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

CHAPTER XXXI

The tray which brought Katharine’s cup of tea the next morning

brought, also, a note from her mother, announcing that it was her

intention to catch an early train to Stratford-on-Avon that very day.

 

“Please find out the best way of getting there,” the note ran, “and

wire to dear Sir John Burdett to expect me, with my love. I’ve been

dreaming all night of you and Shakespeare, dearest Katharine.”

 

This was no momentary impulse. Mrs. Hilbery had been dreaming of

Shakespeare any time these six months, toying with the idea of an

excursion to what she considered the heart of the civilized world. To

stand six feet above Shakespeare’s bones, to see the very stones worn

by his feet, to reflect that the oldest man’s oldest mother had very

likely seen Shakespeare’s daughter—such thoughts roused an emotion in

her, which she expressed at unsuitable moments, and with a passion

that would not have been unseemly in a pilgrim to a sacred shrine. The

only strange thing was that she wished to go by herself. But,

naturally enough, she was well provided with friends who lived in the

neighborhood of Shakespeare’s tomb, and were delighted to welcome her;

and she left later to catch her train in the best of spirits. There

was a man selling violets in the street. It was a fine day. She would

remember to send Mr. Hilbery the first daffodil she saw. And, as she

ran back into the hall to tell Katharine, she felt, she had always

felt, that Shakespeare’s command to leave his bones undisturbed

applied only to odious curiosity-mongers—not to dear Sir John and

herself. Leaving her daughter to cogitate the theory of Anne

Hathaway’s sonnets, and the buried manuscripts here referred to, with

the implied menace to the safety of the heart of civilization itself,

she briskly shut the door of her taxicab, and was whirled off upon

the first stage of her pilgrimage.

 

The house was oddly different without her. Katharine found the maids

already in possession of her room, which they meant to clean

thoroughly during her absence. To Katharine it seemed as if they had

brushed away sixty years or so with the first flick of their damp

dusters. It seemed to her that the work she had tried to do in that

room was being swept into a very insignificant heap of dust. The china

shepherdesses were already shining from a bath of hot water. The

writing-table might have belonged to a professional man of methodical

habits.

 

Gathering together a few papers upon which she was at work, Katharine

proceeded to her own room with the intention of looking through them,

perhaps, in the course of the morning. But she was met on the stairs

by Cassandra, who followed her up, but with such intervals between

each step that Katharine began to feel her purpose dwindling before

they had reached the door. Cassandra leant over the banisters, and

looked down upon the Persian rug that lay on the floor of the hall.

 

“Doesn’t everything look odd this morning?” she inquired. “Are you

really going to spend the morning with those dull old letters, because

if so—”

 

The dull old letters, which would have turned the heads of the most

sober of collectors, were laid upon a table, and, after a moment’s

pause, Cassandra, looking grave all of a sudden, asked Katharine where

she should find the “History of England” by Lord Macaulay. It was

downstairs in Mr. Hilbery’s study. The cousins descended together in

search of it. They diverged into the drawing-room for the good reason

that the door was open. The portrait of Richard Alardyce attracted

their attention.

 

“I wonder what he was like?” It was a question that Katharine had

often asked herself lately.

 

“Oh, a fraud like the rest of them—at least Henry says so,” Cassandra

replied. “Though I don’t believe everything Henry says,” she added a

little defensively.

 

Down they went into Mr. Hilbery’s study, where they began to look

among his books. So desultory was this examination that some fifteen

minutes failed to discover the work they were in search of.

 

“Must you read Macaulay’s History, Cassandra?” Katharine asked, with a

stretch of her arms.

 

“I must,” Cassandra replied briefly.

 

“Well, I’m going to leave you to look for it by yourself.”

 

“Oh, no, Katharine. Please stay and help me. You see—you see—I told

William I’d read a little every day. And I want to tell him that I’ve

begun when he comes.”

 

“When does William come?” Katharine asked, turning to the shelves

again.

 

“To tea, if that suits you?”

 

“If it suits me to be out, I suppose you mean.”

 

“Oh, you’re horrid… . Why shouldn’t you—?”

 

“Yes ?”

 

“Why shouldn’t you be happy too?”

 

“I am quite happy,” Katharine replied.

 

“I mean as I am. Katharine,” she said impulsively, “do let’s be

married on the same day.”

 

“To the same man?”

 

“Oh, no, no. But why shouldn’t you marry—some one else?”

 

“Here’s your Macaulay,” said Katharine, turning round with the book in

her hand. “I should say you’d better begin to read at once if you mean

to be educated by tea-time.”

 

“Damn Lord Macaulay!” cried Cassandra, slapping the book upon the

table. “Would you rather not talk?”

 

“We’ve talked enough already,” Katharine replied evasively.

 

“I know I shan’t be able to settle to Macaulay,” said Cassandra,

looking ruefully at the dull red cover of the prescribed volume,

which, however, possessed a talismanic property, since William admired

it. He had advised a little serious reading for the morning hours.

 

“Have YOU read Macaulay?” she asked.

 

“No. William never tried to educate me.” As she spoke she saw the

light fade from Cassandra’s face, as if she had implied some other,

more mysterious, relationship. She was stung with compunction. She

marveled at her own rashness in having influenced the life of another,

as she had influenced Cassandra’s life.

 

“We weren’t serious,” she said quickly.

 

“But I’m fearfully serious,” said Cassandra, with a little shudder,

and her look showed that she spoke the truth. She turned and glanced

at Katharine as she had never glanced at her before. There was fear in

her glance, which darted on her and then dropped guiltily. Oh,

Katharine had everything—beauty, mind, character. She could never

compete with Katharine; she could never be safe so long as Katharine

brooded over her, dominating her, disposing of her. She called her

cold, unseeing, unscrupulous, but the only sign she gave outwardly was

a curious one—she reached out her hand and grasped the volume of

history. At that moment the bell of the telephone rang and Katharine

went to answer it. Cassandra, released from observation, dropped her

book and clenched her hands. She suffered more fiery torture in those

few minutes than she had suffered in the whole of her life; she learnt

more of her capacities for feeling. But when Katharine reappeared she

was calm, and had gained a look of dignity that was new to her.

 

“Was that him?” she asked.

 

“It was Ralph Denham,” Katharine replied.

 

“I meant Ralph Denham.”

 

“Why did you mean Ralph Denham? What has William told you about Ralph

Denham?” The accusation that Katharine was calm, callous, and

indifferent was not possible in face of her present air of animation.

She gave Cassandra no time to frame an answer. “Now, when are you and

William going to be married?” she asked.

 

Cassandra made no reply for some moments. It was, indeed, a very

difficult question to answer. In conversation the night before,

William had indicated to Cassandra that, in his belief, Katharine was

becoming engaged to Ralph Denham in the dining-room. Cassandra, in the

rosy light of her own circumstances, had been disposed to think that

the matter must be settled already. But a letter which she had

received that morning from William, while ardent in its expression of

affection, had conveyed to her obliquely that he would prefer the

announcement of their engagement to coincide with that of Katharine’s.

This document Cassandra now produced, and read aloud, with

considerable excisions and much hesitation.

 

“… a thousand pities—ahem—I fear we shall cause a great deal of

natural annoyance. If, on the other hand, what I have reason to think

will happen, should happen—within reasonable time, and the present

position is not in any way offensive to you, delay would, in my

opinion, serve all our interests better than a premature explanation,

which is bound to cause more surprise than is desirable—”

 

“Very like William,” Katharine exclaimed, having gathered the drift of

these remarks with a speed that, by itself, disconcerted Cassandra.

 

“I quite understand his feelings,” Cassandra replied. “I quite agree

with them. I think it would be much better, if you intend to marry Mr.

Denham, that we should wait as William says.”

 

“But, then, if I don’t marry him for months—or, perhaps, not at all?”

 

Cassandra was silent. The prospect appalled her. Katharine had been

telephoning to Ralph Denham; she looked queer, too; she must be, or

about to become, engaged to him. But if Cassandra could have overheard

the conversation upon the telephone, she would not have felt so

certain that it tended in that direction. It was to this effect:

 

“I’m Ralph Denham speaking. I’m in my right senses now.”

 

“How long did you wait outside the house?”

 

“I went home and wrote you a letter. I tore it up.”

 

“I shall tear up everything too.”

 

“I shall come.”

 

“Yes. Come to-day.”

 

“I must explain to you—”

 

“Yes. We must explain—”

 

A long pause followed. Ralph began a sentence, which he canceled with

the word, “Nothing.” Suddenly, together, at the same moment, they said

good-bye. And yet, if the telephone had been miraculously connected

with some higher atmosphere pungent with the scent of thyme and the

savor of salt, Katharine could hardly have breathed in a keener sense

of exhilaration. She ran downstairs on the crest of it. She was amazed

to find herself already committed by William and Cassandra to marry

the owner of the halting voice she had