Chapter X

by Virginia Woolf

　　Messrs. Grateley and Hooper, the solicitors in whose firm Ralph Denhamwas clerk, had their office in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and there RalphDenham appeared every morning very punctually at ten o'clock. Hispunctuality, together with other qualities, marked him out among theclerks for success, and indeed it would have been safe to wager thatin ten years' time or so one would find him at the head of hisprofession, had it not been for a peculiarity which sometimes seemedto make everything about him uncertain and perilous. His sister Joanhad already been disturbed by his love of gambling with his savings.Scrutinizing him constantly with the eye of affection, she had becomeaware of a curious perversity in his temperament which caused her muchanxiety, and would have caused her still more if she had notrecognized the germs of it in her own nature. She could fancy Ralphsuddenly sacrificing his entire career for some fantastic imagination;some cause or idea or even (so her fancy ran) for some woman seen froma railway train, hanging up clothes in a back yard. When he had foundthis beauty or this cause, no force, she knew, would avail to restrainhim from pursuit of it. She suspected the East also, and alwaysfidgeted herself when she saw him with a book of Indian travels in hishand, as though he were sucking contagion from the page. On the otherhand, no common love affair, had there been such a thing, would havecaused her a moment's uneasiness where Ralph was concerned. He wasdestined in her fancy for something splendid in the way of success orfailure, she knew not which.And yet nobody could have worked harder or done better in all therecognized stages of a young man's life than Ralph had done, and Joanhad to gather materials for her fears from trifles in her brother'sbehavior which would have escaped any other eye. It was natural thatshe should be anxious. Life had been so arduous for all of them fromthe start that she could not help dreading any sudden relaxation ofhis grasp upon what he held, though, as she knew from inspection ofher own life, such sudden impulse to let go and make away from thediscipline and the drudgery was sometimes almost irresistible. Butwith Ralph, if he broke away, she knew that it would be only to puthimself under harsher constraint; she figured him toiling throughsandy deserts under a tropical sun to find the source of some river orthe haunt of some fly; she figured him living by the labor of hishands in some city slum, the victim of one of those terrible theoriesof right and wrong which were current at the time; she figured himprisoner for life in the house of a woman who had seduced him by hermisfortunes. Half proudly, and wholly anxiously, she framed suchthoughts, as they sat, late at night, talking together over thegas-stove in Ralph's bedroom.It is likely that Ralph would not have recognized his own dream of afuture in the forecasts which disturbed his sister's peace of mind.Certainly, if any one of them had been put before him he would haverejected it with a laugh, as the sort of life that held no attractionsfor him. He could not have said how it was that he had put theseabsurd notions into his sister's head. Indeed, he prided himself uponbeing well broken into a life of hard work, about which he had no sortof illusions. His vision of his own future, unlike many suchforecasts, could have been made public at any moment without a blush;he attributed to himself a strong brain, and conferred on himself aseat in the House of Commons at the age of fifty, a moderate fortune,and, with luck, an unimportant office in a Liberal Government. Therewas nothing extravagant in a forecast of that kind, and certainlynothing dishonorable. Nevertheless, as his sister guessed, it neededall Ralph's strength of will, together with the pressure ofcircumstances, to keep his feet moving in the path which led that way.It needed, in particular, a constant repetition of a phrase to theeffect that he shared the common fate, found it best of all, andwished for no other; and by repeating such phrases he acquiredpunctuality and habits of work, and could very plausibly demonstratethat to be a clerk in a solicitor's office was the best of allpossible lives, and that other ambitions were vain.But, like all beliefs not genuinely held, this one depended very muchupon the amount of acceptance it received from other people, and inprivate, when the pressure of public opinion was removed, Ralph lethimself swing very rapidly away from his actual circumstances uponstrange voyages which, indeed, he would have been ashamed to describe.In these dreams, of course, he figured in noble and romantic parts,but self-glorification was not the only motive of them. They gaveoutlet to some spirit which found no work to do in real life, for,with the pessimism which his lot forced upon him, Ralph had made uphis mind that there was no use for what, contemptuously enough, hecalled dreams, in the world which we inhabit. It sometimes seemed tohim that this spirit was the most valuable possession he had; hethought that by means of it he could set flowering waste tracts of theearth, cure many ills, or raise up beauty where none now existed; itwas, too, a fierce and potent spirit which would devour the dustybooks and parchments on the office wall with one lick of its tongue,and leave him in a minute standing in nakedness, if he gave way to it.His endeavor, for many years, had been to control the spirit, and atthe age of twenty-nine he thought he could pride himself upon a liferigidly divided into the hours of work and those of dreams; the twolived side by side without harming each other. As a matter of fact,this effort at discipline had been helped by the interests of adifficult profession, but the old conclusion to which Ralph had comewhen he left college still held sway in his mind, and tinged his viewswith the melancholy belief that life for most people compels theexercise of the lower gifts and wastes the precious ones, until itforces us to agree that there is little virtue, as well as littleprofit, in what once seemed to us the noblest part of our inheritance.Denham was not altogether popular either in his office or among hisfamily. He was too positive, at this stage of his career, as to whatwas right and what wrong, too proud of his self-control, and, as isnatural in the case of persons not altogether happy or well suited intheir conditions, too apt to prove the folly of contentment, if hefound any one who confessed to that weakness. In the office his ratherostentatious efficiency annoyed those who took their own work morelightly, and, if they foretold his advancement, it was not altogethersympathetically. Indeed, he appeared to be rather a hard and self-sufficient young man, with a queer temper, and manners that wereuncompromisingly abrupt, who was consumed with a desire to get on inthe world, which was natural, these critics thought, in a man of nomeans, but not engaging.The young men in the office had a perfect right to these opinions,because Denham showed no particular desire for their friendship. Heliked them well enough, but shut them up in that compartment of lifewhich was devoted to work. Hitherto, indeed, he had found littledifficulty in arranging his life as methodically as he arranged hisexpenditure, but about this time he began to encounter experienceswhich were not so easy to classify. Mary Datchet had begun thisconfusion two years ago by bursting into laughter at some remark ofhis, almost the first time they met. She could not explain why it was.She thought him quite astonishingly odd. When he knew her well enoughto tell her how he spent Monday and Wednesday and Saturday, she wasstill more amused; she laughed till he laughed, too, without knowingwhy. It seemed to her very odd that he should know as much aboutbreeding bulldogs as any man in England; that he had a collection ofwild flowers found near London; and his weekly visit to old MissTrotter at Ealing, who was an authority upon the science of Heraldry,never failed to excite her laughter. She wanted to know everything,even the kind of cake which the old lady supplied on these occasions;and their summer excursions to churches in the neighborhood of Londonfor the purpose of taking rubbings of the brasses became mostimportant festivals, from the interest she took in them. In six monthsshe knew more about his odd friends and hobbies than his own brothersand sisters knew, after living with him all his life; and Ralph foundthis very pleasant, though disordering, for his own view of himselfhad always been profoundly serious.Certainly it was very pleasant to be with Mary Datchet and to become,directly the door was shut, quite a different sort of person,eccentric and lovable, with scarcely any likeness to the self mostpeople knew. He became less serious, and rather less dictatorial athome, for he was apt to hear Mary laughing at him, and telling him, asshe was fond of doing, that he knew nothing at all about anything. Shemade him, also, take an interest in public questions, for which shehad a natural liking; and was in process of turning him from Tory toRadical, after a course of public meetings, which began by boring himacutely, and ended by exciting him even more than they excited her.But he was reserved; when ideas started up in his mind, he dividedthem automatically into those he could discuss with Mary, and those hemust keep for himself. She knew this and it interested her, for shewas accustomed to find young men very ready to talk about themselves,and had come to listen to them as one listens to children, without anythought of herself. But with Ralph, she had very little of thismaternal feeling, and, in consequence, a much keener sense of her ownindividuality.Late one afternoon Ralph stepped along the Strand to an interview witha lawyer upon business. The afternoon light was almost over, andalready streams of greenish and yellowish artificial light were beingpoured into an atmosphere which, in country lanes, would now have beensoft with the smoke of wood fires; and on both sides of the road theshop windows were full of sparkling chains and highly polished leathercases, which stood upon shelves made of thick plate-glass. None ofthese different objects was seen separately by Denham, but from all ofthem he drew an impression of stir and cheerfulness. Thus it cameabout that he saw Katharine Hilbery coming towards him, and lookedstraight at her, as if she were only an illustration of the argumentthat was going forward in his mind. In this spirit he noticed therather set expression in her eyes, and the slight, half-consciousmovement of her lips, which, together with her height and thedistinction of her dress, made her look as if the scurrying crowdimpeded her, and her direction were different from theirs. He noticedthis calmly; but suddenly, as he passed her, his hands and knees beganto tremble, and his heart beat painfully. She did not see him, andwent on repeating to herself some lines which had stuck to her memory:"It's life that matters, nothing but life--the process of discovering--the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself atall." Thus occupied, she did not see Denham, and he had not thecourage to stop her. But immediately the whole scene in the Strandwore that curious look of order and purpose which is imparted to themost heterogeneous things when music sounds; and so pleasant was thisimpression that he was very glad that he had not stopped her, afterall. It grew slowly fainter, but lasted until he stood outside thebarrister's chambers.When his interview with the barrister was over, it was too late to goback to the office. His sight of Katharine had put him queerly out oftune for a domestic evening. Where should he go? To walk through thestreets of London until he came to Katharine's house, to look up atthe windows and fancy her within, seemed to him possible for a moment;and then he rejected the plan almost with a blush as, with a curiousdivision of consciousness, one plucks a flower sentimentally andthrows it away, with a blush, when it is actually picked. No, he wouldgo and see Mary Datchet. By this time she would be back from her work.To see Ralph appear unexpectedly in her room threw Mary for a secondoff her balance. She had been cleaning knives in her little scullery,and when she had let him in she went back again, and turned on thecold-water tap to its fullest volume, and then turned it off again."Now," she thought to herself, as she screwed it tight, "I'm not goingto let these silly ideas come into my head. . . . Don't you think Mr.Asquith deserves to be hanged?" she called back into the sitting-room,and when she joined him, drying her hands, she began to tell him aboutthe latest evasion on the part of the Government with respect to theWomen's Suffrage Bill. Ralph did not want to talk about politics, buthe could not help respecting Mary for taking such an interest inpublic questions. He looked at her as she leant forward, poking thefire, and expressing herself very clearly in phrases which boredistantly the taint of the platform, and he thought, "How absurd Marywould think me if she knew that I almost made up my mind to walk allthe way to Chelsea in order to look at Katharine's windows. Shewouldn't understand it, but I like her very much as she is."For some time they discussed what the women had better do; and asRalph became genuinely interested in the question, Mary unconsciouslylet her attention wander, and a great desire came over her to talk toRalph about her own feelings; or, at any rate, about somethingpersonal, so that she might see what he felt for her; but she resistedthis wish. But she could not prevent him from feeling her lack ofinterest in what he was saying, and gradually they both became silent.One thought after another came up in Ralph's mind, but they were all,in some way, connected with Katharine, or with vague feelings ofromance and adventure such as she inspired. But he could not talk toMary about such thoughts; and he pitied her for knowing nothing ofwhat he was feeling. "Here," he thought, "is where we differ fromwomen; they have no sense of romance.""Well, Mary," he said at length, "why don't you say somethingamusing?"His tone was certainly provoking, but, as a general rule, Mary was noteasily provoked. This evening, however, she replied rather sharply:"Because I've got nothing amusing to say, I suppose."Ralph thought for a moment, and then remarked:"You work too hard. I don't mean your health," he added, as shelaughed scornfully, "I mean that you seem to me to be getting wrappedup in your work.""And is that a bad thing?" she asked, shading her eyes with her hand."I think it is," he returned abruptly."But only a week ago you were saying the opposite." Her tone wasdefiant, but she became curiously depressed. Ralph did not perceiveit, and took this opportunity of lecturing her, and expressing hislatest views upon the proper conduct of life. She listened, but hermain impression was that he had been meeting some one who hadinfluenced him. He was telling her that she ought to read more, and tosee that there were other points of view as deserving of attention asher own. Naturally, having last seen him as he left the office incompany with Katharine, she attributed the change to her; it waslikely that Katharine, on leaving the scene which she had so clearlydespised, had pronounced some such criticism, or suggested it by herown attitude. But she knew that Ralph would never admit that he hadbeen influenced by anybody."You don't read enough, Mary," he was saying. "You ought to read morepoetry."It was true that Mary's reading had been rather limited to such worksas she needed to know for the sake of examinations; and her time forreading in London was very little. For some reason, no one likes to betold that they do not read enough poetry, but her resentment was onlyvisible in the way she changed the position of her hands, and in thefixed look in her eyes. And then she thought to herself, "I'm behavingexactly as I said I wouldn't behave," whereupon she relaxed all hermuscles and said, in her reasonable way:"Tell me what I ought to read, then."Ralph had unconsciously been irritated by Mary, and he now deliveredhimself of a few names of great poets which were the text for adiscourse upon the imperfection of Mary's character and way of life."You live with your inferiors," he said, warming unreasonably, as heknew, to his text. "And you get into a groove because, on the whole,it's rather a pleasant groove. And you tend to forget what you'rethere for. You've the feminine habit of making much of details. Youdon't see when things matter and when they don't. And that's what'sthe ruin of all these organizations. That's why the Suffragists havenever done anything all these years. What's the point of drawing-roommeetings and bazaars? You want to have ideas, Mary; get hold ofsomething big; never mind making mistakes, but don't niggle. Why don'tyou throw it all up for a year, and travel?--see something of theworld. Don't be content to live with half a dozen people in abackwater all your life. But you won't," he concluded."I've rather come to that way of thinking myself--about myself, Imean," said Mary, surprising him by her acquiescence. "I should liketo go somewhere far away."For a moment they were both silent. Ralph then said:"But look here, Mary, you haven't been taking this seriously, haveyou?" His irritation was spent, and the depression, which she couldnot keep out of her voice, made him feel suddenly with remorse that hehad been hurting her."You won't go away, will you?" he asked. And as she said nothing, headded, "Oh no, don't go away.""I don't know exactly what I mean to do," she replied. She hovered onthe verge of some discussion of her plans, but she received noencouragement. He fell into one of his queer silences, which seemed toMary, in spite of all her precautions, to have reference to what shealso could not prevent herself from thinking about--their feeling foreach other and their relationship. She felt that the two lines ofthought bored their way in long, parallel tunnels which came veryclose indeed, but never ran into each other.When he had gone, and he left her without breaking his silence morethan was needed to wish her good night, she sat on for a time,reviewing what he had said. If love is a devastating fire which meltsthe whole being into one mountain torrent, Mary was no more in lovewith Denham than she was in love with her poker or her tongs. Butprobably these extreme passions are very rare, and the state of mindthus depicted belongs to the very last stages of love, when the powerto resist has been eaten away, week by week or day by day. Like mostintelligent people, Mary was something of an egoist, to the extent,that is, of attaching great importance to what she felt, and she wasby nature enough of a moralist to like to make certain, from time totime, that her feelings were creditable to her. When Ralph left hershe thought over her state of mind, and came to the conclusion that itwould be a good thing to learn a language--say Italian or German. Shethen went to a drawer, which she had to unlock, and took from itcertain deeply scored manuscript pages. She read them through, lookingup from her reading every now and then and thinking very intently fora few seconds about Ralph. She did her best to verify all thequalities in him which gave rise to emotions in her; and persuadedherself that she accounted reasonably for them all. Then she lookedback again at her manuscript, and decided that to write grammaticalEnglish prose is the hardest thing in the world. But she thought aboutherself a great deal more than she thought about grammatical Englishprose or about Ralph Denham, and it may therefore be disputed whethershe was in love, or, if so, to which branch of the family her passionbelonged.