“We don’t want to quarrel,” said Mary.
“Ought I to have told him that I wouldn’t be his friend?”
Katharine asked. “Shall I tell him that? If so, what reason
shall I give him?”
“Of course you can’t tell him that,” said Mary, controlling
herself.
“I believe I shall, though,” said Katharine suddenly.
“I lost my temper, Katharine; I shouldn’t have said what
I did.”
“The whole thing’s foolish,” said Katharine, peremptorily.
“That’s what I say. It’s not worth it.” She spoke with
unnecessary vehemence, but it was not directed against
Mary Datchet. Their animosity had completely disappeared,
and upon both of them a cloud of difficulty and darkness
rested, obscuring the future, in which they had both to
find a way.
“No, no, it’s not worth it,” Katharine repeated. “Suppose,
as you say, it’s out of the question—this friendship;
he falls in love with me. I don’t want that. Still,”
she added, “I believe you exaggerate; love’s not everything;
marriage itself is only one of the things—” They
had reached the main thoroughfare, and stood looking at
the omnibuses and passers-by, who seemed, for the moment,
to illustrate what Katharine had said of the diversity
of human interests. For both of them it had become
one of those moments of extreme detachment, when it
seems unnecessary ever again to shoulder the burden of
happiness and self-assertive existence. Their neighbors
were welcome to their possessions.
“I don’t lay down any rules,”’ said Mary, recovering herself
first, as they turned after a long pause of this description.
“All I say is that you should know what you’re
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about—for certain; but,” she added, “I expect you do.”
At the same time she was profoundly perplexed, not
only by what she knew of the arrangements for Katharine’s
marriage, but by the impression which she had of her,
there on her arm, dark and inscrutable.
They walked back again and reached the steps which
led up to Mary’s flat. Here they stopped and paused for a
moment, saying nothing.
“You must go in,” said Katharine, rousing herself. “He’s
waiting all this time to go on with his reading.” She
glanced up at the lighted window near the top of the
house, and they both looked at it and waited for a moment.
A flight of semicircular steps ran up to the hall,
and Mary slowly mounted the first two or three, and
paused, looking down upon Katharine.
“I think you underrate the value of that emotion,” she
said slowly, and a little awkwardly. She climbed another
step and looked down once more upon the figure that
was only partly lit up, standing in the street with a colorless
face turned upwards. As Mary hesitated, a cab came
by and Katharine turned and stopped it, saying as she
opened the door:
“Remember, I want to belong to your society—remember,”
she added, having to raise her voice a little, and
shutting the door upon the rest of her words.
Mary mounted the stairs step by step, as if she had to
lift her body up an extremely steep ascent. She had had
to wrench herself forcibly away from Katharine, and every
step vanquished her desire. She held on grimly, encouraging
herself as though she were actually making
some great physical effort in climbing a height. She was
conscious that Mr. Basnett, sitting at the top of the stairs
with his documents, offered her solid footing if she were
capable of reaching it. The knowledge gave her a faint
sense of exaltation.
Mr. Basnett raised his eyes as she opened the door.
“I’ll go on where I left off,” he said. “Stop me if you
want anything explained.”
He had been re-reading the document, and making pencil
notes in the margin while he waited, and he went on
again as if there had been no interruption. Mary sat down
among the flat cushions, lit another cigarette, and lis
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tened with a frown upon her face.
Katharine leant back in the corner of the cab that carried
her to Chelsea, conscious of fatigue, and conscious,
too, of the sober and satisfactory nature of such industry
as she had just witnessed. The thought of it composed
and calmed her. When she reached home she let herself
in as quietly as she could, in the hope that the household
was already gone to bed. But her excursion had occupied
less time than she thought, and she heard sounds
of unmistakable liveliness upstairs. A door opened, and
she drew herself into a ground-floor room in case the
sound meant that Mr. Peyton were taking his leave. From
where she stood she could see the stairs, though she was
herself invisible. Some one was coming down the stairs,
and now she saw that it was William Rodney. He looked a
little strange, as if he were walking in his sleep; his lips
moved as if he were acting some part to himself. He came
down very slowly, step by step, with one hand upon the
banisters to guide himself. She thought he looked as if
he were in some mood of high exaltation, which it made
her uncomfortable to witness any longer unseen. She
stepped into the hall. He gave a great start upon seeing
her and stopped.
“Katharine!” he exclaimed. “You’ve been out?” he asked.
“Yes… . Are they still up?”
He did not answer, and walked into the ground-floor
room through the door which stood open.
“It’s been more wonderful than I can tell you,” he said,
“I’m incredibly happy—”
He was scarcely addressing her, and she said nothing.
For a moment they stood at opposite sides of a table
saying nothing. Then he asked her quickly, “But tell me,
how did it seem to you? What did you think, Katharine?
Is there a chance that she likes me? Tell me, Katharine!”
Before she could answer a door opened on the landing
above and disturbed them. It disturbed William excessively.
He started back, walked rapidly into the hall, and
said in a loud and ostentatiously ordinary tone:
“Good night, Katharine. Go to bed now. I shall see you
soon. I hope I shall be able to come to-morrow.”
Next moment he was gone. She went upstairs and found
Cassandra on the landing. She held two or three books in
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her hand, and she was stooping to look at others in a
little bookcase. She said that she could never tell which
book she wanted to read in bed, poetry, biography, or
metaphysics.
“What do you read in bed, Katharine?” she asked, as
they walked upstairs side by side.
“Sometimes one thing—sometimes another,” said
Katharine vaguely. Cassandra looked at her.
“D’you know, you’re extraordinarily queer,” she said. “Every
one seems to me a little queer. Perhaps it’s the effect
of London.”
“Is William queer, too?” Katharine asked.
“Well, I think he is a little,” Cassandra replied. “Queer,
but very fascinating. I shall read Milton to-night. It’s
been one of the happiest nights of my life, Katharine,”
she added, looking with shy devotion at her cousin’s beautiful
face.
CHAPTER XXVII
London, in the first days of spring, has buds that open
and flowers that suddenly shake their petals—white,
purple, or crimson—in competition with the display in
the garden beds, although these city flowers are merely
so many doors flung wide in Bond Street and the neighborhood,
inviting you to look at a picture, or hear a symphony,
or merely crowd and crush yourself among all sorts
of vocal, excitable, brightly colored human beings. But,
all the same, it is no mean rival to the quieter process of
vegetable florescence. Whether or not there is a generous
motive at the root, a desire to share and impart, or
whether the animation is purely that of insensate fervor
and friction, the effect, while it lasts, certainly encourages
those who are young, and those who are ignorant,
to think the world one great bazaar, with banners fluttering
and divans heaped with spoils from every quarter of
the globe for their delight.
As Cassandra Otway went about London provided with
shillings that opened turnstiles, or more often with large
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white cards that disregarded turnstiles, the city seemed
to her the most lavish and hospitable of hosts. After visiting
the National Gallery, or Hertford House, or hearing
Brahms or Beethoven at the Bechstein Hall, she would
come back to find a new person awaiting her, in whose
soul were imbedded some grains of the invaluable substance
which she still called reality, and still believed
that she could find. The Hilberys, as the saying is, “knew
every one,” and that arrogant claim was certainly upheld
by the number of houses which, within a certain area, lit
their lamps at night, opened their doors after 3 p. m.,
and admitted the Hilberys to their dining-rooms, say, once
a month. An indefinable freedom and authority of manner,
shared by most of the people who lived in these
houses, seemed to indicate that whether it was a question
of art, music, or government, they were well within
the gates, and could smile indulgently at the vast mass
of humanity which is forced to wait and struggle, and
pay for entrance with common coin at the door. The gates
opened instantly to admit Cassandra. She was naturally
critical of what went on inside, and inclined to quote
what Henry would have said; but she often succeeded in
contradicting Henry, in his absence, and invariably paid
her partner at dinner, or the kind old lady who remembered
her grandmother, the compliment of believing that
there was meaning in what they said. For the sake of the
light in her eager eyes, much crudity of expression and
some untidiness of person were forgiven her. It was generally
felt that, given a year or two of experience, introduced
to good dressmakers, and preserved from bad influences,
she would be an acquisition. Those elderly ladies,
who sit on the edge of ballrooms sampling the stuff
of humanity between finger and thumb and breathing so
evenly that the necklaces, which rise and fall upon their
breasts, seem to represent some elemental force, such as
the waves upon the ocean of humanity, concluded, a little
smilingly, that she would do. They meant that she would
in all probability marry some young man whose mother
they respected.
William Rodney was fertile in suggestions. He knew of
little galleries, and select concerts, and private performances,
and somehow made time to meet Katharine and
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Cassandra, and to give them tea or dinner or supper in
his rooms afterwards. Each one of her fourteen days thus
promised to bear some bright illumination in its sober
text. But Sunday approached. The day is usually dedicated
to Nature. The weather was almost kindly enough
for an expedition. But Cassandra rejected Hampton Court,
Greenwich, Richmond, and Kew in favor of the Zoological
Gardens. She had once trifled with the psychology of
animals, and still knew something about inherited characteristics.
On Sunday afternoon, therefore, Katharine,
Cassandra, and William Rodney drove off to the Zoo. As
their cab approached the entrance, Katharine bent forward
and waved her hand to a young man who was walking
rapidly in the same direction.
“There’s Ralph Denham!” she exclaimed. “I told him to
meet us here,” she added. She had even come provided
with a ticket for him. William’s objection that he would
not be admitted was, therefore, silenced directly. But the
way in which the two men greeted each other was significant
of what was going to happen. As soon as they
had admired the little birds in the large cage William and
Cassandra lagged behind, and Ralph and Katharine pressed
on rather in advance. It was an arrangement in which
William took his part, and one that suited his convenience,
but he was annoyed all the same. He thought
that Katharine should have told him that she had invited
Denham to meet them.
“One of Katharine’s friends,” he said rather sharply. It
was clear that he was irritated, and Cassandra felt for his
annoyance. They were standing by the pen of some Oriental
hog, and she was prodding the brute gently with
the point of her umbrella, when a thousand little observations
seemed, in some way, to collect in one center.
The center was one of intense and curious emotion. Were
they happy? She dismissed the question as she asked it,
scorning herself for applying such simple measures to
the rare and splendid emotions of so unique a couple.
Nevertheless, her manner became immediately different,
as if, for the first time, she felt consciously womanly, and
as if William might conceivably wish later on to confide
in her. She forgot all about the psychology of animals,
and the recurrence of blue eyes and brown, and became
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instantly engrossed in her feelings as a woman who could
administer consolation, and she hoped that Katharine
would keep ahead with Mr. Denham, as a child who plays
at being grown-up hopes that her mother won’t come in
just yet, and spoil the game. Or was it not rather that she
had ceased to play at being grown-up, and was conscious,
suddenly, that she was alarmingly mature and in earnest?
There was still unbroken silence between Katharine and
Ralph Denham, but the occupants of the different cages
served instead of speech.
“What have you been doing since we met?” Ralph asked
at length.
“Doing?” she pondered. “Walking in and out of other
people’s houses. I wonder if these animals are happy?”
she speculated, stopping before a gray bear, who was
philosophically playing with a tassel which once, perhaps,
formed part of a lady’s parasol.
“I’m afraid Rodney didn’t like my coming,” Ralph remarked.
“No. But he’ll soon get over that,” she replied. The detachment
expressed by her voice puzzled Ralph, and he
would have been glad if she had explained her meaning
