Chapter XXIII

by Virginia Woolf

　　When Ralph Denham entered the room and saw Katharine seated with herback to him, he was conscious of a change in the grade of theatmosphere such as a traveler meets with sometimes upon the roads,particularly after sunset, when, without warning, he runs from clammychill to a hoard of unspent warmth in which the sweetness of hay andbeanfield is cherished, as if the sun still shone although the moon isup. He hesitated; he shuddered; he walked elaborately to the windowand laid aside his coat. He balanced his stick most carefully againstthe folds of the curtain. Thus occupied with his own sensations andpreparations, he had little time to observe what either of the othertwo was feeling. Such symptoms of agitation as he might perceive (andthey had left their tokens in brightness of eye and pallor of cheeks)seemed to him well befitting the actors in so great a drama as that ofKatharine Hilbery's daily life. Beauty and passion were the breath ofher being, he thought.She scarcely noticed his presence, or only as it forced her to adopt amanner of composure, which she was certainly far from feeling.William, however, was even more agitated than she was, and her firstinstalment of promised help took the form of some commonplace upon theage of the building or the architect's name, which gave him an excuseto fumble in a drawer for certain designs, which he laid upon thetable between the three of them.Which of the three followed the designs most carefully it would bedifficult to tell, but it is certain that not one of the three foundfor the moment anything to say. Years of training in a drawing-roomcame at length to Katharine's help, and she said something suitable,at the same moment withdrawing her hand from the table because sheperceived that it trembled. William agreed effusively; Denhamcorroborated him, speaking in rather high-pitched tones; they thrustaside the plans, and drew nearer to the fireplace."I'd rather live here than anywhere in the whole of London," saidDenham.("And I've got nowhere to live") Katharine thought, as she agreedaloud."You could get rooms here, no doubt, if you wanted to," Rodneyreplied."But I'm just leaving London for good--I've taken that cottage I wastelling you about." The announcement seemed to convey very little toeither of his hearers."Indeed?--that's sad. . . . You must give me your address. But youwon't cut yourself off altogether, surely--""You'll be moving, too, I suppose," Denham remarked.William showed such visible signs of floundering that Katharinecollected herself and asked:"Where is the cottage you've taken?"In answering her, Denham turned and looked at her. As their eyes met,she realized for the first time that she was talking to Ralph Denham,and she remembered, without recalling any details, that she had beenspeaking of him quite lately, and that she had reason to think ill ofhim. What Mary had said she could not remember, but she felt thatthere was a mass of knowledge in her mind which she had not had timeto examine--knowledge now lying on the far side of a gulf. But heragitation flashed the queerest lights upon her past. She must getthrough the matter in hand, and then think it out in quiet. She benther mind to follow what Ralph was saying. He was telling her that hehad taken a cottage in Norfolk, and she was saying that she knew, ordid not know, that particular neighborhood. But after a moment'sattention her mind flew to Rodney, and she had an unusual, indeedunprecedented, sense that they were in touch and shared each other'sthoughts. If only Ralph were not there, she would at once give way toher desire to take William's hand, then to bend his head upon hershoulder, for this was what she wanted to do more than anything at themoment, unless, indeed, she wished more than anything to be alone--yes, that was what she wanted. She was sick to death of thesediscussions; she shivered at the effort to reveal her feelings. Shehad forgotten to answer. William was speaking now."But what will you find to do in the country?" she asked at random,striking into a conversation which she had only half heard, in such away as to make both Rodney and Denham look at her with a littlesurprise. But directly she took up the conversation, it was William'sturn to fall silent. He at once forgot to listen to what they weresaying, although he interposed nervously at intervals, "Yes, yes,yes." As the minutes passed, Ralph's presence became more and moreintolerable to him, since there was so much that he must say toKatharine; the moment he could not talk to her, terrible doubts,unanswerable questions accumulated, which he must lay beforeKatharine, for she alone could help him now. Unless he could see heralone, it would be impossible for him ever to sleep, or to know whathe had said in a moment of madness, which was not altogether mad, orwas it mad? He nodded his head, and said, nervously, "Yes, yes," andlooked at Katharine, and thought how beautiful she looked; there wasno one in the world that he admired more. There was an emotion in herface which lent it an expression he had never seen there. Then, as hewas turning over means by which he could speak to her alone, she rose,and he was taken by surprise, for he had counted on the fact that shewould outstay Denham. His only chance, then, of saying something toher in private, was to take her downstairs and walk with her to thestreet. While he hesitated, however, overcome with the difficulty ofputting one simple thought into words when all his thoughts werescattered about, and all were too strong for utterance, he was strucksilent by something that was still more unexpected. Denham got up fromhis chair, looked at Katharine, and said:"I'm going, too. Shall we go together?"And before William could see any way of detaining him--or would it bebetter to detain Katharine?--he had taken his hat, stick, and washolding the door open for Katharine to pass out. The most that Williamcould do was to stand at the head of the stairs and say good-night. Hecould not offer to go with them. He could not insist that she shouldstay. He watched her descend, rather slowly, owing to the dusk of thestaircase, and he had a last sight of Denham's head and of Katharine'shead near together, against the panels, when suddenly a pang of acutejealousy overcame him, and had he not remained conscious of theslippers upon his feet, he would have run after them or cried out. Asit was he could not move from the spot. At the turn of the staircaseKatharine turned to look back, trusting to this last glance to sealtheir compact of good friendship. Instead of returning her silentgreeting, William grinned back at her a cold stare of sarcasm or ofrage.She stopped dead for a moment, and then descended slowly into thecourt. She looked to the right and to the left, and once up into thesky. She was only conscious of Denham as a block upon her thoughts.She measured the distance that must be traversed before she would bealone. But when they came to the Strand no cabs were to be seen, andDenham broke the silence by saying:"There seem to be no cabs. Shall we walk on a little?""Very well," she agreed, paying no attention to him.Aware of her preoccupation, or absorbed in his own thoughts, Ralphsaid nothing further; and in silence they walked some distance alongthe Strand. Ralph was doing his best to put his thoughts into suchorder that one came before the rest, and the determination that whenhe spoke he should speak worthily, made him put off the moment ofspeaking till he had found the exact words and even the place thatbest suited him. The Strand was too busy. There was too much risk,also, of finding an empty cab. Without a word of explanation he turnedto the left, down one of the side streets leading to the river. On noaccount must they part until something of the very greatest importancehad happened. He knew perfectly well what he wished to say, and hadarranged not only the substance, but the order in which he was to sayit. Now, however, that he was alone with her, not only did he find thedifficulty of speaking almost insurmountable, but he was aware that hewas angry with her for thus disturbing him, and casting, as it was soeasy for a person of her advantages to do, these phantoms and pitfallsacross his path. He was determined that he would question her asseverely as he would question himself; and make them both, once andfor all, either justify her dominance or renounce it. But the longerthey walked thus alone, the more he was disturbed by the sense of heractual presence. Her skirt blew; the feathers in her hat waved;sometimes he saw her a step or two ahead of him, or had to wait forher to catch him up.The silence was prolonged, and at length drew her attention to him.First she was annoyed that there was no cab to free her from hiscompany; then she recalled vaguely something that Mary had said tomake her think ill of him; she could not remember what, but therecollection, combined with his masterful ways--why did he walk sofast down this side street?--made her more and more conscious of aperson of marked, though disagreeable, force by her side. She stoppedand, looking round her for a cab, sighted one in the distance. He wasthus precipitated into speech."Should you mind if we walked a little farther?" he asked. "There'ssomething I want to say to you.""Very well," she replied, guessing that his request had something todo with Mary Datchet."It's quieter by the river," he said, and instantly he crossed over."I want to ask you merely this," he began. But he paused so long thatshe could see his head against the sky; the slope of his thin cheekand his large, strong nose were clearly marked against it. While hepaused, words that were quite different from those he intended to usepresented themselves."I've made you my standard ever since I saw you. I've dreamt aboutyou; I've thought of nothing but you; you represent to me the onlyreality in the world."His words, and the queer strained voice in which he spoke them, madeit appear as if he addressed some person who was not the woman besidehim, but some one far away."And now things have come to such a pass that, unless I can speak toyou openly, I believe I shall go mad. I think of you as the mostbeautiful, the truest thing in the world," he continued, filled with asense of exaltation, and feeling that he had no need now to choose hiswords with pedantic accuracy, for what he wanted to say was suddenlybecome plain to him."I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river; to me you'reeverything that exists; the reality of everything. Life, I tell you,would be impossible without you. And now I want--"She had heard him so far with a feeling that she had dropped somematerial word which made sense of the rest. She could hear no more ofthis unintelligible rambling without checking him. She felt that shewas overhearing what was meant for another."I don't understand," she said. "You're saying things that you don'tmean.""I mean every word I say," he replied, emphatically. He turned hishead towards her. She recovered the words she was searching for whilehe spoke. "Ralph Denham is in love with you." They came back to her inMary Datchet's voice. Her anger blazed up in her."I saw Mary Datchet this afternoon," she exclaimed.He made a movement as if he were surprised or taken aback, butanswered in a moment:"She told you that I had asked her to marry me, I suppose?""No!" Katharine exclaimed, in surprise."I did though. It was the day I saw you at Lincoln," he continued. "Ihad meant to ask her to marry me, and then I looked out of the windowand saw you. After that I didn't want to ask any one to marry me. ButI did it; and she knew I was lying, and refused me. I thought then,and still think, that she cares for me. I behaved very badly. I don'tdefend myself.""No," said Katharine, "I should hope not. There's no defence that Ican think of. If any conduct is wrong, that is." She spoke with anenergy that was directed even more against herself than against him."It seems to me," she continued, with the same energy, "that peopleare bound to be honest. There's no excuse for such behavior." Shecould now see plainly before her eyes the expression on Mary Datchet'sface.After a short pause, he said:"I am not telling you that I am in love with you. I am not in lovewith you.""I didn't think that," she replied, conscious of some bewilderment."I have not spoken a word to you that I do not mean," he added."Tell me then what it is that you mean," she said at length.As if obeying a common instinct, they both stopped and, bendingslightly over the balustrade of the river, looked into the flowingwater."You say that we've got to be honest," Ralph began. "Very well. I willtry to tell you the facts; but I warn you, you'll think me mad. It's afact, though, that since I first saw you four or five months ago Ihave made you, in an utterly absurd way, I expect, my ideal. I'malmost ashamed to tell you what lengths I've gone to. It's become thething that matters most in my life." He checked himself. "Withoutknowing you, except that you're beautiful, and all that, I've come tobelieve that we're in some sort of agreement; that we're aftersomething together; that we see something. . . . I've got into thehabit of imagining you; I'm always thinking what you'd say or do; Iwalk along the street talking to you; I dream of you. It's merely abad habit, a schoolboy habit, day-dreaming; it's a common experience;half one's friends do the same; well, those are the facts."Simultaneously, they both walked on very slowly."If you were to know me you would feel none of this," she said. "Wedon't know each other--we've always been--interrupted. . . . Were yougoing to tell me this that day my aunts came?" she asked, recollectingthe whole scene.He bowed his head."The day you told me of your engagement," he said.She thought, with a start, that she was no longer engaged."I deny that I should cease to feel this if I knew you," he went on."I should feel it more reasonably--that's all. I shouldn't talk thekind of nonsense I've talked to-night. . . . But it wasn't nonsense.It was the truth," he said doggedly. "It's the important thing. Youcan force me to talk as if this feeling for you were an hallucination,but all our feelings are that. The best of them are half illusions.Still," he added, as if arguing to himself, "if it weren't as real afeeling as I'm capable of, I shouldn't be changing my life on youraccount.""What do you mean?" she inquired."I told you. I'm taking a cottage. I'm giving up my profession.""On my account?" she asked, in amazement."Yes, on your account," he replied. He explained his meaning nofurther."But I don't know you or your circumstances," she said at last, as heremained silent."You have no opinion about me one way or the other?""Yes, I suppose I have an opinion--" she hesitated.He controlled his wish to ask her to explain herself, and much to hispleasure she went on, appearing to search her mind."I thought that you criticized me--perhaps disliked me. I thought ofyou as a person who judges--""No; I'm a person who feels," he said, in a low voice."Tell me, then, what has made you do this?" she asked, after a break.He told her in an orderly way, betokening careful preparation, allthat he had meant to say at first; how he stood with regard to hisbrothers and sisters; what his mother had said, and his sister Joanhad refrained from saying; exactly how many pounds stood in his nameat the bank; what prospect his brother had of earning a livelihood inAmerica; how much of their income went on rent, and other detailsknown to him by heart. She listened to all this, so that she couldhave passed an examination in it by the time Waterloo Bridge was insight; and yet she was no more listening to it than she was countingthe paving-stones at her feet. She was feeling happier than she hadfelt in her life. If Denham could have seen how visibly books ofalgebraic symbols, pages all speckled with dots and dashes and twistedbars, came before her eyes as they trod the Embankment, his secret joyin her attention might have been dispersed. She went on, saying, "Yes,I see. . . . But how would that help you? . . . Your brother haspassed his examination?" so sensibly, that he had constantly to keephis brain in check; and all the time she was in fancy looking upthrough a telescope at white shadow-cleft disks which were otherworlds, until she felt herself possessed of two bodies, one walking bythe river with Denham, the other concentrated to a silver globe aloftin the fine blue space above the scum of vapors that was covering thevisible world. She looked at the sky once, and saw that no star waskeen enough to pierce the flight of watery clouds now coursing rapidlybefore the west wind. She looked down hurriedly again. There was noreason, she assured herself, for this feeling of happiness; she wasnot free; she was not alone; she was still bound to earth by a millionfibres; every step took her nearer home. Nevertheless, she exulted asshe had never exulted before. The air was fresher, the lights moredistinct, the cold stone of the balustrade colder and harder, when bychance or purpose she struck her hand against it. No feeling ofannoyance with Denham remained; he certainly did not hinder any flightshe might choose to make, whether in the direction of the sky or ofher home; but that her condition was due to him, or to anything thathe had said, she had no consciousness at all.They were now within sight of the stream of cabs and omnibusescrossing to and from the Surrey side of the river; the sound of thetraffic, the hooting of motor-horns, and the light chime of tram-bellssounded more and more distinctly, and, with the increase of noise,they both became silent. With a common instinct they slackened theirpace, as if to lengthen the time of semi-privacy allowed them. ToRalph, the pleasure of these last yards of the walk with Katharine wasso great that he could not look beyond the present moment to the timewhen she should have left him. He had no wish to use the last momentsof their companionship in adding fresh words to what he had alreadysaid. Since they had stopped talking, she had become to him not somuch a real person, as the very woman he dreamt of; but his solitarydreams had never produced any such keenness of sensation as that whichhe felt in her presence. He himself was also strangely transfigured.He had complete mastery of all his faculties. For the first time hewas in possession of his full powers. The vistas which opened beforehim seemed to have no perceptible end. But the mood had none of therestlessness or feverish desire to add one delight to another whichhad hitherto marked, and somewhat spoilt, the most rapturous of hisimaginings. It was a mood that took such clear-eyed account of theconditions of human life that he was not disturbed in the least by thegliding presence of a taxicab, and without agitation he perceived thatKatharine was conscious of it also, and turned her head in thatdirection. Their halting steps acknowledged the desirability ofengaging the cab; and they stopped simultaneously, and signed to it."Then you will let me know your decision as soon as you can?" heasked, with his hand on the door.She hesitated for a moment. She could not immediately recall what thequestion was that she had to decide."I will write," she said vaguely. "No," she added, in a second,bethinking her of the difficulties of writing anything decided upon aquestion to which she had paid no attention, "I don't see how tomanage it."She stood looking at Denham, considering and hesitating, with her footupon the step. He guessed her difficulties; he knew in a second thatshe had heard nothing; he knew everything that she felt."There's only one place to discuss things satisfactorily that I knowof," he said quickly; "that's Kew.""Kew?""Kew," he repeated, with immense decision. He shut the door and gaveher address to the driver. She instantly was conveyed away from him,and her cab joined the knotted stream of vehicles, each marked by alight, and indistinguishable one from the other. He stood watching fora moment, and then, as if swept by some fierce impulse, from the spotwhere they had stood, he turned, crossed the road at a rapid pace, anddisappeared.He walked on upon the impetus of this last mood of almost supernaturalexaltation until he reached a narrow street, at this hour empty oftraffic and passengers. Here, whether it was the shops with theirshuttered windows, the smooth and silvered curve of the wood pavement,or a natural ebb of feeling, his exaltation slowly oozed and desertedhim. He was now conscious of the loss that follows any revelation; hehad lost something in speaking to Katharine, for, after all, was theKatharine whom he loved the same as the real Katharine? She hadtranscended her entirely at moments; her skirt had blown, her featherwaved, her voice spoken; yes, but how terrible sometimes the pausebetween the voice of one's dreams and the voice that comes from theobject of one's dreams! He felt a mixture of disgust and pity at thefigure cut by human beings when they try to carry out, in practice,what they have the power to conceive. How small both he and Katharinehad appeared when they issued from the cloud of thought that envelopedthem! He recalled the small, inexpressive, commonplace words in whichthey had tried to communicate with each other; he repeated them overto himself. By repeating Katharine's words, he came in a few momentsto such a sense of her presence that he worshipped her more than ever.But she was engaged to be married, he remembered with a start. Thestrength of his feeling was revealed to him instantly, and he gavehimself up to an irresistible rage and sense of frustration. The imageof Rodney came before him with every circumstance of folly andindignity. That little pink-cheeked dancing-master to marry Katharine?that gibbering ass with the face of a monkey on an organ? that posing,vain, fantastical fop? with his tragedies and his comedies, hisinnumerable spites and prides and pettinesses? Lord! marry Rodney! Shemust be as great a fool as he was. His bitterness took possession ofhim, and as he sat in the corner of the underground carriage, helooked as stark an image of unapproachable severity as could beimagined. Directly he reached home he sat down at his table, and beganto write Katharine a long, wild, mad letter, begging her for boththeir sakes to break with Rodney, imploring her not to do what woulddestroy for ever the one beauty, the one truth, the one hope; not tobe a traitor, not to be a deserter, for if she were--and he wound upwith a quiet and brief assertion that, whatever she did or leftundone, he would believe to be the best, and accept from her withgratitude. He covered sheet after sheet, and heard the early cartsstarting for London before he went to bed.