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

and then left the room. At length Katharine

heard, through all the superimposed weight of London, the mysterious

sound of feet in her own house mounting to the little room, where she

could almost see the pictures and the books; she listened with extreme

intentness to the preparatory vibrations, and then established her

identity.

 

“Has Mr. Denham called?”

 

“Yes, miss.”

 

“Did he ask for me?”

 

“Yes. We said you were out, miss.”

 

“Did he leave any message?”

 

“No. He went away. About twenty minutes ago, miss.”

 

Katharine hung up the receiver. She walked the length of the room in

such acute disappointment that she did not at first perceive Mary’s

absence. Then she called in a harsh and peremptory tone:

 

“Mary.”

 

Mary was taking off her outdoor things in the bedroom. She heard

Katharine call her. “Yes,” she said, “I shan’t be a moment.” But the

moment prolonged itself, as if for some reason Mary found satisfaction

in making herself not only tidy, but seemly and ornamented. A stage in

her life had been accomplished in the last months which left its

traces for ever upon her bearing. Youth, and the bloom of youth, had

receded, leaving the purpose of her face to show itself in the

hollower cheeks, the firmer lips, the eyes no longer spontaneously

observing at random, but narrowed upon an end which was not near at

hand. This woman was now a serviceable human being, mistress of her

own destiny, and thus, by some combination of ideas, fit to be adorned

with the dignity of silver chains and glowing brooches. She came in at

her leisure and asked: “Well, did you get an answer?”

 

“He has left Chelsea already,” Katharine replied.

 

“Still, he won’t be home yet,” said Mary.

 

Katharine was once more irresistibly drawn to gaze upon an imaginary

map of London, to follow the twists and turns of unnamed streets.

 

“I’ll ring up his home and ask whether he’s back.” Mary crossed to the

telephone and, after a series of brief remarks, announced:

 

“No. His sister says he hasn’t come back yet.”

 

“Ah!” She applied her ear to the telephone once more. “They’ve had a

message. He won’t be back to dinner.”

 

“Then what is he going to do?”

 

Very pale, and with her large eyes fixed not so much upon Mary as upon

vistas of unresponding blankness, Katharine addressed herself also not

so much to Mary as to the unrelenting spirit which now appeared to

mock her from every quarter of her survey.

 

After waiting a little time Mary remarked indifferently:

 

“I really don’t know.” Slackly lying back in her armchair, she watched

the little flames beginning to creep among the coals indifferently, as

if they, too, were very distant and indifferent.

 

Katharine looked at her indignantly and rose.

 

“Possibly he may come here,” Mary continued, without altering the

abstract tone of her voice. “It would be worth your while to wait if

you want to see him to-night.” She bent forward and touched the wood,

so that the flames slipped in between the interstices of the coal.

 

Katharine reflected. “I’ll wait half an hour,” she said.

 

Mary rose, went to the table, spread out her papers under the

green-shaded lamp and, with an action that was becoming a habit,

twisted a lock of hair round and round in her fingers. Once she looked

unperceived at her visitor, who never moved, who sat so still, with

eyes so intent, that you could almost fancy that she was watching

something, some face that never looked up at her. Mary found herself

unable to go on writing. She turned her eyes away, but only to be

aware of the presence of what Katharine looked at. There were ghosts

in the room, and one, strangely and sadly, was the ghost of herself.

The minutes went by.

 

“What would be the time now?” said Katharine at last. The half-hour

was not quite spent.

 

“I’m going to get dinner ready,” said Mary, rising from her table.

 

“Then I’ll go,” said Katharine.

 

“Why don’t you stay? Where are you going?”

 

Katharine looked round the room, conveying her uncertainty in her

glance.

 

“Perhaps I might find him,” she mused.

 

“But why should it matter? You’ll see him another day.”

 

Mary spoke, and intended to speak, cruelly enough.

 

“I was wrong to come here,” Katharine replied.

 

Their eyes met with antagonism, and neither flinched.

 

“You had a perfect right to come here,” Mary answered.

 

A loud knocking at the door interrupted them. Mary went to open it,

and returning with some note or parcel, Katharine looked away so that

Mary might not read her disappointment.

 

“Of course you had a right to come,” Mary repeated, laying the note

upon the table.

 

“No,” said Katharine. “Except that when one’s desperate one has a sort

of right. I am desperate. How do I know what’s happening to him now?

He may do anything. He may wander about the streets all night.

Anything may happen to him.”

 

She spoke with a self-abandonment that Mary had never seen in her.

 

“You know you exaggerate; you’re talking nonsense,” she said roughly.

 

“Mary, I must talk—I must tell you—”

 

“You needn’t tell me anything,” Mary interrupted her. “Can’t I see for

myself?”

 

“No, no,” Katharine exclaimed. “It’s not that—”

 

Her look, passing beyond Mary, beyond the verge of the room and out

beyond any words that came her way, wildly and passionately, convinced

Mary that she, at any rate, could not follow such a glance to its end.

She was baffled; she tried to think herself back again into the height

of her love for Ralph. Pressing her fingers upon her eyelids, she

murmured:

 

“You forget that I loved him too. I thought I knew him. I DID know

him.”

 

And yet, what had she known? She could not remember it any more. She

pressed her eyeballs until they struck stars and suns into her

darkness. She convinced herself that she was stirring among ashes. She

desisted. She was astonished at her discovery. She did not love Ralph

any more. She looked back dazed into the room, and her eyes rested

upon the table with its lamplit papers. The steady radiance seemed

for a second to have its counterpart within her; she shut her eyes;

she opened them and looked at the lamp again; another love burnt in

the place of the old one, or so, in a momentary glance of amazement,

she guessed before the revelation was over and the old surroundings

asserted themselves. She leant in silence against the mantelpiece.

 

“There are different ways of loving,” she murmured, half to herself,

at length.

 

Katharine made no reply and seemed unaware of her words. She seemed

absorbed in her own thoughts.

 

“Perhaps he’s waiting in the street again to-night,” she exclaimed.

“I’ll go now. I might find him.”

 

“It’s far more likely that he’ll come here,” said Mary, and Katharine,

after considering for a moment, said:

 

“I’ll wait another half-hour.”

 

She sank down into her chair again, and took up the same position

which Mary had compared to the position of one watching an unseeing

face. She watched, indeed, not a face, but a procession, not of

people, but of life itself: the good and bad; the meaning; the past,

the present, and the future. All this seemed apparent to her, and she

was not ashamed of her extravagance so much as exalted to one of the

pinnacles of existence, where it behoved the world to do her homage.

No one but she herself knew what it meant to miss Ralph Denham on that

particular night; into this inadequate event crowded feelings that the

great crises of life might have failed to call forth. She had missed

him, and knew the bitterness of all failure; she desired him, and knew

the torment of all passion. It did not matter what trivial accidents

led to this culmination. Nor did she care how extravagant she

appeared, nor how openly she showed her feelings.

 

When the dinner was ready Mary told her to come, and she came

submissively, as if she let Mary direct her movements for her. They

ate and drank together almost in silence, and when Mary told her to

eat more, she ate more; when she was told to drink wine, she drank it.

Nevertheless, beneath this superficial obedience, Mary knew that she

was following her own thoughts unhindered. She was not inattentive so

much as remote; she looked at once so unseeing and so intent upon some

vision of her own that Mary gradually felt more than protective—she

became actually alarmed at the prospect of some collision between

Katharine and the forces of the outside world. Directly they had done,

Katharine announced her intention of going.

 

“But where are you going to?” Mary asked, desiring vaguely to hinder

her.

 

“Oh, I’m going home—no, to Highgate perhaps.”

 

Mary saw that it would be useless to try to stop her. All she could do

was to insist upon coming too, but she met with no opposition;

Katharine seemed indifferent to her presence. In a few minutes they

were walking along the Strand. They walked so rapidly that Mary was

deluded into the belief that Katharine knew where she was going. She

herself was not attentive. She was glad of the movement along lamplit

streets in the open air. She was fingering, painfully and with fear,

yet with strange hope, too, the discovery which she had stumbled upon

unexpectedly that night. She was free once more at the cost of a gift,

the best, perhaps, that she could offer, but she was, thank Heaven, in

love no longer. She was tempted to spend the first instalment of her

freedom in some dissipation; in the pit of the Coliseum, for example,

since they were now passing the door. Why not go in and celebrate her

independence of the tyranny of love? Or, perhaps, the top of an

omnibus bound for some remote place such as Camberwell, or Sidcup, or

the Welsh Harp would suit her better. She noticed these names painted

on little boards for the first time for weeks. Or should she return to

her room, and spend the night working out the details of a very

enlightened and ingenious scheme? Of all possibilities this appealed

to her most, and brought to mind the fire, the lamplight, the steady

glow which had seemed lit in the place where a more passionate flame

had once burnt.

 

Now Katharine stopped, and Mary woke to the fact that instead of

having a goal she had evidently none. She paused at the edge of the

crossing, and looked this way and that, and finally made as if in the

direction of Haverstock Hill.

 

“Look here—where are you going?” Mary cried, catching her by the

hand. “We must take that cab and go home.” She hailed a cab and

insisted that Katharine should get in, while she directed the driver

to take them to Cheyne Walk.

 

Katharine submitted. “Very well,” she said. “We may as well go there

as anywhere else.”

 

A gloom seemed to have fallen on her. She lay back in her corner,

silent and apparently exhausted. Mary, in spite of her own

preoccupation, was struck by her pallor and her attitude of dejection.

 

“I’m sure we shall find him,” she said more gently than she had yet

spoken.

 

“It may be too late,” Katharine replied. Without understanding her,

Mary began to pity her for what she was suffering.

 

“Nonsense,” she said, taking her hand and rubbing it. “If we don’t

find him there we shall find him somewhere