Chapter VI

by Virginia Woolf

  Of all the hours of an ordinary working week-day, which are thepleasantest to look forward to and to look back upon? If a singleinstance is of use in framing a theory, it may be said that theminutes between nine-twenty-five and nine-thirty in the morning had asingular charm for Mary Datchet. She spent them in a very enviableframe of mind; her contentment was almost unalloyed. High in the airas her flat was, some beams from the morning sun reached her even inNovember, striking straight at curtain, chair, and carpet, andpainting there three bright, true spaces of green, blue, and purple,upon which the eye rested with a pleasure which gave physical warmthto the body.There were few mornings when Mary did not look up, as she bent to laceher boots, and as she followed the yellow rod from curtain tobreakfast-table she usually breathed some sigh of thankfulness thather life provided her with such moments of pure enjoyment. She wasrobbing no one of anything, and yet, to get so much pleasure fromsimple things, such as eating one's breakfast alone in a room whichhad nice colors in it, clean from the skirting of the boards to thecorners of the ceiling, seemed to suit her so thoroughly that she usedat first to hunt about for some one to apologize to, or for some flawin the situation. She had now been six months in London, and she couldfind no flaw, but that, as she invariably concluded by the time herboots were laced, was solely and entirely due to the fact that she hadher work. Every day, as she stood with her dispatch-box in her hand atthe door of her flat, and gave one look back into the room to see thateverything was straight before she left, she said to herself that shewas very glad that she was going to leave it all, that to have satthere all day long, in the enjoyment of leisure, would have beenintolerable.Out in the street she liked to think herself one of the workers who,at this hour, take their way in rapid single file along all the broadpavements of the city, with their heads slightly lowered, as if alltheir effort were to follow each other as closely as might be; so thatMary used to figure to herself a straight rabbit-run worn by theirunswerving feet upon the pavement. But she liked to pretend that shewas indistinguishable from the rest, and that when a wet day drove herto the Underground or omnibus, she gave and took her share of crowdand wet with clerks and typists and commercial men, and shared withthem the serious business of winding-up the world to tick for anotherfour-and-twenty hours.Thus thinking, on the particular morning in question, she made heraway across Lincoln's Inn Fields and up Kingsway, and so throughSouthampton Row until she reached her office in Russell Square. Nowand then she would pause and look into the window of some bookselleror flower shop, where, at this early hour, the goods were beingarranged, and empty gaps behind the plate glass revealed a state ofundress. Mary felt kindly disposed towards the shopkeepers, and hopedthat they would trick the midday public into purchasing, for at thishour of the morning she ranged herself entirely on the side of theshopkeepers and bank clerks, and regarded all who slept late and hadmoney to spend as her enemy and natural prey. And directly she hadcrossed the road at Holborn, her thoughts all came naturally andregularly to roost upon her work, and she forgot that she was,properly speaking, an amateur worker, whose services were unpaid, andcould hardly be said to wind the world up for its daily task, sincethe world, so far, had shown very little desire to take the boonswhich Mary's society for woman's suffrage had offered it.She was thinking all the way up Southampton Row of notepaper andfoolscap, and how an economy in the use of paper might be effected(without, of course, hurting Mrs. Seal's feelings), for she wascertain that the great organizers always pounce, to begin with, upontrifles like these, and build up their triumphant reforms upon a basisof absolute solidity; and, without acknowledging it for a moment, MaryDatchet was determined to be a great organizer, and had already doomedher society to reconstruction of the most radical kind. Once or twicelately, it is true, she had started, broad awake, before turning intoRussell Square, and denounced herself rather sharply for being alreadyin a groove, capable, that is, of thinking the same thoughts everymorning at the same hour, so that the chestnut-colored brick of theRussell Square houses had some curious connection with her thoughtsabout office economy, and served also as a sign that she should getinto trim for meeting Mr. Clacton, or Mrs. Seal, or whoever might bebeforehand with her at the office. Having no religious belief, she wasthe more conscientious about her life, examining her position fromtime to time very seriously, and nothing annoyed her more than to findone of these bad habits nibbling away unheeded at the precioussubstance. What was the good, after all, of being a woman if onedidn't keep fresh, and cram one's life with all sorts of views andexperiments? Thus she always gave herself a little shake, as sheturned the corner, and, as often as not, reached her own doorwhistling a snatch of a Somersetshire ballad.The suffrage office was at the top of one of the large Russell Squarehouses, which had once been lived in by a great city merchant and hisfamily, and was now let out in slices to a number of societies whichdisplayed assorted initials upon doors of ground glass, and kept, eachof them, a typewriter which clicked busily all day long. The oldhouse, with its great stone staircase, echoed hollowly to the sound oftypewriters and of errand-boys from ten to six. The noise of differenttypewriters already at work, disseminating their views upon theprotection of native races, or the value of cereals as foodstuffs,quickened Mary's steps, and she always ran up the last flight of stepswhich led to her own landing, at whatever hour she came, so as to gether typewriter to take its place in competition with the rest.She sat herself down to her letters, and very soon all thesespeculations were forgotten, and the two lines drew themselves betweenher eyebrows, as the contents of the letters, the office furniture,and the sounds of activity in the next room gradually asserted theirsway upon her. By eleven o'clock the atmosphere of concentration wasrunning so strongly in one direction that any thought of a differentorder could hardly have survived its birth more than a moment or so.The task which lay before her was to organize a series ofentertainments, the profits of which were to benefit the society,which drooped for want of funds. It was her first attempt atorganization on a large scale, and she meant to achieve somethingremarkable. She meant to use the cumbrous machine to pick out this,that, and the other interesting person from the muddle of the world,and to set them for a week in a pattern which must catch the eyes ofCabinet Ministers, and the eyes once caught, the old arguments were tobe delivered with unexampled originality. Such was the scheme as awhole; and in contemplation of it she would become quite flushed andexcited, and have to remind herself of all the details that intervenedbetween her and success.The door would open, and Mr. Clacton would come in to search for acertain leaflet buried beneath a pyramid of leaflets. He was a thin,sandy-haired man of about thirty-five, spoke with a Cockney accent,and had about him a frugal look, as if nature had not dealt generouslywith him in any way, which, naturally, prevented him from dealinggenerously with other people. When he had found his leaflet, andoffered a few jocular hints upon keeping papers in order, thetypewriting would stop abruptly, and Mrs. Seal would burst into theroom with a letter which needed explanation in her hand. This was amore serious interruption than the other, because she never knewexactly what she wanted, and half a dozen requests would bolt fromher, no one of which was clearly stated. Dressed in plum-coloredvelveteen, with short, gray hair, and a face that seemed permanentlyflushed with philanthropic enthusiasm, she was always in a hurry, andalways in some disorder. She wore two crucifixes, which got themselvesentangled in a heavy gold chain upon her breast, and seemed to Maryexpressive of her mental ambiguity. Only her vast enthusiasm and herworship of Miss Markham, one of the pioneers of the society, kept herin her place, for which she had no sound qualification.So the morning wore on, and the pile of letters grew, and Mary felt,at last, that she was the center ganglion of a very fine network ofnerves which fell over England, and one of these days, when shetouched the heart of the system, would begin feeling and rushingtogether and emitting their splendid blaze of revolutionary fireworks--for some such metaphor represents what she felt about her work, whenher brain had been heated by three hours of application.Shortly before one o'clock Mr. Clacton and Mrs. Seal desisted fromtheir labors, and the old joke about luncheon, which came outregularly at this hour, was repeated with scarcely any variation ofwords. Mr. Clacton patronized a vegetarian restaurant; Mrs. Sealbrought sandwiches, which she ate beneath the plane-trees in RussellSquare; while Mary generally went to a gaudy establishment,upholstered in red plush, near by, where, much to the vegetarian'sdisapproval, you could buy steak, two inches thick, or a roast sectionof fowl, swimming in a pewter dish."The bare branches against the sky do one so much good," Mrs. Sealasserted, looking out into the Square."But one can't lunch off trees, Sally," said Mary."I confess I don't know how you manage it, Miss Datchet," Mr. Clactonremarked. "I should sleep all the afternoon, I know, if I took a heavymeal in the middle of the day.""What's the very latest thing in literature?" Mary asked, good-humoredly pointing to the yellow-covered volume beneath Mr. Clacton'sarm, for he invariably read some new French author at lunch-time, orsqueezed in a visit to a picture gallery, balancing his social workwith an ardent culture of which he was secretly proud, as Mary hadvery soon divined.So they parted and Mary walked away, wondering if they guessed thatshe really wanted to get away from them, and supposing that they hadnot quite reached that degree of subtlety. She bought herself anevening paper, which she read as she ate, looking over the top of itagain and again at the queer people who were buying cakes or impartingtheir secrets, until some young woman whom she knew came in, and shecalled out, "Eleanor, come and sit by me," and they finished theirlunch together, parting on the strip of pavement among the differentlines of traffic with a pleasant feeling that they were stepping oncemore into their separate places in the great and eternally movingpattern of human life.But, instead of going straight back to the office to-day, Mary turnedinto the British Museum, and strolled down the gallery with the shapesof stone until she found an empty seat directly beneath the gaze ofthe Elgin marbles. She looked at them, and seemed, as usual, borne upon some wave of exaltation and emotion, by which her life at oncebecame solemn and beautiful--an impression which was due as much,perhaps, to the solitude and chill and silence of the gallery as tothe actual beauty of the statues. One must suppose, at least, that heremotions were not purely esthetic, because, after she had gazed at theUlysses for a minute or two, she began to think about Ralph Denham. Sosecure did she feel with these silent shapes that she almost yieldedto an impulse to say "I am in love with you" aloud. The presence ofthis immense and enduring beauty made her almost alarmingly consciousof her desire, and at the same time proud of a feeling which did notdisplay anything like the same proportions when she was going abouther daily work.She repressed her impulse to speak aloud, and rose and wandered aboutrather aimlessly among the statues until she found herself in anothergallery devoted to engraved obelisks and winged Assyrian bulls, andher emotion took another turn. She began to picture herself travelingwith Ralph in a land where these monsters were couchant in the sand."For," she thought to herself, as she gazed fixedly at someinformation printed behind a piece of glass, "the wonderful thingabout you is that you're ready for anything; you're not in the leastconventional, like most clever men."And she conjured up a scene of herself on a camel's back, in thedesert, while Ralph commanded a whole tribe of natives."That is what you can do," she went on, moving on to the next statue."You always make people do what you want."A glow spread over her spirit, and filled her eyes with brightness.Nevertheless, before she left the Museum she was very far from saying,even in the privacy of her own mind, "I am in love with you," and thatsentence might very well never have framed itself. She was, indeed,rather annoyed with herself for having allowed such an ill-consideredbreach of her reserve, weakening her powers of resistance, she felt,should this impulse return again. For, as she walked along the streetto her office, the force of all her customary objections to being inlove with any one overcame her. She did not want to marry at all. Itseemed to her that there was something amateurish in bringing loveinto touch with a perfectly straightforward friendship, such as herswas with Ralph, which, for two years now, had based itself upon commoninterests in impersonal topics, such as the housing of the poor, orthe taxation of land values.But the afternoon spirit differed intrinsically from the morningspirit. Mary found herself watching the flight of a bird, or makingdrawings of the branches of the plane-trees upon her blotting-paper.People came in to see Mr. Clacton on business, and a seductive smellof cigarette smoke issued from his room. Mrs. Seal wandered about withnewspaper cuttings, which seemed to her either "quite splendid" or"really too bad for words." She used to paste these into books, orsend them to her friends, having first drawn a broad bar in bluepencil down the margin, a proceeding which signified equally andindistinguishably the depths of her reprobation or the heights of herapproval.About four o'clock on that same afternoon Katharine Hilbery waswalking up Kingsway. The question of tea presented itself. The streetlamps were being lit already, and as she stood still for a momentbeneath one of them, she tried to think of some neighboringdrawing-room where there would be firelight and talk congenial to hermood. That mood, owing to the spinning traffic and the evening veil ofunreality, was ill-adapted to her home surroundings. Perhaps, on thewhole, a shop was the best place in which to preserve this queer senseof heightened existence. At the same time she wished to talk.Remembering Mary Datchet and her repeated invitations, she crossed theroad, turned into Russell Square, and peered about, seeking fornumbers with a sense of adventure that was out of all proportion tothe deed itself. She found herself in a dimly lighted hall, unguardedby a porter, and pushed open the first swing door. But the office-boyhad never heard of Miss Datchet. Did she belong to the S.R.F.R.?Katharine shook her head with a smile of dismay. A voice from withinshouted, "No. The S.G.S.--top floor."Katharine mounted past innumerable glass doors, with initials on them,and became steadily more and more doubtful of the wisdom of herventure. At the top she paused for a moment to breathe and collectherself. She heard the typewriter and formal professional voicesinside, not belonging, she thought, to any one she had ever spoken to.She touched the bell, and the door was opened almost immediately byMary herself. Her face had to change its expression entirely when shesaw Katharine."You!" she exclaimed. "We thought you were the printer." Still holdingthe door open, she called back, "No, Mr. Clacton, it's notPenningtons. I should ring them up again--double three double eight,Central. Well, this is a surprise. Come in," she added. "You're justin time for tea."The light of relief shone in Mary's eyes. The boredom of the afternoonwas dissipated at once, and she was glad that Katharine had found themin a momentary press of activity, owing to the failure of the printerto send back certain proofs.The unshaded electric light shining upon the table covered with papersdazed Katharine for a moment. After the confusion of her twilightwalk, and her random thoughts, life in this small room appearedextremely concentrated and bright. She turned instinctively to lookout of the window, which was uncurtained, but Mary immediatelyrecalled her."It was very clever of you to find your way," she said, and Katharinewondered, as she stood there, feeling, for the moment, entirelydetached and unabsorbed, why she had come. She looked, indeed, toMary's eyes strangely out of place in the office. Her figure in thelong cloak, which took deep folds, and her face, which was composedinto a mask of sensitive apprehension, disturbed Mary for a momentwith a sense of the presence of some one who was of another world,and, therefore, subversive of her world. She became immediatelyanxious that Katharine should be impressed by the importance of herworld, and hoped that neither Mrs. Seal nor Mr. Clacton would appearuntil the impression of importance had been received. But in this shewas disappointed. Mrs. Seal burst into the room holding a kettle inher hand, which she set upon the stove, and then, with inefficienthaste, she set light to the gas, which flared up, exploded, and wentout."Always the way, always the way," she muttered. "Kit Markham is theonly person who knows how to deal with the thing."Mary had to go to her help, and together they spread the table, andapologized for the disparity between the cups and the plainness of thefood."If we had known Miss Hilbery was coming, we should have bought acake," said Mary, upon which Mrs. Seal looked at Katharine for thefirst time, suspiciously, because she was a person who needed cake.Here Mr. Clacton opened the door, and came in, holding a typewrittenletter in his hand, which he was reading aloud."Salford's affiliated," he said."Well done, Salford!" Mrs. Seal exclaimed enthusiastically, thumpingthe teapot which she held upon the table, in token of applause."Yes, these provincial centers seem to be coming into line at last,"said Mr. Clacton, and then Mary introduced him to Miss Hilbery, and heasked her, in a very formal manner, if she were interested "in ourwork.""And the proofs still not come?" said Mrs. Seal, putting both herelbows on the table, and propping her chin on her hands, as Mary beganto pour out tea. "It's too bad--too bad. At this rate we shall missthe country post. Which reminds me, Mr. Clacton, don't you think weshould circularize the provinces with Partridge's last speech? What?You've not read it? Oh, it's the best thing they've had in the Housethis Session. Even the Prime Minister--"But Mary cut her short."We don't allow shop at tea, Sally," she said firmly. "We fine her apenny each time she forgets, and the fines go to buying a plum cake,"she explained, seeking to draw Katharine into the community. She hadgiven up all hope of impressing her."I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Mrs. Seal apologized. "It's my misfortune tobe an enthusiast," she said, turning to Katharine. "My father'sdaughter could hardly be anything else. I think I've been on as manycommittees as most people. Waifs and Strays, Rescue Work, Church Work,C. O. S.--local branch--besides the usual civic duties which fall toone as a householder. But I've given them all up for our work here,and I don't regret it for a second," she added. "This is the rootquestion, I feel; until women have votes--""It'll be sixpence, at least, Sally," said Mary, bringing her fistdown on the table. "And we're all sick to death of women and theirvotes."Mrs. Seal looked for a moment as though she could hardly believe herears, and made a deprecating "tut-tut-tut" in her throat, lookingalternately at Katharine and Mary, and shaking her head as she did so.Then she remarked, rather confidentially to Katharine, with a littlenod in Mary's direction:"She's doing more for the cause than any of us. She's giving her youth--for, alas! when I was young there were domestic circumstances--" shesighed, and stopped short.Mr. Clacton hastily reverted to the joke about luncheon, and explainedhow Mrs. Seal fed on a bag of biscuits under the trees, whatever theweather might be, rather, Katharine thought, as though Mrs. Seal werea pet dog who had convenient tricks."Yes, I took my little bag into the square," said Mrs. Seal, with theself-conscious guilt of a child owning some fault to its elders. "Itwas really very sustaining, and the bare boughs against the sky do oneso much good. But I shall have to give up going into the square," sheproceeded, wrinkling her forehead. "The injustice of it! Why should Ihave a beautiful square all to myself, when poor women who need resthave nowhere at all to sit?" She looked fiercely at Katharine, givingher short locks a little shake. "It's dreadful what a tyrant one stillis, in spite of all one's efforts. One tries to lead a decent life,but one can't. Of course, directly one thinks of it, one sees that allsquares should be open to every one. Is there any society with thatobject, Mr. Clacton? If not, there should be, surely.""A most excellent object," said Mr. Clacton in his professionalmanner. "At the same time, one must deplore the ramification oforganizations, Mrs. Seal. So much excellent effort thrown away, not tospeak of pounds, shillings, and pence. Now how many organizations of aphilanthropic nature do you suppose there are in the City of Londonitself, Miss Hilbery?" he added, screwing his mouth into a queerlittle smile, as if to show that the question had its frivolous side.Katharine smiled, too. Her unlikeness to the rest of them had, by thistime, penetrated to Mr. Clacton, who was not naturally observant, andhe was wondering who she was; this same unlikeness had subtlystimulated Mrs. Seal to try and make a convert of her. Mary, too,looked at her almost as if she begged her to make things easy. ForKatharine had shown no disposition to make things easy. She hadscarcely spoken, and her silence, though grave and even thoughtful,seemed to Mary the silence of one who criticizes."Well, there are more in this house than I'd any notion of," she said."On the ground floor you protect natives, on the next you emigratewomen and tell people to eat nuts--""Why do you say that 'we' do these things?" Mary interposed, rathersharply. "We're not responsible for all the cranks who choose to lodgein the same house with us."Mr. Clacton cleared his throat and looked at each of the young ladiesin turn. He was a good deal struck by the appearance and manner ofMiss Hilbery, which seemed to him to place her among those cultivatedand luxurious people of whom he used to dream. Mary, on the otherhand, was more of his own sort, and a little too much inclined toorder him about. He picked up crumbs of dry biscuit and put them intohis mouth with incredible rapidity."You don't belong to our society, then?" said Mrs. Seal."No, I'm afraid I don't," said Katharine, with such ready candor thatMrs. Seal was nonplussed, and stared at her with a puzzled expression,as if she could not classify her among the varieties of human beingsknown to her."But surely " she began."Mrs. Seal is an enthusiast in these matters," said Mr. Clacton,almost apologetically. "We have to remind her sometimes that othershave a right to their views even if they differ from our own. . . ."Punch" has a very funny picture this week, about a Suffragist and anagricultural laborer. Have you seen this week's "Punch," MissDatchet?"Mary laughed, and said "No."Mr. Clacton then told them the substance of the joke, which, however,depended a good deal for its success upon the expression which theartist had put into the people's faces. Mrs. Seal sat all the timeperfectly grave. Directly he had done speaking she burst out:"But surely, if you care about the welfare of your sex at all, youmust wish them to have the vote?""I never said I didn't wish them to have the vote," Katharineprotested."Then why aren't you a member of our society?" Mrs. Seal demanded.Katharine stirred her spoon round and round, stared into the swirl ofthe tea, and remained silent. Mr. Clacton, meanwhile, framed aquestion which, after a moment's hesitation, he put to Katharine."Are you in any way related, I wonder, to the poet Alardyce? Hisdaughter, I believe, married a Mr. Hilbery.""Yes; I'm the poet's granddaughter," said Katharine, with a littlesigh, after a pause; and for a moment they were all silent."The poet's granddaughter!" Mrs. Seal repeated, half to herself, witha shake of her head, as if that explained what was otherwiseinexplicable.The light kindled in Mr. Clacton's eye."Ah, indeed. That interests me very much," he said. "I owe a greatdebt to your grandfather, Miss Hilbery. At one time I could haverepeated the greater part of him by heart. But one gets out of the wayof reading poetry, unfortunately. You don't remember him, I suppose?"A sharp rap at the door made Katharine's answer inaudible. Mrs. Seallooked up with renewed hope in her eyes, and exclaiming:"The proofs at last!" ran to open the door. "Oh, it's only Mr.Denham!" she cried, without any attempt to conceal her disappointment.Ralph, Katharine supposed, was a frequent visitor, for the only personhe thought it necessary to greet was herself, and Mary at onceexplained the strange fact of her being there by saying:"Katharine has come to see how one runs an office."Ralph felt himself stiffen uncomfortably, as he said:"I hope Mary hasn't persuaded you that she knows how to run anoffice?""What, doesn't she?" said Katharine, looking from one to the other.At these remarks Mrs. Seal began to exhibit signs of discomposure,which displayed themselves by a tossing movement of her head, and, asRalph took a letter from his pocket, and placed his finger upon acertain sentence, she forestalled him by exclaiming in confusion:"Now, I know what you're going to say, Mr. Denham! But it was the dayKit Markham was here, and she upsets one so--with her wonderfulvitality, always thinking of something new that we ought to be doingand aren't--and I was conscious at the time that my dates were mixed.It had nothing to do with Mary at all, I assure you.""My dear Sally, don't apologize," said Mary, laughing. "Men are suchpedants--they don't know what things matter, and what things don't.""Now, Denham, speak up for our sex," said Mr. Clacton in a jocularmanner, indeed, but like most insignificant men he was very quick toresent being found fault with by a woman, in argument with whom he wasfond of calling himself "a mere man." He wished, however, to enterinto a literary conservation with Miss Hilbery, and thus let thematter drop."Doesn't it seem strange to you, Miss Hilbery," he said, "that theFrench, with all their wealth of illustrious names, have no poet whocan compare with your grandfather? Let me see. There's Chenier andHugo and Alfred de Musset--wonderful men, but, at the same time,there's a richness, a freshness about Alardyce--"Here the telephone bell rang, and he had to absent himself with asmile and a bow which signified that, although literature isdelightful, it is not work. Mrs. Seal rose at the same time, butremained hovering over the table, delivering herself of a tiradeagainst party government. "For if I were to tell you what I know ofback-stairs intrigue, and what can be done by the power of the purse,you wouldn't credit me, Mr. Denham, you wouldn't, indeed. Which is whyI feel that the only work for my father's daughter--for he was one ofthe pioneers, Mr. Denham, and on his tombstone I had that verse fromthe Psalms put, about the sowers and the seed. . . . And what wouldn'tI give that he should be alive now, seeing what we're going to see--"but reflecting that the glories of the future depended in part uponthe activity of her typewriter, she bobbed her head, and hurried backto the seclusion of her little room, from which immediately issuedsounds of enthusiastic, but obviously erratic, composition.Mary made it clear at once, by starting a fresh topic of generalinterest, that though she saw the humor of her colleague, she did notintend to have her laughed at."The standard of morality seems to me frightfully low," she observedreflectively, pouring out a second cup of tea, "especially among womenwho aren't well educated. They don't see that small things matter, andthat's where the leakage begins, and then we find ourselves indifficulties--I very nearly lost my temper yesterday," she went on,looking at Ralph with a little smile, as though he knew what happenedwhen she lost her temper. "It makes me very angry when people tell melies--doesn't it make you angry?" she asked Katharine."But considering that every one tells lies," Katharine remarked,looking about the room to see where she had put down her umbrella andher parcel, for there was an intimacy in the way in which Mary andRalph addressed each other which made her wish to leave them. Mary, onthe other hand, was anxious, superficially at least, that Katharineshould stay and so fortify her in her determination not to be in lovewith Ralph.Ralph, while lifting his cup from his lips to the table, had made uphis mind that if Miss Hilbery left, he would go with her."I don't think that I tell lies, and I don't think that Ralph tellslies, do you, Ralph?" Mary continued.Katharine laughed, with more gayety, as it seemed to Mary, than shecould properly account for. What was she laughing at? At them,presumably. Katharine had risen, and was glancing hither and thither,at the presses and the cupboards, and all the machinery of the office,as if she included them all in her rather malicious amusement, whichcaused Mary to keep her eyes on her straightly and rather fiercely, asif she were a gay-plumed, mischievous bird, who might light on thetopmost bough and pick off the ruddiest cherry, without any warning.Two women less like each other could scarcely be imagined, Ralphthought, looking from one to the other. Next moment, he too, rose, andnodding to Mary, as Katharine said good-bye, opened the door for her,and followed her out.Mary sat still and made no attempt to prevent them from going. For asecond or two after the door had shut on them her eyes rested on thedoor with a straightforward fierceness in which, for a moment, acertain degree of bewilderment seemed to enter; but, after a briefhesitation, she put down her cup and proceeded to clear away thetea-things.The impulse which had driven Ralph to take this action was the resultof a very swift little piece of reasoning, and thus, perhaps, was notquite so much of an impulse as it seemed. It passed through his mindthat if he missed this chance of talking to Katharine, he would haveto face an enraged ghost, when he was alone in his room again,demanding an explanation of his cowardly indecision. It was better, onthe whole, to risk present discomfiture than to waste an eveningbandying excuses and constructing impossible scenes with thisuncompromising section of himself. For ever since he had visited theHilberys he had been much at the mercy of a phantom Katharine, whocame to him when he sat alone, and answered him as he would have heranswer, and was always beside him to crown those varying triumphswhich were transacted almost every night, in imaginary scenes, as hewalked through the lamplit streets home from the office. To walk withKatharine in the flesh would either feed that phantom with fresh food,which, as all who nourish dreams are aware, is a process that becomesnecessary from time to time, or refine it to such a degree of thinnessthat it was scarcely serviceable any longer; and that, too, issometimes a welcome change to a dreamer. And all the time Ralph waswell aware that the bulk of Katharine was not represented in hisdreams at all, so that when he met her he was bewildered by the factthat she had nothing to do with his dream of her.When, on reaching the street, Katharine found that Mr. Denhamproceeded to keep pace by her side, she was surprised and, perhaps, alittle annoyed. She, too, had her margin of imagination, and to-nighther activity in this obscure region of the mind required solitude. Ifshe had had her way, she would have walked very fast down theTottenham Court Road, and then sprung into a cab and raced swiftlyhome. The view she had had of the inside of an office was of thenature of a dream to her. Shut off up there, she compared Mrs. Seal,and Mary Datchet, and Mr. Clacton to enchanted people in a bewitchedtower, with the spiders' webs looping across the corners of the room,and all the tools of the necromancer's craft at hand; for so aloof andunreal and apart from the normal world did they seem to her, in thehouse of innumerable typewriters, murmuring their incantations andconcocting their drugs, and flinging their frail spiders' webs overthe torrent of life which rushed down the streets outside.She may have been conscious that there was some exaggeration in thisfancy of hers, for she certainly did not wish to share it with Ralph.To him, she supposed, Mary Datchet, composing leaflets for CabinetMinisters among her typewriters, represented all that was interestingand genuine; and, accordingly, she shut them both out from all sharein the crowded street, with its pendant necklace of lamps, its lightedwindows, and its throng of men and women, which exhilarated her tosuch an extent that she very nearly forgot her companion. She walkedvery fast, and the effect of people passing in the opposite directionwas to produce a queer dizziness both in her head and in Ralph's,which set their bodies far apart. But she did her duty by hercompanion almost unconsciously."Mary Datchet does that sort of work very well. . . . She'sresponsible for it, I suppose?""Yes. The others don't help at all. . . . Has she made a convert ofyou?""Oh no. That is, I'm a convert already.""But she hasn't persuaded you to work for them?""Oh dear no--that wouldn't do at all."So they walked on down the Tottenham Court Road, parting and comingtogether again, and Ralph felt much as though he were addressing thesummit of a poplar in a high gale of wind."Suppose we get on to that omnibus?" he suggested.Katharine acquiesced, and they climbed up, and found themselves aloneon top of it."But which way are you going?" Katharine asked, waking a little fromthe trance into which movement among moving things had thrown her."I'm going to the Temple," Ralph replied, inventing a destination onthe spur of the moment. He felt the change come over her as they satdown and the omnibus began to move forward. He imagined hercontemplating the avenue in front of them with those honest sad eyeswhich seemed to set him at such a distance from them. But the breezewas blowing in their faces; it lifted her hat for a second, and shedrew out a pin and stuck it in again,--a little action which seemed,for some reason, to make her rather more fallible. Ah, if only her hatwould blow off, and leave her altogether disheveled, accepting it fromhis hands!"This is like Venice," she observed, raising her hand. "The motor-cars, I mean, shooting about so quickly, with their lights.""I've never seen Venice," he replied. "I keep that and some otherthings for my old age.""What are the other things?" she asked."There's Venice and India and, I think, Dante, too."She laughed."Think of providing for one's old age! And would you refuse to seeVenice if you had the chance?"Instead of answering her, he wondered whether he should tell hersomething that was quite true about himself; and as he wondered, hetold her."I've planned out my life in sections ever since I was a child, tomake it last longer. You see, I'm always afraid that I'm missingsomething--""And so am I!" Katharine exclaimed. "But, after all," she added, "whyshould you miss anything?""Why? Because I'm poor, for one thing," Ralph rejoined. "You, Isuppose, can have Venice and India and Dante every day of your life."She said nothing for a moment, but rested one hand, which was bare ofglove, upon the rail in front of her, meditating upon a variety ofthings, of which one was that this strange young man pronounced Danteas she was used to hearing it pronounced, and another, that he had,most unexpectedly, a feeling about life that was familiar to her.Perhaps, then, he was the sort of person she might take an interestin, if she came to know him better, and as she had placed him amongthose whom she would never want to know better, this was enough tomake her silent. She hastily recalled her first view of him, in thelittle room where the relics were kept, and ran a bar through half herimpressions, as one cancels a badly written sentence, having found theright one."But to know that one might have things doesn't alter the fact thatone hasn't got them," she said, in some confusion. "How could I go toIndia, for example? Besides," she began impulsively, and stoppedherself. Here the conductor came round, and interrupted them. Ralphwaited for her to resume her sentence, but she said no more."I have a message to give your father," he remarked. "Perhaps youwould give it him, or I could come--""Yes, do come," Katharine replied."Still, I don't see why you shouldn't go to India," Ralph began, inorder to keep her from rising, as she threatened to do.But she got up in spite of him, and said good-bye with her usual airof decision, and left him with a quickness which Ralph connected nowwith all her movements. He looked down and saw her standing on thepavement edge, an alert, commanding figure, which waited its season tocross, and then walked boldly and swiftly to the other side. Thatgesture and action would be added to the picture he had of her, but atpresent the real woman completely routed the phantom one.


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