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

trying to put them into

practice.”

 

“Nonsense, William. You may come of the oldest family in Devonshire,

but that’s no reason why you should mind being seen alone with me on

the Embankment.”

 

“I’m ten years older than you are, Katharine, and I know more of the

world than you do.”

 

“Very well. Leave me and go home.”

 

Rodney looked back over his shoulder and perceived that they were

being followed at a short distance by a taxicab, which evidently

awaited his summons. Katharine saw it, too, and exclaimed:

 

“Don’t call that cab for me, William. I shall walk.”

 

“Nonsense, Katharine; you’ll do nothing of the kind. It’s nearly

twelve o’clock, and we’ve walked too far as it is.”

 

Katharine laughed and walked on so quickly that both Rodney and the

taxicab had to increase their pace to keep up with her.

 

“Now, William,” she said, “if people see me racing along the

Embankment like this they WILL talk. You had far better say

good-night, if you don’t want people to talk.”

 

At this William beckoned, with a despotic gesture, to the cab with one

hand, and with the other he brought Katharine to a standstill.

 

“Don’t let the man see us struggling, for God’s sake!” he murmured.

Katharine stood for a moment quite still.

 

“There’s more of the old maid in you than the poet,” she observed

briefly.

 

William shut the door sharply, gave the address to the driver, and

turned away, lifting his hat punctiliously high in farewell to the

invisible lady.

 

He looked back after the cab twice, suspiciously, half expecting that

she would stop it and dismount; but it bore her swiftly on, and was

soon out of sight. William felt in the mood for a short soliloquy of

indignation, for Katharine had contrived to exasperate him in more

ways than one.

 

“Of all the unreasonable, inconsiderate creatures I’ve ever known,

she’s the worst!” he exclaimed to himself, striding back along the

Embankment. “Heaven forbid that I should ever make a fool of myself

with her again. Why, I’d sooner marry the daughter of my landlady than

Katharine Hilbery! She’d leave me not a moment’s peace—and she’d

never understand me—never, never, never!”

 

Uttered aloud and with vehemence so that the stars of Heaven might

hear, for there was no human being at hand, these sentiments sounded

satisfactorily irrefutable. Rodney quieted down, and walked on in

silence, until he perceived some one approaching him, who had

something, either in his walk or his dress, which proclaimed that he

was one of William’s acquaintances before it was possible to tell

which of them he was. It was Denham who, having parted from Sandys at

the bottom of his staircase, was now walking to the Tube at Charing

Cross, deep in the thoughts which his talk with Sandys had suggested.

He had forgotten the meeting at Mary Datchet’s rooms, he had forgotten

Rodney, and metaphors and Elizabethan drama, and could have sworn that

he had forgotten Katharine Hilbery, too, although that was more

disputable. His mind was scaling the highest pinnacles of its alps,

where there was only starlight and the untrodden snow. He cast strange

eyes upon Rodney, as they encountered each other beneath a lamp-post.

 

“Ha!” Rodney exclaimed.

 

If he had been in full possession of his mind, Denham would probably

have passed on with a salutation. But the shock of the interruption

made him stand still, and before he knew what he was doing, he had

turned and was walking with Rodney in obedience to Rodney’s invitation

to come to his rooms and have something to drink. Denham had no wish

to drink with Rodney, but he followed him passively enough. Rodney was

gratified by this obedience. He felt inclined to be communicative with

this silent man, who possessed so obviously all the good masculine

qualities in which Katharine now seemed lamentably deficient.

 

“You do well, Denham,” he began impulsively, “to have nothing to do

with young women. I offer you my experience—if one trusts them one

invariably has cause to repent. Not that I have any reason at this

moment,” he added hastily, “to complain of them. It’s a subject that

crops up now and again for no particular reason. Miss Datchet, I dare

say, is one of the exceptions. Do you like Miss Datchet?”

 

These remarks indicated clearly enough that Rodney’s nerves were in a

state of irritation, and Denham speedily woke to the situation of the

world as it had been one hour ago. He had last seen Rodney walking

with Katharine. He could not help regretting the eagerness with which

his mind returned to these interests, and fretted him with the old

trivial anxieties. He sank in his own esteem. Reason bade him break

from Rodney, who clearly tended to become confidential, before he had

utterly lost touch with the problems of high philosophy. He looked

along the road, and marked a lamp-post at a distance of some hundred

yards, and decided that he would part from Rodney when they reached

this point.

 

“Yes, I like Mary; I don’t see how one could help liking her,” he

remarked cautiously, with his eye on the lamp-post.

 

“Ah, Denham, you’re so different from me. You never give yourself

away. I watched you this evening with Katharine Hilbery. My instinct

is to trust the person I’m talking to. That’s why I’m always being

taken in, I suppose.”

 

Denham seemed to be pondering this statement of Rodney’s, but, as a

matter of fact, he was hardly conscious of Rodney and his revelations,

and was only concerned to make him mention Katharine again before they

reached the lamp-post.

 

“Who’s taken you in now?” he asked. “Katharine Hilbery?”

 

Rodney stopped and once more began beating a kind of rhythm, as if he

were marking a phrase in a symphony, upon the smooth stone balustrade

of the Embankment.

 

“Katharine Hilbery,” he repeated, with a curious little chuckle. “No,

Denham, I have no illusions about that young woman. I think I made

that plain to her to-night. But don’t run away with a false

impression,” he continued eagerly, turning and linking his arm through

Denham’s, as though to prevent him from escaping; and, thus compelled,

Denham passed the monitory lamp-post, to which, in passing, he

breathed an excuse, for how could he break away when Rodney’s arm was

actually linked in his? “You must not think that I have any bitterness

against her—far from it. It’s not altogether her fault, poor girl.

She lives, you know, one of those odious, self-centered lives—at

least, I think them odious for a woman—feeding her wits upon

everything, having control of everything, getting far too much her own

way at home—spoilt, in a sense, feeling that every one is at her

feet, and so not realizing how she hurts—that is, how rudely she

behaves to people who haven’t all her advantages. Still, to do her

justice, she’s no fool,” he added, as if to warn Denham not to take

any liberties. “She has taste. She has sense. She can understand you

when you talk to her. But she’s a woman, and there’s an end of it,” he

added, with another little chuckle, and dropped Denham’s arm.

 

“And did you tell her all this to-night?” Denham asked.

 

“Oh dear me, no. I should never think of telling Katharine the truth

about herself. That wouldn’t do at all. One has to be in an attitude

of adoration in order to get on with Katharine.

 

“Now I’ve learnt that she’s refused to marry him why don’t I go home?”

Denham thought to himself. But he went on walking beside Rodney, and

for a time they did not speak, though Rodney hummed snatches of a tune

out of an opera by Mozart. A feeling of contempt and liking combine

very naturally in the mind of one to whom another has just spoken

unpremeditatedly, revealing rather more of his private feelings than

he intended to reveal. Denham began to wonder what sort of person

Rodney was, and at the same time Rodney began to think about Denham.

 

“You’re a slave like me, I suppose?” he asked.

 

“A solicitor, yes.”

 

“I sometimes wonder why we don’t chuck it. Why don’t you emigrate,

Denham? I should have thought that would suit you.”

 

“I’ve a family.”

 

“I’m often on the point of going myself. And then I know I couldn’t

live without this”—and he waved his hand towards the City of London,

which wore, at this moment, the appearance of a town cut out of gray-blue cardboard, and pasted flat against the sky, which was of a deeper

blue.

 

“There are one or two people I’m fond of, and there’s a little good

music, and a few pictures, now and then—just enough to keep one

dangling about here. Ah, but I couldn’t live with savages! Are you

fond of books? Music? Pictures? D’you care at all for first editions?

I’ve got a few nice things up here, things I pick up cheap, for I

can’t afford to give what they ask.”

 

They had reached a small court of high eighteenth-century houses, in

one of which Rodney had his rooms. They climbed a very steep

staircase, through whose uncurtained windows the moonlight fell,

illuminating the banisters with their twisted pillars, and the piles

of plates set on the window-sills, and jars half-full of milk.

Rodney’s rooms were small, but the sitting-room window looked out into

a courtyard, with its flagged pavement, and its single tree, and

across to the flat red-brick fronts of the opposite houses, which

would not have surprised Dr. Johnson, if he had come out of his grave

for a turn in the moonlight. Rodney lit his lamp, pulled his curtains,

offered Denham a chair, and, flinging the manuscript of his paper on

the Elizabethan use of Metaphor on to the table, exclaimed:

 

“Oh dear me, what a waste of time! But it’s over now, and so we may

think no more about it.”

 

He then busied himself very dexterously in lighting a fire, producing

glasses, whisky, a cake, and cups and saucers. He put on a faded

crimson dressing-gown, and a pair of red slippers, and advanced to

Denham with a tumbler in one hand and a well-burnished book in the

other.

 

“The Baskerville Congreve,” said Rodney, offering it to his guest. “I

couldn’t read him in a cheap edition.”

 

When he was seen thus among his books and his valuables, amiably

anxious to make his visitor comfortable, and moving about with

something of the dexterity and grace of a Persian cat, Denham relaxed

his critical attitude, and felt more at home with Rodney than he would

have done with many men better known to him. Rodney’s room was the

room of a person who cherishes a great many personal tastes, guarding

them from the rough blasts of the public with scrupulous attention.

His papers and his books rose in jagged mounds on table and floor,

round which he skirted with nervous care lest his dressing-gown might

disarrange them ever so slightly. On a chair stood a stack of

photographs of statues and pictures, which it was his habit to

exhibit, one by one, for the space of a day or two. The books on his

shelves were as orderly as regiments of soldiers, and the backs of

them shone like so many bronze beetle-wings; though, if you took one

from its place you saw a shabbier volume behind it, since space was

limited. An oval Venetian mirror stood above the fireplace, and

reflected duskily in its spotted depths the faint yellow and crimson

of a jarful of tulips which stood among the letters and pipes and

cigarettes upon the mantelpiece. A small piano occupied a corner of

the room,