Complete Works of Virginia Woolf

by Virginia Woolf

  “That was Katharine Hilbery.”

  “Katharine Hilbery? What do you mean?” she asked, hardly understanding from his manner whether he had seen her or not.

  “Katharine Hilbery,” he repeated. “But she’s gone now.”

  “Katharine Hilbery!” Mary thought, in an instant of blinding revelation; “I’ve always known it was Katharine Hilbery!” She knew it all now.

  After a moment of downcast stupor, she raised her eyes, looked steadily at Ralph, and caught his fixed and dreamy gaze leveled at a point far beyond their surroundings, a point that she had never reached in all the time that she had known him. She noticed the lips just parted, the fingers loosely clenched, the whole attitude of rapt contemplation, which fell like a veil between them. She noticed everything about him; if there had been other signs of his utter alienation she would have sought them out, too, for she felt that it was only by heaping one truth upon another that she could keep herself sitting there, upright. The truth seemed to support her; it struck her, even as she looked at his face, that the light of truth was shining far away beyond him; the light of truth, she seemed to frame the words as she rose to go, shines on a world not to be shaken by our personal calamities.

  Ralph handed her her coat and her stick. She took them, fastened the coat securely, grasped the stick firmly. The ivy spray was still twisted about the handle; this one sacrifice, she thought, she might make to sentimentality and personality, and she picked two leaves from the ivy and put them in her pocket before she disencumbered her stick of the rest of it. She grasped the stick in the middle, and settled her fur cap closely upon her head, as if she must be in trim for a long and stormy walk. Next, standing in the middle of the road, she took a slip of paper from her purse, and read out loud a list of commissions entrusted to her — fruit, butter, string, and so on; and all the time she never spoke directly to Ralph or looked at him.

  Ralph heard her giving orders to attentive, rosy-checked men in white aprons, and in spite of his own preoccupation, he commented upon the determination with which she made her wishes known. Once more he began, automatically, to take stock of her characteristics. Standing thus, superficially observant and stirring the sawdust on the floor meditatively with the toe of his boot, he was roused by a musical and familiar voice behind him, accompanied by a light touch upon his shoulder.

  “I’m not mistaken? Surely Mr. Denham? I caught a glimpse of your coat through the window, and I felt sure that I knew your coat. Have you seen Katharine or William? I’m wandering about Lincoln looking for the ruins.”

  It was Mrs. Hilbery; her entrance created some stir in the shop; many people looked at her.

  “First of all, tell me where I am,” she demanded, but, catching sight of the attentive shopman, she appealed to him. “The ruins — my party is waiting for me at the ruins. The Roman ruins — or Greek, Mr. Denham? Your town has a great many beautiful things in it, but I wish it hadn’t so many ruins. I never saw such delightful little pots of honey in my life — are they made by your own bees? Please give me one of those little pots, and tell me how I shall find my way to the ruins.”

  “And now,” she continued, having received the information and the pot of honey, having been introduced to Mary, and having insisted that they should accompany her back to the ruins, since in a town with so many turnings, such prospects, such delightful little half-naked boys dabbling in pools, such Venetian canals, such old blue china in the curiosity shops, it was impossible for one person all alone to find her way to the ruins. “Now,” she exclaimed, “please tell me what you’re doing here, Mr. Denham — for you ARE Mr. Denham, aren’t you?” she inquired, gazing at him with a sudden suspicion of her own accuracy. “The brilliant young man who writes for the Review, I mean? Only yesterday my husband was telling me he thought you one of the cleverest young men he knew. Certainly, you’ve been the messenger of Providence to me, for unless I’d seen you I’m sure I should never have found the ruins at all.”

  They had reached the Roman arch when Mrs. Hilbery caught sight of her own party, standing like sentinels facing up and down the road so as to intercept her if, as they expected, she had got lodged in some shop.

  “I’ve found something much better than ruins!” she exclaimed. “I’ve found two friends who told me how to find you, which I could never have done without them. They must come and have tea with us. What a pity that we’ve just had luncheon.” Could they not somehow revoke that meal?

  Katharine, who had gone a few steps by herself down the road, and was investigating the window of an ironmonger, as if her mother might have got herself concealed among mowing-machines and garden-shears, turned sharply on hearing her voice, and came towards them. She was a great deal surprised to see Denham and Mary Datchet. Whether the cordiality with which she greeted them was merely that which is natural to a surprise meeting in the country, or whether she was really glad to see them both, at any rate she exclaimed with unusual pleasure as she shook hands:

  “I never knew you lived here. Why didn’t you say so, and we could have met? And are you staying with Mary?” she continued, turning to Ralph. “What a pity we didn’t meet before.”

  Thus confronted at a distance of only a few feet by the real body of the woman about whom he had dreamt so many million dreams, Ralph stammered; he made a clutch at his self-control; the color either came to his cheeks or left them, he knew not which; but he was determined to face her and track down in the cold light of day whatever vestige of truth there might be in his persistent imaginations. He did not succeed in saying anything. It was Mary who spoke for both of them. He was struck dumb by finding that Katharine was quite different, in some strange way, from his memory, so that he had to dismiss his old view in order to accept the new one. The wind was blowing her crimson scarf across her face; the wind had already loosened her hair, which looped across the corner of one of the large, dark eyes which, so he used to think, looked sad; now they looked bright with the brightness of the sea struck by an unclouded ray; everything about her seemed rapid, fragmentary, and full of a kind of racing speed. He realized suddenly that he had never seen her in the daylight before.

  Meanwhile, it was decided that it was too late to go in search of ruins as they had intended; and the whole party began to walk towards the stables where the carriage had been put up.

  “Do you know,” said Katharine, keeping slightly in advance of the rest with Ralph, “I thought I saw you this morning, standing at a window. But I decided that it couldn’t be you. And it must have been you all the same.”

  “Yes, I thought I saw you — but it wasn’t you,” he replied.

  This remark, and the rough strain in his voice, recalled to her memory so many difficult speeches and abortive meetings that she was jerked directly back to the London drawing-room, the family relics, and the tea-table; and at the same time recalled some half-finished or interrupted remark which she had wanted to make herself or to hear from him — she could not remember what it was.

  “I expect it was me,” she said. “I was looking for my mother. It happens every time we come to Lincoln. In fact, there never was a family so unable to take care of itself as ours is. Not that it very much matters, because some one always turns up in the nick of time to help us out of our scrapes. Once I was left in a field with a bull when I was a baby — but where did we leave the carriage? Down that street or the next? The next, I think.” She glanced back and saw that the others were following obediently, listening to certain memories of Lincoln upon which Mrs. Hilbery had started. “But what are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I’m buying a cottage. I’m going to live here — as soon as I can find a cottage, and Mary tells me there’ll be no difficulty about that.”

  “But,” she exclaimed, almost standing still in her surprise, “you will give up the Bar, then?” It flashed across her mind that he must already be engaged to Mary.

  “The solicitor’s office? Yes. I’m giving that up.”

  “But why?” she
asked. She answered herself at once, with a curious change from rapid speech to an almost melancholy tone. “I think you’re very wise to give it up. You will be much happier.”

  At this very moment, when her words seemed to be striking a path into the future for him, they stepped into the yard of an inn, and there beheld the family coach of the Otways, to which one sleek horse was already attached, while the second was being led out of the stable door by the hostler.

  “I don’t know what one means by happiness,” he said briefly, having to step aside in order to avoid a groom with a bucket. “Why do you think I shall be happy? I don’t expect to be anything of the kind. I expect to be rather less unhappy. I shall write a book and curse my charwoman — if happiness consists in that. What do you think?”

  She could not answer because they were immediately surrounded by other members of the party — by Mrs. Hilbery, and Mary, Henry Otway, and William.

  Rodney went up to Katharine immediately and said to her:

  “Henry is going to drive home with your mother, and I suggest that they should put us down half-way and let us walk back.”

  Katharine nodded her head. She glanced at him with an oddly furtive expression.

  “Unfortunately we go in opposite directions, or we might have given you a lift,” he continued to Denham. His manner was unusually peremptory; he seemed anxious to hasten the departure, and Katharine looked at him from time to time, as Denham noticed, with an expression half of inquiry, half of annoyance. She at once helped her mother into her cloak, and said to Mary:

  “I want to see you. Are you going back to London at once? I will write.” She half smiled at Ralph, but her look was a little overcast by something she was thinking, and in a very few minutes the Otway carriage rolled out of the stable yard and turned down the high road leading to the village of Lampsher.

  The return drive was almost as silent as the drive from home had been in the morning; indeed, Mrs. Hilbery leant back with closed eyes in her corner, and either slept or feigned sleep, as her habit was in the intervals between the seasons of active exertion, or continued the story which she had begun to tell herself that morning.

  About two miles from Lampsher the road ran over the rounded summit of the heath, a lonely spot marked by an obelisk of granite, setting forth the gratitude of some great lady of the eighteenth century who had been set upon by highwaymen at this spot and delivered from death just as hope seemed lost. In summer it was a pleasant place, for the deep woods on either side murmured, and the heather, which grew thick round the granite pedestal, made the light breeze taste sweetly; in winter the sighing of the trees was deepened to a hollow sound, and the heath was as gray and almost as solitary as the empty sweep of the clouds above it.

  Here Rodney stopped the carriage and helped Katharine to alight. Henry, too, gave her his hand, and fancied that she pressed it very slightly in parting as if she sent him a message. But the carriage rolled on immediately, without wakening Mrs. Hilbery, and left the couple standing by the obelisk. That Rodney was angry with her and had made this opportunity for speaking to her, Katharine knew very well; she was neither glad nor sorry that the time had come, nor, indeed, knew what to expect, and thus remained silent. The carriage grew smaller and smaller upon the dusky road, and still Rodney did not speak. Perhaps, she thought, he waited until the last sign of the carriage had disappeared beneath the curve of the road and they were left entirely alone. To cloak their silence she read the writing on the obelisk, to do which she had to walk completely round it. She was murmuring a word to two of the pious lady’s thanks above her breath when Rodney joined her. In silence they set out along the cart-track which skirted the verge of the trees.

  To break the silence was exactly what Rodney wished to do, and yet could not do to his own satisfaction. In company it was far easier to approach Katharine; alone with her, the aloofness and force of her character checked all his natural methods of attack. He believed that she had behaved very badly to him, but each separate instance of unkindness seemed too petty to be advanced when they were alone together.

  “There’s no need for us to race,” he complained at last; upon which she immediately slackened her pace, and walked too slowly to suit him. In desperation he said the first thing he thought of, very peevishly and without the dignified prelude which he had intended.

  “I’ve not enjoyed my holiday.”

  “No?”

  “No. I shall be glad to get back to work again.”

  “Saturday, Sunday, Monday — there are only three days more,” she counted.

  “No one enjoys being made a fool of before other people,” he blurted out, for his irritation rose as she spoke, and got the better of his awe of her, and was inflamed by that awe.

  “That refers to me, I suppose,” she said calmly.

  “Every day since we’ve been here you’ve done something to make me appear ridiculous,” he went on. “Of course, so long as it amuses you, you’re welcome; but we have to remember that we are going to spend our lives together. I asked you, only this morning, for example, to come out and take a turn with me in the garden. I was waiting for you ten minutes, and you never came. Every one saw me waiting. The stable-boys saw me. I was so ashamed that I went in. Then, on the drive you hardly spoke to me. Henry noticed it. Every one notices it.... You find no difficulty in talking to Henry, though.”

  She noted these various complaints and determined philosophically to answer none of them, although the last stung her to considerable irritation. She wished to find out how deep his grievance lay.

  “None of these things seem to me to matter,” she said.

  “Very well, then. I may as well hold my tongue,” he replied.

  “In themselves they don’t seem to me to matter; if they hurt you, of course they matter,” she corrected herself scrupulously. Her tone of consideration touched him, and he walked on in silence for a space.

  “And we might be so happy, Katharine!” he exclaimed impulsively, and drew her arm through his. She withdrew it directly.

  “As long as you let yourself feel like this we shall never be happy,” she said.

  The harshness, which Henry had noticed, was again unmistakable in her manner. William flinched and was silent. Such severity, accompanied by something indescribably cold and impersonal in her manner, had constantly been meted out to him during the last few days, always in the company of others. He had recouped himself by some ridiculous display of vanity which, as he knew, put him still more at her mercy. Now that he was alone with her there was no stimulus from outside to draw his attention from his injury. By a considerable effort of self-control he forced himself to remain silent, and to make himself distinguish what part of his pain was due to vanity, what part to the certainty that no woman really loving him could speak thus.

  “What do I feel about Katharine?” he thought to himself. It was clear that she had been a very desirable and distinguished figure, the mistress of her little section of the world; but more than that, she was the person of all others who seemed to him the arbitress of life, the woman whose judgment was naturally right and steady, as his had never been in spite of all his culture. And then he could not see her come into a room without a sense of the flowing of robes, of the flowering of blossoms, of the purple waves of the sea, of all things that are lovely and mutable on the surface but still and passionate in their heart.

  “If she were callous all the time and had only led me on to laugh at me I couldn’t have felt that about her,” he thought. “I’m not a fool, after all. I can’t have been utterly mistaken all these years. And yet, when she speaks to me like that! The truth of it is,” he thought, “that I’ve got such despicable faults that no one could help speaking to me like that. Katharine is quite right. And yet those are not my serious feelings, as she knows quite well. How can I change myself? What would make her care for me?” He was terribly tempted here to break the silence by asking Katharine in what respects he could change himself to suit her; but he sough
t consolation instead by running over the list of his gifts and acquirements, his knowledge of Greek and Latin, his knowledge of art and literature, his skill in the management of meters, and his ancient west-country blood. But the feeling that underlay all these feelings and puzzled him profoundly and kept him silent was the certainty that he loved Katharine as sincerely as he had it in him to love any one. And yet she could speak to him like that! In a sort of bewilderment he lost all desire to speak, and would quite readily have taken up some different topic of conversation if Katharine had started one. This, however, she did not do.

  He glanced at her, in case her expression might help him to understand her behavior. As usual, she had quickened her pace unconsciously, and was now walking a little in front of him; but he could gain little information from her eyes, which looked steadily at the brown heather, or from the lines drawn seriously upon her forehead. Thus to lose touch with her, for he had no idea what she was thinking, was so unpleasant to him that he began to talk about his grievances again, without, however, much conviction in his voice.