Night and Day, Virginia Woolf [10 ebook reader txt] 📗
- Author: Virginia Woolf
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impossible to ask a woman with whom he had just broken off his
engagement to help him to become acquainted with another woman with a
view to his falling in love with her. If it was announced that their
engagement was over, a long and complete separation would inevitably
follow; in those circumstances, letters and gifts were returned; after
years of distance the severed couple met, perhaps at an evening party,
and touched hands uncomfortably with an indifferent word or two. He
would be cast off completely; he would have to trust to his own
resources. He could never mention Cassandra to Katharine again; for
months, and doubtless years, he would never see Katharine again;
anything might happen to her in his absence.
Katharine was almost as well aware of his perplexities as he was. She
knew in what direction complete generosity pointed the way; but pride
—for to remain engaged to Rodney and to cover his experiments hurt
what was nobler in her than mere vanity—fought for its life.
“I’m to give up my freedom for an indefinite time,” she thought, “in
order that William may see Cassandra here at his ease. He’s not the
courage to manage it without my help—he’s too much of a coward to
tell me openly what he wants. He hates the notion of a public breach.
He wants to keep us both.”
When she reached this point, Rodney pocketed the letter and
elaborately looked at his watch. Although the action meant that he
resigned Cassandra, for he knew his own incompetence and distrusted
himself entirely, and lost Katharine, for whom his feeling was
profound though unsatisfactory, still it appeared to him that there
was nothing else left for him to do. He was forced to go, leaving
Katharine free, as he had said, to tell her mother that the engagement
was at an end. But to do what plain duty required of an honorable man,
cost an effort which only a day or two ago would have been
inconceivable to him. That a relationship such as he had glanced at
with desire could be possible between him and Katharine, he would have
been the first, two days ago, to deny with indignation. But now his
life had changed; his attitude had changed; his feelings were
different; new aims and possibilities had been shown him, and they had
an almost irresistible fascination and force. The training of a life
of thirty-five years had not left him defenceless; he was still master
of his dignity; he rose, with a mind made up to an irrevocable
farewell.
“I leave you, then,” he said, standing up and holding out his hand
with an effort that left him pale, but lent him dignity, “to tell your
mother that our engagement is ended by your desire.”
She took his hand and held it.
“You don’t trust me?” she said.
“I do, absolutely,” he replied.
“No. You don’t trust me to help you… . I could help you?”
“I’m hopeless without your help!” he exclaimed passionately, but
withdrew his hand and turned his back. When he faced her, she thought
that she saw him for the first time without disguise.
“It’s useless to pretend that I don’t understand what you’re offering,
Katharine. I admit what you say. Speaking to you perfectly frankly, I
believe at this moment that I do love your cousin; there is a chance
that, with your help, I might—but no,” he broke off, “it’s
impossible, it’s wrong—I’m infinitely to blame for having allowed
this situation to arise.”
“Sit beside me. Let’s consider sensibly—”
“Your sense has been our undoing—” he groaned.
“I accept the responsibility.”
“Ah, but can I allow that?” he exclaimed. “It would mean—for we must
face it, Katharine—that we let our engagement stand for the time
nominally; in fact, of course, your freedom would be absolute.”
“And yours too.”
“Yes, we should both be free. Let us say that I saw Cassandra once,
twice, perhaps, under these conditions; and then if, as I think
certain, the whole thing proves a dream, we tell your mother
instantly. Why not tell her now, indeed, under pledge of secrecy?”
“Why not? It would be over London in ten minutes, besides, she would
never even remotely understand.”
“Your father, then? This secrecy is detestable—it’s dishonorable.”
“My father would understand even less than my mother.”
“Ah, who could be expected to understand?” Rodney groaned; “but it’s
from your point of view that we must look at it. It’s not only asking
too much, it’s putting you into a position—a position in which I
could not endure to see my own sister.”
“We’re not brothers and sisters,” she said impatiently, “and if we
can’t decide, who can? I’m not talking nonsense,” she proceeded. “I’ve
done my best to think this out from every point of view, and I’ve come
to the conclusion that there are risks which have to be taken,—though
I don’t deny that they hurt horribly.”
“Katharine, you mind? You’ll mind too much.”
“No I shan’t,” she said stoutly. “I shall mind a good deal, but I’m
prepared for that; I shall get through it, because you will help me.
You’ll both help me. In fact, we’ll help each other. That’s a
Christian doctrine, isn’t it?”
“It sounds more like Paganism to me,” Rodney groaned, as he reviewed
the situation into which her Christian doctrine was plunging them.
And yet he could not deny that a divine relief possessed him, and that
the future, instead of wearing a lead-colored mask, now blossomed with
a thousand varied gaieties and excitements. He was actually to see
Cassandra within a week or perhaps less, and he was more anxious to
know the date of her arrival than he could own even to himself. It
seemed base to be so anxious to pluck this fruit of Katharine’s
unexampled generosity and of his own contemptible baseness. And yet,
though he used these words automatically, they had now no meaning. He
was not debased in his own eyes by what he had done, and as for
praising Katharine, were they not partners, conspirators, people bent
upon the same quest together, so that to praise the pursuit of a
common end as an act of generosity was meaningless. He took her hand
and pressed it, not in thanks so much as in an ecstasy of comradeship.
“We will help each other,” he said, repeating her words, seeking her
eyes in an enthusiasm of friendship.
Her eyes were grave but dark with sadness as they rested on him. “He’s
already gone,” she thought, “far away—he thinks of me no more.” And
the fancy came to her that, as they sat side by side, hand in hand,
she could hear the earth pouring from above to make a barrier between
them, so that, as they sat, they were separated second by second by an
impenetrable wall. The process, which affected her as that of being
sealed away and for ever from all companionship with the person she
cared for most, came to an end at last, and by common consent they
unclasped their fingers, Rodney touching hers with his lips, as the
curtain parted, and Mrs. Hilbery peered through the opening with her
benevolent and sarcastic expression to ask whether Katharine could
remember was it Tuesday or Wednesday, and did she dine in Westminster?
“Dearest William,” she said, pausing, as if she could not resist the
pleasure of encroaching for a second upon this wonderful world of love
and confidence and romance. “Dearest children,” she added,
disappearing with an impulsive gesture, as if she forced herself to
draw the curtain upon a scene which she refused all temptation to
interrupt.
At a quarter-past three in the afternoon of the following Saturday
Ralph Denham sat on the bank of the lake in Kew Gardens, dividing the
dial-plate of his watch into sections with his forefinger. The just
and inexorable nature of time itself was reflected in his face. He
might have been composing a hymn to the unhasting and unresting march
of that divinity. He seemed to greet the lapse of minute after minute
with stern acquiescence in the inevitable order. His expression was so
severe, so serene, so immobile, that it seemed obvious that for him at
least there was a grandeur in the departing hour which no petty
irritation on his part was to mar, although the wasting time wasted
also high private hopes of his own.
His face was no bad index to what went on within him. He was in a
condition of mind rather too exalted for the trivialities of daily
life. He could not accept the fact that a lady was fifteen minutes
late in keeping her appointment without seeing in that accident the
frustration of his entire life. Looking at his watch, he seemed to
look deep into the springs of human existence, and by the light of
what he saw there altered his course towards the north and the
midnight… . Yes, one’s voyage must be made absolutely without
companions through ice and black water—towards what goal? Here he
laid his finger upon the half-hour, and decided that when the
minute-hand reached that point he would go, at the same time answering
the question put by another of the many voices of consciousness with
the reply that there was undoubtedly a goal, but that it would need
the most relentless energy to keep anywhere in its direction. Still,
still, one goes on, the ticking seconds seemed to assure him, with
dignity, with open eyes, with determination not to accept the
second-rate, not to be tempted by the unworthy, not to yield, not to
compromise. Twenty-five minutes past three were now marked upon the
face of the watch. The world, he assured himself, since Katharine
Hilbery was now half an hour behind her time, offers no happiness, no
rest from struggle, no certainty. In a scheme of things utterly bad
from the start the only unpardonable folly is that of hope. Raising
his eyes for a moment from the face of his watch, he rested them upon
the opposite bank, reflectively and not without a certain wistfulness,
as if the sternness of their gaze were still capable of mitigation.
Soon a look of the deepest satisfaction filled them, though, for a
moment, he did not move. He watched a lady who came rapidly, and yet
with a trace of hesitation, down the broad grass-walk towards him. She
did not see him. Distance lent her figure an indescribable height, and
romance seemed to surround her from the floating of a purple veil
which the light air filled and curved from her shoulders.
“Here she comes, like a ship in full sail,” he said to himself, half
remembering some line from a play or poem where the heroine bore down
thus with feathers flying and airs saluting her. The greenery and the
high presences of the trees surrounded her as if they stood forth at
her coming. He rose, and she saw him; her little exclamation proved
that she was glad to find him, and then that she blamed herself for
being late.
“Why did you never tell me? I didn’t know there was this,” she
remarked, alluding to the lake, the broad green space, the vista of
trees, with the ruffled gold of the Thames in the distance and the
Ducal castle standing in its meadows. She paid the rigid tail of the
Ducal lion the tribute of incredulous laughter.
“You’ve never been to Kew?” Denham remarked.
But it appeared that she had come once as a small child, when the
geography of the place was entirely different, and
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