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

next moment, as if to taunt him with his impotence, she

had sunk into one of those dreamy states which took no account

whatever of his existence. Ralph was roused by his passionate attempts

to attract her attention to the fact that he was standing in the

middle of his little private room in Lincoln’s Inn Fields at a

considerable distance from Chelsea. The physical distance increased

his desperation. He began pacing in circles until the process sickened

him, and then took a sheet of paper for the composition of a letter

which, he vowed before he began it, should be sent that same evening.

 

It was a difficult matter to put into words; poetry would have done it

better justice, but he must abstain from poetry. In an infinite number

of half-obliterated scratches he tried to convey to her the

possibility that although human beings are woefully ill-adapted for

communication, still, such communion is the best we know; moreover,

they make it possible for each to have access to another world

independent of personal affairs, a world of law, of philosophy, or

more strangely a world such as he had had a glimpse of the other

evening when together they seemed to be sharing something, creating

something, an ideal—a vision flung out in advance of our actual

circumstances. If this golden rim were quenched, if life were no

longer circled by an illusion (but was it an illusion after all?),

then it would be too dismal an affair to carry to an end; so he wrote

with a sudden spurt of conviction which made clear way for a space and

left at least one sentence standing whole. Making every allowance for

other desires, on the whole this conclusion appeared to him to justify

their relationship. But the conclusion was mystical; it plunged him

into thought. The difficulty with which even this amount was written,

the inadequacy of the words, and the need of writing under them and

over them others which, after all, did no better, led him to leave off

before he was at ail satisfied with his production, and unable to

resist the conviction that such rambling would never be fit for

Katharine’s eye. He felt himself more cut off from her than ever. In

idleness, and because he could do nothing further with words, he began

to draw little figures in the blank spaces, heads meant to resemble

her head, blots fringed with flames meant to represent—perhaps the

entire universe. From this occupation he was roused by the message

that a lady wished to speak to him. He had scarcely time to run his

hands through his hair in order to look as much like a solicitor as

possible, and to cram his papers into his pocket, already overcome

with shame that another eye should behold them, when he realized that

his preparations were needless. The lady was Mrs. Hilbery.

 

“I hope you’re not disposing of somebody’s fortune in a hurry,” she

remarked, gazing at the documents on his table, “or cutting off an

entail at one blow, because I want to ask you to do me a favor. And

Anderson won’t keep his horse waiting. (Anderson is a perfect tyrant,

but he drove my dear father to the Abbey the day they buried him.) I

made bold to come to you, Mr. Denham, not exactly in search of legal

assistance (though I don’t know who I’d rather come to, if I were in

trouble), but in order to ask your help in settling some tiresome

little domestic affairs that have arisen in my absence. I’ve been to

Stratford-on-Avon (I must tell you all about that one of these days),

and there I got a letter from my sister-in-law, a dear kind goose who

likes interfering with other people’s children because she’s got none

of her own. (We’re dreadfully afraid that she’s going to lose the

sight of one of her eyes, and I always feel that our physical ailments

are so apt to turn into mental ailments. I think Matthew Arnold says

something of the same kind about Lord Byron.) But that’s neither here

nor there.”

 

The effect of these parentheses, whether they were introduced for that

purpose or represented a natural instinct on Mrs. Hilbery’s part to

embellish the bareness of her discourse, gave Ralph time to perceive

that she possessed all the facts of their situation and was come,

somehow, in the capacity of ambassador.

 

“I didn’t come here to talk about Lord Byron,” Mrs. Hilbery continued,

with a little laugh, “though I know that both you and Katharine,

unlike other young people of your generation, still find him worth

reading.” She paused. “I’m so glad you’ve made Katharine read poetry,

Mr. Denham!” she exclaimed, “and feel poetry, and look poetry! She

can’t talk it yet, but she will—oh, she will!”

 

Ralph, whose hand was grasped and whose tongue almost refused to

articulate, somehow contrived to say that there were moments when he

felt hopeless, utterly hopeless, though he gave no reason for this

statement on his part.

 

“But you care for her?” Mrs. Hilbery inquired.

 

“Good God!” he exclaimed, with a vehemence which admitted of no

question.

 

“It’s the Church of England service you both object to?” Mrs. Hilbery

inquired innocently.

 

“I don’t care a damn what service it is,” Ralph replied.

 

“You would marry her in Westminster Abbey if the worst came to the

worst?” Mrs. Hilbery inquired.

 

“I would marry her in St. Paul’s Cathedral,” Ralph replied. His doubts

upon this point, which were always roused by Katharine’s presence, had

vanished completely, and his strongest wish in the world was to be

with her immediately, since every second he was away from her he

imagined her slipping farther and farther from him into one of those

states of mind in which he was unrepresented. He wished to dominate

her, to possess her.

 

“Thank God!” exclaimed Mrs. Hilbery. She thanked Him for a variety of

blessings: for the conviction with which the young man spoke; and not

least for the prospect that on her daughter’s wedding-day the noble

cadences, the stately periods, the ancient eloquence of the marriage

service would resound over the heads of a distinguished congregation

gathered together near the very spot where her father lay quiescent

with the other poets of England. The tears filled her eyes; but she

remembered simultaneously that her carriage was waiting, and with dim

eyes she walked to the door. Denham followed her downstairs.

 

It was a strange drive. For Denham it was without exception the most

unpleasant he had ever taken. His only wish was to go as straightly

and quickly as possible to Cheyne Walk; but it soon appeared that Mrs.

Hilbery either ignored or thought fit to baffle this desire by

interposing various errands of her own. She stopped the carriage at

post-offices, and coffee-shops, and shops of inscrutable dignity where

the aged attendants had to be greeted as old friends; and, catching

sight of the dome of St. Paul’s above the irregular spires of Ludgate

Hill, she pulled the cord impulsively, and gave directions that

Anderson should drive them there. But Anderson had reasons of his own

for discouraging afternoon worship, and kept his horse’s nose

obstinately towards the west. After some minutes, Mrs. Hilbery

realized the situation, and accepted it good-humoredly, apologizing to

Ralph for his disappointment.

 

“Never mind,” she said, “we’ll go to St. Paul’s another day, and it

may turn out, though I can’t promise that it WILL, that he’ll take us

past Westminster Abbey, which would be even better.”

 

Ralph was scarcely aware of what she went on to say. Her mind and body

both seemed to have floated into another region of quick-sailing

clouds rapidly passing across each other and enveloping everything in

a vaporous indistinctness. Meanwhile he remained conscious of his own

concentrated desire, his impotence to bring about anything he wished,

and his increasing agony of impatience.

 

Suddenly Mrs. Hilbery pulled the cord with such decision that even

Anderson had to listen to the order which she leant out of the window

to give him. The carriage pulled up abruptly in the middle of

Whitehall before a large building dedicated to one of our Government

offices. In a second Mrs. Hilbery was mounting the steps, and Ralph

was left in too acute an irritation by this further delay even to

speculate what errand took her now to the Board of Education. He was

about to jump from the carriage and take a cab, when Mrs. Hilbery

reappeared talking genially to a figure who remained hidden behind

her.

 

“There’s plenty of room for us all,” she was saying. “Plenty of room.

We could find space for FOUR of you, William,” she added, opening the

door, and Ralph found that Rodney had now joined their company. The

two men glanced at each other. If distress, shame, discomfort in its

most acute form were ever visible upon a human face, Ralph could read

them all expressed beyond the eloquence of words upon the face of his

unfortunate companion. But Mrs. Hilbery was either completely unseeing

or determined to appear so. She went on talking; she talked, it seemed

to both the young men, to some one outside, up in the air. She talked

about Shakespeare, she apostrophized the human race, she proclaimed

the virtues of divine poetry, she began to recite verses which broke

down in the middle. The great advantage of her discourse was that it

was self-supporting. It nourished itself until Cheyne Walk was reached

upon half a dozen grunts and murmurs.

 

“Now,” she said, alighting briskly at her door, “here we are!”

 

There was something airy and ironical in her voice and expression as

she turned upon the doorstep and looked at them, which filled both

Rodney and Denham with the same misgivings at having trusted their

fortunes to such an ambassador; and Rodney actually hesitated upon the

threshold and murmured to Denham:

 

“You go in, Denham. I …” He was turning tail, but the door opening

and the familiar look of the house asserting its charm, he bolted in

on the wake of the others, and the door shut upon his escape. Mrs.

Hilbery led the way upstairs. She took them to the drawing-room. The

fire burnt as usual, the little tables were laid with china and

silver. There was nobody there.

 

“Ah,” she said, “Katharine’s not here. She must be upstairs in her

room. You have something to say to her, I know, Mr. Denham. You can

find your way?” she vaguely indicated the ceiling with a gesture of

her hand. She had become suddenly serious and composed, mistress in

her own house. The gesture with which she dismissed him had a dignity

that Ralph never forgot. She seemed to make him free with a wave of

her hand to all that she possessed. He left the room.

 

The Hilberys’ house was tall, possessing many stories and passages

with closed doors, all, once he had passed the drawing-room floor,

unknown to Ralph. He mounted as high as he could and knocked at the

first door he came to.

 

“May I come in?” he asked.

 

A voice from within answered “Yes.”

 

He was conscious of a large window, full of light, of a bare table,

and of a long looking-glass. Katharine had risen, and was standing

with some white papers in her hand, which slowly fluttered to the

ground as she saw her visitor. The explanation was a short one. The

sounds were inarticulate; no one could have understood the meaning

save themselves. As if the forces of the world were all at work to

tear them asunder they sat, clasping hands, near enough to be taken

even by the malicious eye of Time himself for a united couple, an

indivisible unit.

 

“Don’t move, don’t