silkworms, now it was music—which last she supposed
was the cause of William’s sudden interest in her. Never
before had William wasted the minutes of her presence in
writing his letters. With a curious sense of light opening
where all, hitherto, had been opaque, it dawned upon
her that, after all, possibly, yes, probably, nay, certainly,
the devotion which she had almost wearily taken for
granted existed in a much slighter degree than she had
suspected, or existed no longer. She looked at him attentively
as if this discovery of hers must show traces in his
face. Never had she seen so much to respect in his appearance,
so much that attracted her by its sensitiveness
and intelligence, although she saw these qualities as if
they were those one responds to, dumbly, in the face of a
stranger. The head bent over the paper, thoughtful as
usual, had now a composure which seemed somehow to
place it at a distance, like a face seen talking to some
one else behind glass.
He wrote on, without raising his eyes. She would have
spoken, but could not bring herself to ask him for signs
of affection which she had no right to claim. The conviction
that he was thus strange to her filled her with despondency,
and illustrated quite beyond doubt the infinite
loneliness of human beings. She had never felt the
truth of this so strongly before. She looked away into the
fire; it seemed to her that even physically they were now
scarcely within speaking distance; and spiritually there
was certainly no human being with whom she could claim
comradeship; no dream that satisfied her as she was used
to be satisfied; nothing remained in whose reality she
could believe, save those abstract ideas—figures, laws,
stars, facts, which she could hardly hold to for lack of
knowledge and a kind of shame.
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When Rodney owned to himself the folly of this prolonged
silence, and the meanness of such devices, and
looked up ready to seek some excuse for a good laugh, or
opening for a confession, he was disconcerted by what
he saw. Katharine seemed equally oblivious of what was
bad or of what was good in him. Her expression suggested
concentration upon something entirely remote from
her surroundings. The carelessness of her attitude seemed
to him rather masculine than feminine. His impulse to
break up the constraint was chilled, and once more the
exasperating sense of his own impotency returned to him.
He could not help contrasting Katharine with his vision
of the engaging, whimsical Cassandra; Katharine undemonstrative,
inconsiderate, silent, and yet so notable that
he could never do without her good opinion.
She veered round upon him a moment later, as if, when
her train of thought was ended, she became aware of his
presence.
“Have you finished your letter?” she asked. He thought
he heard faint amusement in her tone, but not a trace of
jealousy.
“No, I’m not going to write any more to-night,” he said.
“I’m not in the mood for it for some reason. I can’t say
what I want to say.”
“Cassandra won’t know if it’s well written or badly written,”
Katharine remarked.
“I’m not so sure about that. I should say she has a
good deal of literary feeling.”
“Perhaps,” said Katharine indifferently. “You’ve been
neglecting my education lately, by the way. I wish you’d
read something. Let me choose a book.” So speaking, she
went across to his bookshelves and began looking in a
desultory way among his books. Anything, she thought,
was better than bickering or the strange silence which
drove home to her the distance between them. As she
pulled one book forward and then another she thought
ironically of her own certainty not an hour ago; how it
had vanished in a moment, how she was merely marking
time as best she could, not knowing in the least where
they stood, what they felt, or whether William loved her
or not. More and more the condition of Mary’s mind seemed
to her wonderful and enviable—if, indeed, it could be
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quite as she figured it—if, indeed, simplicity existed for
any one of the daughters of women.
“Swift,” she said, at last, taking out a volume at haphazard
to settle this question at least. “Let us have some
Swift.”
Rodney took the book, held it in front of him, inserted
one finger between the pages, but said nothing. His face
wore a queer expression of deliberation, as if he were
weighing one thing with another, and would not say anything
until his mind were made up.
Katharine, taking her chair beside him, noted his silence
and looked at him with sudden apprehension. What
she hoped or feared, she could not have said; a most
irrational and indefensible desire for some assurance of
his affection was, perhaps, uppermost in her mind. Peevishness,
complaints, exacting cross-examination she was
used to, but this attitude of composed quiet, which
seemed to come from the consciousness of power within,
puzzled her. She did not know what was going to happen
next.
At last William spoke.
“I think it’s a little odd, don’t you?” he said, in a voice
of detached reflection. “Most people, I mean, would be
seriously upset if their marriage was put off for six months
or so. But we aren’t; now how do you account for that?”
She looked at him and observed his judicial attitude as
of one holding far aloof from emotion.
“I attribute it,” he went on, without waiting for her to
answer, “to the fact that neither of us is in the least
romantic about the other. That may be partly, no doubt,
because we’ve known each other so long; but I’m inclined
to think there’s more in it than that. There’s something
temperamental. I think you’re a trifle cold, and I
suspect I’m a trifle self-absorbed. If that were so it goes
a long way to explaining our odd lack of illusion about
each other. I’m not saying that the most satisfactory
marriages aren’t founded upon this sort of understanding.
But certainly it struck me as odd this morning, when
Wilson told me, how little upset I felt. By the way, you’re
sure we haven’t committed ourselves to that house?”
“I’ve kept the letters, and I’ll go through them to-morrow;
but I’m certain we’re on the safe side.”
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Night and Day
“Thanks. As to the psychological problem,” he continued,
as if the question interested him in a detached way,
“there’s no doubt, I think, that either of us is capable of
feeling what, for reasons of simplicity, I call romance for
a third person—at least, I’ve little doubt in my own case.”
It was, perhaps, the first time in all her knowledge of
him that Katharine had known William enter thus deliberately
and without sign of emotion upon a statement of
his own feelings. He was wont to discourage such intimate
discussions by a little laugh or turn of the conversation,
as much as to say that men, or men of the world,
find such topics a little silly, or in doubtful taste. His
obvious wish to explain something puzzled her, interested
her, and neutralized the wound to her vanity. For
some reason, too, she felt more at ease with him than
usual; or her ease was more the ease of equality—she
could not stop to think of that at the moment though.
His remarks interested her too much for the light that
they threw upon certain problems of her own.
“What is this romance?” she mused.
“Ah, that’s the question. I’ve never come across a defi
nition that satisfied me, though there are some very good
ones”—he glanced in the direction of his books.
“It’s not altogether knowing the other person, perhaps—
it’s ignorance,” she hazarded.
“Some authorities say it’s a question of distance—romance
in literature, that is—”
“Possibly, in the case of art. But in the case of people it
may be—” she hesitated.
“Have you no personal experience of it?” he asked, letting
his eyes rest upon her swiftly for a moment.
“I believe it’s influenced me enormously,” she said, in
the tone of one absorbed by the possibilities of some
view just presented to them; “but in my life there’s so
little scope for it,” she added. She reviewed her daily
task, the perpetual demands upon her for good sense,
self-control, and accuracy in a house containing a romantic
mother. Ah, but her romance wasn’t that romance.
It was a desire, an echo, a sound; she could drape it in
color, see it in form, hear it in music, but not in words;
no, never in words. She sighed, teased by desires so incoherent,
so incommunicable.
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“But isn’t it curious,” William resumed, “that you should
neither feel it for me, nor I for you?”
Katharine agreed that it was curious—very; but even
more curious to her was the fact that she was discussing
the question with William. It revealed possibilities which
opened a prospect of a new relationship altogether. Somehow
it seemed to her that he was helping her to understand
what she had never understood; and in her gratitude
she was conscious of a most sisterly desire to help
him, too—sisterly, save for one pang, not quite to be
subdued, that for him she was without romance.
“I think you might be very happy with some one you
loved in that way,” she said.
“You assume that romance survives a closer knowledge
of the person one loves?”
He asked the question formally, to protect himself from
the sort of personality which he dreaded. The whole situation
needed the most careful management lest it should
degenerate into some degrading and disturbing exhibition
such as the scene, which he could never think of
without shame, upon the heath among the dead leaves.
And yet each sentence brought him relief. He was coming
to understand something or other about his own desires
hitherto undefined by him, the source of his difficulty
with Katharine. The wish to hurt her, which had
urged him to begin, had completely left him, and he felt
that it was only Katharine now who could help him to be
sure. He must take his time. There were so many things
that he could not say without the greatest difficulty—
that name, for example, Cassandra. Nor could he move
his eyes from a certain spot, a fiery glen surrounded by
high mountains, in the heart of the coals. He waited in
suspense for Katharine to continue. She had said that he
might be very happy with some one he loved in that way.
“I don’t see why it shouldn’t last with you,” she resumed.
“I can imagine a certain sort of person—” she
paused; she was aware that he was listening with the
greatest intentness, and that his formality was merely
the cover for an extreme anxiety of some sort. There was
some person then—some woman—who could it be?
Cassandra? Ah, possibly—
“A person,” she added, speaking in the most matter-of
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Night and Day
fact tone she could command, “like Cassandra Otway, for
instance. Cassandra is the most interesting of the
Otways—with the exception of Henry. Even so, I like
Cassandra better. She has more than mere cleverness. She
is a character—a person by herself.”
“Those dreadful insects!” burst from William, with a
nervous laugh, and a little spasm went through him as
Katharine noticed. It was Cassandra then. Automatically
and dully she replied, “You could insist that she confined
herself to—to—something else… . But she cares for
music; I believe she writes poetry; and there can be no
doubt that she has a peculiar charm—”
She ceased, as if defining to herself this peculiar charm.
After a moment’s silence William jerked out:
“I thought her affectionate?”
“Extremely affectionate. She worships Henry. When you
think what a house that is—Uncle Francis always in one
mood or another—”
“Dear, dear, dear,” William muttered.
“And you have so much in common.”
“My dear Katharine!” William exclaimed, flinging him
self back in his chair, and uprooting his eyes from the
spot in the fire. “I really don’t know what we’re talking
about… . I assure you… .”
He was covered with an extreme confusion.
He withdrew the finger that was still thrust between
the pages of Gulliver, opened the book, and ran his eye
down the list of chapters, as though he were about to
select the one most suitable for reading aloud. As
Katharine watched him, she was seized with preliminary
symptoms of his own panic. At the same time she was
convinced that, should he find the right page, take out
his spectacles, clear his throat, and open his lips, a chance
that would never come again in all their lives would be
lost to them both.
“We’re talking about things that interest us both very
much,” she said. “Shan’t we go on talking, and leave
Swift for another time? I don’t feel in the mood for Swift,
and it’s a pity to read any one when that’s the case—
particularly Swift.”
The presence of wise literary speculation, as she calculated,
restored William’s confidence in his security, and
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he replaced the book in the bookcase, keeping his back
turned to her as he did so, and taking advantage of this
circumstance to summon his thoughts together.
But a second of introspection had the alarming result
of showing him that his mind, when looked at from within,
was no longer familiar ground. He felt, that is to say,
what he had never consciously felt before; he was revealed
to himself as other than he was wont to think
him; he was afloat upon a sea of unknown and tumultuous
possibilities. He paced once up and down the room,
and then flung himself impetuously into the chair by
Katharine’s side. He had never felt anything like this before;
he put himself entirely into her hands; he cast off
all responsibility. He very nearly exclaimed aloud:
“You’ve stirred up all these odious and violent emotions,
and now you must do the best you can with them.”
