Night and Day

V >> Virginia Woolf >> Night and Day

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She felt certain that she would marry Rodney. How could one avoid it?
How could one find fault with it? Here she sighed, and, putting the
thought of marriage away, fell into a dream state, in which she became
another person, and the whole world seemed changed. Being a frequent
visitor to that world, she could find her way there unhesitatingly. If
she had tried to analyze her impressions, she would have said that
there dwelt the realities of the appearances which figure in our
world; so direct, powerful, and unimpeded were her sensations there,
compared with those called forth in actual life. There dwelt the
things one might have felt, had there been cause; the perfect
happiness of which here we taste the fragment; the beauty seen here in
flying glimpses only. No doubt much of the furniture of this world was
drawn directly from the past, and even from the England of the
Elizabethan age. However the embellishment of this imaginary world
might change, two qualities were constant in it. It was a place where
feelings were liberated from the constraint which the real world puts
upon them; and the process of awakenment was always marked by
resignation and a kind of stoical acceptance of facts. She met no
acquaintance there, as Denham did, miraculously transfigured; she
played no heroic part. But there certainly she loved some magnanimous
hero, and as they swept together among the leaf-hung trees of an
unknown world, they shared the feelings which came fresh and fast as
the waves on the shore. But the sands of her liberation were running
fast; even through the forest branches came sounds of Rodney moving
things on his dressing-table; and Katharine woke herself from this
excursion by shutting the cover of the book she was holding, and
replacing it in the bookshelf.

"William," she said, speaking rather faintly at first, like one
sending a voice from sleep to reach the living. "William," she
repeated firmly, "if you still want me to marry you, I will."

Perhaps it was that no man could expect to have the most momentous
question of his life settled in a voice so level, so toneless, so
devoid of joy or energy. At any rate William made no answer. She
waited stoically. A moment later he stepped briskly from his
dressing-room, and observed that if she wanted to buy more oysters he
thought he knew where they could find a fishmonger's shop still open.
She breathed deeply a sigh of relief.

Extract from a letter sent a few days later by Mrs. Hilbery to her
sister-in-law, Mrs. Milvain:

" . . . How stupid of me to forget the name in my telegram. Such a
nice, rich, English name, too, and, in addition, he has all the graces
of intellect; he has read literally EVERYTHING. I tell Katharine, I
shall always put him on my right side at dinner, so as to have him by
me when people begin talking about characters in Shakespeare. They
won't be rich, but they'll be very, very happy. I was sitting in my
room late one night, feeling that nothing nice would ever happen to me
again, when I heard Katharine outside in the passage, and I thought to
myself, 'Shall I call her in?' and then I thought (in that hopeless,
dreary way one does think, with the fire going out and one's birthday
just over), 'Why should I lay my troubles on HER?' But my little self-
control had its reward, for next moment she tapped at the door and
came in, and sat on the rug, and though we neither of us said
anything, I felt so happy all of a second that I couldn't help crying,
'Oh, Katharine, when you come to my age, how I hope you'll have a
daughter, too!' You know how silent Katharine is. She was so silent,
for such a long time, that in my foolish, nervous state I dreaded
something, I don't quite know what. And then she told me how, after
all, she had made up her mind. She had written. She expected him
to-morrow. At first I wasn't glad at all. I didn't want her to marry
any one; but when she said, 'It will make no difference. I shall
always care for you and father most,' then I saw how selfish I was,
and I told her she must give him everything, everything, everything! I
told her I should be thankful to come second. But why, when
everything's turned out just as one always hoped it would turn out,
why then can one do nothing but cry, nothing but feel a desolate old
woman whose life's been a failure, and now is nearly over, and age is
so cruel? But Katharine said to me, 'I am happy. I'm very happy.' And
then I thought, though it all seemed so desperately dismal at the
time, Katharine had said she was happy, and I should have a son, and
it would all turn out so much more wonderfully than I could possibly
imagine, for though the sermons don't say so, I do believe the world
is meant for us to be happy in. She told me that they would live quite
near us, and see us every day; and she would go on with the Life, and
we should finish it as we had meant to. And, after all, it would be
far more horrid if she didn't marry--or suppose she married some one
we couldn't endure? Suppose she had fallen in love with some one who
was married already?

"And though one never thinks any one good enough for the people one's
fond of, he has the kindest, truest instincts, I'm sure, and though he
seems nervous and his manner is not commanding, I only think these
things because it's Katharine. And now I've written this, it comes
over me that, of course, all the time, Katharine has what he hasn't.
She does command, she isn't nervous; it comes naturally to her to rule
and control. It's time that she should give all this to some one who
will need her when we aren't there, save in our spirits, for whatever
people say, I'm sure I shall come back to this wonderful world where
one's been so happy and so miserable, where, even now, I seem to see
myself stretching out my hands for another present from the great
Fairy Tree whose boughs are still hung with enchanting toys, though
they are rarer now, perhaps, and between the branches one sees no
longer the blue sky, but the stars and the tops of the mountains.

"One doesn't know any more, does one? One hasn't any advice to give
one's children. One can only hope that they will have the same vision
and the same power to believe, without which life would be so
meaningless. That is what I ask for Katharine and her husband."

CHAPTER XII

Is Mr. Hilbery at home, or Mrs. Hilbery?" Denham asked, of the parlor-
maid in Chelsea, a week later.

"No, sir. But Miss Hilbery is at home," the girl answered.

Ralph had anticipated many answers, but not this one, and now it was
unexpectedly made plain to him that it was the chance of seeing
Katharine that had brought him all the way to Chelsea on pretence of
seeing her father.

He made some show of considering the matter, and was taken upstairs to
the drawing-room. As upon that first occasion, some weeks ago, the
door closed as if it were a thousand doors softly excluding the world;
and once more Ralph received an impression of a room full of deep
shadows, firelight, unwavering silver candle flames, and empty spaces
to be crossed before reaching the round table in the middle of the
room, with its frail burden of silver trays and china teacups. But
this time Katharine was there by herself; the volume in her hand
showed that she expected no visitors.

Ralph said something about hoping to find her father.

"My father is out," she replied. "But if you can wait, I expect him
soon."

It might have been due merely to politeness, but Ralph felt that she
received him almost with cordiality. Perhaps she was bored by drinking
tea and reading a book all alone; at any rate, she tossed the book on
to a sofa with a gesture of relief.

"Is that one of the moderns whom you despise?" he asked, smiling at
the carelessness of her gesture.

"Yes," she replied. "I think even you would despise him."

"Even I?" he repeated. "Why even I?"

"You said you liked modern things; I said I hated them."

This was not a very accurate report of their conversation among the
relics, perhaps, but Ralph was flattered to think that she remembered
anything about it.

"Or did I confess that I hated all books?" she went on, seeing him
look up with an air of inquiry. "I forget--"

"Do you hate all books?" he asked.

"It would be absurd to say that I hate all books when I've only read
ten, perhaps; but--' Here she pulled herself up short.

"Well?"

"Yes, I do hate books," she continued. "Why do you want to be for ever
talking about your feelings? That's what I can't make out. And
poetry's all about feelings--novels are all about feelings."

She cut a cake vigorously into slices, and providing a tray with bread
and butter for Mrs. Hilbery, who was in her room with a cold, she rose
to go upstairs.

Ralph held the door open for her, and then stood with clasped hands in
the middle of the room. His eyes were bright, and, indeed, he scarcely
knew whether they beheld dreams or realities. All down the street and
on the doorstep, and while he mounted the stairs, his dream of
Katharine possessed him; on the threshold of the room he had dismissed
it, in order to prevent too painful a collision between what he dreamt
of her and what she was. And in five minutes she had filled the shell
of the old dream with the flesh of life; looked with fire out of
phantom eyes. He glanced about him with bewilderment at finding
himself among her chairs and tables; they were solid, for he grasped
the back of the chair in which Katharine had sat; and yet they were
unreal; the atmosphere was that of a dream. He summoned all the
faculties of his spirit to seize what the minutes had to give him; and
from the depths of his mind there rose unchecked a joyful recognition
of the truth that human nature surpasses, in its beauty, all that our
wildest dreams bring us hints of.

Katharine came into the room a moment later. He stood watching her
come towards him, and thought her more beautiful and strange than his
dream of her; for the real Katharine could speak the words which
seemed to crowd behind the forehead and in the depths of the eyes, and
the commonest sentence would be flashed on by this immortal light. And
she overflowed the edges of the dream; he remarked that her softness
was like that of some vast snowy owl; she wore a ruby on her finger.

"My mother wants me to tell you," she said, "that she hopes you have
begun your poem. She says every one ought to write poetry. . . . All
my relations write poetry," she went on. "I can't bear to think of it
sometimes--because, of course, it's none of it any good. But then one
needn't read it--"

"You don't encourage me to write a poem," said Ralph.

"But you're not a poet, too, are you?" she inquired, turning upon him
with a laugh.

"Should I tell you if I were?"

"Yes. Because I think you speak the truth," she said, searching him
for proof of this apparently, with eyes now almost impersonally
direct. It would be easy, Ralph thought, to worship one so far
removed, and yet of so straight a nature; easy to submit recklessly to
her, without thought of future pain.

"Are you a poet?" she demanded. He felt that her question had an
unexplained weight of meaning behind it, as if she sought an answer to
a question that she did not ask.

"No. I haven't written any poetry for years," he replied. "But all the
same, I don't agree with you. I think it's the only thing worth
doing."

"Why do you say that?" she asked, almost with impatience, tapping her
spoon two or three times against the side of her cup.

"Why?" Ralph laid hands on the first words that came to mind.
"Because, I suppose, it keeps an ideal alive which might die
otherwise."

A curious change came over her face, as if the flame of her mind were
subdued; and she looked at him ironically and with the expression
which he had called sad before, for want of a better name for it.

"I don't know that there's much sense in having ideals," she said.

"But you have them," he replied energetically. "Why do we call them
ideals? It's a stupid word. Dreams, I mean--"

She followed his words with parted lips, as though to answer eagerly
when he had done; but as he said, "Dreams, I mean," the door of the
drawing-room swung open, and so remained for a perceptible instant.
They both held themselves silent, her lips still parted.

Far off, they heard the rustle of skirts. Then the owner of the skirts
appeared in the doorway, which she almost filled, nearly concealing
the figure of a very much smaller lady who accompanied her.

"My aunts!" Katharine murmured, under her breath. Her tone had a hint
of tragedy in it, but no less, Ralph thought, than the situation
required. She addressed the larger lady as Aunt Millicent; the smaller
was Aunt Celia, Mrs. Milvain, who had lately undertaken the task of
marrying Cyril to his wife. Both ladies, but Mrs. Cosham (Aunt
Millicent) in particular, had that look of heightened, smoothed,
incarnadined existence which is proper to elderly ladies paying calls
in London about five o'clock in the afternoon. Portraits by Romney,
seen through glass, have something of their pink, mellow look, their
blooming softness, as of apricots hanging upon a red wall in the
afternoon sun. Mrs. Cosham was so appareled with hanging muffs,
chains, and swinging draperies that it was impossible to detect the
shape of a human being in the mass of brown and black which filled the
arm-chair. Mrs. Milvain was a much slighter figure; but the same doubt
as to the precise lines of her contour filled Ralph, as he regarded
them, with dismal foreboding. What remark of his would ever reach
these fabulous and fantastic characters?--for there was something
fantastically unreal in the curious swayings and noddings of Mrs.
Cosham, as if her equipment included a large wire spring. Her voice
had a high-pitched, cooing note, which prolonged words and cut them
short until the English language seemed no longer fit for common
purposes. In a moment of nervousness, so Ralph thought, Katharine had
turned on innumerable electric lights. But Mrs. Cosham had gained
impetus (perhaps her swaying movements had that end in view) for
sustained speech; and she now addressed Ralph deliberately and
elaborately.

"I come from Woking, Mr. Popham. You may well ask me, why Woking? and
to that I answer, for perhaps the hundredth time, because of the
sunsets. We went there for the sunsets, but that was five-and-twenty
years ago. Where are the sunsets now? Alas! There is no sunset now
nearer than the South Coast." Her rich and romantic notes were
accompanied by a wave of a long white hand, which, when waved, gave
off a flash of diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. Ralph wondered whether
she more resembled an elephant, with a jeweled head-dress, or a superb
cockatoo, balanced insecurely upon its perch, and pecking capriciously
at a lump of sugar.

"Where are the sunsets now?" she repeated. "Do you find sunsets now,
Mr. Popham?"

"I live at Highgate," he replied.

"At Highgate? Yes, Highgate has its charms; your Uncle John lived at
Highgate," she jerked in the direction of Katharine. She sank her head
upon her breast, as if for a moment's meditation, which past, she
looked up and observed: "I dare say there are very pretty lanes in
Highgate. I can recollect walking with your mother, Katharine, through
lanes blossoming with wild hawthorn. But where is the hawthorn now?
You remember that exquisite description in De Quincey, Mr. Popham?--
but I forget, you, in your generation, with all your activity and
enlightenment, at which I can only marvel"--here she displayed both
her beautiful white hands--"do not read De Quincey. You have your
Belloc, your Chesterton, your Bernard Shaw--why should you read De
Quincey?"

"But I do read De Quincey," Ralph protested, "more than Belloc and
Chesterton, anyhow."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Cosham, with a gesture of surprise and relief
mingled. "You are, then, a 'rara avis' in your generation. I am
delighted to meet anyone who reads De Quincey."

Here she hollowed her hand into a screen, and, leaning towards
Katharine, inquired, in a very audible whisper, "Does your friend
WRITE?"

"Mr. Denham," said Katharine, with more than her usual clearness and
firmness, "writes for the Review. He is a lawyer."

"The clean-shaven lips, showing the expression of the mouth! I
recognize them at once. I always feel at home with lawyers, Mr.
Denham--"

"They used to come about so much in the old days," Mrs. Milvain
interposed, the frail, silvery notes of her voice falling with the
sweet tone of an old bell.

"You say you live at Highgate," she continued. "I wonder whether you
happen to know if there is an old house called Tempest Lodge still in
existence--an old white house in a garden?"

Ralph shook his head, and she sighed.

"Ah, no; it must have been pulled down by this time, with all the
other old houses. There were such pretty lanes in those days. That was
how your uncle met your Aunt Emily, you know," she addressed
Katharine. "They walked home through the lanes."

"A sprig of May in her bonnet," Mrs. Cosham ejaculated, reminiscently.

"And next Sunday he had violets in his buttonhole. And that was how we
guessed."

Katharine laughed. She looked at Ralph. His eyes were meditative, and
she wondered what he found in this old gossip to make him ponder so
contentedly. She felt, she hardly knew why, a curious pity for him.

"Uncle John--yes, 'poor John,' you always called him. Why was that?"
she asked, to make them go on talking, which, indeed, they needed
little invitation to do.

"That was what his father, old Sir Richard, always called him. Poor
John, or the fool of the family," Mrs. Milvain hastened to inform
them. "The other boys were so brilliant, and he could never pass his
examinations, so they sent him to India--a long voyage in those days,
poor fellow. You had your own room, you know, and you did it up. But
he will get his knighthood and a pension, I believe," she said,
turning to Ralph, "only it is not England."

"No," Mrs. Cosham confirmed her, "it is not England. In those days we
thought an Indian Judgeship about equal to a county-court judgeship at
home. His Honor--a pretty title, but still, not at the top of the
tree. However," she sighed, "if you have a wife and seven children,
and people nowadays very quickly forget your father's name--well, you
have to take what you can get," she concluded.

"And I fancy," Mrs. Milvain resumed, lowering her voice rather
confidentially, "that John would have done more if it hadn't been for
his wife, your Aunt Emily. She was a very good woman, devoted to him,
of course, but she was not ambitious for him, and if a wife isn't
ambitious for her husband, especially in a profession like the law,
clients soon get to know of it. In our young days, Mr. Denham, we used
to say that we knew which of our friends would become judges, by
looking at the girls they married. And so it was, and so, I fancy, it
always will be. I don't think," she added, summing up these scattered
remarks, "that any man is really happy unless he succeeds in his
profession."

Mrs. Cosham approved of this sentiment with more ponderous sagacity
from her side of the tea-table, in the first place by swaying her
head, and in the second by remarking:

"No, men are not the same as women. I fancy Alfred Tennyson spoke the
truth about that as about many other things. How I wish he'd lived to
write 'The Prince'--a sequel to 'The Princess'! I confess I'm almost
tired of Princesses. We want some one to show us what a good man can
be. We have Laura and Beatrice, Antigone and Cordelia, but we have no
heroic man. How do you, as a poet, account for that, Mr. Denham?"

"I'm not a poet," said Ralph good-humoredly. "I'm only a solicitor."

"But you write, too?" Mrs. Cosham demanded, afraid lest she should be
balked of her priceless discovery, a young man truly devoted to
literature.

"In my spare time," Denham reassured her.

"In your spare time!" Mrs. Cosham echoed. "That is a proof of
devotion, indeed." She half closed her eyes, and indulged herself in a
fascinating picture of a briefless barrister lodged in a garret,
writing immortal novels by the light of a farthing dip. But the
romance which fell upon the figures of great writers and illumined
their pages was no false radiance in her case. She carried her pocket
Shakespeare about with her, and met life fortified by the words of the
poets. How far she saw Denham, and how far she confused him with some
hero of fiction, it would be hard to say. Literature had taken
possession even of her memories. She was matching him, presumably,
with certain characters in the old novels, for she came out, after a
pause, with:

"Um--um--Pendennis--Warrington--I could never forgive Laura," she
pronounced energetically, "for not marrying George, in spite of
everything. George Eliot did the very same thing; and Lewes was a
little frog-faced man, with the manner of a dancing master. But
Warrington, now, had everything in his favor; intellect, passion,
romance, distinction, and the connection was a mere piece of
undergraduate folly. Arthur, I confess, has always seemed to me a bit
of a fop; I can't imagine how Laura married him. But you say you're a
solicitor, Mr. Denham. Now there are one or two things I should like
to ask you--about Shakespeare--" She drew out her small, worn volume
with some difficulty, opened it, and shook it in the air. "They say,
nowadays, that Shakespeare was a lawyer. They say, that accounts for
his knowledge of human nature. There's a fine example for you, Mr.
Denham. Study your clients, young man, and the world will be the
richer one of these days, I have no doubt. Tell me, how do we come out
of it, now; better or worse than you expected?"

Thus called upon to sum up the worth of human nature in a few words,
Ralph answered unhesitatingly:

"Worse, Mrs. Cosham, a good deal worse. I'm afraid the ordinary man is
a bit of a rascal--"

"And the ordinary woman?"

"No, I don't like the ordinary woman either--"

Ah, dear me, I've no doubt that's very true, very true." Mrs. Cosham
sighed. "Swift would have agreed with you, anyhow--" She looked at
him, and thought that there were signs of distinct power in his brow.
He would do well, she thought, to devote himself to satire.

"Charles Lavington, you remember, was a solicitor," Mrs. Milvain
interposed, rather resenting the waste of time involved in talking
about fictitious people when you might be talking about real people.
"But you wouldn't remember him, Katharine."

"Mr. Lavington? Oh, yes, I do," said Katharine, waking from other
thoughts with her little start. "The summer we had a house near Tenby.
I remember the field and the pond with the tadpoles, and making
haystacks with Mr. Lavington."

"She is right. There WAS a pond with tadpoles," Mrs. Cosham
corroborated. "Millais made studies of it for 'Ophelia.' Some say that
is the best picture he ever painted--"

"And I remember the dog chained up in the yard, and the dead snakes
hanging in the toolhouse."

"It was at Tenby that you were chased by the bull," Mrs. Milvain
continued. "But that you couldn't remember, though it's true you were
a wonderful child. Such eyes she had, Mr. Denham! I used to say to her
father, 'She's watching us, and summing us all up in her little mind.'
And they had a nurse in those days," she went on, telling her story
with charming solemnity to Ralph, "who was a good woman, but engaged
to a sailor. When she ought to have been attending to the baby, her
eyes were on the sea. And Mrs. Hilbery allowed this girl--Susan her
name was--to have him to stay in the village. They abused her
goodness, I'm sorry to say, and while they walked in the lanes, they
stood the perambulator alone in a field where there was a bull. The
animal became enraged by the red blanket in the perambulator, and
Heaven knows what might have happened if a gentleman had not been
walking by in the nick of time, and rescued Katharine in his arms!"

"I think the bull was only a cow, Aunt Celia," said Katharine.

"My darling, it was a great red Devonshire bull, and not long after it
gored a man to death and had to be destroyed. And your mother forgave
Susan--a thing I could never have done."

"Maggie's sympathies were entirely with Susan and the sailor, I am
sure," said Mrs. Cosham, rather tartly. "My sister-in-law," she
continued, "has laid her burdens upon Providence at every crisis in
her life, and Providence, I must confess, has responded nobly, so
far--"

"Yes," said Katharine, with a laugh, for she liked the rashness which
irritated the rest of the family. "My mother's bulls always turn into
cows at the critical moment."

"Well," said Mrs. Milvain, "I'm glad you have some one to protect you
from bulls now."

"I can't imagine William protecting any one from bulls," said
Katharine.

It happened that Mrs. Cosham had once more produced her pocket volume
of Shakespeare, and was consulting Ralph upon an obscure passage in
"Measure for Measure." He did not at once seize the meaning of what
Katharine and her aunt were saying; William, he supposed, referred to
some small cousin, for he now saw Katharine as a child in a pinafore;
but, nevertheless, he was so much distracted that his eye could hardly
follow the words on the paper. A moment later he heard them speak
distinctly of an engagement ring.

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