silent. The orchids seemed to suggest absorbing reflections.
In defiance of the rules she stretched her ungloved
hand and touched one. The sight of the rubies upon her
finger affected him so disagreeably that he started and
turned away. But next moment he controlled himself; he
looked at her taking in one strange shape after another
with the contemplative, considering gaze of a person who
sees not exactly what is before him, but gropes in regions
that lie beyond it. The far-away look entirely lacked
self-consciousness. Denham doubted whether she remembered
his presence. He could recall himself, of course, by
a word or a movement—but why? She was happier thus.
She needed nothing that he could give her. And for him,
too, perhaps, it was best to keep aloof, only to know that
she existed, to preserve what he already had—perfect,
remote, and unbroken. Further, her still look, standing
among the orchids in that hot atmosphere, strangely illustrated
some scene that he had imagined in his room
at home. The sight, mingling with his recollection, kept
him silent when the door was shut and they were walking
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on again.
But though she did not speak, Katharine had an uneasy
sense that silence on her part was selfishness. It was selfish
of her to continue, as she wished to do, a discussion of
subjects not remotely connected with any human beings.
She roused herself to consider their exact position upon
the turbulent map of the emotions. Oh yes—it was a question
whether Ralph Denham should live in the country and
write a book; it was getting late; they must waste no more
time; Cassandra arrived to-night for dinner; she flinched
and roused herself, and discovered that she ought to be
holding something in her hands. But they were empty. She
held them out with an exclamation.
“I’ve left my bag somewhere—where?” The gardens had
no points of the compass, so far as she was concerned.
She had been walking for the most part on grass—that
was all she knew. Even the road to the Orchid House had
now split itself into three. But there was no bag in the
Orchid House. It must, therefore, have been left upon the
seat. They retraced their steps in the preoccupied manner
of people who have to think about something that is
lost. What did this bag look like? What did it contain?
“A purse—a ticket—some letters, papers,” Katharine
counted, becoming more agitated as she recalled the list.
Denham went on quickly in advance of her, and she heard
him shout that he had found it before she reached the
seat. In order to make sure that all was safe she spread
the contents on her knee. It was a queer collection,
Denham thought, gazing with the deepest interest. Loose
gold coins were tangled in a narrow strip of lace; there
were letters which somehow suggested the extreme of
intimacy; there were two or three keys, and lists of commissions
against which crosses were set at intervals. But
she did not seem satisfied until she had made sure of a
certain paper so folded that Denham could not judge what
it contained. In her relief and gratitude she began at
once to say that she had been thinking over what Denham
had told her of his plans.
He cut her short. “Don’t let’s discuss that dreary business.”
“But I thought—”
“It’s a dreary business. I ought never to have bothered
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you—”
“Have you decided, then?”
He made an impatient sound. “It’s not a thing that
matters.”
She could only say rather flatly, “Oh!”
“I mean it matters to me, but it matters to no one else.
Anyhow,” he continued, more amiably, “I see no reason
why you should be bothered with other people’s nuisances.”
She supposed that she had let him see too clearly her
weariness of this side of life.
“I’m afraid I’ve been absent-minded,” she began, remembering
how often William had brought this charge
against her.
“You have a good deal to make you absent-minded,” he
replied.
“Yes,” she replied, flushing. “No,” she contradicted herself.
“Nothing particular, I mean. But I was thinking about
plants. I was enjoying myself. In fact, I’ve seldom enjoyed
an afternoon more. But I want to hear what you’ve
settled, if you don’t mind telling me.”
“Oh, it’s all settled,” he replied. “I’m going to this infernal
cottage to write a worthless book.”
“How I envy you,” she replied, with the utmost sincerity.
“Well, cottages are to be had for fifteen shillings a
week.”
“Cottages are to be had—yes,” she replied. “The question
is—” She checked herself. “Two rooms are all I should
want,” she continued, with a curious sigh; “one for eating,
one for sleeping. Oh, but I should like another, a
large one at the top, and a little garden where one could
grow flowers. A path—so—down to a river, or up to a
wood, and the sea not very far off, so that one could hear
the waves at night. Ships just vanishing on the horizon—”
She broke off. “Shall you be near the sea?”
“My notion of perfect happiness,” he began, not replying
to her question, “is to live as you’ve said.”
“Well, now you can. You will work, I suppose,” she continued;
“you’ll work all the morning and again after tea
and perhaps at night. You won’t have people always coming
about you to interrupt.”
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“How far can one live alone?” he asked. “Have you tried
ever?”
“Once for three weeks,” she replied. “My father and
mother were in Italy, and something happened so that I
couldn’t join them. For three weeks I lived entirely by
myself, and the only person I spoke to was a stranger in
a shop where I lunched—a man with a beard. Then I
went back to my room by myself and—well, I did what I
liked. It doesn’t make me out an amiable character, I’m
afraid,” she added, “but I can’t endure living with other
people. An occasional man with a beard is interesting;
he’s detached; he lets me go my way, and we know we
shall never meet again. Therefore, we are perfectly sincere—
a thing not possible with one’s friends.”
“Nonsense,” Denham replied abruptly.
“Why ‘nonsense’?” she inquired.
“Because you don’t mean what you say,” he expostulated.
“You’re very positive,” she said, laughing and looking at
him. How arbitrary, hot-tempered, and imperious he was!
He had asked her to come to Kew to advise him; he then
told her that he had settled the question already; he then
proceeded to find fault with her. He was the very opposite
of William Rodney, she thought; he was shabby, his clothes
were badly made, he was ill versed in the amenities of life;
he was tongue-tied and awkward to the verge of obliterating
his real character. He was awkwardly silent; he was
awkwardly emphatic. And yet she liked him.
“I don’t mean what I say,” she repeated good-humoredly.
“Well—?”
“I doubt whether you make absolute sincerity your standard
in life,” he answered significantly.
She flushed. He had penetrated at once to the weak
spot—her engagement, and had reason for what he said.
He was not altogether justified now, at any rate, she was
glad to remember; but she could not enlighten him and
must bear his insinuations, though from the lips of a man
who had behaved as he had behaved their force should
not have been sharp. Nevertheless, what he said had its
force, she mused; partly because he seemed unconscious
of his own lapse in the case of Mary Datchet, and thus
baffled her insight; partly because he always spoke with
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force, for what reason she did not yet feel certain.
“Absolute sincerity is rather difficult, don’t you think?”
she inquired, with a touch of irony.
“There are people one credits even with that,” he replied
a little vaguely. He was ashamed of his savage wish
to hurt her, and yet it was not for the sake of hurting her,
who was beyond his shafts, but in order to mortify his
own incredibly reckless impulse of abandonment to the
spirit which seemed, at moments, about to rush him to
the uttermost ends of the earth. She affected him beyond
the scope of his wildest dreams. He seemed to see
that beneath the quiet surface of her manner, which was
almost pathetically at hand and within reach for all the
trivial demands of daily life, there was a spirit which she
reserved or repressed for some reason either of loneliness
or—could it be possible—of love. Was it given to Rodney
to see her unmasked, unrestrained, unconscious of her
duties? a creature of uncalculating passion and instinctive
freedom? No; he refused to believe it. It was in her
loneliness that Katharine was unreserved. “I went back
to my room by myself and I did—what I liked.” She had
said that to him, and in saying it had given him a glimpse
of possibilities, even of confidences, as if he might be
the one to share her loneliness, the mere hint of which
made his heart beat faster and his brain spin. He checked
himself as brutally as he could. He saw her redden, and in
the irony of her reply he heard her resentment.
He began slipping his smooth, silver watch in his pocket,
in the hope that somehow he might help himself back to
that calm and fatalistic mood which had been his when
he looked at its face upon the bank of the lake, for that
mood must, at whatever cost, be the mood of his intercourse
with Katharine. He had spoken of gratitude and
acquiescence in the letter which he had never sent, and
now all the force of his character must make good those
vows in her presence.
She, thus challenged, tried meanwhile to define her
points. She wished to make Denham understand.
“Don’t you see that if you have no relations with people
it’s easier to be honest with them?” she inquired. “That
is what I meant. One needn’t cajole them; one’s under no
obligation to them. Surely you must have found with your
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own family that it’s impossible to discuss what matters
to you most because you’re all herded together, because
you’re in a conspiracy, because the position is false—”
Her reasoning suspended itself a little inconclusively, for
the subject was complex, and she found herself in ignorance
whether Denham had a family or not. Denham was
agreed with her as to the destructiveness of the family
system, but he did not wish to discuss the problem at
that moment.
He turned to a problem which was of greater interest to
him.
“I’m convinced,” he said, “that there are cases in which
perfect sincerity is possible—cases where there’s no relationship,
though the people live together, if you like,
where each is free, where there’s no obligation upon either
side.”
“For a time perhaps,” she agreed, a little despondently.
“But obligations always grow up. There are feelings to be
considered. People aren’t simple, and though they may
mean to be reasonable, they end”—in the condition in
which she found herself, she meant, but added lamely—
”in a muddle.”
“Because,” Denham instantly intervened, “they don’t
make themselves understood at the beginning. I could
undertake, at this instant,” he continued, with a reasonable
intonation which did much credit to his self-control,
“to lay down terms for a friendship which should be perfectly
sincere and perfectly straightforward.”
She was curious to hear them, but, besides feeling that
the topic concealed dangers better known to her than to
him, she was reminded by his tone of his curious abstract
declaration upon the Embankment. Anything that hinted
at love for the moment alarmed her; it was as much an
infliction to her as the rubbing of a skinless wound.
But he went on, without waiting for her invitation.
“In the first place, such a friendship must be unemotional,”
he laid it down emphatically. “At least, on both
sides it must be understood that if either chooses to fall
in love, he or she does so entirely at his own risk. Neither
is under any obligation to the other. They must be at
liberty to break or to alter at any moment. They must be
able to say whatever they wish to say. All this must be
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understood.”
“And they gain something worth having?” she asked.
“It’s a risk—of course it’s a risk,” he replied. The word
was one that she had been using frequently in her arguments
with herself of late.
“But it’s the only way—if you think friendship worth
having,” he concluded.
“Perhaps under those conditions it might be,” she said
reflectively.
“Well,” he said, “those are the terms of the friendship I
wish to offer you.” She had known that this was coming,
but, none the less, felt a little shock, half of pleasure,
half of reluctance, when she heard the formal statement.
“I should like it,” she began, “but—”
“Would Rodney mind?”
“Oh no,” she replied quickly.
“No, no, it isn’t that,” she went on, and again came to
an end. She had been touched by the unreserved and yet
ceremonious way in which he had made what he called
his offer of terms, but if he was generous it was the more
necessary for her to be cautious. They would find them
selves in difficulties, she speculated; but, at this point,
which was not very far, after all, upon the road of caution,
her foresight deserted her. She sought for some definite
catastrophe into which they must inevitably plunge.
But she could think of none. It seemed to her that these
catastrophes were fictitious; life went on and on—life
was different altogether from what people said. And not
only was she at an end of her stock of caution, but it
seemed suddenly altogether superfluous. Surely if any one
could take care of himself, Ralph Denham could; he had
told her that he did not love her. And, further, she meditated,
walking on beneath the beech-trees and swinging
her umbrella, as in her thought she was accustomed to
