look charming?”
She stepped back and bade them contemplate the empty
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Virginia Woolf
drawing-room, with its rich, irregular lights, as the flames
leapt and wavered.
“Dear things!” she exclaimed. “Dear chairs and tables!
How like old friends they are—faithful, silent friends.
Which reminds me, Katharine, little Mr. Anning is coming
to-night, and Tite Street, and Cadogan Square… . Do
remember to get that drawing of your great-uncle glazed.
Aunt Millicent remarked it last time she was here, and I
know how it would hurt me to see MY father in a broken
glass.”
It was like tearing through a maze of diamond-glittering
spiders’ webs to say good-bye and escape, for at each
movement Mrs. Hilbery remembered something further
about the villainies of picture-framers or the delights of
poetry, and at one time it seemed to the young man that
he would be hypnotized into doing what she pretended
to want him to do, for he could not suppose that she
attached any value whatever to his presence. Katharine,
however, made an opportunity for him to leave, and for
that he was grateful to her, as one young person is grateful
for the understanding of another.
CHAPTER II
The young man shut the door with a sharper slam than
any visitor had used that afternoon, and walked up the
street at a great pace, cutting the air with his walkingstick.
He was glad to find himself outside that drawing-
room, breathing raw fog, and in contact with unpolished
people who only wanted their share of the pavement allowed
them. He thought that if he had had Mr. or Mrs. or
Miss Hilbery out here he would have made them, somehow,
feel his superiority, for he was chafed by the memory
of halting awkward sentences which had failed to give
even the young woman with the sad, but inwardly ironical
eyes a hint of his force. He tried to recall the actual
words of his little outburst, and unconsciously supplemented
them by so many words of greater expressiveness
that the irritation of his failure was somewhat assuaged.
Sudden stabs of the unmitigated truth assailed him now
and then, for he was not inclined by nature to take a rosy
view of his conduct, but what with the beat of his foot
upon the pavement, and the glimpse which half-drawn
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Night and Day
curtains offered him of kitchens, dining-rooms, and draw-
ing-rooms, illustrating with mute power different scenes
from different lives, his own experience lost its sharpness.
His own experience underwent a curious change. His
speed slackened, his head sank a little towards his breast,
and the lamplight shone now and again upon a face grown
strangely tranquil. His thought was so absorbing that
when it became necessary to verify the name of a street,
he looked at it for a time before he read it; when he came
to a crossing, he seemed to have to reassure himself by
two or three taps, such as a blind man gives, upon the
curb; and, reaching the Underground station, he blinked
in the bright circle of light, glanced at his watch, decided
that he might still indulge himself in darkness, and
walked straight on.
And yet the thought was the thought with which he
had started. He was still thinking about the people in the
house which he had left; but instead of remembering,
with whatever accuracy he could, their looks and sayings,
he had consciously taken leave of the literal truth.
A turn of the street, a firelit room, something monumen
tal in the procession of the lamp-posts, who shall say
what accident of light or shape had suddenly changed
the prospect within his mind, and led him to murmur
aloud:
“She’ll do… . Yes, Katharine Hilbery’ll do… . I’ll take
Katharine Hilbery.”
As soon as he had said this, his pace slackened, his
head fell, his eyes became fixed. The desire to justify
himself, which had been so urgent, ceased to torment
him, and, as if released from constraint, so that they
worked without friction or bidding, his faculties leapt
forward and fixed, as a matter of course, upon the form
of Katharine Hilbery. It was marvellous how much they
found to feed upon, considering the destructive nature
of Denham’s criticism in her presence. The charm, which
he had tried to disown, when under the effect of it, the
beauty, the character, the aloofness, which he had been
determined not to feel, now possessed him wholly; and
when, as happened by the nature of things, he had exhausted
his memory, he went on with his imagination.
He was conscious of what he was about, for in thus dwell
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Virginia Woolf
ing upon Miss Hilbery’s qualities, he showed a kind of
method, as if he required this vision of her for a particular
purpose. He increased her height, he darkened her
hair; but physically there was not much to change in her.
His most daring liberty was taken with her mind, which,
for reasons of his own, he desired to be exalted and infallible,
and of such independence that it was only in the
case of Ralph Denham that it swerved from its high, swift
flight, but where he was concerned, though fastidious at
first, she finally swooped from her eminence to crown
him with her approval. These delicious details, however,
were to be worked out in all their ramifications at his
leisure; the main point was that Katharine Hilbery would
do; she would do for weeks, perhaps for months. In taking
her he had provided himself with something the lack
of which had left a bare place in his mind for a considerable
time. He gave a sigh of satisfaction; his consciousness
of his actual position somewhere in the neighborhood
of Knightsbridge returned to him, and he was soon
speeding in the train towards Highgate.
Although thus supported by the knowledge of his new
possession of considerable value, he was not proof against
the familiar thoughts which the suburban streets and the
damp shrubs growing in front gardens and the absurd
names painted in white upon the gates of those gardens
suggested to him. His walk was uphill, and his mind dwelt
gloomily upon the house which he approached, where he
would find six or seven brothers and sisters, a widowed
mother, and, probably, some aunt or uncle sitting down
to an unpleasant meal under a very bright light. Should
he put in force the threat which, two weeks ago, some
such gathering had wrung from him—the terrible threat
that if visitors came on Sunday he should dine alone in
his room? A glance in the direction of Miss Hilbery determined
him to make his stand this very night, and accordingly,
having let himself in, having verified the presence
of Uncle Joseph by means of a bowler hat and a very
large umbrella, he gave his orders to the maid, and went
upstairs to his room.
He went up a great many flights of stairs, and he noticed,
as he had very seldom noticed, how the carpet
became steadily shabbier, until it ceased altogether, how
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Night and Day
the walls were discolored, sometimes by cascades of damp,
and sometimes by the outlines of picture-frames since
removed, how the paper flapped loose at the corners,
and a great flake of plaster had fallen from the ceiling.
The room itself was a cheerless one to return to at this
inauspicious hour. A flattened sofa would, later in the
evening, become a bed; one of the tables concealed a
washing apparatus; his clothes and boots were disagreeably
mixed with books which bore the gilt of college arms;
and, for decoration, there hung upon the wall photographs
of bridges and cathedrals and large, unprepossessing
groups of insufficiently clothed young men, sitting
in rows one above another upon stone steps. There
was a look of meanness and shabbiness in the furniture
and curtains, and nowhere any sign of luxury or even of a
cultivated taste, unless the cheap classics in the bookcase
were a sign of an effort in that direction. The only
object that threw any light upon the character of the
room’s owner was a large perch, placed in the window to
catch the air and sun, upon which a tame and, apparently,
decrepit rook hopped dryly from side to side. The
bird, encouraged by a scratch behind the ear, settled upon
Denham’s shoulder. He lit his gas-fire and settled down
in gloomy patience to await his dinner. After sitting thus
for some minutes a small girl popped her head in to say,
“Mother says, aren’t you coming down, Ralph? Uncle
Joseph—”
“They’re to bring my dinner up here,” said Ralph, peremptorily;
whereupon she vanished, leaving the door
ajar in her haste to be gone. After Denham had waited
some minutes, in the course of which neither he nor the
rook took their eyes off the fire, he muttered a curse, ran
downstairs, intercepted the parlor-maid, and cut himself
a slice of bread and cold meat. As he did so, the dining-
room door sprang open, a voice exclaimed “Ralph!” but
Ralph paid no attention to the voice, and made off upstairs
with his plate. He set it down in a chair opposite
him, and ate with a ferocity that was due partly to anger
and partly to hunger. His mother, then, was determined
not to respect his wishes; he was a person of no importance
in his own family; he was sent for and treated as a
child. He reflected, with a growing sense of injury, that
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Virginia Woolf
almost every one of his actions since opening the door of
his room had been won from the grasp of the family system.
By rights, he should have been sitting downstairs in
the drawing-room describing his afternoon’s adventures,
or listening to the afternoon’s adventures of other people;
the room itself, the gas-fire, the arm-chair—all had been
fought for; the wretched bird, with half its feathers out
and one leg lamed by a cat, had been rescued under protest;
but what his family most resented, he reflected,
was his wish for privacy. To dine alone, or to sit alone
after dinner, was flat rebellion, to be fought with every
weapon of underhand stealth or of open appeal. Which
did he dislike most—deception or tears? But, at any rate,
they could not rob him of his thoughts; they could not
make him say where he had been or whom he had seen.
That was his own affair; that, indeed, was a step entirely
in the right direction, and, lighting his pipe, and cutting
up the remains of his meal for the benefit of the rook,
Ralph calmed his rather excessive irritation and settled
down to think over his prospects.
This particular afternoon was a step in the right direc
tion, because it was part of his plan to get to know people
beyond the family circuit, just as it was part of his plan
to learn German this autumn, and to review legal books
for Mr. Hilbery’s “Critical Review.” He had always made
plans since he was a small boy; for poverty, and the fact
that he was the eldest son of a large family, had given
him the habit of thinking of spring and summer, autumn
and winter, as so many stages in a prolonged campaign.
Although he was still under thirty, this forecasting habit
had marked two semicircular lines above his eyebrows,
which threatened, at this moment, to crease into their
wonted shapes. But instead of settling down to think, he
rose, took a small piece of cardboard marked in large
letters with the word out, and hung it upon the handle of
his door. This done, he sharpened a pencil, lit a reading-
lamp and opened his book. But still he hesitated to take
his seat. He scratched the rook, he walked to the window;
he parted the curtains, and looked down upon the
city which lay, hazily luminous, beneath him. He looked
across the vapors in the direction of Chelsea; looked fixedly
for a moment, and then returned to his chair. But
19
Night and Day
the whole thickness of some learned counsel’s treatise
upon Torts did not screen him satisfactorily. Through the
pages he saw a drawing-room, very empty and spacious;
he heard low voices, he saw women’s figures, he could
even smell the scent of the cedar log which flamed in the
grate. His mind relaxed its tension, and seemed to be
giving out now what it had taken in unconsciously at the
time. He could remember Mr. Fortescue’s exact words, and
the rolling emphasis with which he delivered them, and
he began to repeat what Mr. Fortescue had said, in Mr.
Fortescue’s own manner, about Manchester. His mind then
began to wander about the house, and he wondered
whether there were other rooms like the drawing-room,
and he thought, inconsequently, how beautiful the bathroom
must be, and how leisurely it was—the life of these
well-kept people, who were, no doubt, still sitting in the
same room, only they had changed their clothes, and
little Mr. Anning was there, and the aunt who would mind
if the glass of her father’s picture was broken. Miss Hilbery
had changed her dress (“although she’s wearing such a
pretty one,” he heard her mother say), and she was talk
ing to Mr. Anning, who was well over forty, and bald into
the bargain, about books. How peaceful and spacious it
was; and the peace possessed him so completely that his
muscles slackened, his book drooped from his hand, and
he forgot that the hour of work was wasting minute by
minute.
He was roused by a creak upon the stair. With a guilty
start he composed himself, frowned and looked intently at
the fifty-sixth page of his volume. A step paused outside
his door, and he knew that the person, whoever it might
be, was considering the placard, and debating whether to
honor its decree or not. Certainly, policy advised him to sit
still in autocratic silence, for no custom can take root in a
family unless every breach of it is punished severely for
the first six months or so. But Ralph was conscious of a
distinct wish to be interrupted, and his disappointment
was perceptible when he heard the creaking sound rather
