Night and Day
period, the same feelings living for ever, neither dwindling nor
changing within the ring of a thick stone wall. The imagination of this
loneliness frightened her, and yet to speak—to lose her loneliness, for
it had already become dear to her, was beyond her power.
Her hand went down to the hem of Katharine’s skirt, and, fingering a
line of fur, she bent her head as if to examine it.
“I like this fur,” she said, “I like your clothes. And you mustn’t
think that I’m going to marry Ralph,” she continued, in the same tone,
“because he doesn’t care for me at all. He cares for some one else.”
Her head remained bent, and her hand still rested upon the skirt.
“It’s a shabby old dress,” said Katharine, and the only sign that
Mary’s words had reached her was that she spoke with a little jerk.
“You don’t mind my telling you that?” said Mary, raising herself.
“No, no,” said Katharine; “but you’re mistaken, aren’t you?” She was,
in truth, horribly uncomfortable, dismayed, indeed, disillusioned. She
disliked the turn things had taken quite intensely. The indecency of it
afflicted her. The suffering implied by the tone appalled her. She
looked at Mary furtively, with eyes that were full of apprehension. But
if she had hoped to find that these words had been spoken without
understanding of their meaning, she was at once disappointed. Mary lay
back in her chair, frowning slightly, and looking, Katharine thought,
as if she had lived fifteen years or so in the space of a few minutes.
“There are some things, don’t you think, that one can’t be mistaken
about?” Mary said, quietly and almost coldly. “That is what puzzles me
about this question of being in love. I’ve always prided myself upon
being reasonable,” she added. “I didn’t think I could have felt this—I
mean if the other person didn’t. I was foolish. I let myself pretend.”
Here she paused. “For, you see, Katharine,” she proceeded, rousing
herself and speaking with greater energy, “I AM in love. There’s no
doubt about that.... I’m tremendously in love... with Ralph.” The
little forward shake of her head, which shook a lock of hair, together
with her brighter color, gave her an appearance at once proud and
defiant.
Katharine thought to herself, “That’s how it feels then.” She
hesitated, with a feeling that it was not for her to speak; and then
said, in a low tone, “You’ve got that.”
“Yes,” said Mary; “I’ve got that. One wouldn’t _not_ be in love.... But
I didn’t mean to talk about that; I only wanted you to know. There’s
another thing I want to tell you...” She paused. “I haven’t any
authority from Ralph to say it; but I’m sure of this—he’s in love with
you.”
Katharine looked at her again, as if her first glance must have been
deluded, for, surely, there must be some outward sign that Mary was
talking in an excited, or bewildered, or fantastic manner. No; she
still frowned, as if she sought her way through the clauses of a
difficult argument, but she still looked more like one who reasons than
one who feels.
“That proves that you’re mistaken—utterly mistaken,” said Katharine,
speaking reasonably, too. She had no need to verify the mistake by a
glance at her own recollections, when the fact was so clearly stamped
upon her mind that if Ralph had any feeling towards her it was one of
critical hostility. She did not give the matter another thought, and
Mary, now that she had stated the fact, did not seek to prove it, but
tried to explain to herself, rather than to Katharine, her motives in
making the statement.
She had nerved herself to do what some large and imperious instinct
demanded her doing; she had been swept on the breast of a wave beyond
her reckoning.
“I’ve told you,” she said, “because I want you to help me. I don’t want
to be jealous of you. And I am—I’m fearfully jealous. The only way, I
thought, was to tell you.”
She hesitated, and groped in her endeavor to make her feelings clear to
herself.
“If I tell you, then we can talk; and when I’m jealous, I can tell you.
And if I’m tempted to do something frightfully mean, I can tell you;
you could make me tell you. I find talking so difficult; but loneliness
frightens me. I should shut it up in my mind. Yes, that’s what I’m
afraid of. Going about with something in my mind all my life that never
changes. I find it so difficult to change. When I think a thing’s wrong
I never stop thinking it wrong, and Ralph was quite right, I see, when
he said that there’s no such thing as right and wrong; no such thing, I
mean, as judging people—”
“Ralph Denham said that?” said Katharine, with considerable
indignation. In order to have produced such suffering in Mary, it
seemed to her that he must have behaved with extreme callousness. It
seemed to her that he had discarded the friendship, when it suited his
convenience to do so, with some falsely philosophical theory which made
his conduct all the worse. She was going on to express herself thus,
had not Mary at once interrupted her.
“No, no,” she said; “you don’t understand. If there’s any fault it’s
mine entirely; after all, if one chooses to run risks—”
Her voice faltered into silence. It was borne in upon her how
completely in running her risk she had lost her prize, lost it so
entirely that she had no longer the right, in talking of Ralph, to
presume that her knowledge of him supplanted all other knowledge. She
no longer completely possessed her love, since his share in it was
doubtful; and now, to make things yet more bitter, her clear vision of
the way to face life was rendered tremulous and uncertain, because
another was witness of it. Feeling her desire for the old unshared
intimacy too great to be borne without tears, she rose, walked to the
farther end of the room, held the curtains apart, and stood there
mastered for a moment. The grief itself was not ignoble; the sting of
it lay in the fact that she had been led to this act of treachery
against herself. Trapped, cheated, robbed, first by Ralph and then by
Katharine, she seemed all dissolved in humiliation, and bereft of
anything she could call her own. Tears of weakness welled up and rolled
down her cheeks. But tears, at least, she could control, and would this
instant, and then, turning, she would face Katharine, and retrieve what
could be retrieved of the collapse of her courage.
She turned. Katharine had not moved; she was leaning a little forward
in her chair and looking into the fire. Something in the attitude
reminded Mary of Ralph. So he would sit, leaning forward, looking
rather fixedly in front of him, while his mind went far away,
exploring, speculating, until he broke off with his, “Well, Mary?”—and
the silence, that had been so full of romance to her, gave way to the
most delightful talk that she had ever known.
Something unfamiliar in the pose of the silent figure, something still,
solemn, significant about it, made her hold her breath. She paused. Her
thoughts were without bitterness. She was surprised by her own quiet
and confidence. She came back silently, and sat once more by
Katharine’s side. Mary had no wish to speak. In the silence she seemed
to have lost her isolation; she was at once the sufferer and the
pitiful spectator of suffering; she was happier than she had ever been;
she was more bereft; she was rejected, and she was immensely beloved.
Attempt to express these sensations was vain, and, moreover, she could
not help believing that, without any words on her side, they were
shared. Thus for some time longer they sat silent, side by side, while
Mary fingered the fur on the skirt of the old dress.
CHAPTER XXII
The fact that she would be late in keeping her engagement with William
was not the only reason which sent Katharine almost at racing speed
along the Strand in the direction of his rooms. Punctuality might have
been achieved by taking a cab, had she not wished the open air to fan
into flame the glow kindled by Mary’s words. For among all the
impressions of the evening’s talk one was of the nature of a revelation
and subdued the rest to insignificance. Thus one looked; thus one
spoke; such was love.
“She sat up straight and looked at me, and then she said, ‘I’m in
love,’” Katharine mused, trying to set the whole scene in motion. It
was a scene to dwell on with so much wonder that not a grain of pity
occurred to her; it was a flame blazing suddenly in the dark; by its
light Katharine perceived far too vividly for her comfort the
mediocrity, indeed the entirely fictitious character of her own
feelings so far as they pretended to correspond with Mary’s feelings.
She made up her mind to act instantly upon the knowledge thus gained,
and cast her mind in amazement back to the scene upon the heath, when
she had yielded, heaven knows why, for reasons which seemed now
imperceptible. So in broad daylight one might revisit the place where
one has groped and turned and succumbed to utter bewilderment in a fog.
“It’s all so simple,” she said to herself. “There can’t be any doubt.
I’ve only got to speak now. I’ve only got to speak,” she went on
saying, in time to her own footsteps, and completely forgot Mary
Datchet.
William Rodney, having come back earlier from the office than he
expected, sat down to pick out the melodies in “The Magic Flute” upon
the piano. Katharine was late, but that was nothing new, and, as she
had no particular liking for music, and he felt in the mood for it,
perhaps it was as well. This defect in Katharine was the more strange,
William reflected, because, as a rule, the women of her family were
unusually musical. Her cousin, Cassandra Otway, for example, had a very
fine taste in music, and he had charming recollections of her in a
light fantastic attitude, playing the flute in the morning-room at
Stogdon House. He recalled with pleasure the amusing way in which her
nose, long like all the Otway noses, seemed to extend itself into the
flute, as if she were some inimitably graceful species of musical mole.
The little picture suggested very happily her melodious and whimsical
temperament. The enthusiasms of a young girl of distinguished
upbringing appealed to William, and suggested a thousand ways in which,
with his training and accomplishments, he could be of service to her.
She ought to be given the chance of hearing good music, as it is played
by those who have inherited the great tradition. Moreover, from one or
two remarks let fall in the course of conversation, he thought it
possible that she had what Katharine professed to lack, a passionate,
if untaught, appreciation of literature. He had lent her his play.
Meanwhile, as Katharine was certain to be late, and “The Magic Flute”
is nothing without a voice, he felt inclined to spend the time of
waiting in writing a letter to Cassandra, exhorting her to read Pope in
preference to Dostoevsky, until her feeling for form was more highly
developed. He set himself down to compose this piece of advice in a
shape which was light and playful, and yet did no injury to a cause
which he had near at heart, when he heard Katharine upon the stairs. A
moment later it was plain that he had been mistaken, it was not
Katharine; but he could not settle himself to his letter. His temper
had changed from one of urbane contentment—indeed of delicious
expansion—to one of uneasiness and expectation. The dinner was brought
in, and had to be set by the fire to keep hot. It was now a quarter of
an hour beyond the specified time. He bethought him of a piece of news
which had depressed him in the earlier part of the day. Owing to the
illness of one of his fellow-clerks, it was likely that he would get no
holiday until later in the year, which would mean the postponement of
their marriage. But this possibility, after all, was not so