rush of the current—the great flow, the deep stream,
the unquenchable tide. She stood unobserved and absorbed,
glorying openly in the rapture that had run
subterraneously all day. Suddenly she was clutched, unwilling,
from the outside, by the recollection of her purpose
in coming there. She had come to find Ralph Denham.
She hastily turned back into Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and
looked for her landmark—the light in the three tall windows.
She sought in vain. The faces of the houses had
now merged in the general darkness, and she had difficulty
in determining which she sought. Ralph’s three windows
gave back on their ghostly glass panels only a reflection
of the gray and greenish sky. She rang the bell,
peremptorily, under the painted name of the firm. After
some delay she was answered by a caretaker, whose pail
and brush of themselves told her that the working day
was over and the workers gone. Nobody, save perhaps Mr.
Grateley himself, was left, she assured Katharine; every
one else had been gone these ten minutes.
The news woke Katharine completely. Anxiety gained
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upon her. She hastened back into Kingsway, looking at
people who had miraculously regained their solidity. She
ran as far as the Tube station, overhauling clerk after
clerk, solicitor after solicitor. Not one of them even faintly
resembled Ralph Denham. More and more plainly did she
see him; and more and more did he seem to her unlike
any one else. At the door of the station she paused, and
tried to collect her thoughts. He had gone to her house.
By taking a cab she could be there probably in advance
of him. But she pictured herself opening the drawing-
room door, and William and Cassandra looking up, and
Ralph’s entrance a moment later, and the glances—the
insinuations. No; she could not face it. She would write
him a letter and take it at once to his house. She bought
paper and pencil at the bookstall, and entered an A.B.C.
shop, where, by ordering a cup of coffee, she secured an
empty table, and began at vice to write:
“I came to meet you and I have missed you. I could not
face William and Cassandra. They want us—” here she
paused. “They insist that we are engaged,” she substituted,
“and we couldn’t talk at all, or explain anything. I
want—” Her wants were so vast, now that she was in
communication with Ralph, that the pencil was utterly
inadequate to conduct them on to the paper; it seemed
as if the whole torrent of Kingsway had to run down her
pencil. She gazed intently at a notice hanging on the
gold-encrusted wall opposite. “… to say all kinds of
things,” she added, writing each word with the painstaking
of a child. But, when she raised her eyes again to
meditate the next sentence, she was aware of a waitress,
whose expression intimated that it was closing time, and,
looking round, Katharine saw herself almost the last person
left in the shop. She took up her letter, paid her bill,
and found herself once more in the street. She would
now take a cab to Highgate. But at that moment it flashed
upon her that she could not remember the address. This
check seemed to let fall a barrier across a very powerful
current of desire. She ransacked her memory in desperation,
hunting for the name, first by remembering the look
of the house, and then by trying, in memory, to retrace
the words she had written once, at least, upon an envelope.
The more she pressed the farther the words receded.
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Night and Day
Was the house an Orchard Something, on the street a
Hill? She gave it up. Never, since she was a child, had she
felt anything like this blankness and desolation. There
rushed in upon her, as if she were waking from some
dream, all the consequences of her inexplicable indolence.
She figured Ralph’s face as he turned from her door without
a word of explanation, receiving his dismissal as a
blow from herself, a callous intimation that she did not
wish to see him. She followed his departure from her
door; but it was far more easy to see him marching far
and fast in any direction for any length of time than to
conceive that he would turn back to Highgate. Perhaps
he would try once more to see her in Cheyne Walk? It was
proof of the clearness with which she saw him, that she
started forward as this possibility occurred to her, and
almost raised her hand to beckon to a cab. No; he was
too proud to come again; he rejected the desire and walked
on and on, on and on—If only she could read the names
of those visionary streets down which he passed! But her
imagination betrayed her at this point, or mocked her
with a sense of their strangeness, darkness, and distance.
Indeed, instead of helping herself to any decision, she
only filled her mind with the vast extent of London and
the impossibility of finding any single figure that wandered
off this way and that way, turned to the right and
to the left, chose that dingy little back street where the
children were playing in the road, and so—She roused
herself impatiently. She walked rapidly along Holborn.
Soon she turned and walked as rapidly in the other direction.
This indecision was not merely odious, but had something
that alarmed her about it, as she had been alarmed
slightly once or twice already that day; she felt unable to
cope with the strength of her own desires. To a person
controlled by habit, there was humiliation as well as alarm
in this sudden release of what appeared to be a very
powerful as well as an unreasonable force. An aching in
the muscles of her right hand now showed her that she
was crushing her gloves and the map of Norfolk in a grip
sufficient to crack a more solid object. She relaxed her
grasp; she looked anxiously at the faces of the passersby
to see whether their eyes rested on her for a moment
longer than was natural, or with any curiosity. But hav
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ing smoothed out her gloves, and done what she could to
look as usual, she forgot spectators, and was once more
given up to her desperate desire to find Ralph Denham.
It was a desire now—wild, irrational, unexplained, resembling
something felt in childhood. Once more she
blamed herself bitterly for her carelessness. But finding
herself opposite the Tube station, she pulled herself up
and took counsel swiftly, as of old. It flashed upon her
that she would go at once to Mary Datchet, and ask her
to give her Ralph’s address. The decision was a relief, not
only in giving her a goal, but in providing her with a
rational excuse for her own actions. It gave her a goal
certainly, but the fact of having a goal led her to dwell
exclusively upon her obsession; so that when she rang
the bell of Mary’s flat, she did not for a moment consider
how this demand would strike Mary. To her extreme annoyance
Mary was not at home; a charwoman opened the
door. All Katharine could do was to accept the invitation
to wait. She waited for, perhaps, fifteen minutes, and
spent them in pacing from one end of the room to the
other without intermission. When she heard Mary’s key in
the door she paused in front of the fireplace, and Mary
found her standing upright, looking at once expectant
and determined, like a person who has come on an errand
of such importance that it must be broached without
preface.
Mary exclaimed in surprise.
“Yes, yes,” Katharine said, brushing these remarks aside,
as if they were in the way.
“Have you had tea?”
“Oh yes,” she said, thinking that she had had tea hundreds
of years ago, somewhere or other.
Mary paused, took off her gloves, and, finding matches,
proceeded to light the fire.
Katharine checked her with an impatient movement,
and said:
“Don’t light the fire for me… . I want to know Ralph
Denham’s address.”
She was holding a pencil and preparing to write on the
envelope. She waited with an imperious expression.
“The Apple Orchard, Mount Ararat Road, Highgate,” Mary
said, speaking slowly and rather strangely.
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Night and Day
“Oh, I remember now!” Katharine exclaimed, with irritation
at her own stupidity. “I suppose it wouldn’t take
twenty minutes to drive there?” She gathered up her purse
and gloves and seemed about to go.
“But you won’t find him,” said Mary, pausing with a
match in her hand. Katharine, who had already turned
towards the door, stopped and looked at her.
“Why? Where is he?” she asked.
“He won’t have left his office.”
“But he has left the office,” she replied. “The only question
is will he have reached home yet? He went to see me
at Chelsea; I tried to meet him and missed him. He will
have found no message to explain. So I must find him—
as soon as possible.”
Mary took in the situation at her leisure.
“But why not telephone?” she said.
Katharine immediately dropped all that she was holding;
her strained expression relaxed, and exclaiming, “Of course!
Why didn’t I think of that!” she seized the telephone receiver
and gave her number. Mary looked at her steadily,
and then left the room. At length Katharine heard, through
all the superimposed weight of London, the mysterious
sound of feet in her own house mounting to the little
room, where she could almost see the pictures and the
books; she listened with extreme intentness to the preparatory
vibrations, and then established her identity.
“Has Mr. Denham called?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Did he ask for me?”
“Yes. We said you were out, miss.”
“Did he leave any message?”
“No. He went away. About twenty minutes ago, miss.”
Katharine hung up the receiver. She walked the length
of the room in such acute disappointment that she did
not at first perceive Mary’s absence. Then she called in a
harsh and peremptory tone:
“Mary.”
Mary was taking off her outdoor things in the bedroom.
She heard Katharine call her. “Yes,” she said, “I shan’t be
a moment.” But the moment prolonged itself, as if for
some reason Mary found satisfaction in making herself
not only tidy, but seemly and ornamented. A stage in her
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life had been accomplished in the last months which left
its traces for ever upon her bearing. Youth, and the bloom
of youth, had receded, leaving the purpose of her face to
show itself in the hollower cheeks, the firmer lips, the
eyes no longer spontaneously observing at random, but
narrowed upon an end which was not near at hand. This
woman was now a serviceable human being, mistress of
her own destiny, and thus, by some combination of ideas,
fit to be adorned with the dignity of silver chains and
glowing brooches. She came in at her leisure and asked:
“Well, did you get an answer?”
“He has left Chelsea already,” Katharine replied.
“Still, he won’t be home yet,” said Mary.
Katharine was once more irresistibly drawn to gaze upon
an imaginary map of London, to follow the twists and
turns of unnamed streets.
“I’ll ring up his home and ask whether he’s back.” Mary
crossed to the telephone and, after a series of brief remarks,
announced:
“No. His sister says he hasn’t come back yet.”
“Ah!” She applied her ear to the telephone once more.
“They’ve had a message. He won’t be back to dinner.”
“Then what is he going to do?”
Very pale, and with her large eyes fixed not so much
upon Mary as upon vistas of unresponding blankness,
Katharine addressed herself also not so much to Mary as
to the unrelenting spirit which now appeared to mock
her from every quarter of her survey.
After waiting a little time Mary remarked indifferently:
“I really don’t know.” Slackly lying back in her armchair,
she watched the little flames beginning to creep
among the coals indifferently, as if they, too, were very
distant and indifferent.
Katharine looked at her indignantly and rose.
“Possibly he may come here,” Mary continued, without
altering the abstract tone of her voice. “It would be worth
your while to wait if you want to see him to-night.” She
bent forward and touched the wood, so that the flames
slipped in between the interstices of the coal.
Katharine reflected. “I’ll wait half an hour,” she said.
Mary rose, went to the table, spread out her papers
under the green-shaded lamp and, with an action that
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Night and Day
was becoming a habit, twisted a lock of hair round and
round in her fingers. Once she looked unperceived at her
visitor, who never moved, who sat so still, with eyes so
intent, that you could almost fancy that she was watching
something, some face that never looked up at her.
Mary found herself unable to go on writing. She turned
her eyes away, but only to be aware of the presence of
what Katharine looked at. There were ghosts in the room,
and one, strangely and sadly, was the ghost of herself.
The minutes went by.
“What would be the time now?” said Katharine at last.
The half-hour was not quite spent.
“I’m going to get dinner ready,” said Mary, rising from
her table.
“Then I’ll go,” said Katharine.
“Why don’t you stay? Where are you going?”
Katharine looked round the room, conveying her uncertainty
in her glance.
“Perhaps I might find him,” she mused.
“But why should it matter? You’ll see him another day.”
Mary spoke, and intended to speak, cruelly enough.
“I was wrong to come here,” Katharine replied.
Their eyes met with antagonism, and neither flinched.
“You had a perfect right to come here,” Mary answered.
A loud knocking at the door interrupted them. Mary
went to open it, and returning with some note or parcel,
Katharine looked away so that Mary might not read her
disappointment.
“Of course you had a right to come,” Mary repeated,
laying the note upon the table.
“No,” said Katharine. “Except that when one’s desperate
