Night and Day - Virginia Woolf (best novels for beginners txt) 📗

CHAPTER V

Denham had no conscious intention of following Katharine, but, seeing

her depart, he took his hat and ran rather more quickly down the

stairs than he would have done if Katharine had not been in front of

him. He overtook a friend of his, by name Harry Sandys, who was going

the same way, and they walked together a few paces behind Katharine

and Rodney.

 

The night was very still, and on such nights, when the traffic thins

away, the walker becomes conscious of the moon in the street, as if

the curtains of the sky had been drawn apart, and the heaven lay bare,

as it does in the country. The air was softly cool, so that people who

had been sitting talking in a crowd found it pleasant to walk a little

before deciding to stop an omnibus or encounter light again in an

underground railway. Sandys, who was a barrister with a philosophic

tendency, took out his pipe, lit it, murmured “hum” and “ha,” and was

silent. The couple in front of them kept their distance accurately,

and appeared, so far as Denham could judge by the way they turned

towards each other, to be talking very constantly. He observed that

when a pedestrian going the opposite way forced them to part they came

together again directly afterwards. Without intending to watch them he

never quite lost sight of the yellow scarf twisted round Katharine’s

head, or the light overcoat which made Rodney look fashionable among

the crowd. At the Strand he supposed that they would separate, but

instead they crossed the road, and took their way down one of the

narrow passages which lead through ancient courts to the river. Among

the crowd of people in the big thoroughfares Rodney seemed merely to

be lending Katharine his escort, but now, when passengers were rare

and the footsteps of the couple were distinctly heard in the silence,

Denham could not help picturing to himself some change in their

conversation. The effect of the light and shadow, which seemed to

increase their height, was to make them mysterious and significant, so

that Denham had no feeling of irritation with Katharine, but rather a

half-dreamy acquiescence in the course of the world. Yes, she did very

well to dream about—but Sandys had suddenly begun to talk. He was a

solitary man who had made his friends at college and always addressed

them as if they were still undergraduates arguing in his room, though

many months or even years had passed in some cases between the last

sentence and the present one. The method was a little singular, but

very restful, for it seemed to ignore completely all accidents of

human life, and to span very deep abysses with a few simple words.

 

On this occasion he began, while they waited for a minute on the edge

of the Strand:

 

“I hear that Bennett has given up his theory of truth.”

 

Denham returned a suitable answer, and he proceeded to explain how

this decision had been arrived at, and what changes it involved in the

philosophy which they both accepted. Meanwhile Katharine and Rodney

drew further ahead, and Denham kept, if that is the right expression

for an involuntary action, one filament of his mind upon them, while

with the rest of his intelligence he sought to understand what Sandys

was saying.

 

As they passed through the courts thus talking, Sandys laid the tip of

his stick upon one of the stones forming a time-worn arch, and struck

it meditatively two or three times in order to illustrate something

very obscure about the complex nature of one’s apprehension of facts.

During the pause which this necessitated, Katharine and Rodney turned

the corner and disappeared. For a moment Denham stopped involuntarily

in his sentence, and continued it with a sense of having lost

something.

 

Unconscious that they were observed, Katharine and Rodney had come out

on the Embankment. When they had crossed the road, Rodney slapped his

hand upon the stone parapet above the river and exclaimed:

 

“I promise I won’t say another word about it, Katharine! But do stop a

minute and look at the moon upon the water.”

 

Katharine paused, looked up and down the river, and snuffed the air.

 

“I’m sure one can smell the sea, with the wind blowing this way,” she

said.

 

They stood silent for a few moments while the river shifted in its

bed, and the silver and red lights which were laid upon it were torn

by the current and joined together again. Very far off up the river a

steamer hooted with its hollow voice of unspeakable melancholy, as if

from the heart of lonely mist-shrouded voyagings.

 

“Ah!” Rodney cried, striking his hand once more upon the balustrade,

“why can’t one say how beautiful it all is? Why am I condemned for

ever, Katharine, to feel what I can’t express? And the things I can

give there’s no use in my giving. Trust me, Katharine,” he added

hastily, “I won’t speak of it again. But in the presence of beauty—

look at the iridescence round the moon!—one feels—one feels—Perhaps

if you married me—I’m half a poet, you see, and I can’t pretend not

to feel what I do feel. If I could write—ah, that would be another

matter. I shouldn’t bother you to marry me then, Katharine.”

 

He spoke these disconnected sentences rather abruptly, with his eyes

alternately upon the moon and upon the stream.

 

“But for me I suppose you would recommend marriage?” said Katharine,

with her eyes fixed on the moon.

 

“Certainly I should. Not for you only, but for all women. Why, you’re

nothing at all without it; you’re only half alive; using only half

your faculties; you must feel that for yourself. That is why—” Here

he stopped himself, and they began to walk slowly along the

Embankment, the moon fronting them.

 

“With how sad steps she climbs the sky,

How silently and with how wan a face,”

 

Rodney quoted.

 

“I’ve been told a great many unpleasant things about myself to-night,”

Katharine stated, without attending to him. “Mr. Denham seems to think

it his mission to lecture me, though I hardly know him. By the way,

William, you know him; tell me, what is he like?”

 

William drew a deep sigh.

 

“We may lecture you till we’re blue in the face—”

 

“Yes—but what’s he like?”

 

“And we write sonnets to your eyebrows, you cruel practical creature.

Denham?” he added, as Katharine remained silent. “A good fellow, I

should think. He cares, naturally, for the right sort of things, I

expect. But you mustn’t marry him, though. He scolded you, did he—

what did he say?”

 

“What happens with Mr. Denham is this: He comes to tea. I do all I can

to put him at his ease. He merely sits and scowls at me. Then I show

him our manuscripts. At this he becomes really angry, and tells me

I’ve no business to call myself a middle-class woman. So we part in a

huff; and next time we meet, which was to-night, he walks straight up

to me, and says, ‘Go to the Devil!’ That’s the sort of behavior my

mother complains of. I want to know, what does it mean?”

 

She paused and, slackening her steps, looked at the lighted train

drawing itself smoothly over Hungerford Bridge.

 

“It means, I should say, that he finds you chilly and unsympathetic.”

 

Katharine laughed with round, separate notes of genuine amusement.

 

“It’s time I jumped into a cab and hid myself in my own house,” she

exclaimed.

 

“Would your mother object to my being seen with you? No one could

possibly recognize us, could they?” Rodney inquired, with some

solicitude.

 

Katharine looked at him, and perceiving that his solicitude was

genuine, she laughed again, but with an ironical note in her laughter.

 

“You may laugh, Katharine, but I can tell you that if any of your

friends saw us together at this time of night they would talk about

it, and I should find that very disagreeable. But why do you laugh?”

 

“I don’t know. Because you’re such a queer mixture, I think. You’re

half poet and half old maid.”

 

“I know I always seem to you highly ridiculous. But I can’t help

having inherited certain traditions and