for a moment, and then said: “If you don’t want to
tell people yourselves, I’ll do it for you. I know William
has feelings about these matters that make it very difficult
for him to do anything.”
“Because he’s fearfully sensitive about other people’s
feelings,” said Cassandra. “The idea that he could upset
Aunt Maggie or Uncle Trevor would make him ill for weeks.”
This interpretation of what she was used to call William’s
conventionality was new to Katharine. And yet she felt it
now to be the true one.
“Yes, you’re right,” she said.
“And then he worships beauty. He wants life to be beautiful
in every part of it. Have you ever noticed how exquisitely
he finishes everything? Look at the address on
that envelope. Every letter is perfect.”
Whether this applied also to the sentiments expressed
in the letter, Katharine was not so sure; but when William’s
solicitude was spent upon Cassandra it not only failed to
irritate her, as it had done when she was the object of it,
but appeared, as Cassandra said, the fruit of his love of
beauty.
“Yes,” she said, “he loves beauty.”
“I hope we shall have a great many children,” said
Cassandra. “He loves children.”
This remark made Katharine realize the depths of their
intimacy better than any other words could have done;
she was jealous for one moment; but the next she was
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humiliated. She had known William for years, and she
had never once guessed that he loved children. She looked
at the queer glow of exaltation in Cassandra’s eyes,
through which she was beholding the true spirit of a
human being, and wished that she would go on talking
about William for ever. Cassandra was not unwilling to
gratify her. She talked on. The morning slipped away.
Katharine scarcely changed her position on the edge of
her father’s writing-table, and Cassandra never opened
the “History of England.”
And yet it must be confessed that there were vast lapses
in the attention which Katharine bestowed upon her
cousin. The atmosphere was wonderfully congenial for
thoughts of her own. She lost herself sometimes in such
deep reverie that Cassandra, pausing, could look at her
for moments unperceived. What could Katharine be thinking
about, unless it were Ralph Denham? She was satisfied,
by certain random replies, that Katharine had wandered
a little from the subject of William’s perfections.
But Katharine made no sign. She always ended these
pauses by saying something so natural that Cassandra
was deluded into giving fresh examples of her absorbing
theme. Then they lunched, and the only sign that
Katharine gave of abstraction was to forget to help the
pudding. She looked so like her mother, as she sat there
oblivious of the tapioca, that Cassandra was startled into
exclaiming:
“How like Aunt Maggie you look!”
“Nonsense,” said Katharine, with more irritation than
the remark seemed to call for.
In truth, now that her mother was away, Katharine did
feel less sensible than usual, but as she argued it to
herself, there was much less need for sense. Secretly, she
was a little shaken by the evidence which the morning
had supplied of her immense capacity for—what could
one call it?—rambling over an infinite variety of thoughts
that were too foolish to be named. She was, for example,
walking down a road in Northumberland in the August
sunset; at the inn she left her companion, who was Ralph
Denham, and was transported, not so much by her own
feet as by some invisible means, to the top of a high hill.
Here the scents, the sounds among the dry heather-roots,
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Night and Day
the grass-blades pressed upon the palm of her hand, were
all so perceptible that she could experience each one
separately. After this her mind made excursions into the
dark of the air, or settled upon the surface of the sea,
which could be discovered over there, or with equal unreason
it returned to its couch of bracken beneath the
stars of midnight, and visited the snow valleys of the
moon. These fancies would have been in no way strange,
since the walls of every mind are decorated with some
such tracery, but she found herself suddenly pursuing such
thoughts with an extreme ardor, which became a desire
to change her actual condition for something matching
the conditions of her dream. Then she started; then she
awoke to the fact that Cassandra was looking at her in
amazement.
Cassandra would have liked to feel certain that, when
Katharine made no reply at all or one wide of the mark,
she was making up her mind to get married at once, but
it was difficult, if this were so, to account for some remarks
that Katharine let fall about the future. She recurred
several times to the summer, as if she meant to
spend that season in solitary wandering. She seemed to
have a plan in her mind which required Bradshaws and
the names of inns.
Cassandra was driven finally, by her own unrest, to put
on her clothes and wander out along the streets of Chelsea,
on the pretence that she must buy something. But, in
her ignorance of the way, she became panic-stricken at
the thought of being late, and no sooner had she found
the shop she wanted, than she fled back again in order
to be at home when William came. He came, indeed, five
minutes after she had sat down by the tea-table, and she
had the happiness of receiving him alone. His greeting
put her doubts of his affection at rest, but the first question
he asked was:
“Has Katharine spoken to you?”
“Yes. But she says she’s not engaged. She doesn’t seem
to think she’s ever going to be engaged.”
William frowned, and looked annoyed.
“They telephoned this morning, and she behaves very
oddly. She forgets to help the pudding,” Cassandra added
by way of cheering him.
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“My dear child, after what I saw and heard last night,
it’s not a question of guessing or suspecting. Either she’s
engaged to him—or—”
He left his sentence unfinished, for at this point
Katharine herself appeared. With his recollections of the
scene the night before, he was too self-conscious even to
look at her, and it was not until she told him of her
mother’s visit to Stratford-on-Avon that he raised his eyes.
It was clear that he was greatly relieved. He looked round
him now, as if he felt at his ease, and Cassandra exclaimed:
“Don’t you think everything looks quite different?”
“You’ve moved the sofa?” he asked.
“No. Nothing’s been touched,” said Katharine.
“Everything’s exactly the same.” But as she said this, with
a decision which seemed to make it imply that more than
the sofa was unchanged, she held out a cup into which
she had forgotten to pour any tea. Being told of her forgetfulness,
she frowned with annoyance, and said that
Cassandra was demoralizing her. The glance she cast upon
them, and the resolute way in which she plunged them
into speech, made William and Cassandra feel like children
who had been caught prying. They followed her obediently,
making conversation. Any one coming in might
have judged them acquaintances met, perhaps, for the
third time. If that were so, one must have concluded that
the hostess suddenly bethought her of an engagement
pressing for fulfilment. First Katharine looked at her watch,
and then she asked William to tell her the right time.
When told that it was ten minutes to five she rose at
once, and said:
“Then I’m afraid I must go.”
She left the room, holding her unfinished bread and
butter in her hand. William glanced at Cassandra.
“Well, she is queer!” Cassandra exclaimed.
William looked perturbed. He knew more of Katharine
than Cassandra did, but even he could not tell—. In a
second Katharine was back again dressed in outdoor
things, still holding her bread and butter in her bare hand.
“If I’m late, don’t wait for me,” she said. “I shall have
dined,” and so saying, she left them.
“But she can’t—” William exclaimed, as the door shut,
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“not without any gloves and bread and butter in her hand!”
They ran to the window, and saw her walking rapidly along
the street towards the City. Then she vanished.
“She must have gone to meet Mr. Denham,” Cassandra
exclaimed.
“Goodness knows!” William interjected.
The incident impressed them both as having something
queer and ominous about it out of all proportion to its
surface strangeness.
“It’s the sort of way Aunt Maggie behaves,” said
Cassandra, as if in explanation.
William shook his head, and paced up and down the
room looking extremely perturbed.
“This is what I’ve been foretelling,” he burst out. “Once
set the ordinary conventions aside—Thank Heaven Mrs.
Hilbery is away. But there’s Mr. Hilbery. How are we to
explain it to him? I shall have to leave you.”
“But Uncle Trevor won’t be back for hours, William!”
Cassandra implored.
“You never can tell. He may be on his way already. Or
suppose Mrs. Milvain—your Aunt Celia—or Mrs. Cosham,
or any other of your aunts or uncles should be shown in
and find us alone together. You know what they’re saying
about us already.”
Cassandra was equally stricken by the sight of William’s
agitation, and appalled by the prospect of his desertion.
“We might hide,” she exclaimed wildly, glancing at the
curtain which separated the room with the relics.
“I refuse entirely to get under the table,” said William
sarcastically.
She saw that he was losing his temper with the difficulties
of the situation. Her instinct told her that an appeal
to his affection, at this moment, would be extremely
ill-judged. She controlled herself, sat down, poured out a
fresh cup of tea, and sipped it quietly. This natural action,
arguing complete self-mastery, and showing her in
one of those feminine attitudes which William found adorable,
did more than any argument to compose his agitation.
It appealed to his chivalry. He accepted a cup. Next
she asked for a slice of cake. By the time the cake was
eaten and the tea drunk the personal question had lapsed,
and they were discussing poetry. Insensibly they turned
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from the question of dramatic poetry in general, to the
particular example which reposed in William’s pocket, and
when the maid came in to clear away the tea-things,
William had asked permission to read a short passage
aloud, “unless it bored her?”
Cassandra bent her head in silence, but she showed a
little of what she felt in her eyes, and thus fortified, William
felt confident that it would take more than Mrs. Milvain
herself to rout him from his position. He read aloud.
Meanwhile Katharine walked rapidly along the street.
If called upon to explain her impulsive action in leaving
the tea-table, she could have traced it to no better cause
than that William had glanced at Cassandra; Cassandra at
William. Yet, because they had glanced, her position was
impossible. If one forgot to pour out a cup of tea they
rushed to the conclusion that she was engaged to Ralph
Denham. She knew that in half an hour or so the door
would open, and Ralph Denham would appear. She could
not sit there and contemplate seeing him with William’s
and Cassandra’s eyes upon them, judging their exact degree
of intimacy, so that they might fix the wedding-day.
She promptly decided that she would meet Ralph out of
doors; she still had time to reach Lincoln’s Inn Fields
before he left his office. She hailed a cab, and bade it
take her to a shop for selling maps which she remembered
in Great Queen Street, since she hardly liked to be
set down at his door. Arrived at the shop, she bought a
large scale map of Norfolk, and thus provided, hurried
into Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and assured herself of the position
of Messrs. Hoper and Grateley’s office. The great gas
chandeliers were alight in the office windows. She conceived
that he sat at an enormous table laden with papers
beneath one of them in the front room with the
three tall windows. Having settled his position there, she
began walking to and fro upon the pavement. Nobody of
his build appeared. She scrutinized each male figure as it
approached and passed her. Each male figure had, nevertheless,
a look of him, due, perhaps, to the professional
dress, the quick step, the keen glance which they cast
upon her as they hastened home after the day’s work.
The square itself, with its immense houses all so fully
occupied and stern of aspect, its atmosphere of industry
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Night and Day
and power, as if even the sparrows and the children were
earning their daily bread, as if the sky itself, with its
gray and scarlet clouds, reflected the serious intention of
the city beneath it, spoke of him. Here was the fit place
for their meeting, she thought; here was the fit place for
her to walk thinking of him. She could not help comparing
it with the domestic streets of Chelsea. With this
comparison in her mind, she extended her range a little,
and turned into the main road. The great torrent of vans
and carts was sweeping down Kingsway; pedestrians were
streaming in two currents along the pavements. She stood
fascinated at the corner. The deep roar filled her ears;
the changing tumult had the inexpressible fascination of
varied life pouring ceaselessly with a purpose which, as
she looked, seemed to her, somehow, the normal purpose
for which life was framed; its complete indifference to
the individuals, whom it swallowed up and rolled onwards,
filled her with at least a temporary exaltation. The blend
of daylight and of lamplight made her an invisible spectator,
just as it gave the people who passed her a semitransparent
quality, and left the faces pale ivory ovals in
which the eyes alone were dark. They tended the enormous
