Night and Day
emotion upon a statement of his own feelings. He was wont to discourage
such intimate discussions by a little laugh or turn of the
conversation, as much as to say that men, or men of the world, find
such topics a little silly, or in doubtful taste. His obvious wish to
explain something puzzled her, interested her, and neutralized the
wound to her vanity. For some reason, too, she felt more at ease with
him than usual; or her ease was more the ease of equality—she could not
stop to think of that at the moment though. His remarks interested her
too much for the light that they threw upon certain problems of her
own.
“What is this romance?” she mused.
“Ah, that’s the question. I’ve never come across a definition that
satisfied me, though there are some very good ones”—he glanced in the
direction of his books.
“It’s not altogether knowing the other person, perhaps—it’s ignorance,”
she hazarded.
“Some authorities say it’s a question of distance—romance in
literature, that is—”
“Possibly, in the case of art. But in the case of people it may be—”
she hesitated.
“Have you no personal experience of it?” he asked, letting his eyes
rest upon her swiftly for a moment.
“I believe it’s influenced me enormously,” she said, in the tone of one
absorbed by the possibilities of some view just presented to them; “but
in my life there’s so little scope for it,” she added. She reviewed her
daily task, the perpetual demands upon her for good sense,
self-control, and accuracy in a house containing a romantic mother. Ah,
but her romance wasn’t _that_ romance. It was a desire, an echo, a
sound; she could drape it in color, see it in form, hear it in music,
but not in words; no, never in words. She sighed, teased by desires so
incoherent, so incommunicable.
“But isn’t it curious,” William resumed, “that you should neither feel
it for me, nor I for you?”
Katharine agreed that it was curious—very; but even more curious to her
was the fact that she was discussing the question with William. It
revealed possibilities which opened a prospect of a new relationship
altogether. Somehow it seemed to her that he was helping her to
understand what she had never understood; and in her gratitude she was
conscious of a most sisterly desire to help him, too—sisterly, save for
one pang, not quite to be subdued, that for him she was without
romance.
“I think you might be very happy with some one you loved in that way,”
she said.
“You assume that romance survives a closer knowledge of the person one
loves?”
He asked the question formally, to protect himself from the sort of
personality which he dreaded. The whole situation needed the most
careful management lest it should degenerate into some degrading and
disturbing exhibition such as the scene, which he could never think of
without shame, upon the heath among the dead leaves. And yet each
sentence brought him relief. He was coming to understand something or
other about his own desires hitherto undefined by him, the source of
his difficulty with Katharine. The wish to hurt her, which had urged
him to begin, had completely left him, and he felt that it was only
Katharine now who could help him to be sure. He must take his time.
There were so many things that he could not say without the greatest
difficulty—that name, for example, Cassandra. Nor could he move his
eyes from a certain spot, a fiery glen surrounded by high mountains, in
the heart of the coals. He waited in suspense for Katharine to
continue. She had said that he might be very happy with some one he
loved in that way.
“I don’t see why it shouldn’t last with you,” she resumed. “I can
imagine a certain sort of person—” she paused; she was aware that he
was listening with the greatest intentness, and that his formality was
merely the cover for an extreme anxiety of some sort. There was some
person then—some woman—who could it be? Cassandra? Ah, possibly—
“A person,” she added, speaking in the most matter-of-fact tone she
could command, “like Cassandra Otway, for instance. Cassandra is the
most interesting of the Otways—with the exception of Henry. Even so, I
like Cassandra better. She has more than mere cleverness. She is a
character—a person by herself.”
“Those dreadful insects!” burst from William, with a nervous laugh, and
a little spasm went through him as Katharine noticed. It _was_
Cassandra then. Automatically and dully she replied, “You could insist
that she confined herself to—to—something else.... But she cares for
music; I believe she writes poetry; and there can be no doubt that she
has a peculiar charm—”
She ceased, as if defining to herself this peculiar charm. After a
moment’s silence William jerked out:
“I thought her affectionate?”
“Extremely affectionate. She worships Henry. When you think what a
house that is—Uncle Francis always in one mood or another—”
“Dear, dear, dear,” William muttered.
“And you have so much in common.”
“My dear Katharine!” William exclaimed, flinging himself back in his
chair, and uprooting his eyes from the spot in the fire. “I really
don’t know what we’re talking about.... I assure you....”
He was covered with an extreme confusion.
He withdrew the finger that was still thrust between the pages of
Gulliver, opened the book, and ran his eye down the list of chapters,
as though he were about to select the one most suitable for reading
aloud. As Katharine watched him, she was seized with preliminary
symptoms of his own panic. At the same time she was convinced that,
should he find the right page, take out his spectacles, clear his
throat, and open his lips, a chance that would never come again in all
their lives would be lost to them both.
“We’re talking about things that interest us both very much,” she said.
“Shan’t we go on talking, and leave Swift for another time? I don’t
feel in the mood for Swift, and it’s a pity to read any one when that’s
the case—particularly Swift.”
The presence of wise literary speculation, as she calculated, restored
William’s confidence in his security, and he replaced the book in the
bookcase, keeping his back turned to her as he did so, and taking
advantage of this circumstance to summon his thoughts together.
But a second of introspection had the alarming result of showing him
that his mind, when looked at from within, was no longer familiar
ground. He felt, that is to say, what he had never consciously felt
before; he was revealed to himself as other than he was wont to think
him; he was afloat upon a sea of unknown and tumultuous possibilities.
He paced once up and down the room, and then flung himself impetuously
into the chair by Katharine’s side. He had never felt anything like
this before; he put himself entirely into her hands; he cast off all
responsibility. He very nearly exclaimed aloud:
“You’ve stirred up all these odious and violent emotions, and now you
must do the best you can with them.”
Her near presence, however, had a calming and reassuring effect upon
his agitation, and he was conscious only of an implicit trust that,
somehow, he was safe with her, that she would see him through, find out
what it was that he wanted, and procure it for him.
“I wish to do whatever you tell me to do,” he said. “I put myself
entirely in your hands, Katharine.”
“You must try to tell me what you feel,” she said.
“My dear, I feel a thousand things every second. I don’t know, I’m
sure, what I feel. That afternoon on the heath—it was then—then—” He
broke off; he did not tell her what had happened then. “Your ghastly
good sense, as usual, has convinced me—for the moment—but what the
truth is, Heaven only knows!” he exclaimed.
“Isn’t it the truth that you are, or might be, in love with Cassandra?”
she said gently.
William bowed his head. After a moment’s silence he murmured:
“I believe you’re right, Katharine.”
She sighed, involuntarily. She had been hoping all this time, with an
intensity that increased second by second against the current of her
words, that it would not in the end come to this. After a moment of
surprising anguish, she summoned her courage to tell him how she wished
only that she might help him, and had framed the first words of her
speech when a knock, terrific and startling to people in their
overwrought condition, sounded upon the door.
“Katharine, I worship you,” he urged, half in a whisper.
“Yes,” she replied, withdrawing with a little shiver, “but you must
open the door.”
CHAPTER XXIII
When Ralph Denham entered the room and saw Katharine seated with her
back to him, he was conscious of a change in the grade of the
atmosphere such as a traveler meets with sometimes upon the roads,
particularly after sunset, when, without warning, he runs from clammy
chill to a hoard of unspent warmth in which the sweetness of hay and
beanfield is cherished, as if the sun still shone although the moon is
up. He hesitated; he shuddered; he walked elaborately to the window and
laid aside his coat. He balanced his stick most carefully against the
folds of the curtain. Thus occupied with his own sensations and
preparations, he had little time to observe what either of the other
two was feeling. Such symptoms of agitation as he might perceive (and
they had left their tokens in brightness of eye and pallor of cheeks)
seemed to him well befitting the actors in so great a drama as that of
Katharine Hilbery’s daily life. Beauty and passion were the breath of
her being, he thought.
She scarcely noticed his presence, or only as it forced her to adopt a
manner of composure, which she was certainly far from feeling. William,
however, was even more agitated than she was, and her first instalment
of promised help took the form of some commonplace upon the age of the
building or the architect’s name, which gave him an excuse to fumble in
a drawer for certain designs, which he laid upon the table between the
three of them.
Which of the three followed the designs most carefully it would be
difficult to tell, but it is certain that not one of the three found
for the moment anything to say. Years of training in a drawing-room
came at length to Katharine’s help, and she said something suitable, at
the same moment withdrawing her hand from the table because she
perceived that it trembled. William agreed effusively; Denham
corroborated him, speaking in rather high-pitched tones; they thrust
aside the plans, and drew nearer to the fireplace.
“I’d rather live here than anywhere in the whole of London,” said
Denham.
(“And I’ve got nowhere to live”) Katharine thought, as she agreed
aloud.
“You could get rooms here, no doubt, if you wanted to,” Rodney replied.
“But I’m just leaving London for good—I’ve taken that cottage I was
telling you about.” The announcement seemed to convey very little to
either of his hearers.
“Indeed?—that’s sad.... You must give me your address. But you won’t
cut yourself off altogether, surely—”
“You’ll be moving, too, I suppose,” Denham remarked.
William showed such visible signs of floundering that Katharine
collected herself and asked:
“Where is the cottage you’ve taken?”
In answering her, Denham turned and looked at her. As their eyes met,
she realized for the first time that she was talking to Ralph Denham,
and she remembered, without recalling any details, that she had been
speaking of him quite lately, and that she had reason to think ill of
him. What Mary had said she could not remember, but she felt that there
was a mass of knowledge in her mind which she had not had time to
examine—knowledge now lying on the far side of a gulf. But her
agitation flashed the queerest lights upon her past. She must get
through the matter in hand, and then think it out in quiet. She bent