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

executive meets every week, of course,” she observed. “But some

of our members don’t come more than once a month. Members of

Parliament are the worst; it was a mistake, I think, to ask them.”

 

She went on sewing in silence.

 

“You’ve not taken your quinine,” she said, looking up and seeing the

tabloids upon the mantelpiece.

 

“I don’t want it,” said Ralph shortly.

 

“Well, you know best,” she replied tranquilly.

 

“Mary, I’m a brute!” he exclaimed. “Here I come and waste your time,

and do nothing but make myself disagreeable.”

 

“A cold coming on does make one feel wretched,” she replied.

 

“I’ve not got a cold. That was a lie. There’s nothing the matter with

me. I’m mad, I suppose. I ought to have had the decency to keep away.

But I wanted to see you—I wanted to tell you—I’m in love, Mary.” He

spoke the word, but, as he spoke it, it seemed robbed of substance.

 

“In love, are you?” she said quietly. “I’m glad, Ralph.”

 

“I suppose I’m in love. Anyhow, I’m out of my mind. I can’t think, I

can’t work, I don’t care a hang for anything in the world. Good

Heavens, Mary! I’m in torment! One moment I’m happy; next I’m

miserable. I hate her for half an hour; then I’d give my whole life to

be with her for ten minutes; all the time I don’t know what I feel, or

why I feel it; it’s insanity, and yet it’s perfectly reasonable. Can

you make any sense of it? Can you see what’s happened? I’m raving, I

know; don’t listen, Mary; go on with your work.”

 

He rose and began, as usual, to pace up and down the room. He knew

that what he had just said bore very little resemblance to what he

felt, for Mary’s presence acted upon him like a very strong magnet,

drawing from him certain expressions which were not those he made use

of when he spoke to himself, nor did they represent his deepest

feelings. He felt a little contempt for himself at having spoken thus;

but somehow he had been forced into speech.

 

“Do sit down,” said Mary suddenly. “You make me so—” She spoke with

unusual irritability, and Ralph, noticing it with surprise, sat down

at once.

 

“You haven’t told me her name—you’d rather not, I suppose?”

 

“Her name? Katharine Hilbery.”

 

“But she’s engaged—”

 

“To Rodney. They’re to be married in September.”

 

“I see,” said Mary. But in truth the calm of his manner, now that he

was sitting down once more, wrapt her in the presence of something

which she felt to be so strong, so mysterious, so incalculable, that

she scarcely dared to attempt to intercept it by any word or question

that she was able to frame. She looked at Ralph blankly, with a kind

of awe in her face, her lips slightly parted, and her brows raised. He

was apparently quite unconscious of her gaze. Then, as if she could

look no longer, she leant back in her chair, and half closed her eyes.

The distance between them hurt her terribly; one thing after another

came into her mind, tempting her to assail Ralph with questions, to

force him to confide in her, and to enjoy once more his intimacy. But

she rejected every impulse, for she could not speak without doing

violence to some reserve which had grown between them, putting them a

little far from each other, so that he seemed to her dignified and

remote, like a person she no longer knew well.

 

“Is there anything that I could do for you?” she asked gently, and

even with courtesy, at length.

 

“You could see her—no, that’s not what I want; you mustn’t bother

about me, Mary.” He, too, spoke very gently.

 

“I’m afraid no third person can do anything to help,” she added.

 

“No,” he shook his head. “Katharine was saying to-day how lonely we

are.” She saw the effort with which he spoke Katharine’s name, and

believed that he forced himself to make amends now for his concealment

in the past. At any rate, she was conscious of no anger against him;

but rather of a deep pity for one condemned to suffer as she had

suffered. But in the case of Katharine it was different; she was

indignant with Katharine.

 

“There’s always work,” she said, a little aggressively.

 

Ralph moved directly.

 

“Do you want to be working now?” he asked.

 

“No, no. It’s Sunday,” she replied. “I was thinking of Katharine. She

doesn’t understand about work. She’s never had to. She doesn’t know

what work is. I’ve only found out myself quite lately. But it’s the

thing that saves one—I’m sure of that.”

 

“There are other things, aren’t there?” he hesitated.

 

“Nothing that one can count upon,” she returned. “After all, other

people—” she stopped, but forced herself to go on. “Where should I be

now if I hadn’t got to go to my office every day? Thousands of people

would tell you the same thing—thousands of women. I tell you, work is

the only thing that saved me, Ralph.” He set his mouth, as if her

words rained blows on him; he looked as if he had made up his mind to

bear anything she might say, in silence. He had deserved it, and there

would be relief in having to bear it. But she broke off, and rose as

if to fetch something from the next room. Before she reached the door

she turned back, and stood facing him, self-possessed, and yet defiant

and formidable in her composure.

 

“It’s all turned out splendidly for me,” she said. “It will for you,

too. I’m sure of that. Because, after all, Katharine is worth it.”

 

“Mary—!” he exclaimed. But her head was turned away, and he could not

say what he wished to say. “Mary, you’re splendid,” he concluded. She

faced him as he spoke, and gave him her hand. She had suffered and

relinquished, she had seen her future turned from one of infinite

promise to one of barrenness, and yet, somehow, over what she scarcely

knew, and with what results she could hardly foretell, she had

conquered. With Ralph’s eyes upon her, smiling straight back at him

serenely and proudly, she knew, for the first time, that she had

conquered. She let him kiss her hand.

 

The streets were empty enough on Sunday night, and if the Sabbath, and

the domestic amusements proper to the Sabbath, had not kept people

indoors, a high strong wind might very probably have done so. Ralph

Denham was aware of a tumult in the street much in accordance with his

own sensations. The gusts, sweeping along the Strand, seemed at the

same time to blow a clear space across the sky in which stars

appeared, and for a short time the quicks-peeding silver moon riding

through clouds, as if they were waves of water surging round her and

over her. They swamped her, but she emerged; they broke over her and

covered her again; she issued forth indomitable. In the country fields

all the wreckage of winter was being dispersed; the dead leaves, the

withered bracken, the dry and discolored grass, but no bud would be

broken, nor would the new stalks that showed above the earth take any

harm, and perhaps tomorrow a line of blue or yellow would show

through a slit in their green. But the whirl of the atmosphere alone

was in Denham’s mood, and what of star or blossom appeared was only as

a light gleaming for a second upon heaped waves fast following each

other. He had not been able to speak to Mary, though for a moment he

had come near enough to be tantalized by a wonderful possibility of

understanding. But the desire to communicate something of the very

greatest importance possessed him completely; he still wished to

bestow this gift upon some other human being; he sought their company.

More by instinct than by conscious choice, he took the direction which

led to Rodney’s rooms. He knocked loudly upon his door; but no one

answered. He rang the bell. It took him some time to accept the fact

that Rodney was out. When he could no longer pretend that the sound of

the wind in the old building was the sound of some one rising from his

chair, he ran downstairs again, as if his goal had been altered and

only just revealed to him. He walked in the direction of Chelsea.

 

But physical fatigue, for he had not dined and had tramped both far

and fast, made him sit for a moment upon a seat on the Embankment. One

of the regular occupants of those seats, an elderly man who had drunk

himself, probably, out of work and lodging, drifted up, begged a

match, and sat down beside him. It was a windy night, he said; times

were hard; some long story of bad luck and injustice followed, told so

often that the man seemed to be talking to himself, or, perhaps, the

neglect of his audience had long made any attempt to catch their

attention seem scarcely worth while. When he began to speak Ralph had

a wild desire to talk to him; to question him; to make him understand.

He did, in fact, interrupt him at one point; but it was useless. The

ancient story of failure, ill-luck, undeserved disaster, went down the

wind, disconnected syllables flying past Ralph’s ears with a queer

alternation of loudness and faintness as if, at certain moments, the

man’s memory of his wrongs revived and then flagged, dying down at

last into a grumble of resignation, which seemed to represent a final

lapse into the accustomed despair. The unhappy voice afflicted Ralph,

but it also angered him. And when the elderly man refused to listen

and mumbled on, an odd image came to his mind of a lighthouse besieged

by the flying bodies of lost birds, who were dashed senseless, by the

gale, against the glass. He had a strange sensation that he was both

lighthouse and bird; he was steadfast and brilliant; and at the same

time he was whirled, with all other things, senseless against the

glass. He got up, left his tribute of silver, and pressed on, with the

wind against him. The image of the lighthouse and the storm full of

birds persisted, taking the place of more definite thoughts, as he

walked past the Houses of Parliament and down Grosvenor Road, by the

side of the river. In his state of physical fatigue, details merged

themselves in the vaster prospect, of which the flying gloom and the

intermittent lights of lamp-posts and private houses were the outward

token, but he never lost his sense of walking in the direction of

Katharine’s house. He took it for granted that something would then

happen, and, as he walked on, his mind became more and more full of

pleasure and expectancy. Within a certain radius of her house the

streets came under the influence of her presence. Each house had an

individuality known to Ralph, because of the tremendous individuality

of the house in which she lived. For some yards before reaching the

Hilberys’ door he walked in a trance of pleasure, but when he reached

it, and pushed the gate of the little garden open, he hesitated. He

did not know what to do next. There was no hurry, however, for the

outside of the house held pleasure enough to last him some time

longer. He crossed the road, and leant against the balustrade of the

Embankment, fixing his eyes upon the house.

 

Lights burnt in the three long windows of the drawing-room. The space

of the room behind became, in Ralph’s vision, the center of