Night and Day, Virginia Woolf [10 ebook reader txt] 📗

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

armchair. 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