Night and Day
before deciding to stop an omnibus or encounter light again in an
underground railway. Sandys, who was a barrister with a philosophic
tendency, took out his pipe, lit it, murmured “hum” and “ha,” and was
silent. The couple in front of them kept their distance accurately, and
appeared, so far as Denham could judge by the way they turned towards
each other, to be talking very constantly. He observed that when a
pedestrian going the opposite way forced them to part they came
together again directly afterwards. Without intending to watch them he
never quite lost sight of the yellow scarf twisted round Katharine’s
head, or the light overcoat which made Rodney look fashionable among
the crowd. At the Strand he supposed that they would separate, but
instead they crossed the road, and took their way down one of the
narrow passages which lead through ancient courts to the river. Among
the crowd of people in the big thoroughfares Rodney seemed merely to be
lending Katharine his escort, but now, when passengers were rare and
the footsteps of the couple were distinctly heard in the silence,
Denham could not help picturing to himself some change in their
conversation. The effect of the light and shadow, which seemed to
increase their height, was to make them mysterious and significant, so
that Denham had no feeling of irritation with Katharine, but rather a
half-dreamy acquiescence in the course of the world. Yes, she did very
well to dream about—but Sandys had suddenly begun to talk. He was a
solitary man who had made his friends at college and always addressed
them as if they were still undergraduates arguing in his room, though
many months or even years had passed in some cases between the last
sentence and the present one. The method was a little singular, but
very restful, for it seemed to ignore completely all accidents of human
life, and to span very deep abysses with a few simple words.
On this occasion he began, while they waited for a minute on the edge
of the Strand:
“I hear that Bennett has given up his theory of truth.”
Denham returned a suitable answer, and he proceeded to explain how this
decision had been arrived at, and what changes it involved in the
philosophy which they both accepted. Meanwhile Katharine and Rodney
drew further ahead, and Denham kept, if that is the right expression
for an involuntary action, one filament of his mind upon them, while
with the rest of his intelligence he sought to understand what Sandys
was saying.
As they passed through the courts thus talking, Sandys laid the tip of
his stick upon one of the stones forming a time-worn arch, and struck
it meditatively two or three times in order to illustrate something
very obscure about the complex nature of one’s apprehension of facts.
During the pause which this necessitated, Katharine and Rodney turned
the corner and disappeared. For a moment Denham stopped involuntarily
in his sentence, and continued it with a sense of having lost
something.
Unconscious that they were observed, Katharine and Rodney had come out
on the Embankment. When they had crossed the road, Rodney slapped his
hand upon the stone parapet above the river and exclaimed:
“I promise I won’t say another word about it, Katharine! But do stop a
minute and look at the moon upon the water.”
Katharine paused, looked up and down the river, and snuffed the air.
“I’m sure one can smell the sea, with the wind blowing this way,” she
said.
They stood silent for a few moments while the river shifted in its bed,
and the silver and red lights which were laid upon it were torn by the
current and joined together again. Very far off up the river a steamer
hooted with its hollow voice of unspeakable melancholy, as if from the
heart of lonely mist-shrouded voyagings.
“Ah!” Rodney cried, striking his hand once more upon the balustrade,
“why can’t one say how beautiful it all is? Why am I condemned for
ever, Katharine, to feel what I can’t express? And the things I can
give there’s no use in my giving. Trust me, Katharine,” he added
hastily, “I won’t speak of it again. But in the presence of beauty—look
at the iridescence round the moon!—one feels—one feels—Perhaps if you
married me—I’m half a poet, you see, and I can’t pretend not to feel
what I do feel. If I could write—ah, that would be another matter. I
shouldn’t bother you to marry me then, Katharine.”
He spoke these disconnected sentences rather abruptly, with his eyes
alternately upon the moon and upon the stream.
“But for me I suppose you would recommend marriage?” said Katharine,
with her eyes fixed on the moon.
“Certainly I should. Not for you only, but for all women. Why, you’re
nothing at all without it; you’re only half alive; using only half your
faculties; you must feel that for yourself. That is why—” Here he
stopped himself, and they began to walk slowly along the Embankment,
the moon fronting them.
“With how sad steps she climbs the sky,
How silently and with how wan a face,”
Rodney quoted.
“I’ve been told a great many unpleasant things about myself to-night,”
Katharine stated, without attending to him. “Mr. Denham seems to think
it his mission to lecture me, though I hardly know him. By the way,
William, you know him; tell me, what is he like?”
William drew a deep sigh.
“We may lecture you till we’re blue in the face—”
“Yes—but what’s he like?”
“And we write sonnets to your eyebrows, you cruel practical creature.
Denham?” he added, as Katharine remained silent. “A good fellow, I
should think. He cares, naturally, for the right sort of things, I
expect. But you mustn’t marry him, though. He scolded you, did he—what
did he say?”
“What happens with Mr. Denham is this: He comes to tea. I do all I can
to put him at his ease. He merely sits and scowls at me. Then I show
him our manuscripts. At this he becomes really angry, and tells me I’ve
no business to call myself a middle-class woman. So we part in a huff;
and next time we meet, which was to-night, he walks straight up to me,
and says, ‘Go to the Devil!’ That’s the sort of behavior my mother
complains of. I want to know, what does it mean?”
She paused and, slackening her steps, looked at the lighted train
drawing itself smoothly over Hungerford Bridge.
“It means, I should say, that he finds you chilly and unsympathetic.”
Katharine laughed with round, separate notes of genuine amusement.
“It’s time I jumped into a cab and hid myself in my own house,” she
exclaimed.
“Would your mother object to my being seen with you? No one could
possibly recognize us, could they?” Rodney inquired, with some
solicitude.
Katharine looked at him, and perceiving that his solicitude was
genuine, she laughed again, but with an ironical note in her laughter.
“You may laugh, Katharine, but I can tell you that if any of your
friends saw us together at this time of night they would talk about it,
and I should find that very disagreeable. But why do you laugh?”
“I don’t know. Because you’re such a queer mixture, I think. You’re
half poet and half old maid.”
“I know I always seem to you highly ridiculous. But I can’t help having
inherited certain traditions and trying to put them into practice.”
“Nonsense, William. You may come of the oldest family in Devonshire,
but that’s no reason why you should mind being seen alone with me on
the Embankment.”
“I’m ten years older than you are, Katharine, and I know more of the
world than you do.”
“Very well. Leave me and go home.”
Rodney looked back over his shoulder and perceived that they were being
followed at a short distance by a taxicab, which evidently awaited his
summons. Katharine saw it, too, and exclaimed:
“Don’t call that cab for me, William. I shall walk.”
“Nonsense, Katharine; you’ll do nothing of the kind. It’s nearly twelve
o’clock, and we’ve walked too far as it is.”
Katharine laughed and walked on so quickly that both Rodney and the
taxicab had to increase their pace to keep up with her.
“Now, William,” she said, “if people see me racing along the Embankment
like this they _will_ talk. You had far better say good-night, if you
don’t want people to talk.”
At this William beckoned, with a despotic gesture, to the cab with one
hand, and with the other he brought Katharine to a standstill.
“Don’t let the man see us struggling, for God’s sake!” he murmured.
Katharine stood for a moment quite still.
“There’s more of the old maid in you than the poet,” she observed
briefly.
William shut the door sharply, gave the address to the driver, and
turned away, lifting his hat punctiliously high in farewell to the
invisible lady.
He looked back after the cab twice, suspiciously, half expecting that
she would stop it and dismount; but it bore her swiftly on, and was
soon out of sight. William felt in the mood for a short soliloquy of
indignation, for Katharine had contrived to exasperate him in more ways
than one.
“Of all the unreasonable, inconsiderate creatures I’ve ever known,
she’s the worst!” he exclaimed to himself, striding back along the
Embankment. “Heaven forbid that I should ever make a fool of myself
with her again. Why, I’d sooner marry the daughter of my landlady than
Katharine Hilbery! She’d leave me not a moment’s peace—and she’d never
understand me—never, never, never!”
Uttered aloud and with vehemence so that the stars of Heaven might
hear, for there was no human being at hand, these sentiments sounded
satisfactorily irrefutable. Rodney quieted down, and walked on in
silence, until he perceived some one approaching him, who had
something, either in his walk or his dress, which proclaimed that he
was one of William’s acquaintances before it was possible to tell which
of them he was. It was Denham who, having parted from Sandys at the
bottom of his staircase, was now walking to the Tube at Charing Cross,
deep in the thoughts which his talk with Sandys had suggested. He had
forgotten the meeting at Mary Datchet’s rooms, he had forgotten Rodney,
and metaphors and Elizabethan drama, and could have sworn that he had
forgotten Katharine Hilbery, too, although that was more disputable.
His mind was scaling the highest pinnacles of its alps, where there was
only starlight and the untrodden snow. He cast strange eyes upon
Rodney, as they encountered each other beneath a lamp-post.
“Ha!” Rodney exclaimed.
If he had been in full possession of his mind, Denham would probably
have passed on with a salutation. But the shock of the interruption
made him stand still, and before he knew what he was doing, he had
turned and was walking with Rodney in obedience to Rodney’s invitation
to come to his rooms and have something to drink. Denham had no wish to
drink with Rodney, but he followed him passively enough. Rodney was
gratified by this obedience. He felt inclined to be communicative with
this silent man, who possessed so obviously all the good masculine
qualities in which Katharine now seemed lamentably deficient.
“You do well, Denham,” he began impulsively, “to have nothing to do
with young women. I offer you my experience—if one trusts them one
invariably has cause to repent. Not that I have any reason at this
moment,” he added hastily, “to complain of them. It’s a subject that
crops up now and again for no particular reason. Miss Datchet, I dare
say, is one of the exceptions. Do you like Miss Datchet?”
These remarks indicated clearly enough that Rodney’s nerves were in a
state of irritation, and Denham speedily woke to the situation of the
world as it had been one hour ago. He had last seen Rodney walking with
Katharine. He could not help regretting the eagerness with which his
mind returned to these interests, and fretted him with the old trivial
anxieties. He sank in his own esteem. Reason bade him break from