Complete Works of Virginia Woolf

by Virginia Woolf

  “I don’t quite see,” she said, as if Katharine had challenged her explicitly, “how, things being as they are, any one can help trying, at least, to do something.”

  “No. But how ARE things?”

  Mary pressed her lips, and smiled ironically; she had Katharine at her mercy; she could, if she liked, discharge upon her head wagon-loads of revolting proof of the state of things ignored by the casual, the amateur, the looker-on, the cynical observer of life at a distance. And yet she hesitated. As usual, when she found herself in talk with Katharine, she began to feel rapid alternations of opinion about her, arrows of sensation striking strangely through the envelope of personality, which shelters us so conveniently from our fellows. What an egoist, how aloof she was! And yet, not in her words, perhaps, but in her voice, in her face, in her attitude, there were signs of a soft brooding spirit, of a sensibility unblunted and profound, playing over her thoughts and deeds, and investing her manner with an habitual gentleness. The arguments and phrases of Mr. Clacton fell flat against such armor.

  “You’ll be married, and you’ll have other things to think of,” she said inconsequently, and with an accent of condescension. She was not going to make Katharine understand in a second, as she would, all she herself had learnt at the cost of such pain. No. Katharine was to be happy; Katharine was to be ignorant; Mary was to keep this knowledge of the impersonal life for herself. The thought of her morning’s renunciation stung her conscience, and she tried to expand once more into that impersonal condition which was so lofty and so painless. She must check this desire to be an individual again, whose wishes were in conflict with those of other people. She repented of her bitterness.

  Katharine now renewed her signs of leave-taking; she had drawn on one of her gloves, and looked about her as if in search of some trivial saying to end with. Wasn’t there some picture, or clock, or chest of drawers which might be singled out for notice? something peaceable and friendly to end the uncomfortable interview? The green-shaded lamp burnt in the corner, and illumined books and pens and blotting-paper. The whole aspect of the place started another train of thought and struck her as enviably free; in such a room one could work — one could have a life of one’s own.

  “I think you’re very lucky,” she observed. “I envy you, living alone and having your own things” — and engaged in this exalted way, which had no recognition or engagement-ring, she added in her own mind.

  Mary’s lips parted slightly. She could not conceive in what respects Katharine, who spoke sincerely, could envy her.

  “I don’t think you’ve got any reason to envy me,” she said.

  “Perhaps one always envies other people,” Katharine observed vaguely.

  “Well, but you’ve got everything that any one can want.”

  Katharine remained silent. She gazed into the fire quietly, and without a trace of self-consciousness. The hostility which she had divined in Mary’s tone had completely disappeared, and she forgot that she had been upon the point of going.

  “Well, I suppose I have,” she said at length. “And yet I sometimes think—” She paused; she did not know how to express what she meant.

  “It came over me in the Tube the other day,” she resumed, with a smile; “what is it that makes these people go one way rather than the other? It’s not love; it’s not reason; I think it must be some idea. Perhaps, Mary, our affections are the shadow of an idea. Perhaps there isn’t any such thing as affection in itself....” She spoke half-mockingly, asking her question, which she scarcely troubled to frame, not of Mary, or of any one in particular.

  But the words seemed to Mary Datchet shallow, supercilious, cold-blooded, and cynical all in one. All her natural instincts were roused in revolt against them.

  “I’m the opposite way of thinking, you see,” she said.

  “Yes; I know you are,” Katharine replied, looking at her as if now she were about, perhaps, to explain something very important.

  Mary could not help feeling the simplicity and good faith that lay behind Katharine’s words.

  “I think affection is the only reality,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Katharine, almost sadly. She understood that Mary was thinking of Ralph, and she felt it impossible to press her to reveal more of this exalted condition; she could only respect the fact that, in some few cases, life arranged itself thus satisfactorily and pass on. She rose to her feet accordingly. But Mary exclaimed, with unmistakable earnestness, that she must not go; that they met so seldom; that she wanted to talk to her so much.... Katharine was surprised at the earnestness with which she spoke. It seemed to her that there could be no indiscretion in mentioning Ralph by name.

  Seating herself “for ten minutes,” she said: “By the way, Mr. Denham told me he was going to give up the Bar and live in the country. Has he gone? He was beginning to tell me about it, when we were interrupted.”

  “He thinks of it,” said Mary briefly. The color at once came to her face.

  “It would be a very good plan,” said Katharine in her decided way.

  “You think so?”

  “Yes, because he would do something worth while; he would write a book. My father always says that he’s the most remarkable of the young men who write for him.”

  Mary bent low over the fire and stirred the coal between the bars with a poker. Katharine’s mention of Ralph had roused within her an almost irresistible desire to explain to her the true state of the case between herself and Ralph. She knew, from the tone of her voice, that in speaking of Ralph she had no desire to probe Mary’s secrets, or to insinuate any of her own. Moreover, she liked Katharine; she trusted her; she felt a respect for her. The first step of confidence was comparatively simple; but a further confidence had revealed itself, as Katharine spoke, which was not so simple, and yet it impressed itself upon her as a necessity; she must tell Katharine what it was clear that she had no conception of — she must tell Katharine that Ralph was in love with her.

  “I don’t know what he means to do,” she said hurriedly, seeking time against the pressure of her own conviction. “I’ve not seen him since Christmas.”

  Katharine reflected that this was odd; perhaps, after all, she had misunderstood the position. She was in the habit of assuming, however, that she was rather unobservant of the finer shades of feeling, and she noted her present failure as another proof that she was a practical, abstract-minded person, better fitted to deal with figures than with the feelings of men and women. Anyhow, William Rodney would say so.

  “And now—” she said.

  “Oh, please stay!” Mary exclaimed, putting out her hand to stop her. Directly Katharine moved she felt, inarticulately and violently, that she could not bear to let her go. If Katharine went, her only chance of speaking was lost; her only chance of saying something tremendously important was lost. Half a dozen words were sufficient to wake Katharine’s attention, and put flight and further silence beyond her power. But although the words came to her lips, her throat closed upon them and drove them back. After all, she considered, why should she speak? Because it is right, her instinct told her; right to expose oneself without reservations to other human beings. She flinched from the thought. It asked too much of one already stripped bare. Something she must keep of her own. But if she did keep something of her own? Immediately she figured an immured life, continuing for an immense period, the same feelings living for ever, neither dwindling nor changing within the ring of a thick stone wall. The imagination of this loneliness frightened her, and yet to speak — to lose her loneliness, for it had already become dear to her, was beyond her power.

  Her hand went down to the hem of Katharine’s skirt, and, fingering a line of fur, she bent her head as if to examine it.

  “I like this fur,” she said, “I like your clothes. And you mustn’t think that I’m going to marry Ralph,” she continued, in the same tone, “because he doesn’t care for me at all. He cares for some one else.” Her head remained bent, and her hand still rested u
pon the skirt.

  “It’s a shabby old dress,” said Katharine, and the only sign that Mary’s words had reached her was that she spoke with a little jerk.

  “You don’t mind my telling you that?” said Mary, raising herself.

  “No, no,” said Katharine; “but you’re mistaken, aren’t you?” She was, in truth, horribly uncomfortable, dismayed, indeed, disillusioned. She disliked the turn things had taken quite intensely. The indecency of it afflicted her. The suffering implied by the tone appalled her. She looked at Mary furtively, with eyes that were full of apprehension. But if she had hoped to find that these words had been spoken without understanding of their meaning, she was at once disappointed. Mary lay back in her chair, frowning slightly, and looking, Katharine thought, as if she had lived fifteen years or so in the space of a few minutes.

  “There are some things, don’t you think, that one can’t be mistaken about?” Mary said, quietly and almost coldly. “That is what puzzles me about this question of being in love. I’ve always prided myself upon being reasonable,” she added. “I didn’t think I could have felt this — I mean if the other person didn’t. I was foolish. I let myself pretend.” Here she paused. “For, you see, Katharine,” she proceeded, rousing herself and speaking with greater energy, “I AM in love. There’s no doubt about that.... I’m tremendously in love... with Ralph.” The little forward shake of her head, which shook a lock of hair, together with her brighter color, gave her an appearance at once proud and defiant.

  Katharine thought to herself, “That’s how it feels then.” She hesitated, with a feeling that it was not for her to speak; and then said, in a low tone, “You’ve got that.”

  “Yes,” said Mary; “I’ve got that. One wouldn’t NOT be in love.... But I didn’t mean to talk about that; I only wanted you to know. There’s another thing I want to tell you...” She paused. “I haven’t any authority from Ralph to say it; but I’m sure of this — he’s in love with you.”

  Katharine looked at her again, as if her first glance must have been deluded, for, surely, there must be some outward sign that Mary was talking in an excited, or bewildered, or fantastic manner. No; she still frowned, as if she sought her way through the clauses of a difficult argument, but she still looked more like one who reasons than one who feels.

  “That proves that you’re mistaken — utterly mistaken,” said Katharine, speaking reasonably, too. She had no need to verify the mistake by a glance at her own recollections, when the fact was so clearly stamped upon her mind that if Ralph had any feeling towards her it was one of critical hostility. She did not give the matter another thought, and Mary, now that she had stated the fact, did not seek to prove it, but tried to explain to herself, rather than to Katharine, her motives in making the statement.

  She had nerved herself to do what some large and imperious instinct demanded her doing; she had been swept on the breast of a wave beyond her reckoning.

  “I’ve told you,” she said, “because I want you to help me. I don’t want to be jealous of you. And I am — I’m fearfully jealous. The only way, I thought, was to tell you.”

  She hesitated, and groped in her endeavor to make her feelings clear to herself.

  “If I tell you, then we can talk; and when I’m jealous, I can tell you. And if I’m tempted to do something frightfully mean, I can tell you; you could make me tell you. I find talking so difficult; but loneliness frightens me. I should shut it up in my mind. Yes, that’s what I’m afraid of. Going about with something in my mind all my life that never changes. I find it so difficult to change. When I think a thing’s wrong I never stop thinking it wrong, and Ralph was quite right, I see, when he said that there’s no such thing as right and wrong; no such thing, I mean, as judging people—”

  “Ralph Denham said that?” said Katharine, with considerable indignation. In order to have produced such suffering in Mary, it seemed to her that he must have behaved with extreme callousness. It seemed to her that he had discarded the friendship, when it suited his convenience to do so, with some falsely philosophical theory which made his conduct all the worse. She was going on to express herself thus, had not Mary at once interrupted her.

  “No, no,” she said; “you don’t understand. If there’s any fault it’s mine entirely; after all, if one chooses to run risks—”

  Her voice faltered into silence. It was borne in upon her how completely in running her risk she had lost her prize, lost it so entirely that she had no longer the right, in talking of Ralph, to presume that her knowledge of him supplanted all other knowledge. She no longer completely possessed her love, since his share in it was doubtful; and now, to make things yet more bitter, her clear vision of the way to face life was rendered tremulous and uncertain, because another was witness of it. Feeling her desire for the old unshared intimacy too great to be borne without tears, she rose, walked to the farther end of the room, held the curtains apart, and stood there mastered for a moment. The grief itself was not ignoble; the sting of it lay in the fact that she had been led to this act of treachery against herself. Trapped, cheated, robbed, first by Ralph and then by Katharine, she seemed all dissolved in humiliation, and bereft of anything she could call her own. Tears of weakness welled up and rolled down her cheeks. But tears, at least, she could control, and would this instant, and then, turning, she would face Katharine, and retrieve what could be retrieved of the collapse of her courage.

  She turned. Katharine had not moved; she was leaning a little forward in her chair and looking into the fire. Something in the attitude reminded Mary of Ralph. So he would sit, leaning forward, looking rather fixedly in front of him, while his mind went far away, exploring, speculating, until he broke off with his, “Well, Mary?” — and the silence, that had been so full of romance to her, gave way to the most delightful talk that she had ever known.

  Something unfamiliar in the pose of the silent figure, something still, solemn, significant about it, made her hold her breath. She paused. Her thoughts were without bitterness. She was surprised by her own quiet and confidence. She came back silently, and sat once more by Katharine’s side. Mary had no wish to speak. In the silence she seemed to have lost her isolation; she was at once the sufferer and the pitiful spectator of suffering; she was happier than she had ever been; she was more bereft; she was rejected, and she was immensely beloved. Attempt to express these sensations was vain, and, moreover, she could not help believing that, without any words on her side, they were shared. Thus for some time longer they sat silent, side by side, while Mary fingered the fur on the skirt of the old dress.

  CHAPTER XXII

  The fact that she would be late in keeping her engagement with William was not the only reason which sent Katharine almost at racing speed along the Strand in the direction of his rooms. Punctuality might have been achieved by taking a cab, had she not wished the open air to fan into flame the glow kindled by Mary’s words. For among all the impressions of the evening’s talk one was of the nature of a revelation and subdued the rest to insignificance. Thus one looked; thus one spoke; such was love.

  “She sat up straight and looked at me, and then she said, ‘I’m in love,’” Katharine mused, trying to set the whole scene in motion. It was a scene to dwell on with so much wonder that not a grain of pity occurred to her; it was a flame blazing suddenly in the dark; by its light Katharine perceived far too vividly for her comfort the mediocrity, indeed the entirely fictitious character of her own feelings so far as they pretended to correspond with Mary’s feelings. She made up her mind to act instantly upon the knowledge thus gained, and cast her mind in amazement back to the scene upon the heath, when she had yielded, heaven knows why, for reasons which seemed now imperceptible. So in broad daylight one might revisit the place where one has groped and turned and succumbed to utter bewilderment in a fog.

  “It’s all so simple,” she said to herself. “There can’t be any doubt. I’ve only got to speak now. I’ve only got to speak,” she went on saying, in time to he
r own footsteps, and completely forgot Mary Datchet.

  William Rodney, having come back earlier from the office than he expected, sat down to pick out the melodies in “The Magic Flute” upon the piano. Katharine was late, but that was nothing new, and, as she had no particular liking for music, and he felt in the mood for it, perhaps it was as well. This defect in Katharine was the more strange, William reflected, because, as a rule, the women of her family were unusually musical. Her cousin, Cassandra Otway, for example, had a very fine taste in music, and he had charming recollections of her in a light fantastic attitude, playing the flute in the morning-room at Stogdon House. He recalled with pleasure the amusing way in which her nose, long like all the Otway noses, seemed to extend itself into the flute, as if she were some inimitably graceful species of musical mole. The little picture suggested very happily her melodious and whimsical temperament. The enthusiasms of a young girl of distinguished upbringing appealed to William, and suggested a thousand ways in which, with his training and accomplishments, he could be of service to her. She ought to be given the chance of hearing good music, as it is played by those who have inherited the great tradition. Moreover, from one or two remarks let fall in the course of conversation, he thought it possible that she had what Katharine professed to lack, a passionate, if untaught, appreciation of literature. He had lent her his play. Meanwhile, as Katharine was certain to be late, and “The Magic Flute” is nothing without a voice, he felt inclined to spend the time of waiting in writing a letter to Cassandra, exhorting her to read Pope in preference to Dostoevsky, until her feeling for form was more highly developed. He set himself down to compose this piece of advice in a shape which was light and playful, and yet did no injury to a cause which he had near at heart, when he heard Katharine upon the stairs. A moment later it was plain that he had been mistaken, it was not Katharine; but he could not settle himself to his letter. His temper had changed from one of urbane contentment — indeed of delicious expansion — to one of uneasiness and expectation. The dinner was brought in, and had to be set by the fire to keep hot. It was now a quarter of an hour beyond the specified time. He bethought him of a piece of news which had depressed him in the earlier part of the day. Owing to the illness of one of his fellow-clerks, it was likely that he would get no holiday until later in the year, which would mean the postponement of their marriage. But this possibility, after all, was not so disagreeable as the probability which forced itself upon him with every tick of the clock that Katharine had completely forgotten her engagement. Such things had happened less frequently since Christmas, but what if they were going to begin to happen again? What if their marriage should turn out, as she had said, a farce? He acquitted her of any wish to hurt him wantonly, but there was something in her character which made it impossible for her to help hurting people. Was she cold? Was she self-absorbed? He tried to fit her with each of these descriptions, but he had to own that she puzzled him.