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

an expedition. But Cassandra

rejected Hampton Court, Greenwich, Richmond, and Kew in favor of the

Zoological Gardens. She had once trifled with the psychology of

animals, and still knew something about inherited characteristics. On

Sunday afternoon, therefore, Katharine, Cassandra, and William Rodney

drove off to the Zoo. As their cab approached the entrance, Katharine

bent forward and waved her hand to a young man who was walking rapidly

in the same direction.

 

“There’s Ralph Denham!” she exclaimed. “I told him to meet us here,”

she added. She had even come provided with a ticket for him. William’s

objection that he would not be admitted was, therefore, silenced

directly. But the way in which the two men greeted each other was

significant of what was going to happen. As soon as they had admired

the little birds in the large cage William and Cassandra lagged

behind, and Ralph and Katharine pressed on rather in advance. It was

an arrangement in which William took his part, and one that suited his

convenience, but he was annoyed all the same. He thought that

Katharine should have told him that she had invited Denham to meet

them.

 

“One of Katharine’s friends,” he said rather sharply. It was clear

that he was irritated, and Cassandra felt for his annoyance. They were

standing by the pen of some Oriental hog, and she was prodding the

brute gently with the point of her umbrella, when a thousand little

observations seemed, in some way, to collect in one center. The center

was one of intense and curious emotion. Were they happy? She dismissed

the question as she asked it, scorning herself for applying such

simple measures to the rare and splendid emotions of so unique a

couple. Nevertheless, her manner became immediately different, as if,

for the first time, she felt consciously womanly, and as if William

might conceivably wish later on to confide in her. She forgot all

about the psychology of animals, and the recurrence of blue eyes and

brown, and became instantly engrossed in her feelings as a woman who

could administer consolation, and she hoped that Katharine would keep

ahead with Mr. Denham, as a child who plays at being grown-up hopes

that her mother won’t come in just yet, and spoil the game. Or was it

not rather that she had ceased to play at being grown-up, and was

conscious, suddenly, that she was alarmingly mature and in earnest?

 

There was still unbroken silence between Katharine and Ralph Denham,

but the occupants of the different cages served instead of speech.

 

“What have you been doing since we met?” Ralph asked at length.

 

“Doing?” she pondered. “Walking in and out of other people’s houses. I

wonder if these animals are happy?” she speculated, stopping before a

gray bear, who was philosophically playing with a tassel which once,

perhaps, formed part of a lady’s parasol.

 

“I’m afraid Rodney didn’t like my coming,” Ralph remarked.

 

“No. But he’ll soon get over that,” she replied. The detachment

expressed by her voice puzzled Ralph, and he would have been glad if

she had explained her meaning further. But he was not going to press

her for explanations. Each moment was to be, as far as he could make

it, complete in itself, owing nothing of its happiness to

explanations, borrowing neither bright nor dark tints from the future.

 

“The bears seem happy,” he remarked. “But we must buy them a bag of

something. There’s the place to buy buns. Let’s go and get them.” They

walked to the counter piled with little paper bags, and each

simultaneously produced a shilling and pressed it upon the young lady,

who did not know whether to oblige the lady or the gentleman, but

decided, from conventional reasons, that it was the part of the

gentleman to pay.

 

“I wish to pay,” said Ralph peremptorily, refusing the coin which

Katharine tendered. “I have a reason for what I do,” he added, seeing

her smile at his tone of decision.

 

“I believe you have a reason for everything,” she agreed, breaking the

bun into parts and tossing them down the bears’ throats, “but I can’t

believe it’s a good one this time. What is your reason?”

 

He refused to tell her. He could not explain to her that he was

offering up consciously all his happiness to her, and wished, absurdly

enough, to pour every possession he had upon the blazing pyre, even

his silver and gold. He wished to keep this distance between them—the

distance which separates the devotee from the image in the shrine.

 

Circumstances conspired to make this easier than it would have been,

had they been seated in a drawing-room, for example, with a tea-tray

between them. He saw her against a background of pale grottos and

sleek hides; camels slanted their heavy-ridded eyes at her, giraffes

fastidiously observed her from their melancholy eminence, and the

pink-lined trunks of elephants cautiously abstracted buns from her

outstretched hands. Then there were the hothouses. He saw her bending

over pythons coiled upon the sand, or considering the brown rock

breaking the stagnant water of the alligators’ pool, or searching some

minute section of tropical forest for the golden eye of a lizard or

the indrawn movement of the green frogs’ flanks. In particular, he saw

her outlined against the deep green waters, in which squadrons of

silvery fish wheeled incessantly, or ogled her for a moment, pressing

their distorted mouths against the glass, quivering their tails

straight out behind them. Again, there was the insect house, where she

lifted the blinds of the little cages, and marveled at the purple

circles marked upon the rich tussore wings of some lately emerged and

semi-conscious butterfly, or at caterpillars immobile like the knobbed

twigs of a pale-skinned tree, or at slim green snakes stabbing the

glass wall again and again with their flickering cleft tongues. The

heat of the air, and the bloom of heavy flowers, which swam in water

or rose stiffly from great red jars, together with the display of

curious patterns and fantastic shapes, produced an atmosphere in which

human beings tended to look pale and to fall silent.

 

Opening the door of a house which rang with the mocking and profoundly

unhappy laughter of monkeys, they discovered William and Cassandra.

William appeared to be tempting some small reluctant animal to descend

from an upper perch to partake of half an apple. Cassandra was reading

out, in her high-pitched tones, an account of this creature’s secluded

disposition and nocturnal habits. She saw Katharine and exclaimed:

 

“Here you are! Do prevent William from torturing this unfortunate

aye-aye.”

 

“We thought we’d lost you,” said William. He looked from one to the

other, and seemed to take stock of Denham’s unfashionable appearance.

He seemed to wish to find some outlet for malevolence, but, failing

one, he remained silent. The glance, the slight quiver of the upper

lip, were not lost upon Katharine.

 

“William isn’t kind to animals,” she remarked. “He doesn’t know what

they like and what they don’t like.”

 

“I take it you’re well versed in these matters, Denham,” said Rodney,

withdrawing his hand with the apple.

 

“It’s mainly a question of knowing how to stroke them,” Denham

replied.

 

“Which is the way to the Reptile House?” Cassandra asked him, not from

a genuine desire to visit the reptiles, but in obedience to her

new-born feminine susceptibility, which urged her to charm and

conciliate the other sex. Denham began to give her directions, and

Katharine and William moved on together.

 

“I hope you’ve had a pleasant afternoon,” William remarked.

 

“I like Ralph Denham,” she replied.

 

“Ca se voit,” William returned, with superficial urbanity.

 

Many retorts were obvious, but wishing, on the whole, for peace,

Katharine merely inquired:

 

“Are you coming back to tea?”

 

“Cassandra and I thought of having tea at a little shop in Portland

Place,” he replied. “I don’t know whether you and Denham would care to

join us.”

 

“I’ll ask him,” she replied, turning her head to look for him. But he

and Cassandra were absorbed in the aye-aye once more.

 

William and Katharine watched them for a moment, and each looked

curiously at the object of the other’s preference. But resting his eye

upon Cassandra, to whose elegance the dressmakers had now done

justice, William said sharply:

 

“If you come, I hope you won’t do your best to make me ridiculous.”

 

“If that’s what you’re afraid of I certainly shan’t come,” Katharine

replied.

 

They were professedly looking into the enormous central cage of

monkeys, and being thoroughly annoyed by William, she compared him to

a wretched misanthropical ape, huddled in a scrap of old shawl at the

end of a pole, darting peevish glances of suspicion and distrust at

his companions. Her tolerance was deserting her. The events of the

past week had worn it thin. She was in one of those moods, perhaps not

uncommon with either sex, when the other becomes very clearly

distinguished, and of contemptible baseness, so that the necessity of

association is degrading, and the tie, which at such moments is always

extremely close, drags like a halter round the neck. William’s

exacting demands and his jealousy had pulled her down into some

horrible swamp of her nature where the primeval struggle between man

and woman still rages.

 

“You seem to delight in hurting me,” William persisted. “Why did you

say that just now about my behavior to animals?” As he spoke he

rattled his stick against the bars of the cage, which gave his words

an accompaniment peculiarly exasperating to Katharine’s nerves.

 

“Because it’s true. You never see what any one feels,” she said. “You

think of no one but yourself.”

 

“That is not true,” said William. By his determined rattling he had

now collected the animated attention of some half-dozen apes. Either

to propitiate them, or to show his consideration for their feelings,

he proceeded to offer them the apple which he held.

 

The sight, unfortunately, was so comically apt in its illustration of

the picture in her mind, the ruse was so transparent, that Katharine

was seized with laughter. She laughed uncontrollably. William flushed

red. No display of anger could have hurt his feelings more profoundly.

It was not only that she was laughing at him; the detachment of the

sound was horrible.

 

“I don’t know what you’re laughing at,” he muttered, and, turning,

found that the other couple had rejoined them. As if the matter had

been privately agreed upon, the couples separated once more, Katharine

and Denham passing out of the house without more than a perfunctory

glance round them. Denham obeyed what seemed to be Katharine’s wish in

thus making haste. Some change had come over her. He connected it with

her laughter, and her few words in private with Rodney; he felt that

she had become unfriendly to him. She talked, but her remarks were

indifferent, and when he spoke her attention seemed to wander. This

change of mood was at first extremely disagreeable to him; but soon he

found it salutary. The pale drizzling atmosphere of the day affected

him, also. The charm, the insidious magic in which he had luxuriated,

were suddenly gone; his feeling had become one of friendly respect,

and to his great pleasure he found himself thinking spontaneously of

the relief of finding himself alone in his room that night. In his

surprise at the suddenness of the change, and at the extent of his

freedom, he bethought him of a daring plan, by which the ghost of

Katharine could be more effectually exorcised than by mere abstinence.

He would ask her to come home with him to tea. He would force her

through the mill of family life; he would place her in a light