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

nothing to do with it,” Cassandra exclaimed indignantly.

“I consider his conduct, under the circumstances, most disgraceful.”

 

This was the last of the sentences of her premeditated speech; and

having spoken it she was left unprovided with any more to say in that

particular style. When Katharine remarked:

 

“I should say it had everything to do with it,” Cassandra’s

self-possession deserted her.

 

“I don’t understand you in the least, Katharine. How can you behave as

you behave? Ever since I came here I’ve been amazed by you!”

 

“You’ve enjoyed yourself, haven’t you?” Katharine asked.

 

“Yes, I have,” Cassandra admitted.

 

“Anyhow, my behavior hasn’t spoiled your visit.”

 

“No,” Cassandra allowed once more. She was completely at a loss. In

her forecast of the interview she had taken it for granted that

Katharine, after an outburst of incredulity, would agree that

Cassandra must return home as soon as possible. But Katharine, on the

contrary, accepted her statement at once, seemed neither shocked nor

surprised, and merely looked rather more thoughtful than usual. From

being a mature woman charged with an important mission, Cassandra

shrunk to the stature of an inexperienced child.

 

“Do you think I’ve been very foolish about it?” she asked.

 

Katharine made no answer, but still sat deliberating silently, and a

certain feeling of alarm took possession of Cassandra. Perhaps her

words had struck far deeper than she had thought, into depths beyond

her reach, as so much of Katharine was beyond her reach. She thought

suddenly that she had been playing with very dangerous tools.

 

Looking at her at length, Katharine asked slowly, as if she found the

question very difficult to ask.

 

“But do you care for William?”

 

She marked the agitation and bewilderment of the girl’s expression,

and how she looked away from her.

 

“Do you mean, am I in love with him?” Cassandra asked, breathing

quickly, and nervously moving her hands.

 

“Yes, in love with him,” Katharine repeated.

 

“How can I love the man you’re engaged to marry?” Cassandra burst out.

 

“He may be in love with you.”

 

“I don’t think you’ve any right to say such things, Katharine,”

Cassandra exclaimed. “Why do you say them? Don’t you mind in the least

how William behaves to other women? If I were engaged, I couldn’t bear

it!”

 

“We’re not engaged,” said Katharine, after a pause.

 

“Katharine!” Cassandra cried.

 

“No, we’re not engaged,” Katharine repeated. “But no one knows it but

ourselves.”

 

“But why—I don’t understand—you’re not engaged!” Cassandra said

again. “Oh, that explains it! You’re not in love with him! You don’t

want to marry him!”

 

“We aren’t in love with each other any longer,” said Katharine, as if

disposing of something for ever and ever.

 

“How queer, how strange, how unlike other people you are, Katharine,”

Cassandra said, her whole body and voice seeming to fall and collapse

together, and no trace of anger or excitement remaining, but only a

dreamy quietude.

 

“You’re not in love with him?”

 

“But I love him,” said Katharine.

 

Cassandra remained bowed, as if by the weight of the revelation, for

some little while longer. Nor did Katharine speak. Her attitude was

that of some one who wishes to be concealed as much as possible from

observation. She sighed profoundly; she was absolutely silent, and

apparently overcome by her thoughts.

 

“D’you know what time it is?” she said at length, and shook her

pillow, as if making ready for sleep.

 

Cassandra rose obediently, and once more took up her candle. Perhaps

the white dressing-gown, and the loosened hair, and something unseeing

in the expression of the eyes gave her a likeness to a woman walking

in her sleep. Katharine, at least, thought so.

 

“There’s no reason why I should go home, then?” Cassandra said,

pausing. “Unless you want me to go, Katharine? What DO you want me to

do?”

 

For the first time their eyes met.

 

“You wanted us to fall in love,” Cassandra exclaimed, as if she read

the certainty there. But as she looked she saw a sight that surprised

her. The tears rose slowly in Katharine’s eyes and stood there,

brimming but contained—the tears of some profound emotion, happiness,

grief, renunciation; an emotion so complex in its nature that to

express it was impossible, and Cassandra, bending her head and

receiving the tears upon her cheek, accepted them in silence as the

consecration of her love.

 

“Please, miss,” said the maid, about eleven o’clock on the following

morning, “Mrs. Milvain is in the kitchen.”

 

A long wicker basket of flowers and branches had arrived from the

country, and Katharine, kneeling upon the floor of the drawing-room,

was sorting them while Cassandra watched her from an armchair, and

absent-mindedly made spasmodic offers of help which were not accepted.

The maid’s message had a curious effect upon Katharine.

 

She rose, walked to the window, and, the maid being gone, said

emphatically and even tragically:

 

“You know what that means.”

 

Cassandra had understood nothing.

 

“Aunt Celia is in the kitchen,” Katharine repeated.

 

“Why in the kitchen?” Cassandra asked, not unnaturally.

 

“Probably because she’s discovered something,” Katharine replied.

Cassandra’s thoughts flew to the subject of her preoccupation.

 

“About us?” she inquired.

 

“Heaven knows,” Katharine replied. “I shan’t let her stay in the

kitchen, though. I shall bring her up here.”

 

The sternness with which this was said suggested that to bring Aunt

Celia upstairs was, for some reason, a disciplinary measure.

 

“For goodness’ sake, Katharine,” Cassandra exclaimed, jumping from her

chair and showing signs of agitation, “don’t be rash. Don’t let her

suspect. Remember, nothing’s certain—”

 

Katharine assured her by nodding her head several times, but the

manner in which she left the room was not calculated to inspire

complete confidence in her diplomacy.

 

Mrs. Milvain was sitting, or rather perching, upon the edge of a chair

in the servants’ room. Whether there was any sound reason for her

choice of a subterranean chamber, or whether it corresponded with the

spirit of her quest, Mrs. Milvain invariably came in by the back door

and sat in the servants’ room when she was engaged in confidential

family transactions. The ostensible reason she gave was that neither

Mr. nor Mrs. Hilbery should be disturbed. But, in truth, Mrs. Milvain

depended even more than most elderly women of her generation upon the

delicious emotions of intimacy, agony, and secrecy, and the additional

thrill provided by the basement was one not lightly to be forfeited.

She protested almost plaintively when Katharine proposed to go

upstairs.

 

“I’ve something that I want to say to you in PRIVATE,” she said,

hesitating reluctantly upon the threshold of her ambush.

 

“The drawing-room is empty—”

 

“But we might meet your mother upon the stairs. We might disturb your

father,” Mrs. Milvain objected, taking the precaution to speak in a

whisper already.

 

But as Katharine’s presence was absolutely necessary to the success of

the interview, and as Katharine obstinately receded up the kitchen

stairs, Mrs. Milvain had no course but to follow her. She glanced

furtively about her as she proceeded upstairs, drew her skirts

together, and stepped with circumspection past all doors, whether they

were open or shut.

 

“Nobody will overhear us?” she murmured, when the comparative

sanctuary of the drawing-room had been reached. “I see that I have

interrupted you,” she added, glancing at the flowers strewn upon the

floor. A moment later she inquired, “Was some one sitting with you?”

noticing a handkerchief that Cassandra had dropped in her flight.

 

“Cassandra was helping me to put the flowers in water,” said

Katharine, and she spoke so firmly and clearly that Mrs. Milvain

glanced nervously at the main door and then at the curtain which

divided the little room with the relics from the drawing-room.

 

“Ah, Cassandra is still with you,” she remarked. “And did William send

you those lovely flowers?”

 

Katharine sat down opposite her aunt and said neither yes nor no. She

looked past her, and it might have been thought that she was

considering very critically the pattern of the curtains. Another

advantage of the basement, from Mrs. Milvain’s point of view, was that

it made it necessary to sit very close together, and the light was dim

compared with that which now poured through three windows upon

Katharine and the basket of flowers, and gave even the slight angular

figure of Mrs. Milvain herself a halo of gold.

 

“They’re from Stogdon House,” said Katharine abruptly, with a little

jerk of her head.

 

Mrs. Milvain felt that it would be easier to tell her niece what she

wished to say if they were actually in physical contact, for the

spiritual distance between them was formidable. Katharine, however,

made no overtures, and Mrs. Milvain, who was possessed of rash but

heroic courage, plunged without preface:

 

“People are talking about you, Katharine. That is why I have come this

morning. You forgive me for saying what I’d much rather not say? What

I say is only for your own sake, my child.”

 

“There’s nothing to forgive yet, Aunt Celia,” said Katharine, with

apparent good humor.

 

“People are saying that William goes everywhere with you and

Cassandra, and that he is always paying her attentions. At the

Markhams’ dance he sat out five dances with her. At the Zoo they were

seen alone together. They left together. They never came back here

till seven in the evening. But that is not all. They say his manner is

very marked—he is quite different when she is there.”

 

Mrs. Milvain, whose words had run themselves together, and whose voice

had raised its tone almost to one of protest, here ceased, and looked

intently at Katharine, as if to judge the effect of her communication.

A slight rigidity had passed over Katharine’s face. Her lips were

pressed together; her eyes were contracted, and they were still fixed

upon the curtain. These superficial changes covered an extreme inner

loathing such as might follow the display of some hideous or indecent

spectacle. The indecent spectacle was her own action beheld for the

first time from the outside; her aunt’s words made her realize how

infinitely repulsive the body of life is without its soul.

 

“Well?” she said at length.

 

Mrs. Milvain made a gesture as if to bring her closer, but it was not

returned.

 

“We all know how good you are—how unselfish—how you sacrifice

yourself to others. But you’ve been too unselfish, Katharine. You have

made Cassandra happy, and she has taken advantage of your goodness.”

 

“I don’t understand, Aunt Celia,” said Katharine. “What has Cassandra

done?”

 

“Cassandra has behaved in a way that I could not have thought

possible,” said Mrs. Milvain warmly. “She has been utterly

selfish—utterly heartless. I must speak to her before I go.”

 

“I don’t understand,” Katharine persisted.

 

Mrs. Milvain looked at her. Was it possible that Katharine really

doubted? That there was something that Mrs. Milvain herself did not

understand? She braced herself, and pronounced the tremendous words:

 

“Cassandra has stolen William’s love.”

 

Still the words seemed to have curiously little effect.

 

“Do you mean,” said Katharine, “that he has fallen in love with her?”

 

“There are ways of MAKING men fall in love with one, Katharine.”

 

Katharine remained silent. The silence alarmed Mrs. Milvain, and she

began hurriedly:

 

“Nothing would have made me say these things but your own good. I have

not wished to interfere; I have not wished to give you pain. I am a

useless old woman. I have no children of my own. I only want to see

you happy, Katharine.”

 

Again she stretched forth her arms, but they remained