Night and Day
disagreeable as the probability which forced itself upon him with every
tick of the clock that Katharine had completely forgotten her
engagement. Such things had happened less frequently since Christmas,
but what if they were going to begin to happen again? What if their
marriage should turn out, as she had said, a farce? He acquitted her of
any wish to hurt him wantonly, but there was something in her character
which made it impossible for her to help hurting people. Was she cold?
Was she self-absorbed? He tried to fit her with each of these
descriptions, but he had to own that she puzzled him.
“There are so many things that she doesn’t understand,” he reflected,
glancing at the letter to Cassandra which he had begun and laid aside.
What prevented him from finishing the letter which he had so much
enjoyed beginning? The reason was that Katharine might, at any moment,
enter the room. The thought, implying his bondage to her, irritated him
acutely. It occurred to him that he would leave the letter lying open
for her to see, and he would take the opportunity of telling her that
he had sent his play to Cassandra for her to criticize. Possibly, but
not by any means certainly, this would annoy her—and as he reached the
doubtful comfort of this conclusion, there was a knock on the door and
Katharine came in. They kissed each other coldly and she made no
apology for being late. Nevertheless, her mere presence moved him
strangely; but he was determined that this should not weaken his
resolution to make some kind of stand against her; to get at the truth
about her. He let her make her own disposition of clothes and busied
himself with the plates.
“I’ve got a piece of news for you, Katharine,” he said directly they
sat down to table; “I shan’t get my holiday in April. We shall have to
put off our marriage.”
He rapped the words out with a certain degree of briskness. Katharine
started a little, as if the announcement disturbed her thoughts.
“That won’t make any difference, will it? I mean the lease isn’t
signed,” she replied. “But why? What has happened?”
He told her, in an off-hand way, how one of his fellow-clerks had
broken down, and might have to be away for months, six months even, in
which case they would have to think over their position. He said it in
a way which struck her, at last, as oddly casual. She looked at him.
There was no outward sign that he was annoyed with her. Was she well
dressed? She thought sufficiently so. Perhaps she was late? She looked
for a clock.
“It’s a good thing we didn’t take the house then,” she repeated
thoughtfully.
“It’ll mean, too, I’m afraid, that I shan’t be as free for a
considerable time as I have been,” he continued. She had time to
reflect that she gained something by all this, though it was too soon
to determine what. But the light which had been burning with such
intensity as she came along was suddenly overclouded, as much by his
manner as by his news. She had been prepared to meet opposition, which
is simple to encounter compared with—she did not know what it was that
she had to encounter. The meal passed in quiet, well-controlled talk
about indifferent things. Music was not a subject about which she knew
anything, but she liked him to tell her things; and could, she mused,
as he talked, fancy the evenings of married life spent thus, over the
fire; spent thus, or with a book, perhaps, for then she would have time
to read her books, and to grasp firmly with every muscle of her unused
mind what she longed to know. The atmosphere was very free. Suddenly
William broke off. She looked up apprehensively, brushing aside these
thoughts with annoyance.
“Where should I address a letter to Cassandra?” he asked her. It was
obvious again that William had some meaning or other to-night, or was
in some mood. “We’ve struck up a friendship,” he added.
“She’s at home, I think,” Katharine replied.
“They keep her too much at home,” said William. “Why don’t you ask her
to stay with you, and let her hear a little good music? I’ll just
finish what I was saying, if you don’t mind, because I’m particularly
anxious that she should hear to-morrow.”
Katharine sank back in her chair, and Rodney took the paper on his
knees, and went on with his sentence. “Style, you know, is what we tend
to neglect—“; but he was far more conscious of Katharine’s eye upon him
than of what he was saying about style. He knew that she was looking at
him, but whether with irritation or indifference he could not guess.
In truth, she had fallen sufficiently into his trap to feel
uncomfortably roused and disturbed and unable to proceed on the lines
laid down for herself. This indifferent, if not hostile, attitude on
William’s part made it impossible to break off without animosity,
largely and completely. Infinitely preferable was Mary’s state, she
thought, where there was a simple thing to do and one did it. In fact,
she could not help supposing that some littleness of nature had a part
in all the refinements, reserves, and subtleties of feeling for which
her friends and family were so distinguished. For example, although she
liked Cassandra well enough, her fantastic method of life struck her as
purely frivolous; now it was socialism, now it was silkworms, now it
was music—which last she supposed was the cause of William’s sudden
interest in her. Never before had William wasted the minutes of her
presence in writing his letters. With a curious sense of light opening
where all, hitherto, had been opaque, it dawned upon her that, after
all, possibly, yes, probably, nay, certainly, the devotion which she
had almost wearily taken for granted existed in a much slighter degree
than she had suspected, or existed no longer. She looked at him
attentively as if this discovery of hers must show traces in his face.
Never had she seen so much to respect in his appearance, so much that
attracted her by its sensitiveness and intelligence, although she saw
these qualities as if they were those one responds to, dumbly, in the
face of a stranger. The head bent over the paper, thoughtful as usual,
had now a composure which seemed somehow to place it at a distance,
like a face seen talking to some one else behind glass.
He wrote on, without raising his eyes. She would have spoken, but could
not bring herself to ask him for signs of affection which she had no
right to claim. The conviction that he was thus strange to her filled
her with despondency, and illustrated quite beyond doubt the infinite
loneliness of human beings. She had never felt the truth of this so
strongly before. She looked away into the fire; it seemed to her that
even physically they were now scarcely within speaking distance; and
spiritually there was certainly no human being with whom she could
claim comradeship; no dream that satisfied her as she was used to be
satisfied; nothing remained in whose reality she could believe, save
those abstract ideas—figures, laws, stars, facts, which she could
hardly hold to for lack of knowledge and a kind of shame.
When Rodney owned to himself the folly of this prolonged silence, and
the meanness of such devices, and looked up ready to seek some excuse
for a good laugh, or opening for a confession, he was disconcerted by
what he saw. Katharine seemed equally oblivious of what was bad or of
what was good in him. Her expression suggested concentration upon
something entirely remote from her surroundings. The carelessness of
her attitude seemed to him rather masculine than feminine. His impulse
to break up the constraint was chilled, and once more the exasperating
sense of his own impotency returned to him. He could not help
contrasting Katharine with his vision of the engaging, whimsical
Cassandra; Katharine undemonstrative, inconsiderate, silent, and yet so
notable that he could never do without her good opinion.
She veered round upon him a moment later, as if, when her train of
thought was ended, she became aware of his presence.
“Have you finished your letter?” she asked. He thought he heard faint
amusement in her tone, but not a trace of jealousy.
“No, I’m not going to write any more to-night,” he said. “I’m not in
the mood for it for some reason. I can’t say what I want to say.”
“Cassandra won’t know if it’s well written or badly written,” Katharine
remarked.
“I’m not so sure about that. I should say she has a good deal of
literary feeling.”
“Perhaps,” said Katharine indifferently. “You’ve been neglecting my
education lately, by the way. I wish you’d read something. Let me
choose a book.” So speaking, she went across to his bookshelves and
began looking in a desultory way among his books. Anything, she
thought, was better than bickering or the strange silence which drove
home to her the distance between them. As she pulled one book forward
and then another she thought ironically of her own certainty not an
hour ago; how it had vanished in a moment, how she was merely marking
time as best she could, not knowing in the least where they stood, what
they felt, or whether William loved her or not. More and more the
condition of Mary’s mind seemed to her wonderful and enviable—if,
indeed, it could be quite as she figured it—if, indeed, simplicity
existed for any one of the daughters of women.
“Swift,” she said, at last, taking out a volume at haphazard to settle
this question at least. “Let us have some Swift.”
Rodney took the book, held it in front of him, inserted one finger
between the pages, but said nothing. His face wore a queer expression
of deliberation, as if he were weighing one thing with another, and
would not say anything until his mind were made up.
Katharine, taking her chair beside him, noted his silence and looked at
him with sudden apprehension. What she hoped or feared, she could not
have said; a most irrational and indefensible desire for some assurance
of his affection was, perhaps, uppermost in her mind. Peevishness,
complaints, exacting cross-examination she was used to, but this
attitude of composed quiet, which seemed to come from the consciousness
of power within, puzzled her. She did not know what was going to happen
next.
At last William spoke.
“I think it’s a little odd, don’t you?” he said, in a voice of detached
reflection. “Most people, I mean, would be seriously upset if their
marriage was put off for six months or so. But we aren’t; now how do
you account for that?”
She looked at him and observed his judicial attitude as of one holding
far aloof from emotion.
“I attribute it,” he went on, without waiting for her to answer, “to
the fact that neither of us is in the least romantic about the other.
That may be partly, no doubt, because we’ve known each other so long;
but I’m inclined to think there’s more in it than that. There’s
something temperamental. I think you’re a trifle cold, and I suspect
I’m a trifle self-absorbed. If that were so it goes a long way to
explaining our odd lack of illusion about each other. I’m not saying
that the most satisfactory marriages aren’t founded upon this sort of
understanding. But certainly it struck me as odd this morning, when
Wilson told me, how little upset I felt. By the way, you’re sure we
haven’t committed ourselves to that house?”
“I’ve kept the letters, and I’ll go through them to-morrow; but I’m
certain we’re on the safe side.”
“Thanks. As to the psychological problem,” he continued, as if the
question interested him in a detached way, “there’s no doubt, I think,
that either of us is capable of feeling what, for reasons of
simplicity, I call romance for a third person—at least, I’ve little
doubt in my own case.”
It was, perhaps, the first time in all her knowledge of him that
Katharine had known William enter thus deliberately and without sign of