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

go,” she begged of him, when he stooped to gather

the papers she had let fall. But he took them in his hands and, giving

her by a sudden impulse his own unfinished dissertation, with its

mystical conclusion, they read each other’s compositions in silence.

 

Katharine read his sheets to an end; Ralph followed her figures as far

as his mathematics would let him. They came to the end of their tasks

at about the same moment, and sat for a time in silence.

 

“Those were the papers you left on the seat at Kew,” said Ralph at

length. “You folded them so quickly that I couldn’t see what they

were.”

 

She blushed very deeply; but as she did not move or attempt to hide

her face she had the appearance of some one disarmed of all defences,

or Ralph likened her to a wild bird just settling with wings trembling

to fold themselves within reach of his hand. The moment of exposure

had been exquisitely painful—the light shed startlingly vivid. She

had now to get used to the fact that some one shared her loneliness.

The bewilderment was half shame and half the prelude to profound

rejoicing. Nor was she unconscious that on the surface the whole thing

must appear of the utmost absurdity. She looked to see whether Ralph

smiled, but found his gaze fixed on her with such gravity that she

turned to the belief that she had committed no sacrilege but enriched

herself, perhaps immeasurably, perhaps eternally. She hardly dared

steep herself in the infinite bliss. But his glance seemed to ask for

some assurance upon another point of vital interest to him. It

beseeched her mutely to tell him whether what she had read upon his

confused sheet had any meaning or truth to her. She bent her head once

more to the papers she held.

 

“I like your little dot with the flames round it,” she said

meditatively.

 

Ralph nearly tore the page from her hand in shame and despair when he

saw her actually contemplating the idiotic symbol of his most confused

and emotional moments.

 

He was convinced that it could mean nothing to another, although

somehow to him it conveyed not only Katharine herself but all those

states of mind which had clustered round her since he first saw her

pouring out tea on a Sunday afternoon. It represented by its

circumference of smudges surrounding a central blot all that

encircling glow which for him surrounded, inexplicably, so many of the

objects of life, softening their sharp outline, so that he could see

certain streets, books, and situations wearing a halo almost

perceptible to the physical eye. Did she smile? Did she put the paper

down wearily, condemning it not only for its inadequacy but for its

falsity? Was she going to protest once more that he only loved the

vision of her? But it did not occur to her that this diagram had

anything to do with her. She said simply, and in the same tone of

reflection:

 

“Yes, the world looks something like that to me too.”

 

He received her assurance with profound joy. Quietly and steadily

there rose up behind the whole aspect of life that soft edge of fire

which gave its red tint to the atmosphere and crowded the scene with

shadows so deep and dark that one could fancy pushing farther into

their density and still farther, exploring indefinitely. Whether there

was any correspondence between the two prospects now opening before

them they shared the same sense of the impending future, vast,

mysterious, infinitely stored with undeveloped shapes which each would

unwrap for the other to behold; but for the present the prospect of

the future was enough to fill them with silent adoration. At any rate,

their further attempts to communicate articulately were interrupted by

a knock on the door, and the entrance of a maid who, with a due sense

of mystery, announced that a lady wished to see Miss Hilbery, but

refused to allow her name to be given.

 

When Katharine rose, with a profound sigh, to resume her duties, Ralph

went with her, and neither of them formulated any guess, on their way

downstairs, as to who this anonymous lady might prove to be. Perhaps

the fantastic notion that she was a little black hunchback provided

with a steel knife, which she would plunge into Katharine’s heart,

appeared to Ralph more probable than another, and he pushed first into

the dining-room to avert the blow. Then he exclaimed “Cassandra!” with

such heartiness at the sight of Cassandra Otway standing by the

dining-room table that she put her finger to her lips and begged him

to be quiet.

 

“Nobody must know I’m here,” she explained in a sepulchral whisper. “I

missed my train. I have been wandering about London all day. I can

bear it no longer. Katharine, what am I to do?”

 

Katharine pushed forward a chair; Ralph hastily found wine and poured

it out for her. If not actually fainting, she was very near it.

 

“William’s upstairs,” said Ralph, as soon as she appeared to be

recovered. “I’ll go and ask him to come down to you.” His own

happiness had given him a confidence that every one else was bound to

be happy too. But Cassandra had her uncle’s commands and anger too

vividly in her mind to dare any such defiance. She became agitated and

said that she must leave the house at once. She was not in a condition

to go, had they known where to send her. Katharine’s common sense,

which had been in abeyance for the past week or two, still failed her,

and she could only ask, “But where’s your luggage?” in the vague

belief that to take lodgings depended entirely upon a sufficiency of

luggage. Cassandra’s reply, “I’ve lost my luggage,” in no way helped

her to a conclusion.

 

“You’ve lost your luggage,” she repeated. Her eyes rested upon Ralph,

with an expression which seemed better fitted to accompany a profound

thanksgiving for his existence or some vow of eternal devotion than a

question about luggage. Cassandra perceived the look, and saw that it

was returned; her eyes filled with tears. She faltered in what she was

saying. She began bravely again to discuss the question of lodging

when Katharine, who seemed to have communicated silently with Ralph,

and obtained his permission, took her ruby ring from her finger and

giving it to Cassandra, said: “I believe it will fit you without any

alteration.”

 

These words would not have been enough to convince Cassandra of what

she very much wished to believe had not Ralph taken the bare hand in

his and demanded:

 

“Why don’t you tell us you’re glad?” Cassandra was so glad that the

tears ran down her cheeks. The certainty of Katharine’s engagement not

only relieved her of a thousand vague fears and self-reproaches, but

entirely quenched that spirit of criticism which had lately impaired

her belief in Katharine. Her old faith came back to her. She seemed to

behold her with that curious intensity which she had lost; as a being

who walks just beyond our sphere, so that life in their presence is a

heightened process, illuminating not only ourselves but a considerable

stretch of the surrounding world. Next moment she contrasted her own

lot with theirs and gave back the ring.

 

“I won’t take that unless William gives it me himself,” she said.

“Keep it for me, Katharine.”

 

“I assure you everything’s perfectly all right,” said Ralph. “Let me

tell William—”

 

He was about, in spite of Cassandra’s protest, to reach the door, when

Mrs. Hilbery, either warned by the parlor-maid or conscious with her

usual prescience of the need for her intervention, opened the door and

smilingly surveyed them.

 

“My dear Cassandra!” she exclaimed. “How delightful to see you back

again! What a coincidence!” she observed, in a general way. “William

is upstairs. The kettle boils over. Where’s Katharine, I say? I go to

look, and I find Cassandra!” She seemed to have proved something to

her own satisfaction, although nobody felt certain what thing

precisely it was.

 

“I find Cassandra,” she repeated.

 

“She missed her train,” Katharine interposed, seeing that Cassandra

was unable to speak.

 

“Life,” began Mrs. Hilbery, drawing inspiration from the portraits on

the wall apparently, “consists in missing trains and in finding—” But

she pulled herself up and remarked that the kettle must have boiled

completely over everything.

 

To Katharine’s agitated mind it appeared that this kettle was an

enormous kettle, capable of deluging the house in its incessant

showers of steam, the enraged representative of all those household

duties which she had neglected. She ran hastily up to the

drawing-room, and the rest followed her, for Mrs. Hilbery put her arm

round Cassandra and drew her upstairs. They found Rodney observing the

kettle with uneasiness but with such absence of mind that Katharine’s

catastrophe was in a fair way to be fulfilled. In putting the matter

straight no greetings were exchanged, but Rodney and Cassandra chose

seats as far apart as possible, and sat down with an air of people

making a very temporary lodgment. Either Mrs. Hilbery was impervious

to their discomfort, or chose to ignore it, or thought it high time

that the subject was changed, for she did nothing but talk about

Shakespeare’s tomb.

 

“So much earth and so much water and that sublime spirit brooding over

it all,” she mused, and went on to sing her strange, half-earthly song

of dawns and sunsets, of great poets, and the unchanged spirit of

noble loving which they had taught, so that nothing changes, and one

age is linked with another, and no one dies, and we all meet in

spirit, until she appeared oblivious of any one in the room. But

suddenly her remarks seemed to contract the enormously wide circle in

which they were soaring and to alight, airily and temporarily, upon

matters of more immediate moment.

 

“Katharine and Ralph,” she said, as if to try the sound. “William and

Cassandra.”

 

“I feel myself in an entirely false position,” said William

desperately, thrusting himself into this breach in her reflections.

“I’ve no right to be sitting here. Mr. Hilbery told me yesterday to

leave the house. I’d no intention of coming back again. I shall now—”

 

“I feel the same too,” Cassandra interrupted. “After what Uncle Trevor

said to me last night—”

 

“I have put you into a most odious position,” Rodney went on, rising

from his seat, in which movement he was imitated simultaneously by

Cassandra. “Until I have your father’s consent I have no right to

speak to you—let alone in this house, where my conduct”—he looked at

Katharine, stammered, and fell silent—“where my conduct has been

reprehensible and inexcusable in the extreme,” he forced himself to

continue. “I have explained everything to your mother. She is so

generous as to try and make me believe that I have done no harm—you

have convinced her that my behavior, selfish and weak as it

was—selfish and weak—” he repeated, like a speaker who has lost his

notes.

 

Two emotions seemed to be struggling in Katharine; one the desire to

laugh at the ridiculous spectacle of William making her a formal

speech across the tea-table, the other a desire to weep at the sight

of something childlike and honest in him which touched her

inexpressibly. To every one’s surprise she rose, stretched out her

hand, and said:

 

“You’ve nothing to reproach yourself with—you’ve been always—” but

here her voice died away, and the tears forced themselves into her

eyes, and ran down her cheeks, while William, equally moved, seized

her hand and pressed it to his lips. No one perceived that the

drawing-room door had opened itself sufficiently to