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

her uncle, Sir Francis, was

playing his nightly game of whist; it appeared probable that he was

losing.

 

She went up the curving stairway, which represented the one attempt at

ceremony in the otherwise rather dilapidated mansion, and down a

narrow passage until she came to the room whose light she had seen

from the garden. Knocking, she was told to come in. A young man, Henry

Otway, was reading, with his feet on the fender. He had a fine head,

the brow arched in the Elizabethan manner, but the gentle, honest eyes

were rather skeptical than glowing with the Elizabethan vigor. He gave

the impression that he had not yet found the cause which suited his

temperament.

 

He turned, put down his book, and looked at her. He noticed her rather

pale, dew-drenched look, as of one whose mind is not altogether

settled in the body. He had often laid his difficulties before her,

and guessed, in some ways hoped, that perhaps she now had need of him.

At the same time, she carried on her life with such independence that

he scarcely expected any confidence to be expressed in words.

 

“You have fled, too, then?” he said, looking at her cloak. Katharine

had forgotten to remove this token of her star-gazing.

 

“Fled?” she asked. “From whom d’you mean? Oh, the family party. Yes,

it was hot down there, so I went into the garden.”

 

“And aren’t you very cold?” Henry inquired, placing coal on the fire,

drawing a chair up to the grate, and laying aside her cloak. Her

indifference to such details often forced Henry to act the part

generally taken by women in such dealings. It was one of the ties

between them.

 

“Thank you, Henry,” she said. “I’m not disturbing you?”

 

“I’m not here. I’m at Bungay,” he replied. “I’m giving a music lesson

to Harold and Julia. That was why I had to leave the table with the

ladies—I’m spending the night there, and I shan’t be back till late

on Christmas Eve.”

 

“How I wish—” Katharine began, and stopped short. “I think these

parties are a great mistake,” she added briefly, and sighed.

 

“Oh, horrible!” he agreed; and they both fell silent.

 

Her sigh made him look at her. Should he venture to ask her why she

sighed? Was her reticence about her own affairs as inviolable as it

had often been convenient for rather an egoistical young man to think

it? But since her engagement to Rodney, Henry’s feeling towards her

had become rather complex; equally divided between an impulse to hurt

her and an impulse to be tender to her; and all the time he suffered a

curious irritation from the sense that she was drifting away from him

for ever upon unknown seas. On her side, directly Katharine got into

his presence, and the sense of the stars dropped from her, she knew

that any intercourse between people is extremely partial; from the

whole mass of her feelings, only one or two could be selected for

Henry’s inspection, and therefore she sighed. Then she looked at him,

and their eyes meeting, much more seemed to be in common between them

than had appeared possible. At any rate they had a grandfather in

common; at any rate there was a kind of loyalty between them sometimes

found between relations who have no other cause to like each other, as

these two had.

 

“Well, what’s the date of the wedding?” said Henry, the malicious mood

now predominating.

 

“I think some time in March,” she replied.

 

“And afterwards?” he asked.

 

“We take a house, I suppose, somewhere in Chelsea.”

 

“It’s very interesting,” he observed, stealing another look at her.

 

She lay back in her armchair, her feet high upon the side of the

grate, and in front of her, presumably to screen her eyes, she held a

newspaper from which she picked up a sentence or two now and again.

Observing this, Henry remarked:

 

“Perhaps marriage will make you more human.”

 

At this she lowered the newspaper an inch or two, but said nothing.

Indeed, she sat quite silent for over a minute.

 

“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don’t seem to

matter very much, do they?” she said suddenly.

 

“I don’t think I ever do consider things like the stars,” Henry

replied. “I’m not sure that that’s not the explanation, though,” he

added, now observing her steadily.

 

“I doubt whether there is an explanation,” she replied rather

hurriedly, not clearly understanding what he meant.

 

“What? No explanation of anything?” he inquired, with a smile.

 

“Oh, things happen. That’s about all,” she let drop in her casual,

decided way.

 

“That certainly seems to explain some of your actions,” Henry thought

to himself.

 

“One thing’s about as good as another, and one’s got to do something,”

he said aloud, expressing what he supposed to be her attitude, much in

her accent. Perhaps she detected the imitation, for looking gently at

him, she said, with ironical composure:

 

“Well, if you believe that your life must be simple, Henry.”

 

“But I don’t believe it,” he said shortly.

 

“No more do I,” she replied.

 

“What about the stars?” he asked a moment later. “I understand that

you rule your life by the stars?”

 

She let this pass, either because she did not attend to it, or because

the tone was not to her liking.

 

Once more she paused, and then she inquired:

 

“But do you always understand why you do everything? Ought one to

understand? People like my mother understand,” she reflected. “Now I

must go down to them, I suppose, and see what’s happening.”

 

“What could be happening?” Henry protested.

 

“Oh, they may want to settle something,” she replied vaguely, putting

her feet on the ground, resting her chin on her hands, and looking out

of her large dark eyes contemplatively at the fire.

 

“And then there’s William,” she added, as if by an afterthought.

 

Henry very nearly laughed, but restrained himself.

 

“Do they know what coals are made of, Henry?” she asked, a moment

later.

 

“Mares’ tails, I believe,” he hazarded.

 

“Have you ever been down a coal-mine?” she went on.

 

“Don’t let’s talk about coal-mines, Katharine,” he protested. “We

shall probably never see each other again.

 

When you’re married—”

 

Tremendously to his surprise, he saw the tears stand in her eyes.

 

“Why do you all tease me?” she said. “It isn’t kind.”

 

Henry could not pretend that he was altogether ignorant of her

meaning, though, certainly, he had never guessed that she minded the

teasing. But before he knew what to say, her eyes were clear again,

and the sudden crack in the surface was almost filled up.

 

“Things aren’t easy, anyhow,” she stated.

 

Obeying an impulse of genuine affection, Henry spoke.

 

“Promise me, Katharine, that if I can ever help you, you will let me.”

 

She seemed to consider, looking once more into the red of the fire,

and decided to refrain from any explanation.

 

“Yes, I promise that,” she said at length, and Henry felt himself

gratified by her complete sincerity, and began to tell her now about

the coal-mine, in obedience to her love of facts.

 

They were, indeed, descending the shaft in a small cage, and could

hear the picks of the miners, something like the gnawing of rats, in

the earth beneath them, when the door was burst open, without any

knocking.

 

“Well, here you are!” Rodney exclaimed. Both Katharine and Henry

turned round very quickly and rather guiltily. Rodney was in evening

dress. It was clear that his temper was ruffled.

 

“That’s where you’ve been all the time,” he repeated, looking at

Katharine.

 

“I’ve only been here about ten minutes,” she replied.

 

“My dear Katharine, you left the drawing-room over an hour ago.”

 

She said nothing.

 

“Does it very much matter?” Henry asked.

 

Rodney found it hard to be unreasonable in the presence of another

man, and did not answer him.

 

“They don’t like it,” he said. “It isn’t kind to old people to leave

them alone—although I’ve no doubt it’s much more amusing to sit up

here and talk to Henry.”

 

“We were discussing coal-mines,” said Henry urbanely.

 

“Yes. But we were talking about much more interesting things before

that,” said Katharine.

 

From the apparent determination to hurt him with which she spoke,

Henry thought that some sort of explosion on Rodney’s part was about

to take place.

 

“I can quite understand that,” said Rodney, with his little chuckle,

leaning over the back of his chair and tapping the woodwork lightly

with his fingers. They were all silent, and the silence was acutely

uncomfortable to Henry, at least.

 

“Was it very dull, William?” Katharine suddenly asked, with a complete

change of tone and a little gesture of her hand.

 

“Of course it was dull,” William said sulkily.

 

“Well, you stay and talk to Henry, and I’ll go down,” she replied.

 

She rose as she spoke, and as she turned to leave the room, she laid

her hand, with a curiously caressing gesture, upon Rodney’s shoulder.

Instantly Rodney clasped her hand in his, with such an impulse of

emotion that Henry was annoyed, and rather ostentatiously opened a

book.

 

“I shall come down with you,” said William, as she drew back her hand,

and made as if to pass him.

 

“Oh no,” she said hastily. “You stay here and talk to Henry.”

 

“Yes, do,” said Henry, shutting up his book again. His invitation was

polite, without being precisely cordial. Rodney evidently hesitated as

to the course he should pursue, but seeing Katharine at the door, he

exclaimed:

 

“No. I want to come with you.”

 

She looked back, and said in a very commanding tone, and with an

expression of authority upon her face:

 

“It’s useless for you to come. I shall go to bed in ten minutes. Good

night.”

 

She nodded to them both, but Henry could not help noticing that her

last nod was in his direction. Rodney sat down rather heavily.

 

His mortification was so obvious that Henry scarcely liked to open the

conversation with some remark of a literary character. On the other

hand, unless he checked him, Rodney might begin to talk about his

feelings, and irreticence is apt to be extremely painful, at any rate

in prospect. He therefore adopted a middle course; that is to say, he

wrote a note upon the fly-leaf of his book, which ran, “The situation

is becoming most uncomfortable.” This he decorated with those

flourishes and decorative borders which grow of themselves upon these

occasions; and as he did so, he thought to himself that whatever

Katharine’s difficulties might be, they did not justify her behavior.

She had spoken with a kind of brutality which suggested that, whether

it is natural or assumed, women have a peculiar blindness to the

feelings of men.

 

The penciling of this note gave Rodney time to recover himself.

Perhaps, for he was a very vain man, he was more hurt that Henry had

seen him rebuffed than by the rebuff itself. He was in love with

Katharine, and vanity is not decreased but increased by love;

especially, one may hazard, in the presence of one’s own sex. But

Rodney enjoyed the courage which springs from that laughable and

lovable defect, and when he had mastered his first impulse, in some

way to make a fool of himself, he drew inspiration from the perfect

fit of his evening dress. He chose a cigarette, tapped it on the back

of his hand, displayed his exquisite