one has a sort of right. I am desperate. How do I
know what’s happening to him now? He may do anything.
He may wander about the streets all night. Anything may
happen to him.”
She spoke with a self-abandonment that Mary had never
seen in her.
“You know you exaggerate; you’re talking nonsense,”
she said roughly.
“Mary, I must talk—I must tell you—”
“You needn’t tell me anything,” Mary interrupted her.
“Can’t I see for myself?”
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“No, no,” Katharine exclaimed. “It’s not that—”
Her look, passing beyond Mary, beyond the verge of the
room and out beyond any words that came her way, wildly
and passionately, convinced Mary that she, at any rate,
could not follow such a glance to its end. She was baffled;
she tried to think herself back again into the height of
her love for Ralph. Pressing her fingers upon her eyelids,
she murmured:
“You forget that I loved him too. I thought I knew him.
I did know him.”
And yet, what had she known? She could not remember
it any more. She pressed her eyeballs until they struck
stars and suns into her darkness. She convinced herself
that she was stirring among ashes. She desisted. She was
astonished at her discovery. She did not love Ralph any
more. She looked back dazed into the room, and her eyes
rested upon the table with its lamp-lit papers. The steady
radiance seemed for a second to have its counterpart
within her; she shut her eyes; she opened them and looked
at the lamp again; another love burnt in the place of the
old one, or so, in a momentary glance of amazement, she
guessed before the revelation was over and the old surroundings
asserted themselves. She leant in silence against
the mantelpiece.
“There are different ways of loving,” she murmured, half
to herself, at length.
Katharine made no reply and seemed unaware of her
words. She seemed absorbed in her own thoughts.
“Perhaps he’s waiting in the street again to-night,” she
exclaimed. “I’ll go now. I might find him.”
“It’s far more likely that he’ll come here,” said Mary,
and Katharine, after considering for a moment, said:
“I’ll wait another half-hour.”
She sank down into her chair again, and took up the
same position which Mary had compared to the position
of one watching an unseeing face. She watched, indeed,
not a face, but a procession, not of people, but of life
itself: the good and bad; the meaning; the past, the
present, and the future. All this seemed apparent to her,
and she was not ashamed of her extravagance so much as
exalted to one of the pinnacles of existence, where it
behoved the world to do her homage. No one but she
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herself knew what it meant to miss Ralph Denham on
that particular night; into this inadequate event crowded
feelings that the great crises of life might have failed to
call forth. She had missed him, and knew the bitterness
of all failure; she desired him, and knew the torment of
all passion. It did not matter what trivial accidents led to
this culmination. Nor did she care how extravagant she
appeared, nor how openly she showed her feelings.
When the dinner was ready Mary told her to come, and
she came submissively, as if she let Mary direct her movements
for her. They ate and drank together almost in
silence, and when Mary told her to eat more, she ate
more; when she was told to drink wine, she drank it.
Nevertheless, beneath this superficial obedience, Mary
knew that she was following her own thoughts unhindered.
She was not inattentive so much as remote; she
looked at once so unseeing and so intent upon some
vision of her own that Mary gradually felt more than protective—
she became actually alarmed at the prospect of
some collision between Katharine and the forces of the
outside world. Directly they had done, Katharine an
nounced her intention of going.
“But where are you going to?” Mary asked, desiring
vaguely to hinder her.
“Oh, I’m going home—no, to Highgate perhaps.”
Mary saw that it would be useless to try to stop her. All
she could do was to insist upon coming too, but she met
with no opposition; Katharine seemed indifferent to her
presence. In a few minutes they were walking along the
Strand. They walked so rapidly that Mary was deluded
into the belief that Katharine knew where she was going.
She herself was not attentive. She was glad of the movement
along lamp-lit streets in the open air. She was fingering,
painfully and with fear, yet with strange hope,
too, the discovery which she had stumbled upon unexpectedly
that night. She was free once more at the cost
of a gift, the best, perhaps, that she could offer, but she
was, thank Heaven, in love no longer. She was tempted
to spend the first instalment of her freedom in some dissipation;
in the pit of the Coliseum, for example, since
they were now passing the door. Why not go in and celebrate
her independence of the tyranny of love? Or, per
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haps, the top of an omnibus bound for some remote place
such as Camberwell, or Sidcup, or the Welsh Harp would
suit her better. She noticed these names painted on little
boards for the first time for weeks. Or should she return
to her room, and spend the night working out the details
of a very enlightened and ingenious scheme? Of all possibilities
this appealed to her most, and brought to mind
the fire, the lamplight, the steady glow which had seemed
lit in the place where a more passionate flame had once
burnt.
Now Katharine stopped, and Mary woke to the fact that
instead of having a goal she had evidently none. She
paused at the edge of the crossing, and looked this way
and that, and finally made as if in the direction of
Haverstock Hill.
“Look here—where are you going?” Mary cried, catching
her by the hand. “We must take that cab and go home.”
She hailed a cab and insisted that Katharine should get in,
while she directed the driver to take them to Cheyne Walk.
Katharine submitted. “Very well,” she said. “We may as
well go there as anywhere else.”
A gloom seemed to have fallen on her. She lay back in
her corner, silent and apparently exhausted. Mary, in spite
of her own preoccupation, was struck by her pallor and
her attitude of dejection.
“I’m sure we shall find him,” she said more gently than
she had yet spoken.
“It may be too late,” Katharine replied. Without understanding
her, Mary began to pity her for what she was
suffering.
“Nonsense,” she said, taking her hand and rubbing it.
“If we don’t find him there we shall find him somewhere
else.”
“But suppose he’s walking about the streets—for hours
and hours?”
She leant forward and looked out of the window.
“He may refuse ever to speak to me again,” she said in
a low voice, almost to herself.
The exaggeration was so immense that Mary did not
attempt to cope with it, save by keeping hold of
Katharine’s wrist. She half expected that Katharine might
open the door suddenly and jump out. Perhaps Katharine
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perceived the purpose with which her hand was held.
“Don’t be frightened,” she said, with a little laugh. “I’m
not going to jump out of the cab. It wouldn’t do much
good after all.”
Upon this, Mary ostentatiously withdrew her hand.
“I ought to have apologized,” Katharine continued, with
an effort, “for bringing you into all this business; I haven’t
told you half, either. I’m no longer engaged to William
Rodney. He is to marry Cassandra Otway. It’s all arranged—
all perfectly right… . And after he’d waited in the streets
for hours and hours, William made me bring him in. He
was standing under the lamp-post watching our windows.
He was perfectly white when he came into the room.
William left us alone, and we sat and talked. It seems
ages and ages ago, now. Was it last night? Have I been
out long? What’s the time?” She sprang forward to catch
sight of a clock, as if the exact time had some important
bearing on her case.
“Only half-past eight!” she exclaimed. “Then he may be
there still.” She leant out of the window and told the
cabman to drive faster.
“But if he’s not there, what shall I do? Where could I
find him? The streets are so crowded.”
“We shall find him,” Mary repeated.
Mary had no doubt but that somehow or other they would
find him. But suppose they did find him? She began to
think of Ralph with a sort of strangeness, in her effort to
understand how he could be capable of satisfying this extraordinary
desire. Once more she thought herself back to
her old view of him and could, with an effort, recall the
haze which surrounded his figure, and the sense of confused,
heightened exhilaration which lay all about his neighborhood,
so that for months at a time she had never exactly
heard his voice or seen his face—or so it now seemed
to her. The pain of her loss shot through her. Nothing
would ever make up—not success, or happiness, or oblivion.
But this pang was immediately followed by the assurance
that now, at any rate, she knew the truth; and Katharine,
she thought, stealing a look at her, did not know the truth;
yes, Katharine was immensely to be pitied.
The cab, which had been caught in the traffic, was now
liberated and sped on down Sloane Street. Mary was con
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scious of the tension with which Katharine marked its
progress, as if her mind were fixed upon a point in front
of them, and marked, second by second, their approach
to it. She said nothing, and in silence Mary began to fix
her mind, in sympathy at first, and later in forgetfulness
of her companion, upon a point in front of them. She
imagined a point distant as a low star upon the horizon
of the dark. There for her too, for them both, was the
goal for which they were striving, and the end for the
ardors of their spirits was the same: but where it was, or
what it was, or why she felt convinced that they were
united in search of it, as they drove swiftly down the
streets of London side by side, she could not have said.
“At last,” Katharine breathed, as the cab drew up at the
door. She jumped out and scanned the pavement on either
side. Mary, meanwhile, rang the bell. The door opened
as Katharine assured herself that no one of the people
within view had any likeness to Ralph. On seeing her, the
maid said at once:
“Mr. Denham called again, miss. He has been waiting
for you for some time.”
Katharine vanished from Mary’s sight. The door shut
between them, and Mary walked slowly and thoughtfully
up the street alone.
Katharine turned at once to the dining-room. But with
her fingers upon the handle, she held back. Perhaps she
realized that this was a moment which would never come
again. Perhaps, for a second, it seemed to her that no
reality could equal the imagination she had formed. Perhaps
she was restrained by some vague fear or anticipation,
which made her dread any exchange or interruption.
But if these doubts and fears or this supreme bliss
restrained her, it was only for a moment. In another second
she had turned the handle and, biting her lip to
control herself, she opened the door upon Ralph Denham.
An extraordinary clearness of sight seemed to possess
her on beholding him. So little, so single, so separate
from all else he appeared, who had been the cause of
these extreme agitations and aspirations. She could have
laughed in his face. But, gaining upon this clearness of
sight against her will, and to her dislike, was a flood of
confusion, of relief, of certainty, of humility, of desire no
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longer to strive and to discriminate, yielding to which,
she let herself sink within his arms and confessed her
love.
CHAPTER XXXII
Nobody asked Katharine any questions next day. If cross-
examined she might have said that nobody spoke to her.
She worked a little, wrote a little, ordered the dinner, and
sat, for longer than she knew, with her head on her hand
piercing whatever lay before her, whether it was a letter
or a dictionary, as if it were a film upon the deep prospects
that revealed themselves to her kindling and brooding
eyes. She rose once, and going to the bookcase, took
out her father’s Greek dictionary and spread the sacred
pages of symbols and figures before her. She smoothed
the sheets with a mixture of affectionate amusement and
hope. Would other eyes look on them with her one day?
The thought, long intolerable, was now just bearable.
She was quite unaware of the anxiety with which her
movements were watched and her expression scanned.
Cassandra was careful not to be caught looking at her,
and their conversation was so prosaic that were it not for
certain jolts and jerks between the sentences, as if the
mind were kept with difficulty to the rails, Mrs. Milvain
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herself could have detected nothing of a suspicious nature
in what she overheard.
William, when he came in late that afternoon and found
Cassandra alone, had a very serious piece of news to impart.
He had just passed Katharine in the street and she
had failed to recognize him.
“That doesn’t matter with me, of course, but suppose it
happened with somebody else? What would they think?
They would suspect something merely from her expression.
She looked—she looked”—he hesitated—”like some
one walking in her sleep.”
To Cassandra the significant thing was that Katharine
had gone out without telling her, and she interpreted
this to mean that she had gone out to meet Ralph Denham.
But to her surprise William drew no comfort from this
probability.
“Once throw conventions aside,” he began, “once do
the things that people don’t do—” and the fact that you
