Night and Day

V >> Virginia Woolf >> Night and Day

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"Mrs. Milvain?" Rodney exclaimed. "What has she told you?"

His air of open confidence entirely vanished.

"Oh, people are saying that you're in love with Cassandra, and that
you don't care for me."

"They have seen us?" he asked.

"Everything we've done for a fortnight has been seen."

"I told you that would happen!" he exclaimed.

He walked to the window in evident perturbation. Katharine was too
indignant to attend to him. She was swept away by the force of her own
anger. Clasping Rodney's flowers, she stood upright and motionless.

Rodney turned away from the window.

"It's all been a mistake," he said. "I blame myself for it. I should
have known better. I let you persuade me in a moment of madness. I beg
you to forget my insanity, Katharine."

"She wished even to persecute Cassandra!" Katharine burst out, not
listening to him. "She threatened to speak to her. She's capable of
it--she's capable of anything!"

"Mrs. Milvain is not tactful, I know, but you exaggerate, Katharine.
People are talking about us. She was right to tell us. It only
confirms my own feeling--the position is monstrous."

At length Katharine realized some part of what he meant.

"You don't mean that this influences you, William?" she asked in
amazement.

"It does," he said, flushing. "It's intensely disagreeable to me. I
can't endure that people should gossip about us. And then there's your
cousin--Cassandra--" He paused in embarrassment.

"I came here this morning, Katharine," he resumed, with a change of
voice, "to ask you to forget my folly, my bad temper, my inconceivable
behavior. I came, Katharine, to ask whether we can't return to the
position we were in before this--this season of lunacy. Will you take
me back, Katharine, once more and for ever?"

No doubt her beauty, intensified by emotion and enhanced by the
flowers of bright color and strange shape which she carried wrought
upon Rodney, and had its share in bestowing upon her the old romance.
But a less noble passion worked in him, too; he was inflamed by
jealousy. His tentative offer of affection had been rudely and, as he
thought, completely repulsed by Cassandra on the preceding day.
Denham's confession was in his mind. And ultimately, Katharine's
dominion over him was of the sort that the fevers of the night cannot
exorcise.

"I was as much to blame as you were yesterday," she said gently,
disregarding his question. "I confess, William, the sight of you and
Cassandra together made me jealous, and I couldn't control myself. I
laughed at you, I know."

"You jealous!" William exclaimed. "l assure you, Katharine, you've not
the slightest reason to be jealous. Cassandra dislikes me, so far as
she feels about me at all. I was foolish enough to try to explain the
nature of our relationship. I couldn't resist telling her what I
supposed myself to feel for her. She refused to listen, very rightly.
But she left me in no doubt of her scorn."

Katharine hesitated. She was confused, agitated, physically tired, and
had already to reckon with the violent feeling of dislike aroused by
her aunt which still vibrated through all the rest of her feelings.
She sank into a chair and dropped her flowers upon her lap.

"She charmed me," Rodney continued. "I thought I loved her. But that's
a thing of the past. It's all over, Katharine. It was a dream--an
hallucination. We were both equally to blame, but no harm's done if
you believe how truly I care for you. Say you believe me!"

He stood over her, as if in readiness to seize the first sign of her
assent. Precisely at that moment, owing, perhaps, to her vicissitudes
of feeling, all sense of love left her, as in a moment a mist lifts
from the earth. And when the mist departed a skeleton world and
blankness alone remained--a terrible prospect for the eyes of the
living to behold. He saw the look of terror in her face, and without
understanding its origin, took her hand in his. With the sense of
companionship returned a desire, like that of a child for shelter, to
accept what he had to offer her--and at that moment it seemed that he
offered her the only thing that could make it tolerable to live. She
let him press his lips to her cheek, and leant her head upon his arm.
It was the moment of his triumph. It was the only moment in which she
belonged to him and was dependent upon his protection.

"Yes, yes, yes," he murmured, "you accept me, Katharine. You love me."

For a moment she remained silent. He then heard her murmur:

"Cassandra loves you more than I do."

"Cassandra?" he whispered.

"She loves you," Katharine repeated. She raised herself and repeated
the sentence yet a third time. "She loves you."

William slowly raised himself. He believed instinctively what
Katharine said, but what it meant to him he was unable to understand.
Could Cassandra love him? Could she have told Katharine that she loved
him? The desire to know the truth of this was urgent, unknown though
the consequences might be. The thrill of excitement associated with
the thought of Cassandra once more took possession of him. No longer
was it the excitement of anticipation and ignorance; it was the
excitement of something greater than a possibility, for now he knew
her and had measure of the sympathy between them. But who could give
him certainty? Could Katharine, Katharine who had lately lain in his
arms, Katharine herself the most admired of women? He looked at her,
with doubt, and with anxiety, but said nothing.

"Yes, yes," she said, interpreting his wish for assurance, "it's true.
I know what she feels for you."

"She loves me?"

Katharine nodded.

"Ah, but who knows what I feel? How can I be sure of my feeling
myself? Ten minutes ago I asked you to marry me. I still wish it--I
don't know what I wish--"

He clenched his hands and turned away. He suddenly faced her and
demanded: "Tell me what you feel for Denham."

"For Ralph Denham?" she asked. "Yes!" she exclaimed, as if she had
found the answer to some momentarily perplexing question. "You're
jealous of me, William; but you're not in love with me. I'm jealous of
you. Therefore, for both our sakes, I say, speak to Cassandra at
once."

He tried to compose himself. He walked up and down the room; he paused
at the window and surveyed the flowers strewn upon the floor.
Meanwhile his desire to have Katharine's assurance confirmed became so
insistent that he could no longer deny the overmastering strength of
his feeling for Cassandra.

"You're right," he exclaimed, coming to a standstill and rapping his
knuckles sharply upon a small table carrying one slender vase. "I love
Cassandra."

As he said this, the curtains hanging at the door of the little room
parted, and Cassandra herself stepped forth.

"I have overheard every word!" she exclaimed.

A pause succeeded this announcement. Rodney made a step forward and
said:

"Then you know what I wish to ask you. Give me your answer--"

She put her hands before her face; she turned away and seemed to
shrink from both of them.

"What Katharine said," she murmured. "But," she added, raising her
head with a look of fear from the kiss with which he greeted her
admission, "how frightfully difficult it all is! Our feelings, I mean
--yours and mine and Katharine's. Katharine, tell me, are we doing
right?"

"Right--of course we're doing right," William answered her, "if, after
what you've heard, you can marry a man of such incomprehensible
confusion, such deplorable--"

"Don't, William," Katharine interposed; "Cassandra has heard us; she
can judge what we are; she knows better than we could tell her."

But, still holding William's hand, questions and desires welled up in
Cassandra's heart. Had she done wrong in listening? Why did Aunt Celia
blame her? Did Katharine think her right? Above all, did William
really love her, for ever and ever, better than any one?

"I must be first with him, Katharine!" she exclaimed. "I can't share
him even with you."

"I shall never ask that," said Katharine. She moved a little away from
where they sat and began half-consciously sorting her flowers.

"But you've shared with me," Cassandra said. "Why can't I share with
you? Why am I so mean? I know why it is," she added. "We understand
each other, William and I. You've never understood each other. You're
too different."

"I've never admired anybody more," William interposed.

"It's not that"--Cassandra tried to enlighten him--"it's
understanding."

"Have I never understood you, Katharine? Have I been very selfish?"

"Yes," Cassandra interposed. "You've asked her for sympathy, and she's
not sympathetic; you've wanted her to be practical, and she's not
practical. You've been selfish; you've been exacting--and so has
Katharine--but it wasn't anybody's fault."

Katharine had listened to this attempt at analysis with keen
attention. Cassandra's words seemed to rub the old blurred image of
life and freshen it so marvelously that it looked new again. She
turned to William.

"It's quite true," she said. "It was nobody's fault."

"There are many things that he'll always come to you for," Cassandra
continued, still reading from her invisible book. "I accept that,
Katharine. I shall never dispute it. I want to be generous as you've
been generous. But being in love makes it more difficult for me."

They were silent. At length William broke the silence.

"One thing I beg of you both, he said, and the old nervousness of
manner returned as he glanced at Katharine. "We will never discuss
these matters again. It's not that I'm timid and conventional, as you
think, Katharine. It's that it spoils things to discuss them; it
unsettles people's minds; and now we're all so happy--"

Cassandra ratified this conclusion so far as she was concerned, and
William, after receiving the exquisite pleasure of her glance, with
its absolute affection and trust, looked anxiously at Katharine.

"Yes, I'm happy," she assured him. "And I agree. We will never talk
about it again."

"Oh, Katharine, Katharine!" Cassandra cried, holding out her arms
while the tears ran down her cheeks.

CHAPTER XXX

The day was so different from other days to three people in the house
that the common routine of household life--the maid waiting at table,
Mrs. Hilbery writing a letter, the clock striking, and the door
opening, and all the other signs of long-established civilization
appeared suddenly to have no meaning save as they lulled Mr. and Mrs.
Hilbery into the belief that nothing unusual had taken place. It
chanced that Mrs. Hilbery was depressed without visible cause, unless
a certain crudeness verging upon coarseness in the temper of her
favorite Elizabethans could be held responsible for the mood. At any
rate, she had shut up "The Duchess of Malfi" with a sigh, and wished
to know, so she told Rodney at dinner, whether there wasn't some young
writer with a touch of the great spirit--somebody who made you believe
that life was BEAUTIFUL? She got little help from Rodney, and after
singing her plaintive requiem for the death of poetry by herself, she
charmed herself into good spirits again by remembering the existence
of Mozart. She begged Cassandra to play to her, and when they went
upstairs Cassandra opened the piano directly, and did her best to
create an atmosphere of unmixed beauty. At the sound of the first
notes Katharine and Rodney both felt an enormous sense of relief at
the license which the music gave them to loosen their hold upon the
mechanism of behavior. They lapsed into the depths of thought. Mrs.
Hilbery was soon spirited away into a perfectly congenial mood, that
was half reverie and half slumber, half delicious melancholy and half
pure bliss. Mr. Hilbery alone attended. He was extremely musical, and
made Cassandra aware that he listened to every note. She played her
best, and won his approval. Leaning slightly forward in his chair, and
turning his little green stone, he weighed the intention of her
phrases approvingly, but stopped her suddenly to complain of a noise
behind him. The window was unhasped. He signed to Rodney, who crossed
the room immediately to put the matter right. He stayed a moment
longer by the window than was, perhaps, necessary, and having done
what was needed, drew his chair a little closer than before to
Katharine's side. The music went on. Under cover of some exquisite run
of melody, he leant towards her and whispered something. She glanced
at her father and mother, and a moment later left the room, almost
unobserved, with Rodney.

"What is it?" she asked, as soon as the door was shut.

Rodney made no answer, but led her downstairs into the dining-room on
the ground floor. Even when he had shut the door he said nothing, but
went straight to the window and parted the curtains. He beckoned to
Katharine.

"There he is again," he said. "Look, there--under the lamp-post."

Katharine looked. She had no idea what Rodney was talking about. A
vague feeling of alarm and mystery possessed her. She saw a man
standing on the opposite side of the road facing the house beneath a
lamp-post. As they looked the figure turned, walked a few steps, and
came back again to his old position. It seemed to her that he was
looking fixedly at her, and was conscious of her gaze on him. She
knew, in a flash, who the man was who was watching them. She drew the
curtain abruptly.

"Denham," said Rodney. "He was there last night too." He spoke
sternly. His whole manner had become full of authority. Katharine felt
almost as if he accused her of some crime. She was pale and
uncomfortably agitated, as much by the strangeness of Rodney's
behavior as by the sight of Ralph Denham.

"If he chooses to come--" she said defiantly.

"You can't let him wait out there. I shall tell him to come in."
Rodney spoke with such decision that when he raised his arm Katharine
expected him to draw the curtain instantly. She caught his hand with a
little exclamation.

"Wait!" she cried. "I don't allow you."

"You can't wait," he replied. "You've gone too far." His hand remained
upon the curtain. "Why don't you admit, Katharine," he broke out,
looking at her with an expression of contempt as well as of anger,
"that you love him? Are you going to treat him as you treated me?"

She looked at him, wondering, in spite of all her perplexity, at the
spirit that possessed him.

"I forbid you to draw the curtain," she said.

He reflected, and then took his hand away.

"I've no right to interfere," he concluded. "I'll leave you. Or, if
you like, we'll go back to the drawing-room."

"No. I can't go back," she said, shaking her head. She bent her head
in thought.

"You love him, Katharine," Rodney said suddenly. His tone had lost
something of its sternness, and might have been used to urge a child
to confess its fault. She raised her eyes and fixed them upon him.

"I love him?" she repeated. He nodded. She searched his face, as if
for further confirmation of his words, and, as he remained silent and
expectant, turned away once more and continued her thoughts. He
observed her closely, but without stirring, as if he gave her time to
make up her mind to fulfil her obvious duty. The strains of Mozart
reached them from the room above.

"Now," she said suddenly, with a sort of desperation, rising from her
chair and seeming to command Rodney to fulfil his part. He drew the
curtain instantly, and she made no attempt to stop him. Their eyes at
once sought the same spot beneath the lamp-post.

"He's not there!" she exclaimed.

No one was there. William threw the window up and looked out. The wind
rushed into the room, together with the sound of distant wheels,
footsteps hurrying along the pavement, and the cries of sirens hooting
down the river.

"Denham!" William cried.

"Ralph!" said Katharine, but she spoke scarcely louder than she might
have spoken to some one in the same room. With their eyes fixed upon
the opposite side of the road, they did not notice a figure close to
the railing which divided the garden from the street. But Denham had
crossed the road and was standing there. They were startled by his
voice close at hand.

"Rodney!"

"There you are! Come in, Denham." Rodney went to the front door and
opened it. "Here he is," he said, bringing Ralph with him into the
dining-room where Katharine stood, with her back to the open window.
Their eyes met for a second. Denham looked half dazed by the strong
light, and, buttoned in his overcoat, with his hair ruffled across his
forehead by the wind, he seemed like somebody rescued from an open
boat out at sea. William promptly shut the window and drew the
curtains. He acted with a cheerful decision as if he were master of
the situation, and knew exactly what he meant to do.

"You're the first to hear the news, Denham," he said. "Katharine isn't
going to marry me, after all."

"Where shall I put--" Ralph began vaguely, holding out his hat and
glancing about him; he balanced it carefully against a silver bowl
that stood upon the sideboard. He then sat himself down rather heavily
at the head of the oval dinner-table. Rodney stood on one side of him
and Katharine on the other. He appeared to be presiding over some
meeting from which most of the members were absent. Meanwhile, he
waited, and his eyes rested upon the glow of the beautifully polished
mahogany table.

"William is engaged to Cassandra," said Katharine briefly.

At that Denham looked up quickly at Rodney. Rodney's expression
changed. He lost his self-possession. He smiled a little nervously,
and then his attention seemed to be caught by a fragment of melody
from the floor above. He seemed for a moment to forget the presence of
the others. He glanced towards the door.

"I congratulate you," said Denham.

"Yes, yes. We're all mad--quite out of our minds, Denham," he said.
"It's partly Katharine's doing--partly mine." He looked oddly round
the room as if he wished to make sure that the scene in which he
played a part had some real existence. "Quite mad," he repeated. "Even
Katharine--" His gaze rested upon her finally, as if she, too, had
changed from his old view of her. He smiled at her as if to encourage
her. "Katharine shall explain," he said, and giving a little nod to
Denham, he left the room.

Katharine sat down at once, and leant her chin upon her hands. So long
as Rodney was in the room the proceedings of the evening had seemed to
be in his charge, and had been marked by a certain unreality. Now that
she was alone with Ralph she felt at once that a constraint had been
taken from them both. She felt that they were alone at the bottom of
the house, which rose, story upon story, upon the top of them.

"Why were you waiting out there?" she asked.

"For the chance of seeing you," he replied.

"You would have waited all night if it hadn't been for William. It's
windy too. You must have been cold. What could you see? Nothing but
our windows."

"It was worth it. I heard you call me."

"I called you?" She had called unconsciously.

"They were engaged this morning," she told him, after a pause.

"You're glad?" he asked.

She bent her head. "Yes, yes," she sighed. "But you don't know how
good he is--what he's done for me--" Ralph made a sound of
understanding. "You waited there last night too?" she asked.

"Yes. I can wait," Denham replied.

The words seemed to fill the room with an emotion which Katharine
connected with the sound of distant wheels, the footsteps hurrying
along the pavement, the cries of sirens hooting down the river, the
darkness and the wind. She saw the upright figure standing beneath the
lamp-post.

"Waiting in the dark," she said, glancing at the window, as if he saw
what she was seeing. "Ah, but it's different--" She broke off. "I'm
not the person you think me. Until you realize that it's impossible--"

Placing her elbows on the table, she slid her ruby ring up and down
her finger abstractedly. She frowned at the rows of leather-bound
books opposite her. Ralph looked keenly at her. Very pale, but sternly
concentrated upon her meaning, beautiful but so little aware of
herself as to seem remote from him also, there was something distant
and abstract about her which exalted him and chilled him at the same
time.

"No, you're right," he said. "I don't know you. I've never known you."

"Yet perhaps you know me better than any one else," she mused.

Some detached instinct made her aware that she was gazing at a book
which belonged by rights to some other part of the house. She walked
over to the shelf, took it down, and returned to her seat, placing the
book on the table between them. Ralph opened it and looked at the
portrait of a man with a voluminous white shirt-collar, which formed
the frontispiece.

"I say I do know you, Katharine," he affirmed, shutting the book.
"It's only for moments that I go mad."

"Do you call two whole nights a moment?"

"I swear to you that now, at this instant, I see you precisely as you
are. No one has ever known you as I know you. . . . Could you have
taken down that book just now if I hadn't known you?"

"That's true," she replied, "but you can't think how I'm divided--how
I'm at my ease with you, and how I'm bewildered. The unreality--the
dark--the waiting outside in the wind--yes, when you look at me, not
seeing me, and I don't see you either. . . . But I do see," she went
on quickly, changing her position and frowning again, "heaps of
things, only not you."

"Tell me what you see," he urged.

But she could not reduce her vision to words, since it was no single
shape colored upon the dark, but rather a general excitement, an
atmosphere, which, when she tried to visualize it, took form as a wind
scouring the flanks of northern hills and flashing light upon
cornfields and pools.

"Impossible," she sighed, laughing at the ridiculous notion of putting
any part of this into words.

"Try, Katharine," Ralph urged her.

"But I can't--I'm talking a sort of nonsense--the sort of nonsense one
talks to oneself." She was dismayed by the expression of longing and
despair upon his face. "I was thinking about a mountain in the North
of England," she attempted. "It's too silly--I won't go on."

"We were there together?" he pressed her.

"No. I was alone." She seemed to be disappointing the desire of a
child. His face fell.

"You're always alone there?"

"I can't explain." She could not explain that she was essentially
alone there. "It's not a mountain in the North of England. It's an
imagination--a story one tells oneself. You have yours too?"

"You're with me in mine. You're the thing I make up, you see."

"Oh, I see," she sighed. "That's why it's so impossible." She turned
upon him almost fiercely. "You must try to stop it," she said.

"I won't," he replied roughly, "because I--" He stopped. He realized
that the moment had come to impart that news of the utmost importance
which he had tried to impart to Mary Datchet, to Rodney upon the
Embankment, to the drunken tramp upon the seat. How should he offer it
to Katharine? He looked quickly at her. He saw that she was only half
attentive to him; only a section of her was exposed to him. The sight
roused in him such desperation that he had much ado to control his
impulse to rise and leave the house. Her hand lay loosely curled upon
the table. He seized it and grasped it firmly as if to make sure of
her existence and of his own. "Because I love you, Katharine," he
said.

Some roundness or warmth essential to that statement was absent from
his voice, and she had merely to shake her head very slightly for him
to drop her hand and turn away in shame at his own impotence. He
thought that she had detected his wish to leave her. She had discerned
the break in his resolution, the blankness in the heart of his vision.
It was true that he had been happier out in the street, thinking of
her, than now that he was in the same room with her. He looked at her
with a guilty expression on his face. But her look expressed neither
disappointment nor reproach. Her pose was easy, and she seemed to give
effect to a mood of quiet speculation by the spinning of her ruby ring
upon the polished table. Denham forgot his despair in wondering what
thoughts now occupied her.

"You don't believe me?" he said. His tone was humble, and made her
smile at him.

"As far as I understand you--but what should you advise me to do with
this ring?" she asked, holding it out.

"I should advise you to let me keep it for you," he replied, in the
same tone of half-humorous gravity.

"After what you've said, I can hardly trust you--unless you'll unsay
what you've said?"

"Very well. I'm not in love with you."

"But I think you ARE in love with me. . . . As I am with you," she
added casually enough. "At least," she said slipping her ring back to
its old position, "what other word describes the state we're in?"

She looked at him gravely and inquiringly, as if in search of help.

"It's when I'm with you that I doubt it, not when I'm alone," he
stated.

"So I thought," she replied.

In order to explain to her his state of mind, Ralph recounted his
experience with the photograph, the letter, and the flower picked at
Kew. She listened very seriously.

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