 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Night and Day by Virginia Woolf. CHAPTER XVIII But other passengers were approaching Lincoln meanwhile by other roads on foot. A country town draws the inhabitants of all vicarages, farms, country houses, and wayside cottages within a radius of ten miles at least, once or twice a week to its streets, and among them on this occasion were Ralph Denham and Mary Dashett. They despised the roads and took their way across the fields, and yet from their appearance it did not seem as if they cared much where they walked so long as the way did not actually trip them up. When they left the vicarage, they had begun an argument which swung their feet along so rhythmically in time with it that they covered the ground at over four miles an hour and saw nothing of the hedgerows, the swelling plowland, or the mild blue sky. What they saw were the houses of parliament and the government offices in Whitehall. They both belonged to the class which is conscious of having lost its birthright in these great structures and is seeking to build another kind of lodging for its own notion of law and government. Purposely, perhaps, Mary did not agree with Ralph. She loved to feel her mind in conflict with his, and to be certain that he spared her female judgment no ounce of his male muscularity. He seemed to argue as fiercely with her as if she were his brother. They were alike, however, in believing that it behooved them to take in hand the repair and reconstruction of the fabric of England. They agreed in thinking that nature has not been generous in the endowment of our counsellors. They agreed unconsciously in a mute love for the muddy field through which they tramped, with eyes narrowed closed by the concentration of their minds. At length they drew breath, let the argument fly away into the limbo of other good arguments, and, leaning over a gate, opened their eyes for the first time and looked about them. Their feet tingled with warm blood and their breath rose in steam around them. The bodily exercise made them both feel more direct and less self-conscious than usual, and Mary, indeed, was overcome by a sort of light-headedness which made it seem to her that it mattered very little what happened next. It mattered so little, indeed, that she felt herself on the point of saying to Ralph, I love you, I shall never love anybody else, marry me or leave me, think what you like of me, I don't care a straw. At the moment, however, speech or silence seemed immaterial, and she merely clapped her hands together and looked at the distant woods with the rust-like bloom on their brown and the green and brown landscape through the steam of her own breath. It seemed Amir toss up whether she said, I love you, or whether she said, I love the beech trees, or only, I love, I love. Do you know Mary? Ralph suddenly interrupted her. I've made up my mind. Her indifference must have been superficial, for it disappeared at once. Indeed, she lost sight of the trees and saw her own hand upon the topmost bar of the gate with extreme distinctness while he went on. I've made up my mind to check my work and live down here. I want you to tell me about that cottage you spoke of. However, I suppose there'll be no difficulty about getting a cottage, will there? He spoke with an assumption of carelessness as if expecting her to dissuade him. She still waited as if for him to continue. She was convinced that in some roundabout way he approached the subject of their marriage. I can't stand the office any longer. He proceeded. I don't know what my family will say, but I'm sure I'm right. Don't you think so? Live down here by yourself, she asked. Some old woman would do for me, I suppose, he replied. I'm sick of the whole thing. He went on and opened the gate with a jerk. They began to cross the next field, walking side by side. I tell you, Mary, it's other destruction working away day after day at stuff that doesn't matter a damn to anyone. I've stood eight years of it and I'm not going to stand it any longer. I suppose this all seems to you mad, though. By this time Mary had recovered herself control. No, I thought you weren't happy, she said. Why did you think that? He asked with some surprise. Don't you remember that morning in Lincoln's infields, she asked? Yes, said Ralph, slackening his pace and remembering Catherine and her engagement. The purple leaves stamped into the path, the white paper radiant under the electric light, and the hopelessness which seemed to surround all these things. You're right, Mary, he said with something of an effort, though I don't know how you guessed it. She was silent, hoping that he might tell her the reason of his unhappiness, for his excuses had not deceived her. I was unhappy, very unhappy, he repeated. Some six weeks separated him from that afternoon when he had sat upon the embankment watching his visions dissolve and mist as the water swam past and the sense of his desolation still made him shiver. He had not recovered in the least from that depression. Here was an opportunity for making himself face it, as he felt he ought to, for by this time, no doubt, it was only a sentimental ghost. Better exercised by ruthless exposure to such an eye as Mary's, than allowed to underlie all his actions and thoughts, as had been the case ever since he first saw Catherine Hillberry pouring out tea. He must begin, however, by mentioning her name, and this he found it impossible to do. He persuaded himself that he could make an honest statement without speaking her name. He persuaded himself that his feeling had very little to do with her. Unhappiness is a state of mind, he said, by which I mean that it is not necessarily the result of any particular cause. This rather stilted beginning did not please him, and it became more and more obvious to him that, whatever he might say, his unhappiness had been directly caused by Catherine. I began to find my life unsatisfactory. He started afresh. It seemed to me meaningless. He paused again, but felt that this, at any rate, was true, and that on these lines he could go on. All this money-making and working ten hours a day in an office, what's it for? When one's a boy, you see, one's head is so full of dreams that it doesn't seem to matter what one does. And if you're ambitious, you're all right. You've got a reason for going on. Now my reason ceased to satisfy me. Perhaps I never had any. That's very likely now that I come to think of it. My reason is there for anything, though. Still, it's impossible, after a certain age, to take oneself in satisfactorily. And I know what carried me on. For a good reason now occurred to him. I wanted to be the saviour of my family and all that kind of thing. I wanted them to get on in the world. That was a lie, of course, a kind of self-glorification, too. Like most people, I suppose. I've lived almost entirely among delusions, and now I'm at the awkward stage of finding it out. I want another delusion to go on with. That's what my unhappiness amounts to, Mary. There were two reasons that kept Mary very silent during this speech, and drew curiously straight lines upon her face. In the first place, Ralph made no mention of marriage. In the second, he was not speaking the truth. I don't think it will be difficult to find a cottage, she said with cheerful hardness, ignoring the whole of this statement. You've got a little money, haven't you? Yes, she concluded. I don't see why it shouldn't be a very good plan. It crossed the field in complete silence. Ralph was surprised by her remark and a little hurt, and yet on the whole rather pleased. He had convinced himself that it was impossible to lay his case truthfully before Mary, and secretly he was relieved to find that he had not parted with his dream to her. She was, as he had always found her, the sensible, loyal friend, the woman he trusted, whose sympathy he could count upon provided he kept within certain limits. He was not this pleased to find that those limits were very clearly marked. When they had crossed the next hedge, she said to him, Yes, Ralph, it's time you made a break. I've come to the same conclusion myself. Only it won't be a country cottage, in my case. It'll be America. America, she cried. That's the place for me. Teach me something about organizing a movement there, and I'll come back and show you how to do it. If she meant consciously or unconsciously to belittle the seclusion and security of a country cottage, she did not succeed, for Ralph's determination was genuine. But she made him visualize her in her own character, so that he looked quickly at her, as she walked a little in front of him across the plowed field. For the first time that morning he saw her independently of him, or of his preoccupation with Catherine. He seemed to see her marching ahead, a rather clumsy but powerful and independent figure, for whose courage he felt the greatest respect. Don't go away, Mary, he exclaimed, and stopped. That's what you said before, Ralph, she returned, without looking at him. You want to go away yourself, and you don't want me to go away. That's not very sensible, is it? Mary, he cried, stung by the remembrance of his exacting and dictatorial ways with her. What a brute I've been to you. It took all her strength to keep the tears from springing, and to thrust back her assurance that she would forgive him till doomsday if he chose. She was preserved from doing so only by a stubborn kind of respect for herself, which lay at the root of her nature, and forbade surrender, even in moments of almost overwhelming passion. Now, when all was tempest and high-running waves, she knew of a land where the sun shone clear upon Italian grammars and files of docketed papers. Nevertheless, from the skeleton pallor of that land, and the rocks that broke its surface, she knew that her life there would be harsh and lonely almost beyond endurance. She walked steadily a little in front of him across the plowed field. Their way took them round the verge of a wood of thin trees standing at the edge of a steep fold in the land. Looking between the tree trunks, Ralph's soul laid out on the perfectly flat and richly green meadow at the bottom of the hill, a small gray manor house, with ponds, terraces, and clipped hedges in front of it, a farm-building or so at the side, and a screen of fir trees rising behind, all perfectly sheltered and self-sufficient. Behind the house, the hill rose again, and the trees on the farther summit stood upright against the sky, which appeared of a more intense blue between their trunks. His mind at once was filled with a sense of the actual presence of Catherine. The gray house and the intense blue sky gave him the feeling of her presence close by. He lent against a tree, forming her name beneath his breath. Catherine, Catherine, he said aloud, and then, looking round, saw Mary walking slowly away from him, tearing a long spray of ivy from the trees as she passed them. She seemed so definitely opposed to the vision he held in his mind that he returned to it with a gesture of impatience. Catherine, Catherine, he repeated, and seemed to himself to be with her. He lost his sense of all that surrounded him, all substantial things, the hour of the day, what we have done and are about to do, the presence of other people, and the support we derive from seeing their belief in a common reality. All this slipped from him, so he might have felt if the earth had dropped from his feet and the empty blue had hung all round him, and the air had been steeped in the presence of one woman. The chirp of a robin on the bow above his head awakened him, and his awakening was accompanied by a sigh. Here was the world in which he had lived, here the plowed field, the high road yonder, and Mary, stripping ivy from the trees. When he came up with her, he linked his arm through hers and said, Now, Mary, what's all this about America? There was a brotherly kindness in his voice which seemed to her magnanimous when she reflected that she had cut short his explanations and shown little interest in his change of plan. She gave him her reasons for thinking that she might profit by such a journey, omitting the one reason which had set all the rest in motion. He listened attentively and made no attempt to dissuade her. In truth, he found himself curiously eager to make certain of her good sense and accepted each fresh proof of it with satisfaction, as though it helped him to make up his own voice. In truth, he found himself curiously eager to make certain of her good sense and his mind about something. She forgot the pain he had caused her and in place of it she became conscious of a steady tide of well-being which harmonized very aptly with the tramp of their feet upon the dry road and the support of his arm. The comfort was the more glowing in that it seemed to be the reward of her determination to behave to him simply and without attempting to be other than she was. Instead of making out an interest in the poets, she avoided them instinctively and dwelt rather insistently upon the practical nature of her gifts. In a practical way, she asked for particulars of his cottage which hardly existed in his mind and corrected his vagueness. You must see that there's water, she insisted, with an exaggeration of interest. She avoided asking him what he meant to do in his cottage and at last, when all the practical details had been thrashed out as much as possible, he rewarded her by a more intimate statement. One of the rooms, he said, must be my study, for you see, Mary, I'm going to write a book. Here he withdrew his arm from hers, lit his pipe, and they tramped on in a sagacious kind of comradeship, the most complete they had attained in all their friendship. And what's your book to be about? She asked, as boldly as if she had never come to grief with Ralph in talking about books. He told her, unhesitatingly, that he meant to write the history of the English village from Saxon days to the present time. Some such plan had lain as a seed in his mind for many years, and now that he had decided, in a flash, to give up his profession, the seed grew in the space of twenty minutes, both tall and lusty. He was surprised himself at the positive way in which he spoke. It was the same with the question of his cottage. That had come into existence too, in an unromantic shape, a square white house standing on the road, no doubt, was a neighbor who kept a pig in a dozen squalling children, for these plans were shorn of all romance in his mind, and the pleasure he derived from thinking of them was checked directly at past a very sober limit. So a sensible man who has lost his chance of some beautiful inheritance might tread out the narrow bounds of his actual dwelling place and assure himself that life is supportable within its domain. And so Ralph took some pride in the resources of his mind and was insensibly helped to write himself by Mary's trust in him. She wound her ivy spray round her ash plant, and for the first time for many days, went alone with Ralph, set no spies upon her motives, sayings, and feelings, but surrendered herself to complete happiness. Thus talking with easy silences and some pauses to look at the view over the hedge, they walked into Lincoln. And after strolling up and down the main street, decided upon an inn where the rounded windows suggested substantial fare, nor were they mistaken. For over 150 years, hot joints, potatoes, greens, and apple puddings had been served to generations of country gentlemen. And now, sitting at a table in the hollow of the bow window, Ralph and Mary took their share of this perennial feast. Looking across the joint, they looked quite like the other people in the room. Would he be absorbed among the round pink faces, pricked with little white bristles, the calves fitted in shiny brown leather, the black and white check suits which were sprinkled about in the same room with them? She half hoped so. She thought that it was only in his mind that he was different. She did not wish him to be too different from other people. The walk had given him a ruddy colour, too, and the helpless farmer feel ill at ease, or suggest to the most devout of clergymen a disposition to sneer at his faith. She loved the steep cliff of his forehead and compared it to the brow of a young Greek horseman who reins his horse back so sharply that it half falls on its haunches. He always seemed to her like a rider on a spirited horse. And there was an exultation to her in being with him because there was a risk that she would have left him at the little table in the window. She came back to that state of careless exultation which had overcome her when they halted by the gate. But now it was accompanied by a sense of sanity and security for she felt that they had a feeling in common which scarcely needed embodiment in words. How silent he was, leaning his forehead on his hand now and then one thought solidly upon the top of another. She thought that she could feel him thinking through the shade of her fingers and she could anticipate the exact moment when he would put an end to his thought and turn a little in his chair and say, well, Mary, inviting her to take up the thread of thought where he had dropped it and at that very moment he turned just so and said, well, Mary, with the curious touch of diffidence which she loved in him. She laughed and she explained her thought of the moment by the look of the people in the street below. There was a motor car with an old lady swathed in blue veils and a lady's maid on the seat opposite holding a King Charles spaniel. There was a country woman wheeling a perambulator full of sticks down the middle of the road. There was a bailiff in Gators discussing the state of the cattle market with a dissenting minister so she defined them. She ran over this list without any fear that her companion would think her trivial. She said, or whether Ralph had achieved the process which is called making up one's mind. Certainly he had given up testing the good sense, the independent character, the intelligence shown in her remarks. He had been building one of those piles of thought as ramshackle and fantastic as a Chinese pagoda, half from words let fall by gentlemen in Gators, half from the litter in his own mind about duck shooting and legal history, about the Roman occupation of Lincoln and the death of country gentlemen with their wives. When from all this disconnected rambling there suddenly formed itself in his mind the idea that he would ask Mary to marry him. The idea was so spontaneous that it seemed to shape itself of its own accord before his eyes. It was then that he turned round and made use of his old instinctive phrase. Well, Mary, as it presented itself to him at first the idea was so new and interesting that he was half inclined to address it without more ado to Mary herself. His natural instinct to divide his thoughts carefully into two different classes before he expressed them to her prevailed. But as he watched her looking out of the window and describing the old lady, the woman with the perambulator, the bailiff and the dissenting minister, his eyes filled involuntarily with tears. He would have liked to lay his head on her shoulder and sob while she parted his hair with her fingers and soothed him and said, "'There, there, don't cry. Tell me why you're crying.'" And they would clasp each other tight and her arms would hold him like his mother's. He felt that he was very lonely and that he was afraid of the other people in the room. "'How damned of all this all is,' he exclaimed abruptly. "'What are you talking about?' she replied rather vaguely, still looking out of the window. He resented this divided attention more than perhaps he knew and he thought how Mary would soon and he said, "'I want to talk to you. Haven't we nearly done? Why don't they take away these plates?' Mary felt his agitation without looking at him. She felt convinced that she knew what it was that he wished to say to her. "'They'll come all in good time,' she said and felt it necessary to display her extreme calmness by lifting a salt cellar and sweeping up a little heap of breadcrumbs. "'I want to apologize,' Ralph continued, he urged him to commit himself irrevocably and to prevent the moment of intimacy from passing. "'I think I've treated you very badly. That is, I've told you lies. Did you guess that I was lying to you? Once in Lincoln's infield and again today on our walk. "'I am a liar, Mary. Did you know that? Do you think you do know me?' "'I think I do,' she said. At this point the waiter changed their plates. "'It's true, I don't want you to go to America,' he said, looking fixedly at the tablecloth. "'In fact, my feelings toward you seem to be utterly and damnably bad,' he said energetically, although forced to keep his voice low. "'If I weren't a selfish beast, I should tell you to have nothing more to do with me. And yet, Mary, in spite of the fact that I believe what I'm saying, I also believe that it's good we should know each other, the world being what it is you see.' And by a nod of his head he indicated the other occupants of the room, for, of course, in an ideal state of things, in a decent community even, there's no doubt you shouldn't have anything to do with me. Seriously, that is.' "'You forget that I'm not an ideal character either,' said Mary, in the same low and very earnest tones, which, in spite of being almost inaudible, surrounded their table with an atmosphere of concentration which was quite perceptible to the other diners, who glanced at them now and then with a queer mixture of kindness, amusement, and curiosity. "'I'm more selfish than I let on, and I'm worldly a little, more than you think anyhow. I like bossing things. Perhaps that's my greatest fault. I've none of your passion for,' here she hesitated and glanced at him, as if to ascertain what his passion was for, for the truth,' she added, as if she had found what she had sought indisputably. "'I've told you I'm a liar,' Ralph repeated obstinately. "'Oh, in little things, I dare say,' she said impatiently, but not in real ones, and that's what matters. I dare say I'm more truthful than you are in small ways, but I could never care.' She was surprised to find herself speaking the word and had to force herself to speak it out for anyone who was a liar in that way. I love the truth a certain amount, a considerable amount, but not in the way you love it.' Her voice sank, became inaudible, and wavered as if she could say, "'Good heavens,' Ralph exclaimed to himself, "'She loves me. Why did I never see it before? She's going to cry. No, but she can speak.' The certainty overwhelmed him so that he scarcely knew what he was doing. The blood rushed to his cheeks, and although he had quite made up his mind to ask her to marry him, the certainty that she loved him seemed to change the situation so completely that he could not do it. He did not dare to look at her. It seemed to him that something of a terrible and devastating nature had happened. The waiter changed their plates once more. In his agitation, Ralph rose, turned his back upon Mary, and looked out of the window. The people in the street seemed to him only a dissolving and combining pattern of black particles, which for the moment represented very well the involuntary procession of feelings and thoughts which formed and dissolved in rapid succession in his own mind. Then he thought that Mary loved him. At the next, it seemed that he was without feeling for her. Her love was repulsive to him. Now he felt urged to marry her at once, now to disappear, and never see her again. In order to control this disorderly race of thought, he forced himself to read the name on the chemist's shop directly opposite him, then to examine the object in the shop windows, and then to focus his eyes exactly upon a little group of women looking in at the great windows with this discipline having given him at least a superficial control of himself. He was about to turn and ask the waiter to bring the bill, when his eye was caught by a tall figure walking quickly along the opposite pavement, a tall figure, upright, dark, and commanding, much detached from her surroundings. She held her gloves in her left hand and the left hand was bare. All this Ralph noticed and enumerated and recognized before he put a name to the whole, Catherine Hilberry. Her eyes, in fact, scanned both sides of the street and for one second were raised directly to the bow window in which Ralph stood, but she looked away again instantly without giving any sign that she had seen him. This sudden apparition had an extraordinary effect upon him. It was as if he had thought of her so intensely that his mind had formed the shape of her rather than that he had seen her in the flesh outside in the street. And yet he had not been thinking of her at all. The impression was so intense that he could not dismiss it. Nor even think whether he had seen her or merely imagined her. He sat down at once and said briefly and strangely rather to himself than to Mary. That was Catherine Hilberry. Catherine Hilberry, what do you mean? She asked, hardly understanding from his manner whether he had seen her or not. Catherine Hilberry, he repeated, but she's gone now. Catherine Hilberry, Mary thought, in an instant of blinding revelation, I've always known it was Catherine Hilberry. 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 and 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, 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. She took the 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 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-cheeked 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 saw-dust 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 Catherine or William? I'm wondering about Lincoln looking for the ruins Mrs. Hilbury 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 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 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. Hilbury 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 we've just had luncheon could they not somehow revoke that meal Catherine who had gone a few steps by herself down the road and was investigating the window of an iron monger as if her mother might have got herself concealed among mowing machines and garden shears turned sharply unhearing her voice and came towards them she was a great deal surprised to see Denham and Mary dash it whether the courgeality with which she greeted them was merely that which is natural she was surprised to see Denham and Mary dash it whether the courgeality with which she greeted them to a surprise meeting in the country or whether she was really glad to see them both at any rate she exclaimed was 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 was so 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 Catherine 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 in 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 look 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 to find the tables where the carriage had been put up do you know said Catherine 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 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 I 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. Hilbury 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 of 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 to which one sleek horse was already attached while the second was being led out of the stable door by the hustler 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 surrounded by other members of the party by Mrs. Hilbury and Mary Henry Otway and William Rodney went up to Catherine immediately and said to her Henry is going to drive home with your mother and I suggest that they should put us down halfway and let us walk back Catherine 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 denim Catherine was unusually peremptory he seemed anxious to hasten the departure and Catherine looked at him from time to time as denim 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 she was going back to the stable yard and turned down the high road leading to the village of Lampshire the return drive was almost as silent as the drive from home had been in the morning indeed Mrs. Hilbury lent back with closed eyes in her corner and either slept or faint 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 Lampshire the road ran over the rounded summit of the heath a lonely spot setting forth the gratitude of some great lady of the 18th century who had been set upon by high women 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 the winter the sighing of the trees was deep into a hollow sound and the heath was as gray as the clouds above it here Rodney stopped the carriage and helped Catherine 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. Hilbury and left the couple standing by the obelisk that Rodney was angry with her and had made this opportunity for speaking to her Catherine knew very well she was neither glad nor sorry that the time had come and 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 or two of the pious ladies 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 accompanied it was far easier to approach Catherine 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 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 I shall be glad to get back to work again Saturday Sunday Monday there are only three days more she counted her love 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 you ten minutes and you never came everyone 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 everyone 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 Catherine 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 he 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 he had lost 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 Catherine 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 and his 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 impassionate 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 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 Catherine 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 Catherine in what respects he could change himself to suit her but he sought consolation instead 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 Catherine as sincerely as he had it in him to love anyone 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 if Catherine 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 if you have no feeling for me wouldn't it be kinder to say so to me in private oh William she burst out as if he had interrupted some absorbing train of thought how you go on about feelings isn't it better not to talk so much not to be worrying always about small things that don't really matter that's the question precisely I only want you to tell me that they don't matter there are times when you seem indifferent to everything I'm vain I have a thousand faults but you know they're not everything you know I care for you and if I say that I care for you don't you believe me say it Catherine say it as if you meant it make me feel that you care for me she could not force herself to speak a word the heather was growing dim around them and the horizon was blotted out to ask her for passion or for certainty seemed like asking that damp prospect for fierce blades of fire or the faded sky for the intense blue vault of June he went on to tell her of his love for her in words which bore even to her critical senses the stamp of truth but none of this touched her until coming to a gate whose hinge was rusty he heaved it open with his shoulder still talking and taking no account of his effort the virility of this deed impressed her and yet normally she attached no value to the power of opening gates the strength of muscles has nothing to do on the face of it with the strength of affections nevertheless she felt a sudden concern for this power running to waste on her account which combined with a desire to keep possession of that strangely attractive masculine power made her rouse herself from her torpor why should she simply not tell him the truth which was that she had accepted him in a misty state of mind when nothing had its right shape or size that it was deplorable but that with clearer eyesight marriage was out of the question she did not want to marry anyone she wanted to go away by herself preferably to some bleak northern moor and there studying mathematics and the science of astronomy 20 words would explain the whole situation to him he had ceased to speak he had told her once more how he loved her and why she summoned her courage fixed her eyes upon a lightning splintered ash tree and almost as if she were reading a writing fixed to the trunk began I was wrong to get engaged to you I shall never make you happy I have never loved you Catherine he protested no never she repeated obstinately not rightly don't you see I didn't know what I was doing you love someone else Henry I should have thought William even you there is someone he persisted there has been a change in the last few weeks you owe it to me to be honest Catherine if I could I would she replied why did you tell me you would marry me then he demanded why indeed a moment of pessimism a sudden conviction of the undeniable prose of life a lapse of the illusion which sustains you midway between heaven and earth a desperate attempt to reconcile herself with facts she could only recall a moment as of waking from a dream which now seemed to her a moment of surrender but who could give reasons such as these for doing what she had done she shook her head very sadly but you're not a child you're not a woman of moods Rodney persisted you couldn't have accepted me if you hadn't loved me he cried a sense of her own misbehavior which she had succeeded in keeping from her by sharpening her consciousness of Rodney's faults now swept over her and almost overwhelmed her what were his faults in comparison with the fact that he cared for her what were her virtues in comparison with the fact that she did not care for him in a flash the conviction that not to care is the uttermost sin of all stamped itself upon her in most thought and she felt herself branded forever he had taken her arm very well nor had she the force to resist what now seemed to her his enormously superior strength very well she would submit as her mother and her aunt and most women perhaps had submitted and yet she knew that every second of such submission to his strength was a second of treachery to him I did say I would marry you but it was wrong she forced herself to say and she stiffened her arm for I don't love you William you've noticed it everyone's noticed it why should we go on pretending when I told you I loved you I was wrong I said what I knew to be untrue as none of her words seemed to her at all adequate to represent what she felt she repeated them and emphasized them without realizing the effect that they might have upon a man who cared for her she was completely taken aback by finding her arm suddenly dropped and flashed across her in another moment she saw that he was in tears in her bewilderment at this apparition she stood aghast for a second with a desperate sense that this horror must at all costs be stopped she then put her arms about him drew his head for a moment upon her shoulder and let him on murmuring words of consolation until he heaved a great sigh they held fast to each other her tears too ran down her cheeks and were both quite silent noticing the difficulty with which he walked and feeling the same extreme lassitude in her own limbs she proposed that they should rest for a moment where the bracken was brown and shriveled beneath an oak tree he assented once more he gave a great sigh and wiped his eyes with a childlike unconsciousness and began to speak without a trace of his previous anger the idea came to her that they were like the children in the fairy tale who were lost in a wood and with this in her mind she began to wind into heaps a foot or two deep here and there when did you begin to feel this Catherine he said for it isn't true to say that you've always felt it I admit I was unreasonable the first night when you found that your clothes had been left behind still where's the fault in that I could promise you never to interfere with your clothes again I admit I was cross when I found you upstairs with Henry perhaps I showed it too openly but that's not unreasonable and now this terrible thing he broke off unable for the moment to proceed any further this decision you say you've come to have you discussed it with anyone your mother for example or Henry no no of course not she said stirring the leaves with her hand but you don't understand me William help me to understand you you don't understand I mean my real feelings how could you I've only now faced them myself but I haven't got the sort of feeling you don't know what to call it she looked vaguely towards the horizon sunk under the mist but anyhow without it our marriage would be a farce how a farce he asked but this kind of analysis is disastrous he exclaimed I should have done it before she said gloomily you make yourself think things you don't think he continued becoming demonstrative with his hands as his manner was believe me Catherine the chair covers don't you remember like any other woman who is about to be married now for no reason whatever you begin to fret about your feeling about my feeling with the usual result I assure you Catherine I've been through it all myself at one time I was always asking myself absurd questions which came to nothing either what you want if I may say so is some occupation to take you out of yourself when this morbid mood comes on if it hadn't been for my poetry I should often have been very much in the same state myself to let you into a secret he continued with his little chuckle which now sounded almost assured I have often gone home from seeing you in such a state of nerves that I had to force myself to write a page or two before I could get you out of my head I asked Denim he'll tell you how he met me one night he'll tell you what a state he found me in Catherine started with displeasure at the mention of Ralph's name the thought of the conversation and a subject for discussion with Denim roused her anger but as she instantly felt she had scarcely the right to grudge William any use of her name seeing what her fault against him had been from verse to last and yet Denim she had a view of him as a judge she figured him sternly weighing instances of her levity in this masculine court of inquiry into feminine morality and gruffly dismissing both her and her family with some half sarcastic half tolerant phrase as far as he was concerned forever having met him so lately the sense of his character was strong in her the thought was not a pleasant one for a proud woman but she had yet to learn the art of subduing her expression her eyes fixed upon the ground her brows drawn together gave William a very fair picture of the resentment that she was forcing herself to control a certain degree of apprehension occasionally culminating in a kind of fear in her eyes in the greater intimacy of their engagement beneath her steady exemplary surface ran a vein of passion which seemed to him now perverse now completely irrational for it never took the normal channel of glorification of him and his doings and indeed he almost preferred the steady good sense which had always marked their relationship to a more romantic bond but passion she had he could not deny it and hitherto he had tried to see it and he was born to them she will make a perfect mother a mother of sons he thought but seeing her sitting there gloomy and silent he began to have his doubts on this point a farce a farce he thought to himself she said that our marriage would be a farce and he became suddenly aware of their situation sitting upon the ground among the dead leaves not fifty yards from the main road so that it was quite possible for someone passing to see what might remain of the unseemly exhibition of emotion but he was more troubled by Catherine's appearance as she sat wrapped and thought upon the ground than by his own there was something improper to him in her self-forgetfulness a man naturally alive to the conventions of society he was strictly conventional where women were concerned and especially if the woman happened to be in any way connected with him he noticed with distress the long strand of dark hair touching her shoulder and two or three dead beach leaves attached to her dress but to recall her mind in their present circumstances to a sense of these details was impossible she sat there seeming unconscious of everything he suspected that in her silence she was reproaching herself but he wished that she would think of her hair and of the dead beach leaves which were of more immediate importance to him than anything else indeed, these trifles drew his attention strangely from his own doubtful state of mind for relief mixing itself with pain stirred up a most curious hurry and tumult in his breast almost concealing his first sharp sense of bleak and overwhelming disappointment in order to relieve this restlessness and close a distressingly ill-ordered scene he rose abruptly and helped Catherine to her feet she smiled a little at the minute care with which he tidied her and yet when he brushed the dead leaves in his own coat she flinched seeing in that action the gesture of a lonely man William, she said I will marry you I will try to make you happy end of Chapter 18 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information please visit LibriVox.org Night and Day by Virginia Woolf Chapter 19 Mary and Ralph Denham came out on the high road beyond the outskirts of Lincoln the high road as they both felt was better suited to this return journey than the open country and for the first mile or so of the way they spoke little in his own mind Ralph was following the passage of the Otway carriage over the Heath he then went back to the 5 or 10 minutes that he had spent with Catherine and examined each word with the care that a scholar displays he was determined that the glow the romance the atmosphere of this meeting should not paint what he must in future regard as sober facts on her side Mary was silent not because her thoughts took much handling but because her mind seemed empty of thought as her heart of feeling only Ralph's presence as she knew preserved this numbness for she could foresee a time of loneliness when many varieties of pain would beset her at the present moment her effort was to preserve what she could of the wreck of herself respect for such she deemed that momentary glimpse of her love so involuntarily revealed to Ralph in the light of reason it did not much matter perhaps but it was her instinct to be careful of that vision of herself which keeps pace so evenly beside every one of us and had been damaged by her confession the grey night coming down over the country was kind to her so she could find comfort in sitting upon the earth alone beneath a tree looking through the darkness she marked the swelling ground and the tree Ralph made her start by saying abruptly what I was going to say when we were interrupted at lunch was that if you go to America I shall come too it can't be harder to earn a living there than it is here however that's not the point the point is Mary that I want to marry you well what do you say Mary she said nothing but this did not seem to strike him in most ways at least in the important ways as you said we know each other and we think alike I believe you are the only person in the world I could live with happily and if you feel the same about me as you do don't you marry Mary Mary Mary we should make each other happy here he paused and seemed to be in no hurry for an answer he seemed indeed to be continuing his own thoughts yes but I'm afraid I couldn't do it Mary said at last the casual and rather hurried way in which he spoke together with the fact that she was saying the exact opposite of what he expected her to say baffled him so much that he instinctively loosened his clasp upon her arm he asked no I couldn't marry you she replied you don't care for me she made no answer well Mary he said with a curious laugh I must be an aren't fool for I thought you did they walked for a minute or two in silence and suddenly he turned to her looked at her and exclaimed I don't believe you Mary you're not telling me the truth I can't marry you to believe what I say I can't marry you I don't want to marry you the voice in which she stated this was so evidently the voice of one in some extremity of anguish that Ralph had no course but to obey her and as soon as the tone of her voice had died out and the surprise faded from his mind he found himself believing that she had spoken the truth for he had but little vanity of despondency until he reached a bottom of absolute gloom failure seemed to mark the whole of his life he had failed with Catherine and now he had failed with Mary up at once sprang the thought of Catherine and with it a sense of exalting freedom but this he checked instantly no good had ever come to him from Catherine his whole relationship with her had been made up of dreams and as he thought of the little substance there had been in his dreams haven't I always been thinking of Catherine while I was with Mary I might have loved Mary if it hadn't been for that idiocy of mine she cared for me once I'm certain of that but I tormented her so with my humours that I let my chances slip and now she won't risk marrying me and this is what I've made of my life nothing, nothing, nothing the tramp of their boots upon the dry road seemed to acervate nothing, nothing, nothing Mary thought that this silence was the silence of relief his depression she ascribed to the fact that he had seen Catherine and parted from her leaving her in the company of William Rodney she could not blame him for loving Catherine but that when he loved another he should ask her to marry him that seemed to her the cruelest treachery their old friendship and its firm base upon indestructible qualities of character crumbled and her whole past seemed foolish herself weak and credulous and Ralph merely the shell of an honest man oh the past so much made up of Ralph and now as she saw made up of something strange and false and other than she had thought it she tried to recapture a saying that she had made to help herself that morning as Ralph paid the bill for luncheon but she could see him paying the bill more vividly than she could remember the phrase something about truth was in it how to see the truth is our great chance in this world if you don't want to marry me Ralph now began again without abruptness with diffidence rather there is no need why we should cease to see each other is there or would you rather that we should keep apart for the present keep apart I don't know I must think about it tell me one thing Mary he resumed have I done anything to make you change your mind about me she was immensely tempted to give way to her natural trust in him revived by the deep emotions of his voice and to tell him of her love and of what had changed it but although it seemed likely that she would soon control her anger with him the certainty that he did not love her confirmed by every word of his proposal forbade any freedom of speech to hear him speak and to feel herself unable to reply or constrained in her replies was so painful that she longed for the time when she should be alone a more pliant woman would have taken this chance of an explanation and attached to it but to one of Mary's firm and resolute temperament there was a degradation in the idea of self abandonment let the waves of emotion rise ever so high she could not shut her eyes to what she conceived to be the truth her silence puzzled Ralph he searched his memory for words or deeds that might have made her think badly of him in his present mood instances came but too quickly and on top of them this culminating proof of his baseness he asked her to marry him when his reasons for such a proposal were selfish and half hearted you needn't answer he said grimly there are reasons enough I know but must they kill our friendship Mary let me keep that at least oh she thought to herself with a sudden rush of anguish which threatened disaster to her self respect it has come to this to this when I could have given him everything yes we can still be friends with what firmness she could muster I shall want your friendship he said he added if you find it possible let me see you as often as you can the oftener the better I shall want your help she promised this and they went on to talk calmly of things that had no reference to their feelings a talk which in its constraint was infinitely sad to both of them one more reference was made to the state of things between them when Elizabeth had gone to her room and the two young men had stumbled off to bed in such a state of sleep that they hardly felt the floor beneath their feet after a day's shooting Mary drew her chair a little nearer to the fire for the logs were burning low and at this time of night it was hardly worthwhile to replenish them Ralph was reading but she had noticed for some time that his eyes instead of following the print were fixed rather above the page with an intensity of gloom that came to weigh upon her mind she had not weakened in her resolve not to give way for reflection had only made her more bitterly certain that if she gave way it would be to her own wish and not to his but she had determined that there was no reason why he should suffer if her reticence were the cause of his suffering therefore although she found it painful she spoke you asked me if I had changed my mind about you Ralph she said you asked me to marry you I don't think you meant it that made me angry for the moment before you'd always spoken the truth Ralph's books slid down upon his knee and fell upon the floor he rested his forehead on his hand and looked into the fire he was trying to recall the exact words in which he had made his proposal to Mary I never said I loved you he said at last she winced but she respected him for saying what he did for this after all she had vowed to live by and to me marriage without love doesn't seem worthwhile she said well Mary I'm not going to press you he said I see you don't want to marry me but love don't we all talk a great deal of nonsense about it what does one mean I believe I care for you more genuinely than 9 men out of 10 care for the women they're in love with it's only a story that's what one knows why one's always taking care not to destroy the illusion one takes care not to see them too often or to be alone with them for too long together it's a pleasant illusion but if you're thinking of the risk of marriage it seems to me that the risk of marrying a person you're in love with is something colossal I don't believe a word of that and what's more you don't either she replied with anger however we don't agree I only wanted you to understand as if she were about to go an instinctive desire to prevent her from leaving the room made Ralph rise at this point and begin pacing up and down the nearly empty kitchen checking his desire each time he reached the door to open it and step out into the garden a moralist might have said that at this point his mind should have been full of self reproach for the suffering he had caused on the contrary he was extremely angry with the confused, impotent anger he was trapped by the illogicality of human life the obstacles in the way of his desire seemed to him purely artificial and yet he could see no way of removing them Mary's words the tone of her voice even angered him for she would not help him she was part of the insanely jumbled muddle of a world which impedes the sensible life he would have liked to slam the door or break the hind legs of a chair for the obstacles had taken some such curiously substantial shape I doubt that one human being ever understands another he said stopping in his march and confronting Mary at a distance of a few feet such damned liars as we all are how can we but we can try if you don't want to marry me don't but the position you take up about love and not seeing each other isn't that mere sentimentality you think I've behaved very badly he continued as she did not speak of course I behave badly you can't go through life measuring right and wrong with a foot rule that's what you're always doing Mary that's what you're doing now she saw herself in the suffrage office delivering judgment meeting outright and wrong and there seemed to her to be some justice in the charge although it did not affect her main position I'm not angry with you she said slowly I will go on seeing you as I said I would it was true that she had promised that much already and it was difficult for him to say that he wanted some intimacy some help against the ghost of Catherine perhaps something that he knew he had no right to ask and yet as he sank into his chair and looked once more at the dying fire it seemed to him that he had been defeated not so much by Mary as by life itself he felt himself thrown back to the beginning of life again where everything has yet to be won but in extreme youth one has an ignorant hope end of chapter 19 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information please visit LibriVox.org Night and Day by Virginia Woolf Chapter 20 happily for Mary Dashett she returned to the office to find that by some obscure parliamentary maneuver the vote had once more slipped beyond the attainment of women Mrs. Seal was in a condition bordering upon frenzy the duplicity of ministers the treachery of mankind the insult to womanhood the setback to civilization the ruin of her life's work the feelings of her father's daughter all these topics were discussed in turn and the office was littered with newspaper cuttings branded with the blue if ambiguous marks of her displeasure she confessed herself at fault in her estimate of human nature the simple elementary acts of justice she said waving her hand towards her passengers and omnibuses then passing down the far side of Russell Square are as far beyond them as they ever were we can only look upon ourselves Mary as pioneers in a wilderness we can only go on patiently putting the truth before them it isn't them she continued taking heart from her sight of the traffic it's their leaders it's those gentlemen sitting in parliament and drawing 400 a year of the people's money if we had to put our case to the people we should soon have justice done to us I have always believed in the people and I do so still but she shook her head and implied that she would give them one more chance and if they didn't take advantage of that she couldn't answer for the consequences Mr. Clackden's attitude was more philosophical and better supported by statistics he came into the room after Mrs. Seale's outburst and pointed out with historical illustrations that such reverses had happened in every political campaign of any importance if anything his spirits were improved in the disaster the enemy he said had taken the offensive and it was now up to the society to outwit the enemy he gave Mary to understand that he had taken the measure of their cunning and had already bent his mind to the task which so far she could make out depended solely upon him it depended so she came to think when invited into his room for a private conference upon a systematic revision of the card index upon the issue of certain new lemon-colored leaflets in which the facts were marshaled once more in a very striking way and upon a large-scale map of England dotted with little pins tufted with differently colored plumes of hair according to their geographical position each district under the new system had its flag its bottle of ink its sheaf of documents tabulated and filed for reference in a drawer so that by looking under M or S as the case might be you had all the facts with respect to what the text ends this would require a great deal of work, of course we must try to consider ourselves rather than the light of a telephone exchange for the exchange of ideas, Ms. Dashett he said and taking pleasure in his image he continued it we should consider ourselves the center of an enormous system of wires connecting us up with every district of the country we must have our fingers upon the pulse of the community we want to know what people all over England are thinking the system, of course, was only roughly sketched so far jotted down, in fact, during the Christmas holidays when you ought to have been taking a rest Mr. Clacton said Mary dutifully but her tone was flat and tired we learned to do without holidays Ms. Dashett said Mr. Clacton with a spark of satisfaction in his eye he wished particularly to have her opinion of the lemon-colored leaflet according to his plan immediately in order to stimulate and generate to generate and stimulate, he repeated write thoughts in the country before the meeting of parliament we have to take the enemy by surprise he said they don't let the grass grow under their feet have you seen Bingham's address to his constituents? that's an int of the sort of thing we've got to meet, Ms. Dashett he handed her a great bundle of newspaper clippings and begging her to give him her views upon the yellow leaflet before lunchtime he turned with alacrity to his different sheets of paper and his different bottles of ink Mary shut the door laid the documents upon her table and sank her head on her hands her brain was curiously empty of any thought she listened as if perhaps by listening she would become merged again in the atmosphere of the office from the next room came the rapid spasmodic sounds of Mrs. Seale's erratic type writing she, doubtless, was already hard at work helping the people of England correctly generating and stimulating those were his words she was striking a blow against the enemy no doubt who didn't let the grass grow beneath their feet Mr. Clackton's words repeated themselves accurately in her brain she pushed the papers wearily over to the farther side of the table it was no use though something or other had happened to her brain a change of focus so that near things were indistinct again the same thing had happened to her once before she remembered the importance of Lincoln's infields she had spent the whole of a committee meeting in thinking about sparrows and colours until almost at the end of the meeting her old convictions had all come back to her but they had only come back she thought would scorn at her feebleness because she wanted to use them to fight against Ralph they weren't rightly speaking convictions at all she could not see the world divided into separate compartments of good people and bad people any more than she could believe so implicitly in the rightness she wished to bring the population of the British Isles into agreement with it she looked at the lemon-coloured leaflet and thought almost enviously of the faith which could find comfort in the issue of such documents for herself she would be content to remain silent forever if a share of personal happiness were granted her she read Mr. Clackton's statement with a curious division of judgment noting its weak and pompous verbosity on the one hand faith in an illusion perhaps but at any rate faith in something was of all gifts the most to be envied an illusion it was no doubt she looked curiously round her at the furniture of the office at the machinery in which she had taken so much pride and marveled to think that once the copying presses the card index, the files of documents had all been shrouded wrapped in some mist which gave them a unity of great significance the ugly cumbersomeness of the furniture alone impressed her now her attitude had become very lax and despondent when the typewriter stopped in the next room Mary immediately drew up to the table laid hands on an unopened envelope and adopted an expression which might hide her state of mind for Mrs. Seal some instinct of decency required that she should not allow Mrs. Seal to see her face shading her eyes with her fingers in her search for some envelope or leaflet she was tempted to drop her fingers and exclaim do sit down Sally and tell me how you manage it how you manage that is to bustle about with perfect confidence in the necessity of your own activities which to me seemed as futile as the buzzing of a belated blue bottle she said nothing of the kind however and the presence of industry which she preserved so long as Mrs. Seal was in the room served to set her brain in motion and her body's work much as usual at one o'clock she was surprised to find how efficiently she had dealt with the morning as she put her hat on she determined to lunch at a shop in the strand so as to set that other piece of mechanism her body into action with a brain working and a body working one could keep step with the crowd and never be found out for the hollow machine lacking the essential thing that one was conscious of being she considered her case and considered she put to herself a series of questions which she mined for example if the wheels of that motor omnibus passed over her and crushed her to death no not in the least or an adventure with that disagreeable looking man hanging about the entrance of the tube station no she could not conceive fear or excitement did suffering in any form appalled her no suffering was neither good nor bad and this essential thing in the eyes of every single person she detected a flame as if a spark in the brain ignited spontaneously at contact with the things they met and drove them on the young women looking into the milliner's windows had that look in their eyes and elderly men turning over books in the second hand book shops and eagerly waiting to hear what the price was the very lowest price they had it too but she cared nothing at all for clothes or for money either books she shrank from closely with Ralph she kept on her way resolutely through the crowd of people among whom she was so much of an alien feeling them cleave and give way before her strange thoughts are bred in passing through crowded streets should the passenger by chance have no exact destination in front of him much as the mind shapes all kinds of forms, solutions, images when listening inattentively to music from an acute consciousness of herself as an individual Mary passed to a conception of the scheme of things in which as a human being she must have her share she half held a vision the vision shaped and dwindled she wished she had a pencil and a piece of paper to help her to give a form to this conception which composed itself as she walked down the Charing Cross Road but if she talked to anyone the conception might escape her her vision seemed to lay out the lines of her life until death in a way which satisfied her sense of harmony it only needed a persistent effort of thought stimulated in this strange way by the crowd and the noise to climb the crest of existence and see it all laid out once and for ever already her suffering as an individual was left behind her of this process which was to her so full of effort which comprised infinitely swift and full passages of thought leading from one crest to another as she shaped her conception of life in this world muttered beneath her breath not happiness not happiness she sat down on a seat opposite the statue of one of London's heroes upon the embankment and spoke the words aloud to her they represented the rare flower or splinter of rock brought down by a climber improved that he has stood for a moment at least upon the highest peak of the mountain she had been up there and seen the world spread to the horizon it was now necessary to alter her course according to her new resolve her post should be in one of those exposed and desolate stations which are shunned naturally by happy people she arranged the details of the new plan in her mind not without a grim satisfaction now she said to herself rising from her seat I'll think of Ralph where was he to be placed in the new scale of life her exalted mood seemed to make it safe to handle the question how quickly her passions leapt forward the moment she sanctioned this line of thought now she was identified with him and rethought his thoughts with complete self-surrender now with a sudden cleavage of spirit she turned upon him and announced him for his cruelty but I refuse I refuse to hate anyone she said aloud chose the moment to cross the road with circumspection and ten minutes later lunched in the strand giving her fellow diners no further cause to judge her eccentric her soliloquy crystallized itself into little fragmentary phrases emerging suddenly from the turbulence of her thought particularly when she had to exert herself in any way either to move, to count money or to choose a turning to know the truth to accept without bitterness those perhaps were the most articulate of her utterances of the queer gibberish murmured in front of the statue of Francis, Duke of Bedford saved the name of Ralph occurred frequently in very strange connections as if, having spoken it she wished superstitiously to cancel it by adding some other word that robbed the sentence with his name in it of any meaning those champions of the cause of women Mr. Clackton and Mrs. Seal did not perceive anything strange in Mary's behavior saved that she was almost half an hour later than usual in coming back to the office happily their own affairs kept them busy and she was free from their inspection if they had surprised her they would have found her lost apparently in admiration of the large hotel across the square for after writing a few words her pen rested upon the paper and her mind pursued its own journey among the sudden blazoned windows and the drifts of purplish smoke which formed her view and indeed this background of her thoughts she sought to the remote spaces behind the strife of the foreground enabled now to gaze there since she had renounced her own demands privileged to see the larger view to share the vast desires and sufferings of the mass of mankind she had been too lately and too roughly mastered by facts to take an easy pleasure in the relief of renunciation such satisfaction as she felt came only from the discovery that having renounced everything there remained a hard reality unimpaired by one's personal adventures remote as the stars unquenchable as they are while Mary Dashett was undergoing this curious transformation from the particular to the universal Missa Seal remembered her duties with regard to the kettle and the gas fire she was a little surprised to find that Mary had drawn her chair to the window and having lit the gas she raised herself from a stooping posture and looked at her as such an attitude in a secretary was some kind of indisposition but Mary rousing herself with an effort denied that she was indisposed I'm frightfully lazy this afternoon she added with a glance at her table you must really get another secretary sally the words were meant to be taken lightly but something in the tone of them browsed a jealous fear which was always dormant in Missa Seal's breast she was terribly afraid that one of these days Mary the young woman who typified sentimental and enthusiastic ideas who had some sort of visionary existence in white with a sheaf of lilies in her hand would announce in a jaunty way that she was about to be married you don't mean that you're going to leave us she said I've not made up my mind about anything said Mary a remark which could be taken as a generalization Missa Seal got the tea cups out of the cupboard and set them on the table you're not going to be married are you she asked why are you asking such absurd questions this afternoon sally Mary asked not very steadily must we all get married Missa Seal emitted a most peculiar chuckle she seemed for one moment to acknowledge the terrible side of life which is concerned with the emotions the private lives of the sexes and then to shear off from it with all possible speed into the shades of her own shivering virginity she was made so uncomfortable by the turn the conversation had taken and endeavored to abstract some very obscure piece of china we have our work she said withdrawing her head displaying cheeks more than usually crimson and placing a jam pot emphatically upon the table but for the moment she was unable to launch herself upon one of those enthusiastic but inconsequent tirades upon liberty democracy the rights of the people and the inequities of the government in which she delighted some memory from her own past and kept her abashed she glanced furtively at Mary who still sat by the window with her arm upon the sill she noticed how young she was and full of the promise of womanhood the sight made her so uneasy that she fidgeted the cups upon their saucers yes enough work to last a lifetime said Mary as if concluding some passage of thought Missa Seal brightened at once she lamented her lack of scientific training and her deficiency in the processes of logic but she set her mind to work at once to make the prospects of the cause appear as alluring and important as she could she delivered herself of an harangue in which she asked a great many rhetorical questions and answered them with a little bang of one fist upon another to last a lifetime my dear child it will last all our lifetimes as one falls another steps into the breach my father in his generation a pioneer I coming after him do my little best what alas can one do more and now it's you young women we look to you the future looks to you ah my dear if I had a thousand lies I'd give them all to our cause the cause of women do you say I say the cause of humanity and there are some she glanced fiercely at the window who don't see it there are some who are satisfied to go on year after year refusing to admit the truth and we who have the vision the kettle boiling over we who know the truth she continued gesticulating with the kettle and the teapot owing to these incumbrances perhaps she lost the threat of her discourse and concluded rather wistfully it's all so simple she referred to a matter that was a perpetual source of bewilderment to her the extraordinary incapacity of the human race in a world where the good is so unmistakably divided from the bad of distinguishing one from the other and embodying what ought to be done in a few large simple acts of parliament which would in a very short time completely change the lot of humanity one would have thought she said that men of university training like Mr. Asquith one would have thought that an appeal to reason would not be unheard by them but reason she reflected doing homage to the phrase she repeated it once more and caught the ear of Mr. Clackton as he issued from his room giving it as he was in the habit of doing with Mrs. Seal's phrases a dryly humorous intonation he was well pleased with the world however and he remarked in a flattering manner that he would like to see that phrase in large letters at the head of a leaflet but Mrs. Seal we have to aim at a judicious combination of the two he added in his magisterial way to check the unbalanced enthusiasm of the women reality has to be voiced by reason before it can make itself felt at the point of all these movements misdash it he continued taking his place at the table and turning to Mary as usual when about to deliver his more profound cogitations is that they are not based upon sufficiently intellectual grounds a mistake in my opinion the British public likes a pellet of reason in its jam of eloquence a pill of reason in its pudding of sentiment he said sharpening the phrase to a satisfactory degree of literary precision of the vanity of an author upon the yellow leaflet which Mary held in her hand she rose, took her seat at the head of the table poured out tea for her colleagues and gave her opinion upon the leaflet so she had poured out tea so she had criticized Mr. Clacton's leaflets a hundred times already but now it seemed to her that she was doing it in a different spirit she had enlisted in the army and was a volunteer no longer she had renounced something and was now how could she express it not quite in the running for life she had always known that Mr. Clacton and Mrs. Seal were not in the running and across the gulf that separated them she had seen them in the guise of shadow people flitting in and out of the ranks of the living eccentrics, undeveloped human beings from whose substance some essential part had been cut away all this had never struck her so clearly as it did this afternoon when she felt that her lot one view of the world plunged in darkness so a more volatile temperament might have argued after a season of despair let the world turn again and show another more splendid perhaps no, Mary thought with unflinching loyalty to what appeared to her to be the true view having lost what is best I do not mean to pretend that any other view does instead whatever happens I mean to have no presences in my life her very words had a sort of distinctness which is sometimes produced by sharp bodily pain to Mrs. Seal's secret jubilation the rule which forbade discussion of shop at tea time was overlooked Mary and Mr. Clacton argued with a cogency and a ferocity which made the little woman feel that something very important she hardly knew what was taking place she became very excited one crucifix became entangled with another and she dug a considerable hole in the table with the point of her pencil in order to emphasize the most striking heads of the discourse and how any combination of cabinet ministers could resist such discourse she really did not know she could hardly bring herself to remember her own private instrument of justice the typewriter the telephone bell rang and as she hurried off to answer a voice which always seemed a proof of importance by itself she felt that it was at this exact spot on the surface of the globe that all the subterranean wires from the printer she found that Mary was putting on her hat firmly there was something imperious and dominating in her attitude altogether look Sally she said these letters want copying these I've not looked at the question of the new census will have to be gone into carefully but I'm going home now good night Mr. Clacton good night Sally we are very fortunate in our secretary Mr. Clacton said Mrs. Seal was more shut behind Mary Mr. Clacton himself had been vaguely impressed by something in Mary's behavior towards him he envisioned a time when it would become necessary to tell her that there could not be two masters in one office but she was certainly able very able and in touch with a group of very clever young men no doubt they had suggested to her some of her new ideas he signified his assent to Mrs. Seal's remark but observed with a glance at the clock which showed only half an hour past five if she takes the work seriously Mrs. Seal but that's just what some of your clever young ladies don't do so saying he returned to his room and Mrs. Seal after a moment's hesitation hurried back to her labors end of chapter 20 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information please visit LibriVox.org Night and Day by Virginia Woolf Chapter 21 Mary walked to the nearest station and reached home in an incredibly short space of time just so much indeed as was needed for the intelligent understanding of the news of the world as the Westminster Gazette reported it within a few minutes of opening her door she was in trim for a hard evening's work she unlocked a drawer and took out a manuscript which consisted of a very few pages entitled in a forcible hand some aspects of the democratic state the aspects dwindled out in a criss-cross of blotted lines in the very middle of a sentence and suggested that the author had been interrupted or convinced of the futility of proceeding with her pen in the air oh yes Ralph had come in at that point she scored that sheet very effectively and choosing a fresh one began at a great rate with a generalization upon the structure of human society which was a good deal bolder than her custom Ralph had told her once that she couldn't write English which accounted for those frequent blots and insertions but she put all that behind her and drove ahead with such words as came her way until she had accomplished half a page of generalization and might legitimately draw a breath directly her hand stopped her brain stopped too and she began to listen a paper boy shouted down the street and omnibus ceased and lurched on again with the heave of duty once more shouldered the dullness of the sound suggested since her return if indeed a fog has power to deaden sound of which fact she could not be sure at the present moment it was the sort of fact Ralph Denham knew at any rate it was no concern of hers and she was about to dip a pen when her ear was caught by the sound of a step upon the stone staircase she followed it past Mr. Chippen's chambers past Mr. Gibson's past Mr. Turner's after which it became her sound a postman, a washerwoman a circular, a bill she presented herself with each of these perfectly natural possibilities but to her surprise her mind rejected each one of them impatiently even apprehensively the step became slow as it was apt to at the end of the steep climb and Mary listening for the regular sound was filled with an intolerable nervousness leaning against the table she felt the knock of her heart push her body perceptively backwards and forwards with nerves astonishing and reprehensible in a stable woman grotesque fancies took shape alone at the top of the house an unknown person approaching nearer and nearer how could she escape there was no way of escape she did not even know whether that oblong mark on the ceiling was a trapdoor to the roof or not and if she got onto the roof well there was a drop of 60 feet or so onto the pavement but she sat perfectly still and she saw a tall figure outside with something ominous to her eyes in the look of it what do you want she said not recognizing the face in the fitful light of the staircase Mary I'm Catherine Hilberry Mary's self-possession returned almost excessively and her welcome was decidedly cold as if she must recoup herself for this ridiculous waste of emotion she moved her green shaded lamp to another table with a sheet of blotting paper why can't they leave me alone she thought bitterly connecting Catherine and Ralph in a conspiracy to take from her even this hour of solitary study even this poor little defense against the world and as she smoothed down the sheet of blotting paper over the manuscript she braced herself to resist Catherine whose presence struck her not merely by its force as usual but as something in the nature of a menace you're working is not welcome nothing that matters Mary replied drawing forward the best of the chairs and poking the fire I didn't know you had to work after you had left the office said Catherine in a tone which gave the impression that she was thinking of something else as was indeed the case she had been paying calls with her mother and in between the calls Mrs. Hilberry had rushed into shops and bought pillowcases and blotting books and pedimenta accumulating on all sides of her she had left her at length and had come on to keep an engagement to dine with Rodney at his rooms but she did not mean to get to him before seven o'clock and so had plenty of time to walk all the way from Bond Street to the temple if she wished it the flow of faces streaming on either side of her had hypnotized her into a mood of profound despondency to which her expectation of an evening alone with Rodney was ever before so far she was concerned this was true there were many more things in him than she had guessed until emotion brought them forth strength, affection, sympathy and she thought of them and looked at the faces passing and thought how much alike they were and how distant nobody feeling anything as she felt nothing and distance she thought lay inevitably between the closest and their intimacy was the worst I don't care for any of them and I don't care for William and people say this is the thing that matters most and I can't see what they mean by it she looked desperately at the smooth bold pipes and wondered should she walk on by the strand or by the embankment it was not a simple question for it concerned not different streets so much as different streams of thought if she went by the strand she would force herself to think out the problem of the future she would certainly begin to think about things that didn't exist the forest, the ocean beach the leafy solitudes the magnanimous hero no, no, no, a thousand times no it wouldn't do there was something repulsive in such thoughts at present she must take something else she was out of that mood at present and then she thought of Mary the thought gave her confidence even pleasure of a sad sort as if the triumph of Ralph and Mary an indistinct idea that the sight of Mary might be of help combined with her natural trust in her suggested a visit for surely her liking was of a kind that implied liking upon Mary's side also after a moment's hesitation she decided although she seldom acted upon impulse to act upon this one and turned down a side street and found Mary's door but her reception was not encouraging clearly Mary didn't want to see her in part and the half form desire to confide in her was quenched immediately she was slightly amused at her own delusion looked rather absent minded and swung her gloves to and fro as if doling out the few minutes accurately before she could say goodbye those few minutes might very well be spent in asking for information as to the exact position of the suffrage bill or in expounding her own very sensible view of the situation but there was a tone in her voice or a shade in her opinions of her gloves which served to irritate Mary dash it whose manner became increasingly direct abrupt and even antagonistic she became conscious of a wish to make Catherine realize the importance of this work which she discussed so coolly as though she too had sacrificed what Mary herself had sacrificed the swinging of the gloves ceased and Catherine after ten minutes began to make movements preliminary to departure at the site of this of another very strong desire Catherine was not to be allowed to go to disappear into the free happy world of irresponsible individuals she must be made to realize to feel I don't quite see she said as if Catherine had challenged her explicitly how things being as they are anyone can help trying at least to do something no but how are things Mary pressed her lips and smiled ironically at her mercy she could if she liked to start 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 Catherine she began to feel rapid alterations of opinion about her 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. Clackton fell flat against such armor you'll be married with other things to think of she said inconsequently and with an accent of condescension she was not going to make Catherine understand in a second as she would all she herself had learned at the cost of such pain no Catherine was to be happy Catherine 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 but she was 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 Catherine now renewed her signs of leaf-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 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 slightly she could not conceive in what respects Catherine 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 Catherine observed vaguely well but you've got everything that anyone can want Catherine remained silent she gazed into the fire quietly and without a trace of self-consciousness the hostility which she had defined in Mary's tone 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 she spoke half mockingly asking her question which she scarcely troubled to frame not of Mary or of anyone in particular but the word seemed to Mary dash at 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 looking at her as if now she were about perhaps to explain something very important filling the simplicity and good faith that lay behind Catherine's words I think affection is the only reality she said yes said Catherine 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 arranges self thus satisfactorily and pass on she rose to her feet accordingly but Mary exclaimed with that they met so seldom that she wanted to talk to her so much Catherine 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 the color at once came to her face it would be a very good plan said Catherine in her decided way you think so yes because he could do something worthwhile 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 Catherine's mention of Ralph had roused within her an almost irresistible desire to explain to her the true state 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 Catherine 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 Catherine spoke which was not so simple and yet it impressed itself upon her as a necessity she must tell Catherine what it was clear that Ralph was in love with her I don't know what he means to do she said heredly taking time against the pressure of her own conviction I've not seen him since Christmas Catherine 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 she was expected to deal with figures than with the feelings of men and women anyhow William Rodney would say so and now she said a please stay Mary exclaimed putting out her hand to stop her directly Catherine moved she felt inarticulately and violently that she could not bear to let her go if Catherine 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 Catherine'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 bear something she must keep of her own immediately she figured an immured life continuing for an immense period the same feelings living forever 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 Catherine's skirt and fingering a line of fur she bent her head as if to examine it I like this fur she said 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 someone else her head remained bent and her hand still rested upon the skirt it's a shabby old dress said Catherine 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 Catherine but you're mistaken aren't you because 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 Catherine thought that she had seen 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 with greater energy I am in love there is 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 Catherine 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 say I've got that one would 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 Catherine looked at her again as if her first glance must have been diluted 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 Catherine 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 of 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 Catherine her motives in making the statement she had nerfed 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 was to be 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 to 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 Catherine 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 wrists her voice faltered into silence it was born 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 and 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 born 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 it was against herself trapped, cheated, robbed first by Ralph and then by Catherine 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 Catherine and retrieve what could be retrieved of the collapse of her courage she turned Catherine had not moved 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 her hold her breath she paused our thoughts were without bitterness she was surprised by her own quiet and confidence she came back silently and sat once more by Catherine'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 her 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 end of chapter 21