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- Author: Virginia Woolf
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the dawn coming up, the barges swimming past, the sun setting… .
Ah dear,” she sighed, “well, the sunset is very lovely too. I
sometimes think that poetry isn’t so much what we write as what we
feel, Mr. Denham.”
During this speech of her mother’s Katharine had turned away, and
Ralph felt that Mrs. Hilbery was talking to him apart, with a desire
to ascertain something about him which she veiled purposely by the
vagueness of her words. He felt curiously encouraged and heartened by
the beam in her eye rather than by her actual words. From the distance
of her age and sex she seemed to be waving to him, hailing him as a
ship sinking beneath the horizon might wave its flag of greeting to
another setting out upon the same voyage. He bent his head, saying
nothing, but with a curious certainty that she had read an answer to
her inquiry that satisfied her. At any rate, she rambled off into a
description of the Law Courts which turned to a denunciation of
English justice, which, according to her, imprisoned poor men who
couldn’t pay their debts. “Tell me, shall we ever do without it all?”
she asked, but at this point Katharine gently insisted that her mother
should go to bed. Looking back from half-way up the staircase,
Katharine seemed to see Denham’s eyes watching her steadily and
intently with an expression that she had guessed in them when he stood
looking at the windows across the road.
The tray which brought Katharine’s cup of tea the next morning
brought, also, a note from her mother, announcing that it was her
intention to catch an early train to Stratford-on-Avon that very day.
“Please find out the best way of getting there,” the note ran, “and
wire to dear Sir John Burdett to expect me, with my love. I’ve been
dreaming all night of you and Shakespeare, dearest Katharine.”
This was no momentary impulse. Mrs. Hilbery had been dreaming of
Shakespeare any time these six months, toying with the idea of an
excursion to what she considered the heart of the civilized world. To
stand six feet above Shakespeare’s bones, to see the very stones worn
by his feet, to reflect that the oldest man’s oldest mother had very
likely seen Shakespeare’s daughter—such thoughts roused an emotion in
her, which she expressed at unsuitable moments, and with a passion
that would not have been unseemly in a pilgrim to a sacred shrine. The
only strange thing was that she wished to go by herself. But,
naturally enough, she was well provided with friends who lived in the
neighborhood of Shakespeare’s tomb, and were delighted to welcome her;
and she left later to catch her train in the best of spirits. There
was a man selling violets in the street. It was a fine day. She would
remember to send Mr. Hilbery the first daffodil she saw. And, as she
ran back into the hall to tell Katharine, she felt, she had always
felt, that Shakespeare’s command to leave his bones undisturbed
applied only to odious curiosity-mongers—not to dear Sir John and
herself. Leaving her daughter to cogitate the theory of Anne
Hathaway’s sonnets, and the buried manuscripts here referred to, with
the implied menace to the safety of the heart of civilization itself,
she briskly shut the door of her taxicab, and was whirled off upon
the first stage of her pilgrimage.
The house was oddly different without her. Katharine found the maids
already in possession of her room, which they meant to clean
thoroughly during her absence. To Katharine it seemed as if they had
brushed away sixty years or so with the first flick of their damp
dusters. It seemed to her that the work she had tried to do in that
room was being swept into a very insignificant heap of dust. The china
shepherdesses were already shining from a bath of hot water. The
writing-table might have belonged to a professional man of methodical
habits.
Gathering together a few papers upon which she was at work, Katharine
proceeded to her own room with the intention of looking through them,
perhaps, in the course of the morning. But she was met on the stairs
by Cassandra, who followed her up, but with such intervals between
each step that Katharine began to feel her purpose dwindling before
they had reached the door. Cassandra leant over the banisters, and
looked down upon the Persian rug that lay on the floor of the hall.
“Doesn’t everything look odd this morning?” she inquired. “Are you
really going to spend the morning with those dull old letters, because
if so—”
The dull old letters, which would have turned the heads of the most
sober of collectors, were laid upon a table, and, after a moment’s
pause, Cassandra, looking grave all of a sudden, asked Katharine where
she should find the “History of England” by Lord Macaulay. It was
downstairs in Mr. Hilbery’s study. The cousins descended together in
search of it. They diverged into the drawing-room for the good reason
that the door was open. The portrait of Richard Alardyce attracted
their attention.
“I wonder what he was like?” It was a question that Katharine had
often asked herself lately.
“Oh, a fraud like the rest of them—at least Henry says so,” Cassandra
replied. “Though I don’t believe everything Henry says,” she added a
little defensively.
Down they went into Mr. Hilbery’s study, where they began to look
among his books. So desultory was this examination that some fifteen
minutes failed to discover the work they were in search of.
“Must you read Macaulay’s History, Cassandra?” Katharine asked, with a
stretch of her arms.
“I must,” Cassandra replied briefly.
“Well, I’m going to leave you to look for it by yourself.”
“Oh, no, Katharine. Please stay and help me. You see—you see—I told
William I’d read a little every day. And I want to tell him that I’ve
begun when he comes.”
“When does William come?” Katharine asked, turning to the shelves
again.
“To tea, if that suits you?”
“If it suits me to be out, I suppose you mean.”
“Oh, you’re horrid… . Why shouldn’t you—?”
“Yes ?”
“Why shouldn’t you be happy too?”
“I am quite happy,” Katharine replied.
“I mean as I am. Katharine,” she said impulsively, “do let’s be
married on the same day.”
“To the same man?”
“Oh, no, no. But why shouldn’t you marry—some one else?”
“Here’s your Macaulay,” said Katharine, turning round with the book in
her hand. “I should say you’d better begin to read at once if you mean
to be educated by tea-time.”
“Damn Lord Macaulay!” cried Cassandra, slapping the book upon the
table. “Would you rather not talk?”
“We’ve talked enough already,” Katharine replied evasively.
“I know I shan’t be able to settle to Macaulay,” said Cassandra,
looking ruefully at the dull red cover of the prescribed volume,
which, however, possessed a talismanic property, since William admired
it. He had advised a little serious reading for the morning hours.
“Have YOU read Macaulay?” she asked.
“No. William never tried to educate me.” As she spoke she saw the
light fade from Cassandra’s face, as if she had implied some other,
more mysterious, relationship. She was stung with compunction. She
marveled at her own rashness in having influenced the life of another,
as she had influenced Cassandra’s life.
“We weren’t serious,” she said quickly.
“But I’m fearfully serious,” said Cassandra, with a little shudder,
and her look showed that she spoke the truth. She turned and glanced
at Katharine as she had never glanced at her before. There was fear in
her glance, which darted on her and then dropped guiltily. Oh,
Katharine had everything—beauty, mind, character. She could never
compete with Katharine; she could never be safe so long as Katharine
brooded over her, dominating her, disposing of her. She called her
cold, unseeing, unscrupulous, but the only sign she gave outwardly was
a curious one—she reached out her hand and grasped the volume of
history. At that moment the bell of the telephone rang and Katharine
went to answer it. Cassandra, released from observation, dropped her
book and clenched her hands. She suffered more fiery torture in those
few minutes than she had suffered in the whole of her life; she learnt
more of her capacities for feeling. But when Katharine reappeared she
was calm, and had gained a look of dignity that was new to her.
“Was that him?” she asked.
“It was Ralph Denham,” Katharine replied.
“I meant Ralph Denham.”
“Why did you mean Ralph Denham? What has William told you about Ralph
Denham?” The accusation that Katharine was calm, callous, and
indifferent was not possible in face of her present air of animation.
She gave Cassandra no time to frame an answer. “Now, when are you and
William going to be married?” she asked.
Cassandra made no reply for some moments. It was, indeed, a very
difficult question to answer. In conversation the night before,
William had indicated to Cassandra that, in his belief, Katharine was
becoming engaged to Ralph Denham in the dining-room. Cassandra, in the
rosy light of her own circumstances, had been disposed to think that
the matter must be settled already. But a letter which she had
received that morning from William, while ardent in its expression of
affection, had conveyed to her obliquely that he would prefer the
announcement of their engagement to coincide with that of Katharine’s.
This document Cassandra now produced, and read aloud, with
considerable excisions and much hesitation.
“… a thousand pities—ahem—I fear we shall cause a great deal of
natural annoyance. If, on the other hand, what I have reason to think
will happen, should happen—within reasonable time, and the present
position is not in any way offensive to you, delay would, in my
opinion, serve all our interests better than a premature explanation,
which is bound to cause more surprise than is desirable—”
“Very like William,” Katharine exclaimed, having gathered the drift of
these remarks with a speed that, by itself, disconcerted Cassandra.
“I quite understand his feelings,” Cassandra replied. “I quite agree
with them. I think it would be much better, if you intend to marry Mr.
Denham, that we should wait as William says.”
“But, then, if I don’t marry him for months—or, perhaps, not at all?”
Cassandra was silent. The prospect appalled her. Katharine had been
telephoning to Ralph Denham; she looked queer, too; she must be, or
about to become, engaged to him. But if Cassandra could have overheard
the conversation upon the telephone, she would not have felt so
certain that it tended in that direction. It was to this effect:
“I’m Ralph Denham speaking. I’m in my right senses now.”
“How long did you wait outside the house?”
“I went home and wrote you a letter. I tore it up.”
“I shall tear up everything too.”
“I shall come.”
“Yes. Come to-day.”
“I must explain to you—”
“Yes. We must explain—”
A long pause followed. Ralph began a sentence, which he canceled with
the word, “Nothing.” Suddenly, together, at the same moment, they said
good-bye. And yet, if the telephone had been miraculously connected
with some higher atmosphere pungent with the scent of thyme and the
savor of salt, Katharine could hardly have breathed in a keener sense
of exhilaration. She ran downstairs on the crest of it. She was amazed
to find herself already committed by William and Cassandra to marry
the owner of the halting voice she had
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