Night and Day
scrutiny which suggests that, in looking at her daughter a mother is
really looking at herself. She was not altogether satisfied; but she
purposely made no attempt to break down the reserve which, as a matter
of fact, was a quality she particularly admired and depended upon in
her daughter. But when her mother said that marriage was the most
interesting life, Katharine felt, as she was apt to do suddenly, for no
definite reason, that they understood each other, in spite of differing
in every possible way. Yet the wisdom of the old seems to apply more to
feelings which we have in common with the rest of the human race than
to our feelings as individuals, and Katharine knew that only some one
of her own age could follow her meaning. Both these elderly women
seemed to her to have been content with so little happiness, and at the
moment she had not sufficient force to feel certain that their version
of marriage was the wrong one. In London, certainly, this temperate
attitude toward her own marriage had seemed to her just. Why had she
now changed? Why did it now depress her? It never occurred to her that
her own conduct could be anything of a puzzle to her mother, or that
elder people are as much affected by the young as the young are by
them. And yet it was true that love—passion—whatever one chose to call
it, had played far less part in Mrs. Hilbery’s life than might have
seemed likely, judging from her enthusiastic and imaginative
temperament. She had always been more interested by other things. Lady
Otway, strange though it seemed, guessed more accurately at Katharine’s
state of mind than her mother did.
“Why don’t we all live in the country?” exclaimed Mrs. Hilbery, once
more looking out of the window. “I’m sure one would think such
beautiful things if one lived in the country. No horrid slum houses to
depress one, no trams or motor-cars; and the people all looking so
plump and cheerful. Isn’t there some little cottage near you,
Charlotte, which would do for us, with a spare room, perhaps, in case
we asked a friend down? And we should save so much money that we should
be able to travel—”
“Yes. You would find it very nice for a week or two, no doubt,” said
Lady Otway. “But what hour would you like the carriage this morning?”
she continued, touching the bell.
“Katharine shall decide,” said Mrs. Hilbery, feeling herself unable to
prefer one hour to another. “And I was just going to tell you,
Katharine, how, when I woke this morning, everything seemed so clear in
my head that if I’d had a pencil I believe I could have written quite a
long chapter. When we’re out on our drive I shall find us a house. A
few trees round it, and a little garden, a pond with a Chinese duck, a
study for your father, a study for me, and a sitting room for
Katharine, because then she’ll be a married lady.”
At this Katharine shivered a little, drew up to the fire, and warmed
her hands by spreading them over the topmost peak of the coal. She
wished to bring the talk back to marriage again, in order to hear Aunt
Charlotte’s views, but she did not know how to do this.
“Let me look at your engagement-ring, Aunt Charlotte,” she said,
noticing her own.
She took the cluster of green stones and turned it round and round, but
she did not know what to say next.
“That poor old ring was a sad disappointment to me when I first had
it,” Lady Otway mused. “I’d set my heart on a diamond ring, but I never
liked to tell Frank, naturally. He bought it at Simla.”
Katharine turned the ring round once more, and gave it back to her aunt
without speaking. And while she turned it round her lips set themselves
firmly together, and it seemed to her that she could satisfy William as
these women had satisfied their husbands; she could pretend to like
emeralds when she preferred diamonds. Having replaced her ring, Lady
Otway remarked that it was chilly, though not more so than one must
expect at this time of year. Indeed, one ought to be thankful to see
the sun at all, and she advised them both to dress warmly for their
drive. Her aunt’s stock of commonplaces, Katharine sometimes suspected,
had been laid in on purpose to fill silences with, and had little to do
with her private thoughts. But at this moment they seemed terribly in
keeping with her own conclusions, so that she took up her knitting
again and listened, chiefly with a view to confirming herself in the
belief that to be engaged to marry some one with whom you are not in
love is an inevitable step in a world where the existence of passion is
only a traveller’s story brought from the heart of deep forests and
told so rarely that wise people doubt whether the story can be true.
She did her best to listen to her mother asking for news of John, and
to her aunt replying with the authentic history of Hilda’s engagement
to an officer in the Indian Army, but she cast her mind alternately
towards forest paths and starry blossoms, and towards pages of neatly
written mathematical signs. When her mind took this turn her marriage
seemed no more than an archway through which it was necessary to pass
in order to have her desire. At such times the current of her nature
ran in its deep narrow channel with great force and with an alarming
lack of consideration for the feelings of others. Just as the two elder
ladies had finished their survey of the family prospects, and Lady
Otway was nervously anticipating some general statement as to life and
death from her sister-in-law, Cassandra burst into the room with the
news that the carriage was at the door.
“Why didn’t Andrews tell me himself?” said Lady Otway, peevishly,
blaming her servants for not living up to her ideals.
When Mrs. Hilbery and Katharine arrived in the hall, ready dressed for
their drive, they found that the usual discussion was going forward as
to the plans of the rest of the family. In token of this, a great many
doors were opening and shutting, two or three people stood irresolutely
on the stairs, now going a few steps up, and now a few steps down, and
Sir Francis himself had come out from his study, with the “Times” under
his arm, and a complaint about noise and draughts from the open door
which, at least, had the effect of bundling the people who did not want
to go into the carriage, and sending those who did not want to stay
back to their rooms. It was decided that Mrs. Hilbery, Katharine,
Rodney, and Henry should drive to Lincoln, and any one else who wished
to go should follow on bicycles or in the pony-cart. Every one who
stayed at Stogdon House had to make this expedition to Lincoln in
obedience to Lady Otway’s conception of the right way to entertain her
guests, which she had imbibed from reading in fashionable papers of the
behavior of Christmas parties in ducal houses. The carriage horses were
both fat and aged, still they matched; the carriage was shaky and
uncomfortable, but the Otway arms were visible on the panels. Lady
Otway stood on the topmost step, wrapped in a white shawl, and waved
her hand almost mechanically until they had turned the corner under the
laurel-bushes, when she retired indoors with a sense that she had
played her part, and a sigh at the thought that none of her children
felt it necessary to play theirs.
The carriage bowled along smoothly over the gently curving road. Mrs.
Hilbery dropped into a pleasant, inattentive state of mind, in which
she was conscious of the running green lines of the hedges, of the
swelling ploughland, and of the mild blue sky, which served her, after
the first five minutes, for a pastoral background to the drama of human
life; and then she thought of a cottage garden, with the flash of
yellow daffodils against blue water; and what with the arrangement of
these different prospects, and the shaping of two or three lovely
phrases, she did not notice that the young people in the carriage were
almost silent. Henry, indeed, had been included against his wish, and
revenged himself by observing Katharine and Rodney with disillusioned
eyes; while Katharine was in a state of gloomy self-suppression which
resulted in complete apathy. When Rodney spoke to her she either said
“Hum!” or assented so listlessly that he addressed his next remark to
her mother. His deference was agreeable to her, his manners were
exemplary; and when the church towers and factory chimneys of the town
came into sight, she roused herself, and recalled memories of the fair
summer of 1853, which fitted in harmoniously with what she was dreaming
of the future.
CHAPTER XVIII
But other passengers were approaching Lincoln meanwhile by other roads
on foot. A county town draws the inhabitants of all vicarages, farms,
country houses, and wayside cottages, within a radius of ten miles at
least, once or twice a week to its streets; and among them, on this
occasion, were Ralph Denham and Mary Datchet. They despised the roads,
and took their way across the fields; and yet, from their appearance,
it did not seem as if they cared much where they walked so long as the
way did not actually trip them up. When they left the Vicarage, they
had begun an argument which swung their feet along so rhythmically in
time with it that they covered the ground at over four miles an hour,
and saw nothing of the hedgerows, the swelling plowland, or the mild
blue sky. What they saw were the Houses of Parliament and the
Government Offices in Whitehall. They both belonged to the class which
is conscious of having lost its birthright in these great structures
and is seeking to build another kind of lodging for its own notion of
law and government. Purposely, perhaps, Mary did not agree with Ralph;
she loved to feel her mind in conflict with his, and to be certain that
he spared her female judgment no ounce of his male muscularity. He
seemed to argue as fiercely with her as if she were his brother. They
were alike, however, in believing that it behooved them to take in hand
the repair and reconstruction of the fabric of England. They agreed in
thinking that nature has not been generous in the endowment of our
councilors. They agreed, unconsciously, in a mute love for the muddy
field through which they tramped, with eyes narrowed close by the
concentration of their minds. At length they drew breath, let the
argument fly away into the limbo of other good arguments, and, leaning
over a gate, opened their eyes for the first time and looked about
them. Their feet tingled with warm blood and their breath rose in steam
around them. The bodily exercise made them both feel more direct and
less self-conscious than usual, and Mary, indeed, was overcome by a
sort of light-headedness which made it seem to her that it mattered
very little what happened next. It mattered so little, indeed, that she
felt herself on the point of saying to Ralph:
“I love you; I shall never love anybody else. Marry me or leave me;
think what you like of me—I don’t care a straw.” At the moment,
however, speech or silence seemed immaterial, and she merely clapped
her hands together, and looked at the distant woods with the rust-like
bloom on their brown, and the green and blue landscape through the
steam of her own breath. It seemed a mere toss-up whether she said, “I
love you,” or whether she said, “I love the beech-trees,” or only “I
love—I love.”
“Do you know, Mary,” Ralph suddenly interrupted her, “I’ve made up my
mind.”
Her indifference must have been superficial, for it disappeared at
once. Indeed, she lost sight of the trees, and saw her own hand upon
the topmost bar of the gate with extreme distinctness, while he went
on:
“I’ve made up my mind to chuck my work and live down here. I want you
to tell me about that cottage you spoke of. However, I suppose there’ll
be no difficulty about getting a cottage, will there?” He spoke with an