to apply more to feelings which we have in common with
the rest of the human race than to our feelings as individuals,
and Katharine knew that only some one of her
own age could follow her meaning. Both these elderly
women seemed to her to have been content with so little
happiness, and at the moment she had not sufficient force
to feel certain that their version of marriage was the
wrong one. In London, certainly, this temperate attitude
toward her own marriage had seemed to her just. Why
had she now changed? Why did it now depress her? It
never occurred to her that her own conduct could be any
thing of a puzzle to her mother, or that elder people are
as much affected by the young as the young are by them.
And yet it was true that love—passion —whatever one
chose to call it, had played far less part in Mrs. Hilbery’s
life than might have seemed likely, judging from her enthusiastic
and imaginative temperament. She had always
been more interested by other things. Lady Otway, strange
though it seemed, guessed more accurately at Katharine’s
state of mind than her mother did.
“Why don’t we all live in the country?” exclaimed Mrs.
Hilbery, once more looking out of the window. “I’m sure
one would think such beautiful things if one lived in the
country. No horrid slum houses to depress one, no trams
or motor-cars; and the people all looking so plump and
cheerful. Isn’t there some little cottage near you, Charlotte,
which would do for us, with a spare room, perhaps,
in case we asked a friend down? And we should save so
much money that we should be able to travel—”
“Yes. You would find it very nice for a week or two, no
doubt,” said Lady Otway. “But what hour would you like the
carriage this morning?” she continued, touching the bell.
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“Katharine shall decide,” said Mrs. Hilbery, feeling herself
unable to prefer one hour to another. “And I was just
going to tell you, Katharine, how, when I woke this morning,
everything seemed so clear in my head that if I’d
had a pencil I believe I could have written quite a long
chapter. When we’re out on our drive I shall find us a
house. A few trees round it, and a little garden, a pond
with a Chinese duck, a study for your father, a study for
me, and a sitting room for Katharine, because then she’ll
be a married lady.”
At this Katharine shivered a little, drew up to the fire,
and warmed her hands by spreading them over the topmost
peak of the coal. She wished to bring the talk back
to marriage again, in order to hear Aunt Charlotte’s views,
but she did not know how to do this.
“Let me look at your engagement-ring, Aunt Charlotte,”
she said, noticing her own.
She took the cluster of green stones and turned it round
and round, but she did not know what to say next.
“That poor old ring was a sad disappointment to me
when I first had it,” Lady Otway mused. “I’d set my heart
on a diamond ring, but I never liked to tell Frank, naturally.
He bought it at Simla.”
Katharine turned the ring round once more, and gave it
back to her aunt without speaking. And while she turned
it round her lips set themselves firmly together, and it
seemed to her that she could satisfy William as these
women had satisfied their husbands; she could pretend
to like emeralds when she preferred diamonds. Having
replaced her ring, Lady Otway remarked that it was chilly,
though not more so than one must expect at this time of
year. Indeed, one ought to be thankful to see the sun at
all, and she advised them both to dress warmly for their
drive. Her aunt’s stock of commonplaces, Katharine sometimes
suspected, had been laid in on purpose to fill silences
with, and had little to do with her private thoughts.
But at this moment they seemed terribly in keeping with
her own conclusions, so that she took up her knitting
again and listened, chiefly with a view to confirming
herself in the belief that to be engaged to marry some
one with whom you are not in love is an inevitable step
in a world where the existence of passion is only a
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traveller’s story brought from the heart of deep forests
and told so rarely that wise people doubt whether the
story can be true. She did her best to listen to her mother
asking for news of John, and to her aunt replying with
the authentic history of Hilda’s engagement to an officer
in the Indian Army, but she cast her mind alternately
towards forest paths and starry blossoms, and towards
pages of neatly written mathematical signs. When her
mind took this turn her marriage seemed no more than
an archway through which it was necessary to pass in
order to have her desire. At such times the current of her
nature ran in its deep narrow channel with great force
and with an alarming lack of consideration for the feelings
of others. Just as the two elder ladies had finished
their survey of the family prospects, and Lady Otway was
nervously anticipating some general statement as to life
and death from her sister-in-law, Cassandra burst into
the room with the news that the carriage was at the door.
“Why didn’t Andrews tell me himself?” said Lady Otway,
peevishly, blaming her servants for not living up to her
ideals.
When Mrs. Hilbery and Katharine arrived in the hall,
ready dressed for their drive, they found that the usual
discussion was going forward as to the plans of the rest
of the family. In token of this, a great many doors were
opening and shutting, two or three people stood irresolutely
on the stairs, now going a few steps up, and now a
few steps down, and Sir Francis himself had come out
from his study, with the “Times” under his arm, and a
complaint about noise and draughts from the open door
which, at least, had the effect of bundling the people
who did not want to go into the carriage, and sending
those who did not want to stay back to their rooms. It
was decided that Mrs. Hilbery, Katharine, Rodney, and
Henry should drive to Lincoln, and any one else who wished
to go should follow on bicycles or in the pony-cart. Every
one who stayed at Stogdon House had to make this expedition
to Lincoln in obedience to Lady Otway’s conception
of the right way to entertain her guests, which she
had imbibed from reading in fashionable papers of the
behavior of Christmas parties in ducal houses. The carriage
horses were both fat and aged, still they matched;
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Night and Day
the carriage was shaky and uncomfortable, but the Otway
arms were visible on the panels. Lady Otway stood on the
topmost step, wrapped in a white shawl, and waved her
hand almost mechanically until they had turned the corner
under the laurel-bushes, when she retired indoors
with a sense that she had played her part, and a sigh at
the thought that none of her children felt it necessary to
play theirs.
The carriage bowled along smoothly over the gently
curving road. Mrs. Hilbery dropped into a pleasant, inattentive
state of mind, in which she was conscious of the
running green lines of the hedges, of the swelling
ploughland, and of the mild blue sky, which served her,
after the first five minutes, for a pastoral background to
the drama of human life; and then she thought of a cottage
garden, with the flash of yellow daffodils against
blue water; and what with the arrangement of these different
prospects, and the shaping of two or three lovely
phrases, she did not notice that the young people in the
carriage were almost silent. Henry, indeed, had been included
against his wish, and revenged himself by observ
ing Katharine and Rodney with disillusioned eyes; while
Katharine was in a state of gloomy self-suppression which
resulted in complete apathy. When Rodney spoke to her
she either said “Hum!” or assented so listlessly that he
addressed his next remark to her mother. His deference
was agreeable to her, his manners were exemplary; and
when the church towers and factory chimneys of the town
came into sight, she roused herself, and recalled memories
of the fair summer of 1853, which fitted in harmoniously
with what she was dreaming of the future.
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CHAPTER XVIII
But other passengers were approaching Lincoln meanwhile
by other roads on foot. A county town draws the
inhabitants of all vicarages, farms, country houses, and
wayside cottages, within a radius of ten miles at least,
once or twice a week to its streets; and among them, on
this occasion, were Ralph Denham and Mary Datchet. They
despised the roads, and took their way across the fields;
and yet, from their appearance, it did not seem as if they
cared much where they walked so long as the way did not
actually trip them up. When they left the Vicarage, they
had begun an argument which swung their feet along so
rhythmically in time with it that they covered the ground
at over four miles an hour, and saw nothing of the
hedgerows, the swelling plowland, or the mild blue sky.
What they saw were the Houses of Parliament and the
Government Offices in Whitehall. They both belonged to
the class which is conscious of having lost its birthright
in these great structures and is seeking to build another
kind of lodging for its own notion of law and govern
ment. Purposely, perhaps, Mary did not agree with Ralph;
she loved to feel her mind in conflict with his, and to be
certain that he spared her female judgment no ounce of
his male muscularity. He seemed to argue as fiercely with
her as if she were his brother. They were alike, however,
in believing that it behooved them to take in hand the
repair and reconstruction of the fabric of England. They
agreed in thinking that nature has not been generous in
the endowment of our councilors. They agreed, unconsciously,
in a mute love for the muddy field through which
they tramped, with eyes narrowed close by the concentration
of their minds. At length they drew breath, let
the argument fly away into the limbo of other good arguments,
and, leaning over a gate, opened their eyes for
the first time and looked about them. Their feet tingled
with warm blood and their breath rose in steam around
them. The bodily exercise made them both feel more direct
and less self-conscious than usual, and Mary, indeed,
was overcome by a sort of light-headedness which made
it seem to her that it mattered very little what happened
next. It mattered so little, indeed, that she felt herself
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Night and Day
on the point of saying to Ralph:
“I love you; I shall never love anybody else. Marry me
or leave me; think what you like of me—I don’t care a
straw.” At the moment, however, speech or silence seemed
immaterial, and she merely clapped her hands together,
and looked at the distant woods with the rust-like bloom
on their brown, and the green and blue landscape through
the steam of her own breath. It seemed a mere toss-up
whether she said, “I love you,” or whether she said, “I
love the beech-trees,” or only “I love—I love.”
“Do you know, Mary,” Ralph suddenly interrupted her,
“I’ve made up my mind.”
Her indifference must have been superficial, for it disappeared
at once. Indeed, she lost sight of the trees, and
saw her own hand upon the topmost bar of the gate with
extreme distinctness, while he went on:
“I’ve made up my mind to chuck my work and live down
here. I want you to tell me about that cottage you spoke
of. However, I suppose there’ll be no difficulty about getting
a cottage, will there?” He spoke with an assumption
of carelessness as if expecting her to dissuade him.
She still waited, as if for him to continue; she was
convinced that in some roundabout way he approached
the subject of their marriage.
“I can’t stand the office any longer,” he proceeded. “I
don’t know what my family will say; but I’m sure I’m right.
Don’t you think so?”
“Live down here by yourself?” she asked.
“Some old woman would do for me, I suppose,” he replied.
“I’m sick of the whole thing,” he went on, and
opened the gate with a jerk. They began to cross the
next field walking side by side.
“I tell you, Mary, it’s utter destruction, working away,
day after day, at stuff that doesn’t matter a damn to any
one. I’ve stood eight years of it, and I’m not going to
stand it any longer. I suppose this all seems to you mad,
though?”
By this time Mary had recovered her self-control.
“No. I thought you weren’t happy,” she said.
“Why did you think that?” he asked, with some surprise.
“Don’t you remember that morning in Lincoln’s Inn
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Fields?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Ralph, slackening his pace and remembering
Katharine and her engagement, the purple leaves
stamped into the path, the white paper radiant under the
electric light, and the hopelessness which seemed to surround
all these things.
“You’re right, Mary,” he said, with something of an effort,
“though I don’t know how you guessed it.”
She was silent, hoping that he might tell her the reason
of his unhappiness, for his excuses had not deceived her.
“I was unhappy—very unhappy,” he repeated. Some
six weeks separated him from that afternoon when he
had sat upon the Embankment watching his visions dissolve
in mist as the waters swam past and the sense of
his desolation still made him shiver. He had not recovered
in the least from that depression. Here was an opportunity
for making himself face it, as he felt that he
ought to; for, by this time, no doubt, it was only a sentimental
ghost, better exorcised by ruthless exposure to
such an eye as Mary’s, than allowed to underlie all his
actions and thoughts as had been the case ever since he
first saw Katharine Hilbery pouring out tea. He must begin,
