far better than she could. Accordingly, Katharine did nothing but scrub one of her circles an intense black with her pencil, in the midst of which process the telephone-bell rang, and she left the room to answer it.