Night and Day, Virginia Woolf [electronic book reader .txt] 📗

if a bell had summoned them. She was not used to the clockwork regulations of a large family. She hesitated in what she was saying, and rose. Mrs. Denham and Joan had drawn together and stood by the fireplace, slightly raising their skirts above their ankles, and discussing something which had an air of being very serious and very private. They appeared to have forgotten her presence among them. Ralph stood holding the door open for her.

“Won’t you come up to my room?” he said. And Katharine, glancing back at Joan, who smiled at her in a preoccupied way, followed Ralph upstairs. She was thinking of their argument, and when, after the long climb, he opened his door, she began at once.

“The question is, then, at what point is it right for the individual to assert his will against the will of the State.”

For some time they continued the argument, and then the intervals between one statement and the next became longer and longer, and they spoke more speculatively and less pugnaciously, and at last fell silent. Katharine went over the argument in her mind, remembering how, now and then, it had been set conspicuously on the right course by some remark offered either by James or by Johnnie.

“Your brothers are very clever,” she said. “I suppose you’re in the habit of arguing?”

“James and Johnnie will go on like that for hours,” Ralph replied. “So will Hester, if you start her upon Elizabethan dramatists.”

“And the little girl with the pigtail?”

“Molly? She’s only ten. But they’re always arguing among themselves.”

He was immensely pleased by Katharine’s praise of his brothers and sisters. He would have liked to go on telling her about them, but he checked himself.

“I see that it must be difficult to leave them,” Katharine continued. His deep pride in his family was more evident to him, at that moment, than ever before, and the idea of living alone in a cottage was ridiculous. All that brotherhood and sisterhood, and a common childhood in a common past mean, all the stability, the unambitious comradeship, and tacit understanding of family life at its best, came to his mind, and he thought of them as a company, of which he was the leader, bound on a difficult, dreary, but glorious voyage. And it was Katharine who had opened his eyes to this, he thought.

A little dry chirp from the corner of the room now roused her attention.

“My tame rook,” he explained briefly. “A cat had bitten one of its legs.” She looked at the rook, and her eyes went from one object to another.

“You sit here and read?” she said, her eyes resting upon his books. He said that he was in the habit of working there at night.

“The great advantage of Highgate is the view over London. At night the view from my window is splendid.” He was extremely anxious that she should appreciate his view, and she rose to see what was to be seen. It was already dark enough for the turbulent haze to be yellow with the light of street lamps, and she tried to determine the quarters of the city beneath her. The sight of her gazing from his window gave him a peculiar satisfaction. When she turned, at length, he was still sitting motionless in his chair.

“It must be late,” she said. “I must be going.” She settled upon the arm of the chair irresolutely, thinking that she had no wish to go home. William would be there, and he would find some way of making things unpleasant for her, and the memory of their quarrel came back to her. She had noticed Ralph’s coldness, too. She looked at him, and from his fixed stare she thought that he must be working out some theory, some argument. He had thought, perhaps, of some fresh point in his position, as to the bounds of personal liberty. She waited, silently, thinking about liberty.

“You’ve won again,” he said at last, without moving.

“I’ve won?” she repeated, thinking of the argument.

“I wish to God I hadn’t asked you here,” he burst out.

“What do you mean?”

“When you’re here, it’s different⁠—I’m happy. You’ve only to walk to the window⁠—you’ve only to talk about liberty. When I saw you down there among them all⁠—” He stopped short.

“You thought how ordinary I was.”

“I tried to think so. But I thought you more wonderful than ever.”

An immense relief, and a reluctance to enjoy that relief, conflicted in her heart.

She slid down into the chair.

“I thought you disliked me,” she said.

“God knows I tried,” he replied. “I’ve done my best to see you as you are, without any of this damned romantic nonsense. That was why I asked you here, and it’s increased my folly. When you’re gone I shall look out of that window and think of you. I shall waste the whole evening thinking of you. I shall waste my whole life, I believe.”

He spoke with such vehemence that her relief disappeared; she frowned; and her tone changed to one almost of severity.

“This is what I foretold. We shall gain nothing but unhappiness. Look at me, Ralph.” He looked at her. “I assure you that I’m far more ordinary than I appear. Beauty means nothing whatever. In fact, the most beautiful women are generally the most stupid. I’m not that, but I’m a matter-of-fact, prosaic, rather ordinary character; I order the dinner, I pay the bills, I do the accounts, I wind up the clock, and I never look at a book.”

“You forget⁠—” he began, but she would not let him speak.

“You come and see me among flowers and pictures, and think me mysterious, romantic, and all the rest of it. Being yourself very inexperienced and very emotional, you go home and invent a story about me, and now you can’t separate me from the person you’ve imagined me to be. You call that, I suppose, being in love; as a matter of fact it’s being in delusion. All romantic people are the same,” she added.