gence shown in her remarks. He had been building one of
those piles of thought, as ramshackle and fantastic as a
Chinese pagoda, half from words let fall by gentlemen in
gaiters, half from the litter in his own mind, about duck
shooting and legal history, about the Roman occupation
of Lincoln and the relations of country gentlemen with
their wives, when, from all this disconnected rambling,
there suddenly formed itself in his mind the idea that he
would ask Mary to marry him. The idea was so spontaneous
that it seemed to shape itself of its own accord before
his eyes. It was then that he turned round and made
use of his old, instinctive phrase:
“Well, Mary—?”
As it presented itself to him at first, the idea was so
new and interesting that he was half inclined to address
it, without more ado, to Mary herself. His natural instinct
to divide his thoughts carefully into two different classes
before he expressed them to her prevailed. But as he
watched her looking out of the window and describing
the old lady, the woman with the perambulator, the bailiff
and the dissenting minister, his eyes filled involun
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tarily with tears. He would have liked to lay his head on
her shoulder and sob, while she parted his hair with her
fingers and soothed him and said:
“There, there. Don’t cry! Tell me why you’re crying—”;
and they would clasp each other tight, and her arms would
hold him like his mother’s. He felt that he was very lonely,
and that he was afraid of the other people in the room.
“How damnable this all is!” he exclaimed abruptly.
“What are you talking about?” she replied, rather
vaguely, still looking out of the window.
He resented this divided attention more than, perhaps,
he knew, and he thought how Mary would soon be on her
way to America.
“Mary,” he said, “I want to talk to you. Haven’t we
nearly done? Why don’t they take away these plates?”
Mary felt his agitation without looking at him; she felt
convinced that she knew what it was that he wished to
say to her.
“They’ll come all in good time,” she said; and felt it
necessary to display her extreme calmness by lifting a
salt-cellar and sweeping up a little heap of bread-crumbs.
“I want to apologize,” Ralph continued, not quite knowing
what he was about to say, but feeling some curious
instinct which urged him to commit himself irrevocably,
and to prevent the moment of intimacy from passing.
“I think I’ve treated you very badly. That is, I’ve told you
lies. Did you guess that I was lying to you? Once in Lincoln’s
Inn Fields and again to-day on our walk. I am a liar, Mary.
Did you know that? Do you think you do know me?”
“I think I do,” she said.
At this point the waiter changed their plates.
“It’s true I don’t want you to go to America,” he said,
looking fixedly at the table-cloth. “In fact, my feelings
towards you seem to be utterly and damnably bad,” he
said energetically, although forced to keep his voice low.
“If I weren’t a selfish beast I should tell you to have
nothing more to do with me. And yet, Mary, in spite of
the fact that I believe what I’m saying, I also believe
that it’s good we should know each other—the world
being what it is, you see—” and by a nod of his head he
indicated the other occupants of the room, “for, of course,
in an ideal state of things, in a decent community even,
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there’s no doubt you shouldn’t have anything to do with
me—seriously, that is.”
“You forget that I’m not an ideal character, either,”
said Mary, in the same low and very earnest tones, which,
in spite of being almost inaudible, surrounded their table
with an atmosphere of concentration which was quite
perceptible to the other diners, who glanced at them now
and then with a queer mixture of kindness, amusement,
and curiosity.
“I’m much more selfish than I let on, and I’m worldly a
little—more than you think, anyhow. I like bossing
things—perhaps that’s my greatest fault. I’ve none of
your passion for—” here she hesitated, and glanced at
him, as if to ascertain what his passion was for—”for the
truth,” she added, as if she had found what she sought
indisputably.
“I’ve told you I’m a liar,” Ralph repeated obstinately.
“Oh, in little things, I dare say,” she said impatiently.
“But not in real ones, and that’s what matters. I dare say
I’m more truthful than you are in small ways. But I could
never care”—she was surprised to find herself speaking
the word, and had to force herself to speak it out—”for
any one who was a liar in that way. I love the truth a
certain amount—a considerable amount—but not in the
way you love it.” Her voice sank, became inaudible, and
wavered as if she could scarcely keep herself from tears.
“Good heavens!” Ralph exclaimed to himself. “She loves
me! Why did I never see it before? She’s going to cry; no,
but she can’t speak.”
The certainty overwhelmed him so that he scarcely knew
what he was doing; the blood rushed to his cheeks, and
although he had quite made up his mind to ask her to
marry him, the certainty that she loved him seemed to
change the situation so completely that he could not do
it. He did not dare to look at her. If she cried, he did not
know what he should do. It seemed to him that something
of a terrible and devastating nature had happened.
The waiter changed their plates once more.
In his agitation Ralph rose, turned his back upon Mary,
and looked out of the window. The people in the street
seemed to him only a dissolving and combining pattern
of black particles; which, for the moment, represented
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Night and Day
very well the involuntary procession of feelings and
thoughts which formed and dissolved in rapid succession
in his own mind. At one moment he exulted in the thought
that Mary loved him; at the next, it seemed that he was
without feeling for her; her love was repulsive to him.
Now he felt urged to marry her at once; now to disappear
and never see her again. In order to control this disorderly
race of thought he forced himself to read the name
on the chemist’s shop directly opposite him; then to examine
the objects in the shop windows, and then to focus
his eyes exactly upon a little group of women looking
in at the great windows of a large draper’s shop. This
discipline having given him at least a superficial control
of himself, he was about to turn and ask the waiter to
bring the bill, when his eye was caught by a tall figure
walking quickly along the opposite pavement—a tall figure,
upright, dark, and commanding, much detached from
her surroundings. She held her gloves in her left hand,
and the left hand was bare. All this Ralph noticed and
enumerated and recognized before he put a name to the
whole—Katharine Hilbery. She seemed to be looking for
somebody. Her eyes, in fact, scanned both sides of the
street, and for one second were raised directly to the
bow window in which Ralph stood; but she looked away
again instantly without giving any sign that she had seen
him. This sudden apparition had an extraordinary effect
upon him. It was as if he had thought of her so intensely
that his mind had formed the shape of her, rather than
that he had seen her in the flesh outside in the street.
And yet he had not been thinking of her at all. The impression
was so intense that he could not dismiss it, nor
even think whether he had seen her or merely imagined
her. He sat down at once, and said, briefly and strangely,
rather to himself than to Mary:
“That was Katharine Hilbery.”
“Katharine Hilbery? What do you mean?” she asked,
hardly understanding from his manner whether he had
seen her or not.
“Katharine Hilbery,” he repeated. “But she’s gone now.”
“Katharine Hilbery!” Mary thought, in an instant of
blinding revelation; “I’ve always known it was Katharine
Hilbery!” She knew it all now.
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After a moment of downcast stupor, she raised her eyes,
looked steadily at Ralph, and caught his fixed and dreamy
gaze leveled at a point far beyond their surroundings, a
point that she had never reached in all the time that she
had known him. She noticed the lips just parted, the
fingers loosely clenched, the whole attitude of rapt contemplation,
which fell like a veil between them. She noticed
everything about him; if there had been other signs
of his utter alienation she would have sought them out,
too, for she felt that it was only by heaping one truth
upon another that she could keep herself sitting there,
upright. The truth seemed to support her; it struck her,
even as she looked at his face, that the light of truth was
shining far away beyond him; the light of truth, she
seemed to frame the words as she rose to go, shines on a
world not to be shaken by our personal calamities.
Ralph handed her her coat and her stick. She took them,
fastened the coat securely, grasped the stick firmly. The
ivy spray was still twisted about the handle; this one
sacrifice, she thought, she might make to sentimentality
and personality, and she picked two leaves from the ivy
and put them in her pocket before she disencumbered
her stick of the rest of it. She grasped the stick in the
middle, and settled her fur cap closely upon her head, as
if she must be in trim for a long and stormy walk. Next,
standing in the middle of the road, she took a slip of
paper from her purse, and read out loud a list of commissions
entrusted to her—fruit, butter, string, and so on;
and all the time she never spoke directly to Ralph or
looked at him.
Ralph heard her giving orders to attentive, rosy-checked
men in white aprons, and in spite of his own preoccupation,
he commented upon the determination with which
she made her wishes known. Once more he began, automatically,
to take stock of her characteristics. Standing
thus, superficially observant and stirring the sawdust on
the floor meditatively with the toe of his boot, he was
roused by a musical and familiar voice behind him, accompanied
by a light touch upon his shoulder.
“I’m not mistaken? Surely Mr. Denham? I caught a
glimpse of your coat through the window, and I felt sure
that I knew your coat. Have you seen Katharine or Will
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iam? I’m wandering about Lincoln looking for the ruins.”
It was Mrs. Hilbery; her entrance created some stir in
the shop; many people looked at her.
“First of all, tell me where I am,” she demanded, but,
catching sight of the attentive shopman, she appealed
to him. “The ruins—my party is waiting for me at the
ruins. The Roman ruins—or Greek, Mr. Denham? Your town
has a great many beautiful things in it, but I wish it
hadn’t so many ruins. I never saw such delightful little
pots of honey in my life—are they made by your own
bees? Please give me one of those little pots, and tell me
how I shall find my way to the ruins.”
“And now,” she continued, having received the information
and the pot of honey, having been introduced to
Mary, and having insisted that they should accompany
her back to the ruins, since in a town with so many turnings,
such prospects, such delightful little half-naked boys
dabbling in pools, such Venetian canals, such old blue
china in the curiosity shops, it was impossible for one
person all alone to find her way to the ruins. “Now,” she
exclaimed, “please tell me what you’re doing here, Mr.
Denham—for you ARE Mr. Denham, aren’t you?” she inquired,
gazing at him with a sudden suspicion of her own
accuracy. “The brilliant young man who writes for the
Review, I mean? Only yesterday my husband was telling
me he thought you one of the cleverest young men he
knew. Certainly, you’ve been the messenger of Providence
to me, for unless I’d seen you I’m sure I should never
have found the ruins at all.”
They had reached the Roman arch when Mrs. Hilbery
caught sight of her own party, standing like sentinels
facing up and down the road so as to intercept her if, as
they expected, she had got lodged in some shop.
“I’ve found something much better than ruins!” she
exclaimed. “I’ve found two friends who told me how to
find you, which I could never have done without them.
They must come and have tea with us. What a pity that
we’ve just had luncheon.” Could they not somehow revoke
that meal?
Katharine, who had gone a few steps by herself down
the road, and was investigating the window of an
ironmonger, as if her mother might have got herself con
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cealed among mowing-machines and garden-shears,
turned sharply on hearing her voice, and came towards
them. She was a great deal surprised to see Denham and
Mary Datchet. Whether the cordiality with which she
greeted them was merely that which is natural to a surprise
meeting in the country, or whether she was really
glad to see them both, at any rate she exclaimed with
unusual pleasure as she shook hands:
“I never knew you lived here. Why didn’t you say so,
and we could have met? And are you staying with Mary?”
she continued, turning to Ralph. “What a pity we didn’t
meet before.”
Thus confronted at a distance of only a few feet by the
real body of the woman about whom he had dreamt so
many million dreams, Ralph stammered; he made a clutch
at his self-control; the color either came to his cheeks or
left them, he knew not which; but he was determined to
face her and track down in the cold light of day whatever
vestige of truth there might be in his persistent imaginations.
He did not succeed in saying anything. It was Mary
who spoke for both of them. He was struck dumb by find
ing that Katharine was quite different, in some strange
way, from his memory, so that he had to dismiss his old
