The tray which brought Katharine’s cup of tea the next morning brought,
also, a note from her mother, announcing that it was her intention to
catch an early train to Stratford-on-Avon that very day.
“Please find out the best way of getting there,” the note ran, “and
wire to dear Sir John Burdett to expect me, with my love. I’ve been
dreaming all night of you and Shakespeare, dearest Katharine.”
This was no momentary impulse. Mrs. Hilbery had been dreaming of
Shakespeare any time these six months, toying with the idea of an
excursion to what she considered the heart of the civilized world. To
stand six feet above Shakespeare’s bones, to see the very stones worn
by his feet, to reflect that the oldest man’s oldest mother had very
likely seen Shakespeare’s daughter—such thoughts roused an emotion in
her, which she expressed at unsuitable moments, and with a passion that
would not have been unseemly in a pilgrim to a sacred shrine. The only
strange thing was that she wished to go by herself. But, naturally
enough, she was well provided with friends who lived in the
neighborhood of Shakespeare’s tomb, and were delighted to welcome her;
and she left later to catch her train in the best of spirits. There was
a man selling violets in the street. It was a fine day. She would
remember to send Mr. Hilbery the first daffodil she saw. And, as she
ran back into the hall to tell Katharine, she felt, she had always
felt, that Shakespeare’s command to leave his bones undisturbed applied
only to odious curiosity-mongers—not to dear Sir John and herself.
Leaving her daughter to cogitate the theory of Anne Hathaway’s sonnets,
and the buried manuscripts here referred to, with the implied menace to
the safety of the heart of civilization itself, she briskly shut the
door of her taxi-cab, and was whirled off upon the first stage of her
pilgrimage.
The house was oddly different without her. Katharine found the maids
already in possession of her room, which they meant to clean thoroughly
during her absence. To Katharine it seemed as if they had brushed away
sixty years or so with the first flick of their damp dusters. It seemed
to her that the work she had tried to do in that room was being swept
into a very insignificant heap of dust. The china shepherdesses were
already shining from a bath of hot water. The writing-table might have
belonged to a professional man of methodical habits.
Gathering together a few papers upon which she was at work, Katharine
proceeded to her own room with the intention of looking through them,
perhaps, in the course of the morning. But she was met on the stairs by
Cassandra, who followed her up, but with such intervals between each
step that Katharine began to feel her purpose dwindling before they had
reached the door. Cassandra leant over the banisters, and looked down
upon the Persian rug that lay on the floor of the hall.
“Doesn’t everything look odd this morning?” she inquired. “Are you
really going to spend the morning with those dull old letters, because
if so—”
The dull old letters, which would have turned the heads of the most
sober of collectors, were laid upon a table, and, after a moment’s
pause, Cassandra, looking grave all of a sudden, asked Katharine where
she should find the “History of England” by Lord Macaulay. It was
downstairs in Mr. Hilbery’s study. The cousins descended together in
search of it. They diverged into the drawing-room for the good reason
that the door was open. The portrait of Richard Alardyce attracted
their attention.
“I wonder what he was like?” It was a question that Katharine had often
asked herself lately.
“Oh, a fraud like the rest of them—at least Henry says so,” Cassandra
replied. “Though I don’t believe everything Henry says,” she added a
little defensively.
Down they went into Mr. Hilbery’s study, where they began to look among
his books. So desultory was this examination that some fifteen minutes
failed to discover the work they were in search of.
“Must you read Macaulay’s History, Cassandra?” Katharine asked, with a
stretch of her arms.
“I must,” Cassandra replied briefly.
“Well, I’m going to leave you to look for it by yourself.”
“Oh, no, Katharine. Please stay and help me. You see—you see—I told
William I’d read a little every day. And I want to tell him that I’ve
begun when he comes.”
“When does William come?” Katharine asked, turning to the shelves
again.
“To tea, if that suits you?”
“If it suits me to be out, I suppose you mean.”
“Oh, you’re horrid.... Why shouldn’t you—?”
“Yes?”
“Why shouldn’t you be happy too?”
“I am quite happy,” Katharine replied.
“I mean as I am. Katharine,” she said impulsively, “do let’s be married
on the same day.”
“To the same man?”
“Oh, no, no. But why shouldn’t you marry—some one else?”
“Here’s your Macaulay,” said Katharine, turning round with the book in
her hand. “I should say you’d better begin to read at once if you mean
to be educated by tea-time.”
“Damn Lord Macaulay!” cried Cassandra, slapping the book upon the
table. “Would you rather not talk?”
“We’ve talked enough already,” Katharine replied evasively.
“I know I shan’t be able to settle to Macaulay,” said Cassandra,
looking ruefully at the dull red cover of the prescribed volume, which,
however, possessed a talismanic property, since William admired it. He
had advised a little serious reading for the morning hours.
“Have _you_ read Macaulay?” she asked.
“No. William never tried to educate me.” As she spoke she saw the light
fade from Cassandra’s face, as if she had implied some other, more
mysterious, relationship. She was stung with compunction. She marveled
at her own rashness in having influenced the life of another, as she
had influenced Cassandra’s life.
“We weren’t serious,” she said quickly.
“But I’m fearfully serious,” said Cassandra, with a little shudder, and
her look showed that she spoke the truth. She turned and glanced at
Katharine as she had never glanced at her before. There was fear in her
glance, which darted on her and then dropped guiltily. Oh, Katharine
had everything—beauty, mind, character. She could never compete with
Katharine; she could never be safe so long as Katharine brooded over
her, dominating her, disposing of her. She called her cold, unseeing,
unscrupulous, but the only sign she gave outwardly was a curious
one—she reached out her hand and grasped the volume of history. At that
moment the bell of the telephone rang and Katharine went to answer it.
Cassandra, released from observation, dropped her book and clenched her
hands. She suffered more fiery torture in those few minutes than she
had suffered in the whole of her life; she learnt more of her
capacities for feeling. But when Katharine reappeared she was calm, and
had gained a look of dignity that was new to her.
“Was that him?” she asked.
“It was Ralph Denham,” Katharine replied.
“I meant Ralph Denham.”
“Why did you mean Ralph Denham? What has William told you about Ralph
Denham?” The accusation that Katharine was calm, callous, and
indifferent was not possible in face of her present air of animation.
She gave Cassandra no time to frame an answer. “Now, when are you and
William going to be married?” she asked.
Cassandra made no reply for some moments. It was, indeed, a very
difficult question to answer. In conversation the night before, William
had indicated to Cassandra that, in his belief, Katharine was becoming
engaged to Ralph Denham in the dining-room. Cassandra, in the rosy
light of her own circumstances, had been disposed to think that the
matter must be settled already. But a letter which she had received
that morning from William, while ardent in its expression of affection,
had conveyed to her obliquely that he would prefer the announcement of
their engagement to coincide with that of Katharine’s. This document
Cassandra now produced, and read aloud, with considerable excisions and
much hesitation.
“... a thousand pities—ahem—I fear we shall cause a great deal of
natural annoyance. If, on the other hand, what I have reason to think
will happen, should happen—within reasonable time, and the present
position is not in any way offensive to you, delay would, in my
opinion, serve all our interests better than a premature explanation,
which is bound to cause more surprise than is desirable—”
“Very like William,” Katharine exclaimed, having gathered the drift of
these remarks with a speed that, by itself, disconcerted Cassandra.
“I quite understand his feelings,” Cassandra replied. “I quite agree
with them. I think it would be much better, if you intend to marry Mr.
Denham, that we should wait as William says.”
“But, then, if I don’t marry him for months—or, perhaps, not at all?”
Cassandra was silent. The prospect appalled her. Katharine had been
telephoning to Ralph Denham; she looked queer, too; she must be, or
about to become, engaged to him. But if Cassandra could have overheard
the conversation upon the telephone, she would not have felt so certain
that it tended in that direction. It was to this effect:
“I’m Ralph Denham speaking. I’m in my right senses now.”
“How long did you wait outside the house?”
“I went home and wrote you a letter. I tore it up.”
“I shall tear up everything too.”
“I shall come.”
“Yes. Come to-day.”
“I must explain to you—”
“Yes. We must explain—”
A long pause followed. Ralph began a sentence, which he canceled with
the word, “Nothing.” Suddenly, together, at the same moment, they said
good-bye. And yet, if the telephone had been miraculously connected
with some higher atmosphere pungent with the scent of thyme and the
savor of salt, Katharine could hardly have breathed in a keener sense
of exhilaration. She ran downstairs on the crest of it. She was amazed
to find herself already committed by William and Cassandra to marry the
owner of the halting voice she had just heard on the telephone. The
tendency of her spirit seemed to be in an altogether different
direction; and of a different nature. She had only to look at Cassandra
to see what the love that results in an engagement and marriage means.
She considered for a moment, and then said: “If you don’t want to tell
people yourselves, I’ll do it for you. I know William has feelings
about these matters that make it very difficult for him to do
anything.”
“Because he’s fearfully sensitive about other people’s feelings,” said
Cassandra. “The idea that he could upset Aunt Maggie or Uncle Trevor
would make him ill for weeks.”
This interpretation of what she was used to call William’s
conventionality was new to Katharine. And yet she felt it now to be the
true one.
“Yes, you’re right,” she said.
“And then he worships beauty. He wants life to be beautiful in every
part of it. Have you ever noticed how exquisitely he finishes
everything? Look at the address on that envelope. Every letter is
perfect.”
Whether this applied also to the sentiments expressed in the letter,
Katharine was not so sure; but when William’s solicitude was spent upon
Cassandra it not only failed to irritate her, as it had done when she
was the object of it, but appeared, as Cassandra said, the fruit of his
love of beauty.
“Yes,” she said, “he loves beauty.”
“I hope we shall have a great many children,” said Cassandra. “He loves
children.”
This remark made Katharine realize the depths of their intimacy better
than any other words could have done; she was jealous for one moment;
but the next she was humiliated. She had known William for years, and
she had never once guessed that he loved children. She looked at the
queer glow of exaltation in Cassandra’s eyes, through which she was
beholding the true spirit of a human being, and wished that she would
go on talking about William for ever. Cassandra was not unwilling to
gratify her. She talked on. The morning slipped away. Katharine
scarcely changed her position on the edge of her father’s
writing-table, and Cassandra never opened the “History of England.”
And yet it must be confessed that there were vast lapses in the
attention which Katharine bestowed upon her cousin. The atmosphere was
wonderfully congenial for thoughts of her own. She lost herself
sometimes in such deep reverie that Cassandra, pausing, could look at
her for moments unperceived. What could Katharine be thinking about,
unless it were Ralph Denham? She was satisfied, by certain random
replies, that Katharine had wandered a little from the subject of
William’s perfections. But Katharine made no sign. She always ended
these pauses by saying something so natural that Cassandra was deluded
into giving fresh examples of her absorbing theme. Then they lunched,
and the only sign that Katharine gave of abstraction was to forget to
help the pudding. She looked so like her mother, as she sat there
oblivious of the tapioca, that Cassandra was startled into exclaiming:
“How like Aunt Maggie you look!”
“Nonsense,” said Katharine, with more irritation than the remark seemed
to call for.
In truth, now that her mother was away, Katharine did feel less
sensible than usual, but as she argued it to herself, there was much
less need for sense. Secretly, she was a little shaken by the evidence
which the morning had supplied of her immense capacity for—what could
one call it?—rambling over an infinite variety of thoughts that were
too foolish to be named. She was, for example, walking down a road in
Northumberland in the August sunset; at the inn she left her companion,
who was Ralph Denham, and was transported, not so much by her own feet
as by some invisible means, to the top of a high hill. Here the scents,
the sounds among the dry heather-roots, the grass-blades pressed upon
the palm of her hand, were all so perceptible that she could experience
each one separately. After this her mind made excursions into the dark
of the air, or settled upon the surface of the sea, which could be
discovered over there, or with equal unreason it returned to its couch
of bracken beneath the stars of midnight, and visited the snow valleys
of the moon. These fancies would have been in no way strange, since the
walls of every mind are decorated with some such tracery, but she found
herself suddenly pursuing such thoughts with an extreme ardor, which
became a desire to change her actual condition for something matching
the conditions of her dream. Then she started; then she awoke to the
fact that Cassandra was looking at her in amazement.
Cassandra would have liked to feel certain that, when Katharine made no
reply at all or one wide of the mark, she was making up her mind to get
married at once, but it was difficult, if this were so, to account for
some remarks that Katharine let fall about the future. She recurred
several times to the summer, as if she meant to spend that season in
solitary wandering. She seemed to have a plan in her mind which
required Bradshaws and the names of inns.
Cassandra was driven finally, by her own unrest, to put on her clothes
and wander out along the streets of Chelsea, on the pretence that she
must buy something. But, in her ignorance of the way, she became
panic-stricken at the thought of being late, and no sooner had she
found the shop she wanted, than she fled back again in order to be at
home when William came. He came, indeed, five minutes after she had sat
down by the tea-table, and she had the happiness of receiving him
alone. His greeting put her doubts of his affection at rest, but the
first question he asked was:
“Has Katharine spoken to you?”
“Yes. But she says she’s not engaged. She doesn’t seem to think she’s
ever going to be engaged.”
William frowned, and looked annoyed.
“They telephoned this morning, and she behaves very oddly. She forgets
to help the pudding,” Cassandra added by way of cheering him.
“My dear child, after what I saw and heard last night, it’s not a
question of guessing or suspecting. Either she’s engaged to him—or—”
He left his sentence unfinished, for at this point Katharine herself
appeared. With his recollections of the scene the night before, he was
too self-conscious even to look at her, and it was not until she told
him of her mother’s visit to Stratford-on-Avon that he raised his eyes.
It was clear that he was greatly relieved. He looked round him now, as
if he felt at his ease, and Cassandra exclaimed:
“Don’t you think everything looks quite different?”
“You’ve moved the sofa?” he asked.
“No. Nothing’s been touched,” said Katharine. “Everything’s exactly the
same.” But as she said this, with a decision which seemed to make it
imply that more than the sofa was unchanged, she held out a cup into
which she had forgotten to pour any tea. Being told of her
forgetfulness, she frowned with annoyance, and said that Cassandra was
demoralizing her. The glance she cast upon them, and the resolute way
in which she plunged them into speech, made William and Cassandra feel
like children who had been caught prying. They followed her obediently,
making conversation. Any one coming in might have judged them
acquaintances met, perhaps, for the third time. If that were so, one
must have concluded that the hostess suddenly bethought her of an
engagement pressing for fulfilment. First Katharine looked at her
watch, and then she asked William to tell her the right time. When told
that it was ten minutes to five she rose at once, and said:
“Then I’m afraid I must go.”
She left the room, holding her unfinished bread and butter in her hand.
William glanced at Cassandra.
“Well, she IS queer!” Cassandra exclaimed.
William looked perturbed. He knew more of Katharine than Cassandra did,
but even he could not tell—. In a second Katharine was back again
dressed in outdoor things, still holding her bread and butter in her
bare hand.
“If I’m late, don’t wait for me,” she said. “I shall have dined,” and
so saying, she left them.
“But she can’t—” William exclaimed, as the door shut, “not without any
gloves and bread and butter in her hand!” They ran to the window, and
saw her walking rapidly along the street towards the City. Then she
vanished.
“She must have gone to meet Mr. Denham,” Cassandra exclaimed.
“Goodness knows!” William interjected.
The incident impressed them both as having something queer and ominous
about it out of all proportion to its surface strangeness.
“It’s the sort of way Aunt Maggie behaves,” said Cassandra, as if in
explanation.
William shook his head, and paced up and down the room looking
extremely perturbed.
“This is what I’ve been foretelling,” he burst out. “Once set the
ordinary conventions aside—Thank Heaven Mrs. Hilbery is away. But
there’s Mr. Hilbery. How are we to explain it to him? I shall have to
leave you.”
“But Uncle Trevor won’t be back for hours, William!” Cassandra
implored.
“You never can tell. He may be on his way already. Or suppose Mrs.
Milvain—your Aunt Celia—or Mrs. Cosham, or any other of your aunts or
uncles should be shown in and find us alone together. You know what
they’re saying about us already.”
Cassandra was equally stricken by the sight of William’s agitation, and
appalled by the prospect of his desertion.
“We might hide,” she exclaimed wildly, glancing at the curtain which
separated the room with the relics.
“I refuse entirely to get under the table,” said William sarcastically.
She saw that he was losing his temper with the difficulties of the
situation. Her instinct told her that an appeal to his affection, at
this moment, would be extremely ill-judged. She controlled herself, sat
down, poured out a fresh cup of tea, and sipped it quietly. This
natural action, arguing complete self-mastery, and showing her in one
of those feminine attitudes which William found adorable, did more than
any argument to compose his agitation. It appealed to his chivalry. He
accepted a cup. Next she asked for a slice of cake. By the time the
cake was eaten and the tea drunk the personal question had lapsed, and
they were discussing poetry. Insensibly they turned from the question
of dramatic poetry in general, to the particular example which reposed
in William’s pocket, and when the maid came in to clear away the
tea-things, William had asked permission to read a short passage aloud,
“unless it bored her?”
Cassandra bent her head in silence, but she showed a little of what she
felt in her eyes, and thus fortified, William felt confident that it
would take more than Mrs. Milvain herself to rout him from his
position. He read aloud.
Meanwhile Katharine walked rapidly along the street. If called upon to
explain her impulsive action in leaving the tea-table, she could have
traced it to no better cause than that William had glanced at
Cassandra; Cassandra at William. Yet, because they had glanced, her
position was impossible. If one forgot to pour out a cup of tea they
rushed to the conclusion that she was engaged to Ralph Denham. She knew
that in half an hour or so the door would open, and Ralph Denham would
appear. She could not sit there and contemplate seeing him with
William’s and Cassandra’s eyes upon them, judging their exact degree of
intimacy, so that they might fix the wedding-day. She promptly decided
that she would meet Ralph out of doors; she still had time to reach
Lincoln’s Inn Fields before he left his office. She hailed a cab, and
bade it take her to a shop for selling maps which she remembered in
Great Queen Street, since she hardly liked to be set down at his door.
Arrived at the shop, she bought a large scale map of Norfolk, and thus
provided, hurried into Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and assured herself of the
position of Messrs. Hoper and Grateley’s office. The great gas
chandeliers were alight in the office windows. She conceived that he
sat at an enormous table laden with papers beneath one of them in the
front room with the three tall windows. Having settled his position
there, she began walking to and fro upon the pavement. Nobody of his
build appeared. She scrutinized each male figure as it approached and
passed her. Each male figure had, nevertheless, a look of him, due,
perhaps, to the professional dress, the quick step, the keen glance
which they cast upon her as they hastened home after the day’s work.
The square itself, with its immense houses all so fully occupied and
stern of aspect, its atmosphere of industry and power, as if even the
sparrows and the children were earning their daily bread, as if the sky
itself, with its gray and scarlet clouds, reflected the serious
intention of the city beneath it, spoke of him. Here was the fit place
for their meeting, she thought; here was the fit place for her to walk
thinking of him. She could not help comparing it with the domestic
streets of Chelsea. With this comparison in her mind, she extended her
range a little, and turned into the main road. The great torrent of
vans and carts was sweeping down Kingsway; pedestrians were streaming
in two currents along the pavements. She stood fascinated at the
corner. The deep roar filled her ears; the changing tumult had the
inexpressible fascination of varied life pouring ceaselessly with a
purpose which, as she looked, seemed to her, somehow, the normal
purpose for which life was framed; its complete indifference to the
individuals, whom it swallowed up and rolled onwards, filled her with
at least a temporary exaltation. The blend of daylight and of lamplight
made her an invisible spectator, just as it gave the people who passed
her a semi-transparent quality, and left the faces pale ivory ovals in
which the eyes alone were dark. They tended the enormous rush of the
current—the great flow, the deep stream, the unquenchable tide. She
stood unobserved and absorbed, glorying openly in the rapture that had
run subterraneously all day. Suddenly she was clutched, unwilling, from
the outside, by the recollection of her purpose in coming there. She
had come to find Ralph Denham. She hastily turned back into Lincoln’s
Inn Fields, and looked for her landmark—the light in the three tall
windows. She sought in vain. The faces of the houses had now merged in
the general darkness, and she had difficulty in determining which she
sought. Ralph’s three windows gave back on their ghostly glass panels
only a reflection of the gray and greenish sky. She rang the bell,
peremptorily, under the painted name of the firm. After some delay she
was answered by a caretaker, whose pail and brush of themselves told
her that the working day was over and the workers gone. Nobody, save
perhaps Mr. Grateley himself, was left, she assured Katharine; every
one else had been gone these ten minutes.
The news woke Katharine completely. Anxiety gained upon her. She
hastened back into Kingsway, looking at people who had miraculously
regained their solidity. She ran as far as the Tube station,
overhauling clerk after clerk, solicitor after solicitor. Not one of
them even faintly resembled Ralph Denham. More and more plainly did she
see him; and more and more did he seem to her unlike any one else. At
the door of the station she paused, and tried to collect her thoughts.
He had gone to her house. By taking a cab she could be there probably
in advance of him. But she pictured herself opening the drawing-room
door, and William and Cassandra looking up, and Ralph’s entrance a
moment later, and the glances—the insinuations. No; she could not face
it. She would write him a letter and take it at once to his house. She
bought paper and pencil at the bookstall, and entered an A.B.C. shop,
where, by ordering a cup of coffee, she secured an empty table, and
began at vice to write:
“I came to meet you and I have missed you. I could not face William and
Cassandra. They want us—” here she paused. “They insist that we are
engaged,” she substituted, “and we couldn’t talk at all, or explain
anything. I want—” Her wants were so vast, now that she was in
communication with Ralph, that the pencil was utterly inadequate to
conduct them on to the paper; it seemed as if the whole torrent of
Kingsway had to run down her pencil. She gazed intently at a notice
hanging on the gold-encrusted wall opposite, “... to say all kinds of
things,” she added, writing each word with the painstaking of a child.
But, when she raised her eyes again to meditate the next sentence, she
was aware of a waitress, whose expression intimated that it was closing
time, and, looking round, Katharine saw herself almost the last person
left in the shop. She took up her letter, paid her bill, and found
herself once more in the street. She would now take a cab to Highgate.
But at that moment it flashed upon her that she could not remember the
address. This check seemed to let fall a barrier across a very powerful
current of desire. She ransacked her memory in desperation, hunting for
the name, first by remembering the look of the house, and then by
trying, in memory, to retrace the words she had written once, at least,
upon an envelope. The more she pressed the farther the words receded.
Was the house an Orchard Something, on the street a Hill? She gave it
up. Never, since she was a child, had she felt anything like this
blankness and desolation. There rushed in upon her, as if she were
waking from some dream, all the consequences of her inexplicable
indolence. She figured Ralph’s face as he turned from her door without
a word of explanation, receiving his dismissal as a blow from herself,
a callous intimation that she did not wish to see him. She followed his
departure from her door; but it was far more easy to see him marching
far and fast in any direction for any length of time than to conceive
that he would turn back to Highgate. Perhaps he would try once more to
see her in Cheyne Walk? It was proof of the clearness with which she
saw him, that she started forward as this possibility occurred to her,
and almost raised her hand to beckon to a cab. No; he was too proud to
come again; he rejected the desire and walked on and on, on and on—If
only she could read the names of those visionary streets down which he
passed! But her imagination betrayed her at this point, or mocked her
with a sense of their strangeness, darkness, and distance. Indeed,
instead of helping herself to any decision, she only filled her mind
with the vast extent of London and the impossibility of finding any
single figure that wandered off this way and that way, turned to the
right and to the left, chose that dingy little back street where the
children were playing in the road, and so—She roused herself
impatiently. She walked rapidly along Holborn. Soon she turned and
walked as rapidly in the other direction. This indecision was not
merely odious, but had something that alarmed her about it, as she had
been alarmed slightly once or twice already that day; she felt unable
to cope with the strength of her own desires. To a person controlled by
habit, there was humiliation as well as alarm in this sudden release of
what appeared to be a very powerful as well as an unreasonable force.
An aching in the muscles of her right hand now showed her that she was
crushing her gloves and the map of Norfolk in a grip sufficient to
crack a more solid object. She relaxed her grasp; she looked anxiously
at the faces of the passers-by to see whether their eyes rested on her
for a moment longer than was natural, or with any curiosity. But having
smoothed out her gloves, and done what she could to look as usual, she
forgot spectators, and was once more given up to her desperate desire
to find Ralph Denham. It was a desire now—wild, irrational,
unexplained, resembling something felt in childhood. Once more she
blamed herself bitterly for her carelessness. But finding herself
opposite the Tube station, she pulled herself up and took counsel
swiftly, as of old. It flashed upon her that she would go at once to
Mary Datchet, and ask her to give her Ralph’s address. The decision was
a relief, not only in giving her a goal, but in providing her with a
rational excuse for her own actions. It gave her a goal certainly, but
the fact of having a goal led her to dwell exclusively upon her
obsession; so that when she rang the bell of Mary’s flat, she did not
for a moment consider how this demand would strike Mary. To her extreme
annoyance Mary was not at home; a charwoman opened the door. All
Katharine could do was to accept the invitation to wait. She waited
for, perhaps, fifteen minutes, and spent them in pacing from one end of
the room to the other without intermission. When she heard Mary’s key
in the door she paused in front of the fireplace, and Mary found her
standing upright, looking at once expectant and determined, like a
person who has come on an errand of such importance that it must be
broached without preface.
Mary exclaimed in surprise.
“Yes, yes,” Katharine said, brushing these remarks aside, as if they
were in the way.
“Have you had tea?”
“Oh yes,” she said, thinking that she had had tea hundreds of years
ago, somewhere or other.
Mary paused, took off her gloves, and, finding matches, proceeded to
light the fire.
Katharine checked her with an impatient movement, and said:
“Don’t light the fire for me.... I want to know Ralph Denham’s
address.”
She was holding a pencil and preparing to write on the envelope. She
waited with an imperious expression.
“The Apple Orchard, Mount Ararat Road, Highgate,” Mary said, speaking
slowly and rather strangely.
“Oh, I remember now!” Katharine exclaimed, with irritation at her own
stupidity. “I suppose it wouldn’t take twenty minutes to drive there?”
She gathered up her purse and gloves and seemed about to go.
“But you won’t find him,” said Mary, pausing with a match in her hand.
Katharine, who had already turned towards the door, stopped and looked
at her.
“Why? Where is he?” she asked.
“He won’t have left his office.”
“But he has left the office,” she replied. “The only question is will
he have reached home yet? He went to see me at Chelsea; I tried to meet
him and missed him. He will have found no message to explain. So I must
find him—as soon as possible.”
Mary took in the situation at her leisure.
“But why not telephone?” she said.
Katharine immediately dropped all that she was holding; her strained
expression relaxed, and exclaiming, “Of course! Why didn’t I think of
that!” she seized the telephone receiver and gave her number. Mary
looked at her steadily, and then left the room. At length Katharine
heard, through all the superimposed weight of London, the mysterious
sound of feet in her own house mounting to the little room, where she
could almost see the pictures and the books; she listened with extreme
intentness to the preparatory vibrations, and then established her
identity.
“Has Mr. Denham called?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Did he ask for me?”
“Yes. We said you were out, miss.”
“Did he leave any message?”
“No. He went away. About twenty minutes ago, miss.”
Katharine hung up the receiver. She walked the length of the room in
such acute disappointment that she did not at first perceive Mary’s
absence. Then she called in a harsh and peremptory tone:
“Mary.”
Mary was taking off her outdoor things in the bedroom. She heard
Katharine call her. “Yes,” she said, “I shan’t be a moment.” But the
moment prolonged itself, as if for some reason Mary found satisfaction
in making herself not only tidy, but seemly and ornamented. A stage in
her life had been accomplished in the last months which left its traces
for ever upon her bearing. Youth, and the bloom of youth, had receded,
leaving the purpose of her face to show itself in the hollower cheeks,
the firmer lips, the eyes no longer spontaneously observing at random,
but narrowed upon an end which was not near at hand. This woman was now
a serviceable human being, mistress of her own destiny, and thus, by
some combination of ideas, fit to be adorned with the dignity of silver
chains and glowing brooches. She came in at her leisure and asked:
“Well, did you get an answer?”
“He has left Chelsea already,” Katharine replied.
“Still, he won’t be home yet,” said Mary.
Katharine was once more irresistibly drawn to gaze upon an imaginary
map of London, to follow the twists and turns of unnamed streets.
“I’ll ring up his home and ask whether he’s back.” Mary crossed to the
telephone and, after a series of brief remarks, announced:
“No. His sister says he hasn’t come back yet.”
“Ah!” She applied her ear to the telephone once more. “They’ve had a
message. He won’t be back to dinner.”
“Then what is he going to do?”
Very pale, and with her large eyes fixed not so much upon Mary as upon
vistas of unresponding blankness, Katharine addressed herself also not
so much to Mary as to the unrelenting spirit which now appeared to mock
her from every quarter of her survey.
After waiting a little time Mary remarked indifferently:
“I really don’t know.” Slackly lying back in her armchair, she watched
the little flames beginning to creep among the coals indifferently, as
if they, too, were very distant and indifferent.
Katharine looked at her indignantly and rose.
“Possibly he may come here,” Mary continued, without altering the
abstract tone of her voice. “It would be worth your while to wait if
you want to see him to-night.” She bent forward and touched the wood,
so that the flames slipped in between the interstices of the coal.
Katharine reflected. “I’ll wait half an hour,” she said.
Mary rose, went to the table, spread out her papers under the
green-shaded lamp and, with an action that was becoming a habit,
twisted a lock of hair round and round in her fingers. Once she looked
unperceived at her visitor, who never moved, who sat so still, with
eyes so intent, that you could almost fancy that she was watching
something, some face that never looked up at her. Mary found herself
unable to go on writing. She turned her eyes away, but only to be aware
of the presence of what Katharine looked at. There were ghosts in the
room, and one, strangely and sadly, was the ghost of herself. The
minutes went by.
“What would be the time now?” said Katharine at last. The half-hour was
not quite spent.
“I’m going to get dinner ready,” said Mary, rising from her table.
“Then I’ll go,” said Katharine.
“Why don’t you stay? Where are you going?”
Katharine looked round the room, conveying her uncertainty in her
glance.
“Perhaps I might find him,” she mused.
“But why should it matter? You’ll see him another day.”
Mary spoke, and intended to speak, cruelly enough.
“I was wrong to come here,” Katharine replied.
Their eyes met with antagonism, and neither flinched.
“You had a perfect right to come here,” Mary answered.
A loud knocking at the door interrupted them. Mary went to open it, and
returning with some note or parcel, Katharine looked away so that Mary
might not read her disappointment.
“Of course you had a right to come,” Mary repeated, laying the note
upon the table.
“No,” said Katharine. “Except that when one’s desperate one has a sort
of right. I am desperate. How do I know what’s happening to him now? He
may do anything. He may wander about the streets all night. Anything
may happen to him.”
She spoke with a self-abandonment that Mary had never seen in her.
“You know you exaggerate; you’re talking nonsense,” she said roughly.
“Mary, I must talk—I must tell you—”
“You needn’t tell me anything,” Mary interrupted her. “Can’t I see for
myself?”
“No, no,” Katharine exclaimed. “It’s not that—”
Her look, passing beyond Mary, beyond the verge of the room and out
beyond any words that came her way, wildly and passionately, convinced
Mary that she, at any rate, could not follow such a glance to its end.
She was baffled; she tried to think herself back again into the height
of her love for Ralph. Pressing her fingers upon her eyelids, she
murmured:
“You forget that I loved him too. I thought I knew him. I _did_ know
him.”
And yet, what had she known? She could not remember it any more. She
pressed her eyeballs until they struck stars and suns into her
darkness. She convinced herself that she was stirring among ashes. She
desisted. She was astonished at her discovery. She did not love Ralph
any more. She looked back dazed into the room, and her eyes rested upon
the table with its lamp-lit papers. The steady radiance seemed for a
second to have its counterpart within her; she shut her eyes; she
opened them and looked at the lamp again; another love burnt in the
place of the old one, or so, in a momentary glance of amazement, she
guessed before the revelation was over and the old surroundings
asserted themselves. She leant in silence against the mantelpiece.
“There are different ways of loving,” she murmured, half to herself, at
length.
Katharine made no reply and seemed unaware of her words. She seemed
absorbed in her own thoughts.
“Perhaps he’s waiting in the street again to-night,” she exclaimed.
“I’ll go now. I might find him.”
“It’s far more likely that he’ll come here,” said Mary, and Katharine,
after considering for a moment, said:
“I’ll wait another half-hour.”
She sank down into her chair again, and took up the same position which
Mary had compared to the position of one watching an unseeing face. She
watched, indeed, not a face, but a procession, not of people, but of
life itself: the good and bad; the meaning; the past, the present, and
the future. All this seemed apparent to her, and she was not ashamed of
her extravagance so much as exalted to one of the pinnacles of
existence, where it behoved the world to do her homage. No one but she
herself knew what it meant to miss Ralph Denham on that particular
night; into this inadequate event crowded feelings that the great
crises of life might have failed to call forth. She had missed him, and
knew the bitterness of all failure; she desired him, and knew the
torment of all passion. It did not matter what trivial accidents led to
this culmination. Nor did she care how extravagant she appeared, nor
how openly she showed her feelings.
When the dinner was ready Mary told her to come, and she came
submissively, as if she let Mary direct her movements for her. They ate
and drank together almost in silence, and when Mary told her to eat
more, she ate more; when she was told to drink wine, she drank it.
Nevertheless, beneath this superficial obedience, Mary knew that she
was following her own thoughts unhindered. She was not inattentive so
much as remote; she looked at once so unseeing and so intent upon some
vision of her own that Mary gradually felt more than protective—she
became actually alarmed at the prospect of some collision between
Katharine and the forces of the outside world. Directly they had done,
Katharine announced her intention of going.
“But where are you going to?” Mary asked, desiring vaguely to hinder
her.
“Oh, I’m going home—no, to Highgate perhaps.”
Mary saw that it would be useless to try to stop her. All she could do
was to insist upon coming too, but she met with no opposition;
Katharine seemed indifferent to her presence. In a few minutes they
were walking along the Strand. They walked so rapidly that Mary was
deluded into the belief that Katharine knew where she was going. She
herself was not attentive. She was glad of the movement along lamp-lit
streets in the open air. She was fingering, painfully and with fear,
yet with strange hope, too, the discovery which she had stumbled upon
unexpectedly that night. She was free once more at the cost of a gift,
the best, perhaps, that she could offer, but she was, thank Heaven, in
love no longer. She was tempted to spend the first instalment of her
freedom in some dissipation; in the pit of the Coliseum, for example,
since they were now passing the door. Why not go in and celebrate her
independence of the tyranny of love? Or, perhaps, the top of an omnibus
bound for some remote place such as Camberwell, or Sidcup, or the Welsh
Harp would suit her better. She noticed these names painted on little
boards for the first time for weeks. Or should she return to her room,
and spend the night working out the details of a very enlightened and
ingenious scheme? Of all possibilities this appealed to her most, and
brought to mind the fire, the lamplight, the steady glow which had
seemed lit in the place where a more passionate flame had once burnt.
Now Katharine stopped, and Mary woke to the fact that instead of having
a goal she had evidently none. She paused at the edge of the crossing,
and looked this way and that, and finally made as if in the direction
of Haverstock Hill.
“Look here—where are you going?” Mary cried, catching her by the hand.
“We must take that cab and go home.” She hailed a cab and insisted that
Katharine should get in, while she directed the driver to take them to
Cheyne Walk.
Katharine submitted. “Very well,” she said. “We may as well go there as
anywhere else.”
A gloom seemed to have fallen on her. She lay back in her corner,
silent and apparently exhausted. Mary, in spite of her own
preoccupation, was struck by her pallor and her attitude of dejection.
“I’m sure we shall find him,” she said more gently than she had yet
spoken.
“It may be too late,” Katharine replied. Without understanding her,
Mary began to pity her for what she was suffering.
“Nonsense,” she said, taking her hand and rubbing it. “If we don’t find
him there we shall find him somewhere else.”
“But suppose he’s walking about the streets—for hours and hours?”
She leant forward and looked out of the window.
“He may refuse ever to speak to me again,” she said in a low voice,
almost to herself.
The exaggeration was so immense that Mary did not attempt to cope with
it, save by keeping hold of Katharine’s wrist. She half expected that
Katharine might open the door suddenly and jump out. Perhaps Katharine
perceived the purpose with which her hand was held.
“Don’t be frightened,” she said, with a little laugh. “I’m not going to
jump out of the cab. It wouldn’t do much good after all.”
Upon this, Mary ostentatiously withdrew her hand.
“I ought to have apologized,” Katharine continued, with an effort, “for
bringing you into all this business; I haven’t told you half, either.
I’m no longer engaged to William Rodney. He is to marry Cassandra
Otway. It’s all arranged—all perfectly right.... And after he’d waited
in the streets for hours and hours, William made me bring him in. He
was standing under the lamp-post watching our windows. He was perfectly
white when he came into the room. William left us alone, and we sat and
talked. It seems ages and ages ago, now. Was it last night? Have I been
out long? What’s the time?” She sprang forward to catch sight of a
clock, as if the exact time had some important bearing on her case.
“Only half-past eight!” she exclaimed. “Then he may be there still.”
She leant out of the window and told the cabman to drive faster.
“But if he’s not there, what shall I do? Where could I find him? The
streets are so crowded.”
“We shall find him,” Mary repeated.
Mary had no doubt but that somehow or other they would find him. But
suppose they did find him? She began to think of Ralph with a sort of
strangeness, in her effort to understand how he could be capable of
satisfying this extraordinary desire. Once more she thought herself
back to her old view of him and could, with an effort, recall the haze
which surrounded his figure, and the sense of confused, heightened
exhilaration which lay all about his neighborhood, so that for months
at a time she had never exactly heard his voice or seen his face—or so
it now seemed to her. The pain of her loss shot through her. Nothing
would ever make up—not success, or happiness, or oblivion. But this
pang was immediately followed by the assurance that now, at any rate,
she knew the truth; and Katharine, she thought, stealing a look at her,
did not know the truth; yes, Katharine was immensely to be pitied.
The cab, which had been caught in the traffic, was now liberated and
sped on down Sloane Street. Mary was conscious of the tension with
which Katharine marked its progress, as if her mind were fixed upon a
point in front of them, and marked, second by second, their approach to
it. She said nothing, and in silence Mary began to fix her mind, in
sympathy at first, and later in forgetfulness of her companion, upon a
point in front of them. She imagined a point distant as a low star upon
the horizon of the dark. There for her too, for them both, was the goal
for which they were striving, and the end for the ardors of their
spirits was the same: but where it was, or what it was, or why she felt
convinced that they were united in search of it, as they drove swiftly
down the streets of London side by side, she could not have said.
“At last,” Katharine breathed, as the cab drew up at the door. She
jumped out and scanned the pavement on either side. Mary, meanwhile,
rang the bell. The door opened as Katharine assured herself that no one
of the people within view had any likeness to Ralph. On seeing her, the
maid said at once:
“Mr. Denham called again, miss. He has been waiting for you for some
time.”
Katharine vanished from Mary’s sight. The door shut between them, and
Mary walked slowly and thoughtfully up the street alone.
Katharine turned at once to the dining-room. But with her fingers upon
the handle, she held back. Perhaps she realized that this was a moment
which would never come again. Perhaps, for a second, it seemed to her
that no reality could equal the imagination she had formed. Perhaps she
was restrained by some vague fear or anticipation, which made her dread
any exchange or interruption. But if these doubts and fears or this
supreme bliss restrained her, it was only for a moment. In another
second she had turned the handle and, biting her lip to control
herself, she opened the door upon Ralph Denham. An extraordinary
clearness of sight seemed to possess her on beholding him. So little,
so single, so separate from all else he appeared, who had been the
cause of these extreme agitations and aspirations. She could have
laughed in his face. But, gaining upon this clearness of sight against
her will, and to her dislike, was a flood of confusion, of relief, of
certainty, of humility, of desire no longer to strive and to
discriminate, yielding to which, she let herself sink within his arms
and confessed her love.