view in order to accept the new one. The wind was blowing
her crimson scarf across her face; the wind had already
loosened her hair, which looped across the corner
of one of the large, dark eyes which, so he used to think,
looked sad; now they looked bright with the brightness
of the sea struck by an unclouded ray; everything about
her seemed rapid, fragmentary, and full of a kind of racing
speed. He realized suddenly that he had never seen
her in the daylight before.
Meanwhile, it was decided that it was too late to go in
search of ruins as they had intended; and the whole party
began to walk towards the stables where the carriage
had been put up.
“Do you know,” said Katharine, keeping slightly in advance
of the rest with Ralph, “I thought I saw you this
morning, standing at a window. But I decided that it
couldn’t be you. And it must have been you all the same.”
“Yes, I thought I saw you—but it wasn’t you,” he replied.
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This remark, and the rough strain in his voice, recalled
to her memory so many difficult speeches and abortive
meetings that she was jerked directly back to the London
drawing-room, the family relics, and the tea-table; and
at the same time recalled some half-finished or interrupted
remark which she had wanted to make herself or
to hear from him—she could not remember what it was.
“I expect it was me,” she said. “I was looking for my
mother. It happens every time we come to Lincoln. In
fact, there never was a family so unable to take care of
itself as ours is. Not that it very much matters, because
some one always turns up in the nick of time to help us
out of our scrapes. Once I was left in a field with a bull
when I was a baby—but where did we leave the carriage?
Down that street or the next? The next, I think.” She
glanced back and saw that the others were following obediently,
listening to certain memories of Lincoln upon
which Mrs. Hilbery had started. “But what are you doing
here?” she asked.
“I’m buying a cottage. I’m going to live here—as soon
as I can find a cottage, and Mary tells me there’ll be no
difficulty about that.”
“But,” she exclaimed, almost standing still in her surprise,
“you will give up the Bar, then?” It flashed across
her mind that he must already be engaged to Mary.
“The solicitor’s office? Yes. I’m giving that up.”
“But why?” she asked. She answered herself at once,
with a curious change from rapid speech to an almost
melancholy tone. “I think you’re very wise to give it up.
You will be much happier.”
At this very moment, when her words seemed to be
striking a path into the future for him, they stepped into
the yard of an inn, and there beheld the family coach of
the Otways, to which one sleek horse was already attached,
while the second was being led out of the stable
door by the hostler.
“I don’t know what one means by happiness,” he said
briefly, having to step aside in order to avoid a groom with
a bucket. “Why do you think I shall be happy? I don’t
expect to be anything of the kind. I expect to be rather
less unhappy. I shall write a book and curse my charwoman
—if happiness consists in that. What do you think?”
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She could not answer because they were immediately
surrounded by other members of the party—by Mrs.
Hilbery, and Mary, Henry Otway, and William.
Rodney went up to Katharine immediately and said to
her:
“Henry is going to drive home with your mother, and I
suggest that they should put us down half-way and let us
walk back.”
Katharine nodded her head. She glanced at him with an
oddly furtive expression.
“Unfortunately we go in opposite directions, or we might
have given you a lift,” he continued to Denham. His manner
was unusually peremptory; he seemed anxious to hasten
the departure, and Katharine looked at him from time
to time, as Denham noticed, with an expression half of
inquiry, half of annoyance. She at once helped her mother
into her cloak, and said to Mary:
“I want to see you. Are you going back to London at
once? I will write.” She half smiled at Ralph, but her look
was a little overcast by something she was thinking, and
in a very few minutes the Otway carriage rolled out of the
stable yard and turned down the high road leading to the
village of Lampsher.
The return drive was almost as silent as the drive from
home had been in the morning; indeed, Mrs. Hilbery leant
back with closed eyes in her corner, and either slept or
feigned sleep, as her habit was in the intervals between
the seasons of active exertion, or continued the story
which she had begun to tell herself that morning.
About two miles from Lampsher the road ran over the
rounded summit of the heath, a lonely spot marked by an
obelisk of granite, setting forth the gratitude of some
great lady of the eighteenth century who had been set
upon by highwaymen at this spot and delivered from death
just as hope seemed lost. In summer it was a pleasant
place, for the deep woods on either side murmured, and
the heather, which grew thick round the granite pedestal,
made the light breeze taste sweetly; in winter the
sighing of the trees was deepened to a hollow sound, and
the heath was as gray and almost as solitary as the empty
sweep of the clouds above it.
Here Rodney stopped the carriage and helped Katharine
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to alight. Henry, too, gave her his hand, and fancied that
she pressed it very slightly in parting as if she sent him a
message. But the carriage rolled on immediately, without
wakening Mrs. Hilbery, and left the couple standing by
the obelisk. That Rodney was angry with her and had
made this opportunity for speaking to her, Katharine knew
very well; she was neither glad nor sorry that the time
had come, nor, indeed, knew what to expect, and thus
remained silent. The carriage grew smaller and smaller
upon the dusky road, and still Rodney did not speak.
Perhaps, she thought, he waited until the last sign of the
carriage had disappeared beneath the curve of the road
and they were left entirely alone. To cloak their silence
she read the writing on the obelisk, to do which she had
to walk completely round it. She was murmuring a word
to two of the pious lady’s thanks above her breath when
Rodney joined her. In silence they set out along the cart-
track which skirted the verge of the trees.
To break the silence was exactly what Rodney wished
to do, and yet could not do to his own satisfaction. In
company it was far easier to approach Katharine; alone
with her, the aloofness and force of her character checked
all his natural methods of attack. He believed that she
had behaved very badly to him, but each separate instance
of unkindness seemed too petty to be advanced
when they were alone together.
“There’s no need for us to race,” he complained at last;
upon which she immediately slackened her pace, and
walked too slowly to suit him. In desperation he said the
first thing he thought of, very peevishly and without the
dignified prelude which he had intended.
“I’ve not enjoyed my holiday.”
“No?”
“No. I shall be glad to get back to work again.”
“Saturday, Sunday, Monday—there are only three days
more,” she counted.
“No one enjoys being made a fool of before other
people,” he blurted out, for his irritation rose as she spoke,
and got the better of his awe of her, and was inflamed by
that awe.
“That refers to me, I suppose,” she said calmly.
“Every day since we’ve been here you’ve done some
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thing to make me appear ridiculous,” he went on. “Of
course, so long as it amuses you, you’re welcome; but we
have to remember that we are going to spend our lives
together. I asked you, only this morning, for example, to
come out and take a turn with me in the garden. I was
waiting for you ten minutes, and you never came. Every
one saw me waiting. The stable-boys saw me. I was so
ashamed that I went in. Then, on the drive you hardly
spoke to me. Henry noticed it. Every one notices it… .
You find no difficulty in talking to Henry, though.”
She noted these various complaints and determined
philosophically to answer none of them, although the
last stung her to considerable irritation. She wished to
find out how deep his grievance lay.
“None of these things seem to me to matter,” she said.
“Very well, then. I may as well hold my tongue,” he
replied.
“In themselves they don’t seem to me to matter; if they
hurt you, of course they matter,” she corrected herself
scrupulously. Her tone of consideration touched him, and
he walked on in silence for a space.
“And we might be so happy, Katharine!” he exclaimed
impulsively, and drew her arm through his. She withdrew
it directly.
“As long as you let yourself feel like this we shall never
be happy,” she said.
The harshness, which Henry had noticed, was again unmistakable
in her manner. William flinched and was silent.
Such severity, accompanied by something indescribably
cold and impersonal in her manner, had constantly
been meted out to him during the last few days, always
in the company of others. He had recouped himself by
some ridiculous display of vanity which, as he knew, put
him still more at her mercy. Now that he was alone with
her there was no stimulus from outside to draw his attention
from his injury. By a considerable effort of self-control
he forced himself to remain silent, and to make himself
distinguish what part of his pain was due to vanity,
what part to the certainty that no woman really loving
him could speak thus.
“What do I feel about Katharine?” he thought to himself.
It was clear that she had been a very desirable and
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distinguished figure, the mistress of her little section of
the world; but more than that, she was the person of all
others who seemed to him the arbitress of life, the woman
whose judgment was naturally right and steady, as his
had never been in spite of all his culture. And then he
could not see her come into a room without a sense of
the flowing of robes, of the flowering of blossoms, of the
purple waves of the sea, of all things that are lovely and
mutable on the surface but still and passionate in their
heart.
“If she were callous all the time and had only led me on
to laugh at me I couldn’t have felt that about her,” he
thought. “I’m not a fool, after all. I can’t have been utterly
mistaken all these years. And yet, when she speaks
to me like that! The truth of it is,” he thought, “that I’ve
got such despicable faults that no one could help speaking
to me like that. Katharine is quite right. And yet
those are not my serious feelings, as she knows quite
well. How can I change myself? What would make her
care for me?” He was terribly tempted here to break the
silence by asking Katharine in what respects he could
change himself to suit her; but he sought consolation
instead by running over the list of his gifts and acquirements,
his knowledge of Greek and Latin, his knowledge
of art and literature, his skill in the management of meters,
and his ancient west-country blood. But the feeling that
underlay all these feelings and puzzled him profoundly
and kept him silent was the certainty that he loved
Katharine as sincerely as he had it in him to love any
one. And yet she could speak to him like that! In a sort
of bewilderment he lost all desire to speak, and would
quite readily have taken up some different topic of conversation
if Katharine had started one. This, however,
she did not do.
He glanced at her, in case her expression might help
him to understand her behavior. As usual, she had quickened
her pace unconsciously, and was now walking a little
in front of him; but he could gain little information from
her eyes, which looked steadily at the brown heather, or
from the lines drawn seriously upon her forehead. Thus
to lose touch with her, for he had no idea what she was
thinking, was so unpleasant to him that he began to talk
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about his grievances again, without, however, much conviction
in his voice.
“If you have no feeling for me, wouldn’t it be kinder to
say so to me in private?”
“Oh, William,” she burst out, as if he had interrupted some
absorbing train of thought, “how you go on about feelings!
Isn’t it better not to talk so much, not to be worrying always
about small things that don’t really matter?”
“That’s the question precisely,” he exclaimed. “I only
want you to tell me that they don’t matter. There are
times when you seem indifferent to everything. I’m vain,
I’ve a thousand faults; but you know they’re not everything;
you know I care for you.”
“And if I say that I care for you, don’t you believe me?”
“Say it, Katharine! Say it as if you meant it! Make me
feel that you care for me!”
She could not force herself to speak a word. The heather
was growing dim around them, and the horizon was blotted
out by white mist. To ask her for passion or for certainty
seemed like asking that damp prospect for fierce blades of
fire, or the faded sky for the intense blue vault of June.
He went on now to tell her of his love for her, in words
which bore, even to her critical senses, the stamp of truth;
but none of this touched her, until, coming to a gate
whose hinge was rusty, he heaved it open with his shoulder,
still talking and taking no account of his effort. The
virility of this deed impressed her; and yet, normally, she
attached no value to the power of opening gates. The
strength of muscles has nothing to do on the face of it
with the strength of affections; nevertheless, she felt a
sudden concern for this power running to waste on her
