Complete Works of Virginia Woolf

by Virginia Woolf

  The news woke Katharine completely. Anxiety gained upon her. She hastened back into Kingsway, looking at people who had miraculously regained their solidity. She ran as far as the Tube station, overhauling clerk after clerk, solicitor after solicitor. Not one of them even faintly resembled Ralph Denham. More and more plainly did she see him; and more and more did he seem to her unlike any one else. At the door of the station she paused, and tried to collect her thoughts. He had gone to her house. By taking a cab she could be there probably in advance of him. But she pictured herself opening the drawing-room door, and William and Cassandra looking up, and Ralph’s entrance a moment later, and the glances — the insinuations. No; she could not face it. She would write him a letter and take it at once to his house. She bought paper and pencil at the bookstall, and entered an A.B.C. shop, where, by ordering a cup of coffee, she secured an empty table, and began at vice to write:

  “I came to meet you and I have missed you. I could not face William and Cassandra. They want us—” here she paused. “They insist that we are engaged,” she substituted, “and we couldn’t talk at all, or explain anything. I want—” Her wants were so vast, now that she was in communication with Ralph, that the pencil was utterly inadequate to conduct them on to the paper; it seemed as if the whole torrent of Kingsway had to run down her pencil. She gazed intently at a notice hanging on the gold-encrusted wall opposite, “... to say all kinds of things,” she added, writing each word with the painstaking of a child. But, when she raised her eyes again to meditate the next sentence, she was aware of a waitress, whose expression intimated that it was closing time, and, looking round, Katharine saw herself almost the last person left in the shop. She took up her letter, paid her bill, and found herself once more in the street. She would now take a cab to Highgate. But at that moment it flashed upon her that she could not remember the address. This check seemed to let fall a barrier across a very powerful current of desire. She ransacked her memory in desperation, hunting for the name, first by remembering the look of the house, and then by trying, in memory, to retrace the words she had written once, at least, upon an envelope. The more she pressed the farther the words receded. Was the house an Orchard Something, on the street a Hill? She gave it up. Never, since she was a child, had she felt anything like this blankness and desolation. There rushed in upon her, as if she were waking from some dream, all the consequences of her inexplicable indolence. She figured Ralph’s face as he turned from her door without a word of explanation, receiving his dismissal as a blow from herself, a callous intimation that she did not wish to see him. She followed his departure from her door; but it was far more easy to see him marching far and fast in any direction for any length of time than to conceive that he would turn back to Highgate. Perhaps he would try once more to see her in Cheyne Walk? It was proof of the clearness with which she saw him, that she started forward as this possibility occurred to her, and almost raised her hand to beckon to a cab. No; he was too proud to come again; he rejected the desire and walked on and on, on and on — If only she could read the names of those visionary streets down which he passed! But her imagination betrayed her at this point, or mocked her with a sense of their strangeness, darkness, and distance. Indeed, instead of helping herself to any decision, she only filled her mind with the vast extent of London and the impossibility of finding any single figure that wandered off this way and that way, turned to the right and to the left, chose that dingy little back street where the children were playing in the road, and so — She roused herself impatiently. She walked rapidly along Holborn. Soon she turned and walked as rapidly in the other direction. This indecision was not merely odious, but had something that alarmed her about it, as she had been alarmed slightly once or twice already that day; she felt unable to cope with the strength of her own desires. To a person controlled by habit, there was humiliation as well as alarm in this sudden release of what appeared to be a very powerful as well as an unreasonable force. An aching in the muscles of her right hand now showed her that she was crushing her gloves and the map of Norfolk in a grip sufficient to crack a more solid object. She relaxed her grasp; she looked anxiously at the faces of the passers-by to see whether their eyes rested on her for a moment longer than was natural, or with any curiosity. But having smoothed out her gloves, and done what she could to look as usual, she forgot spectators, and was once more given up to her desperate desire to find Ralph Denham. It was a desire now — wild, irrational, unexplained, resembling something felt in childhood. Once more she blamed herself bitterly for her carelessness. But finding herself opposite the Tube station, she pulled herself up and took counsel swiftly, as of old. It flashed upon her that she would go at once to Mary Datchet, and ask her to give her Ralph’s address. The decision was a relief, not only in giving her a goal, but in providing her with a rational excuse for her own actions. It gave her a goal certainly, but the fact of having a goal led her to dwell exclusively upon her obsession; so that when she rang the bell of Mary’s flat, she did not for a moment consider how this demand would strike Mary. To her extreme annoyance Mary was not at home; a charwoman opened the door. All Katharine could do was to accept the invitation to wait. She waited for, perhaps, fifteen minutes, and spent them in pacing from one end of the room to the other without intermission. When she heard Mary’s key in the door she paused in front of the fireplace, and Mary found her standing upright, looking at once expectant and determined, like a person who has come on an errand of such importance that it must be broached without preface.

  Mary exclaimed in surprise.

  “Yes, yes,” Katharine said, brushing these remarks aside, as if they were in the way.

  “Have you had tea?”

  “Oh yes,” she said, thinking that she had had tea hundreds of years ago, somewhere or other.

  Mary paused, took off her gloves, and, finding matches, proceeded to light the fire.

  Katharine checked her with an impatient movement, and said:

  “Don’t light the fire for me.... I want to know Ralph Denham’s address.”

  She was holding a pencil and preparing to write on the envelope. She waited with an imperious expression.

  “The Apple Orchard, Mount Ararat Road, Highgate,” Mary said, speaking slowly and rather strangely.

  “Oh, I remember now!” Katharine exclaimed, with irritation at her own stupidity. “I suppose it wouldn’t take twenty minutes to drive there?” She gathered up her purse and gloves and seemed about to go.

  “But you won’t find him,” said Mary, pausing with a match in her hand. Katharine, who had already turned towards the door, stopped and looked at her.

  “Why? Where is he?” she asked.

  “He won’t have left his office.”

  “But he has left the office,” she replied. “The only question is will he have reached home yet? He went to see me at Chelsea; I tried to meet him and missed him. He will have found no message to explain. So I must find him — as soon as possible.”

  Mary took in the situation at her leisure.

  “But why not telephone?” she said.

  Katharine immediately dropped all that she was holding; her strained expression relaxed, and exclaiming, “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that!” she seized the telephone receiver and gave her number. Mary looked at her steadily, and then left the room. At length Katharine heard, through all the superimposed weight of London, the mysterious sound of feet in her own house mounting to the little room, where she could almost see the pictures and the books; she listened with extreme intentness to the preparatory vibrations, and then established her identity.

  “Has Mr. Denham called?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “Did he ask for me?”

  “Yes. We said you were out, miss.”

  “Did he leave any message?”

  “No. He went away. About twenty minutes ago, miss.”

  Katharine hung up the receiver. She walked the length of the room in such acute disappointment that she did not
at first perceive Mary’s absence. Then she called in a harsh and peremptory tone:

  “Mary.”

  Mary was taking off her outdoor things in the bedroom. She heard Katharine call her. “Yes,” she said, “I shan’t be a moment.” But the moment prolonged itself, as if for some reason Mary found satisfaction in making herself not only tidy, but seemly and ornamented. A stage in her life had been accomplished in the last months which left its traces for ever upon her bearing. Youth, and the bloom of youth, had receded, leaving the purpose of her face to show itself in the hollower cheeks, the firmer lips, the eyes no longer spontaneously observing at random, but narrowed upon an end which was not near at hand. This woman was now a serviceable human being, mistress of her own destiny, and thus, by some combination of ideas, fit to be adorned with the dignity of silver chains and glowing brooches. She came in at her leisure and asked: “Well, did you get an answer?”

  “He has left Chelsea already,” Katharine replied.

  “Still, he won’t be home yet,” said Mary.

  Katharine was once more irresistibly drawn to gaze upon an imaginary map of London, to follow the twists and turns of unnamed streets.

  “I’ll ring up his home and ask whether he’s back.” Mary crossed to the telephone and, after a series of brief remarks, announced:

  “No. His sister says he hasn’t come back yet.”

  “Ah!” She applied her ear to the telephone once more. “They’ve had a message. He won’t be back to dinner.”

  “Then what is he going to do?”

  Very pale, and with her large eyes fixed not so much upon Mary as upon vistas of unresponding blankness, Katharine addressed herself also not so much to Mary as to the unrelenting spirit which now appeared to mock her from every quarter of her survey.

  After waiting a little time Mary remarked indifferently:

  “I really don’t know.” Slackly lying back in her armchair, she watched the little flames beginning to creep among the coals indifferently, as if they, too, were very distant and indifferent.

  Katharine looked at her indignantly and rose.

  “Possibly he may come here,” Mary continued, without altering the abstract tone of her voice. “It would be worth your while to wait if you want to see him to-night.” She bent forward and touched the wood, so that the flames slipped in between the interstices of the coal.

  Katharine reflected. “I’ll wait half an hour,” she said.

  Mary rose, went to the table, spread out her papers under the green-shaded lamp and, with an action that was becoming a habit, twisted a lock of hair round and round in her fingers. Once she looked unperceived at her visitor, who never moved, who sat so still, with eyes so intent, that you could almost fancy that she was watching something, some face that never looked up at her. Mary found herself unable to go on writing. She turned her eyes away, but only to be aware of the presence of what Katharine looked at. There were ghosts in the room, and one, strangely and sadly, was the ghost of herself. The minutes went by.

  “What would be the time now?” said Katharine at last. The half-hour was not quite spent.

  “I’m going to get dinner ready,” said Mary, rising from her table.

  “Then I’ll go,” said Katharine.

  “Why don’t you stay? Where are you going?”

  Katharine looked round the room, conveying her uncertainty in her glance.

  “Perhaps I might find him,” she mused.

  “But why should it matter? You’ll see him another day.”

  Mary spoke, and intended to speak, cruelly enough.

  “I was wrong to come here,” Katharine replied.

  Their eyes met with antagonism, and neither flinched.

  “You had a perfect right to come here,” Mary answered.

  A loud knocking at the door interrupted them. Mary went to open it, and returning with some note or parcel, Katharine looked away so that Mary might not read her disappointment.

  “Of course you had a right to come,” Mary repeated, laying the note upon the table.

  “No,” said Katharine. “Except that when one’s desperate one has a sort of right. I am desperate. How do I know what’s happening to him now? He may do anything. He may wander about the streets all night. Anything may happen to him.”

  She spoke with a self-abandonment that Mary had never seen in her.

  “You know you exaggerate; you’re talking nonsense,” she said roughly.

  “Mary, I must talk — I must tell you—”

  “You needn’t tell me anything,” Mary interrupted her. “Can’t I see for myself?”

  “No, no,” Katharine exclaimed. “It’s not that—”

  Her look, passing beyond Mary, beyond the verge of the room and out beyond any words that came her way, wildly and passionately, convinced Mary that she, at any rate, could not follow such a glance to its end. She was baffled; she tried to think herself back again into the height of her love for Ralph. Pressing her fingers upon her eyelids, she murmured:

  “You forget that I loved him too. I thought I knew him. I DID know him.”

  And yet, what had she known? She could not remember it any more. She pressed her eyeballs until they struck stars and suns into her darkness. She convinced herself that she was stirring among ashes. She desisted. She was astonished at her discovery. She did not love Ralph any more. She looked back dazed into the room, and her eyes rested upon the table with its lamp-lit papers. The steady radiance seemed for a second to have its counterpart within her; she shut her eyes; she opened them and looked at the lamp again; another love burnt in the place of the old one, or so, in a momentary glance of amazement, she guessed before the revelation was over and the old surroundings asserted themselves. She leant in silence against the mantelpiece.

  “There are different ways of loving,” she murmured, half to herself, at length.

  Katharine made no reply and seemed unaware of her words. She seemed absorbed in her own thoughts.

  “Perhaps he’s waiting in the street again to-night,” she exclaimed. “I’ll go now. I might find him.”

  “It’s far more likely that he’ll come here,” said Mary, and Katharine, after considering for a moment, said:

  “I’ll wait another half-hour.”

  She sank down into her chair again, and took up the same position which Mary had compared to the position of one watching an unseeing face. She watched, indeed, not a face, but a procession, not of people, but of life itself: the good and bad; the meaning; the past, the present, and the future. All this seemed apparent to her, and she was not ashamed of her extravagance so much as exalted to one of the pinnacles of existence, where it behoved the world to do her homage. No one but she herself knew what it meant to miss Ralph Denham on that particular night; into this inadequate event crowded feelings that the great crises of life might have failed to call forth. She had missed him, and knew the bitterness of all failure; she desired him, and knew the torment of all passion. It did not matter what trivial accidents led to this culmination. Nor did she care how extravagant she appeared, nor how openly she showed her feelings.