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

the fauna included

certainly flamingoes and, possibly, camels. They strolled on,

refashioning these legendary gardens. She was, as he felt, glad merely

to stroll and loiter and let her fancy touch upon anything her eyes

encountered—a bush, a park-keeper, a decorated goose—as if the

relaxation soothed her. The warmth of the afternoon, the first of

spring, tempted them to sit upon a seat in a glade of beech-trees,

with forest drives striking green paths this way and that around them.

She sighed deeply.

 

“It’s so peaceful,” she said, as if in explanation of her sigh. Not a

single person was in sight, and the stir of the wind in the branches,

that sound so seldom heard by Londoners, seemed to her as if wafted

from fathomless oceans of sweet air in the distance.

 

While she breathed and looked, Denham was engaged in uncovering with

the point of his stick a group of green spikes half smothered by the

dead leaves. He did this with the peculiar touch of the botanist. In

naming the little green plant to her he used the Latin name, thus

disguising some flower familiar even to Chelsea, and making her

exclaim, half in amusement, at his knowledge. Her own ignorance was

vast, she confessed. What did one call that tree opposite, for

instance, supposing one condescended to call it by its English name?

Beech or elm or sycamore? It chanced, by the testimony of a dead leaf,

to be oak; and a little attention to a diagram which Denham proceeded

to draw upon an envelope soon put Katharine in possession of some of

the fundamental distinctions between our British trees. She then asked

him to inform her about flowers. To her they were variously shaped and

colored petals, poised, at different seasons of the year, upon very

similar green stalks; but to him they were, in the first instance,

bulbs or seeds, and later, living things endowed with sex, and pores,

and susceptibilities which adapted themselves by all manner of

ingenious devices to live and beget life, and could be fashioned squat

or tapering, flame-colored or pale, pure or spotted, by processes

which might reveal the secrets of human existence. Denham spoke with

increasing ardor of a hobby which had long been his in secret. No

discourse could have worn a more welcome sound in Katharine’s ears.

For weeks she had heard nothing that made such pleasant music in her

mind. It wakened echoes in all those remote fastnesses of her being

where loneliness had brooded so long undisturbed.

 

She wished he would go on for ever talking of plants, and showing her

how science felt not quite blindly for the law that ruled their

endless variations. A law that might be inscrutable but was certainly

omnipotent appealed to her at the moment, because she could find

nothing like it in possession of human lives. Circumstances had long

forced her, as they force most women in the flower of youth, to

consider, painfully and minutely, all that part of life which is

conspicuously without order; she had had to consider moods and wishes,

degrees of liking or disliking, and their effect upon the destiny of

people dear to her; she had been forced to deny herself any

contemplation of that other part of life where thought constructs a

destiny which is independent of human beings. As Denham spoke, she

followed his words and considered their bearing with an easy vigor

which spoke of a capacity long hoarded and unspent. The very trees and

the green merging into the blue distance became symbols of the vast

external world which recks so little of the happiness, of the

marriages or deaths of individuals. In order to give her examples of

what he was saying, Denham led the way, first to the Rock Garden, and

then to the Orchid House.

 

For him there was safety in the direction which the talk had taken.

His emphasis might come from feelings more personal than those science

roused in him, but it was disguised, and naturally he found it easy to

expound and explain. Nevertheless, when he saw Katharine among the

orchids, her beauty strangely emphasized by the fantastic plants,

which seemed to peer and gape at her from striped hoods and fleshy

throats, his ardor for botany waned, and a more complex feeling

replaced it. She fell silent. The orchids seemed to suggest absorbing

reflections. In defiance of the rules she stretched her ungloved hand

and touched one. The sight of the rubies upon her finger affected him

so disagreeably that he started and turned away. But next moment he

controlled himself; he looked at her taking in one strange shape after

another with the contemplative, considering gaze of a person who sees

not exactly what is before him, but gropes in regions that lie beyond

it. The far-away look entirely lacked self-consciousness. Denham

doubted whether she remembered his presence. He could recall himself,

of course, by a word or a movement—but why? She was happier thus. She

needed nothing that he could give her. And for him, too, perhaps, it

was best to keep aloof, only to know that she existed, to preserve

what he already had—perfect, remote, and unbroken. Further, her still

look, standing among the orchids in that hot atmosphere, strangely

illustrated some scene that he had imagined in his room at home. The

sight, mingling with his recollection, kept him silent when the door

was shut and they were walking on again.

 

But though she did not speak, Katharine had an uneasy sense that

silence on her part was selfishness. It was selfish of her to

continue, as she wished to do, a discussion of subjects not remotely

connected with any human beings. She roused herself to consider their

exact position upon the turbulent map of the emotions. Oh yes—it was

a question whether Ralph Denham should live in the country and write a

book; it was getting late; they must waste no more time; Cassandra

arrived to-night for dinner; she flinched and roused herself, and

discovered that she ought to be holding something in her hands. But

they were empty. She held them out with an exclamation.

 

“I’ve left my bag somewhere—where?” The gardens had no points of the

compass, so far as she was concerned. She had been walking for the

most part on grass—that was all she knew. Even the road to the Orchid

House had now split itself into three. But there was no bag in the

Orchid House. It must, therefore, have been left upon the seat. They

retraced their steps in the preoccupied manner of people who have to

think about something that is lost. What did this bag look like? What

did it contain?

 

“A purse—a ticket—some letters, papers,” Katharine counted, becoming

more agitated as she recalled the list. Denham went on quickly in

advance of her, and she heard him shout that he had found it before

she reached the seat. In order to make sure that all was safe she

spread the contents on her knee. It was a queer collection, Denham

thought, gazing with the deepest interest. Loose gold coins were

tangled in a narrow strip of lace; there were letters which somehow

suggested the extreme of intimacy; there were two or three keys, and

lists of commissions against which crosses were set at intervals. But

she did not seem satisfied until she had made sure of a certain paper

so folded that Denham could not judge what it contained. In her relief

and gratitude she began at once to say that she had been thinking over

what Denham had told her of his plans.

 

He cut her short. “Don’t let’s discuss that dreary business.”

 

“But I thought—”

 

“It’s a dreary business. I ought never to have bothered you—”

 

“Have you decided, then?”

 

He made an impatient sound. “It’s not a thing that matters.”

 

She could only say rather flatly, “Oh!”

 

“I mean it matters to me, but it matters to no one else. Anyhow,” he

continued, more amiably, “I see no reason why you should be bothered

with other people’s nuisances.”

 

She supposed that she had let him see too clearly her weariness of

this side of life.

 

“I’m afraid I’ve been absent-minded,” she began, remembering how often

William had brought this charge against her.

 

“You have a good deal to make you absent-minded,” he replied.

 

“Yes,” she replied, flushing. “No,” she contradicted herself. “Nothing

particular, I mean. But I was thinking about plants. I was enjoying

myself. In fact, I’ve seldom enjoyed an afternoon more. But I want to

hear what you’ve settled, if you don’t mind telling me.”

 

“Oh, it’s all settled,” he replied. “I’m going to this infernal

cottage to write a worthless book.”

 

“How I envy you,” she replied, with the utmost sincerity.

 

“Well, cottages are to be had for fifteen shillings a week.”

 

“Cottages are to be had—yes,” she replied. “The question is—” She

checked herself. “Two rooms are all I should want,” she continued,

with a curious sigh; “one for eating, one for sleeping. Oh, but I

should like another, a large one at the top, and a little garden where

one could grow flowers. A path—so—down to a river, or up to a wood,

and the sea not very far off, so that one could hear the waves at

night. Ships just vanishing on the horizon—” She broke off. “Shall

you be near the sea?”

 

“My notion of perfect happiness,” he began, not replying to her

question, “is to live as you’ve said.”

 

“Well, now you can. You will work, I suppose,” she continued; “you’ll

work all the morning and again after tea and perhaps at night. You

won’t have people always coming about you to interrupt.”

 

“How far can one live alone?” he asked. “Have you tried ever?”

 

“Once for three weeks,” she replied. “My father and mother were in

Italy, and something happened so that I couldn’t join them. For three

weeks I lived entirely by myself, and the only person I spoke to was a

stranger in a shop where I lunched—a man with a beard. Then I went

back to my room by myself and—well, I did what I liked. It doesn’t

make me out an amiable character, I’m afraid,” she added, “but I can’t

endure living with other people. An occasional man with a beard is

interesting; he’s detached; he lets me go my way, and we know we shall

never meet again. Therefore, we are perfectly sincere—a thing not

possible with one’s friends.”

 

“Nonsense,” Denham replied abruptly.

 

“Why ‘nonsense’?” she inquired.

 

“Because you don’t mean what you say,” he expostulated.

 

“You’re very positive,” she said, laughing and looking at him. How

arbitrary, hot-tempered, and imperious he was! He had asked her to

come to Kew to advise him; he then told her that he had settled the

question already; he then proceeded to find fault with her. He was the

very opposite of William Rodney, she thought; he was shabby, his

clothes were badly made, he was ill versed in the amenities of life;

he was tongue-tied and awkward to the verge of obliterating his real

character. He was awkwardly silent; he was awkwardly emphatic. And yet

she liked him.

 

“I don’t mean what I say,” she repeated good-humoredly. “Well—?”

 

“I doubt whether you make absolute sincerity your standard in life,”

he answered significantly.

 

She flushed. He had penetrated at once to the weak spot—her

engagement, and had reason for what he said. He was not altogether

justified now, at any rate, she was glad to remember; but she could

not enlighten him and must bear his insinuations, though from the lips

of a man who had behaved as he had behaved their force should not have

been sharp. Nevertheless,