Night and Day
excuses, as that she did not wish to cross the road, or that she was
certain to pass another post-office in a more central position a little
farther on. The longer she held the letter in her hand, however, the
more persistently certain questions pressed upon her, as if from a
collection of voices in the air. These invisible people wished to be
informed whether she was engaged to William Rodney, or was the
engagement broken off? Was it right, they asked, to invite Cassandra
for a visit, and was William Rodney in love with her, or likely to fall
in love? Then the questioners paused for a moment, and resumed as if
another side of the problem had just come to their notice. What did
Ralph Denham mean by what he said to you last night? Do you consider
that he is in love with you? Is it right to consent to a solitary walk
with him, and what advice are you going to give him about his future?
Has William Rodney cause to be jealous of your conduct, and what do you
propose to do about Mary Datchet? What are you going to do? What does
honor require you to do? they repeated.
“Good Heavens!” Katharine exclaimed, after listening to all these
remarks, “I suppose I ought to make up my mind.”
But the debate was a formal skirmishing, a pastime to gain
breathing-space. Like all people brought up in a tradition, Katharine
was able, within ten minutes or so, to reduce any moral difficulty to
its traditional shape and solve it by the traditional answers. The book
of wisdom lay open, if not upon her mother’s knee, upon the knees of
many uncles and aunts. She had only to consult them, and they would at
once turn to the right page and read out an answer exactly suited to
one in her position. The rules which should govern the behavior of an
unmarried woman are written in red ink, graved upon marble, if, by some
freak of nature, it should fall out that the unmarried woman has not
the same writing scored upon her heart. She was ready to believe that
some people are fortunate enough to reject, accept, resign, or lay down
their lives at the bidding of traditional authority; she could envy
them; but in her case the questions became phantoms directly she tried
seriously to find an answer, which proved that the traditional answer
would be of no use to her individually. Yet it had served so many
people, she thought, glancing at the rows of houses on either side of
her, where families, whose incomes must be between a thousand and
fifteen-hundred a year lived, and kept, perhaps, three servants, and
draped their windows with curtains which were always thick and
generally dirty, and must, she thought, since you could only see a
looking-glass gleaming above a sideboard on which a dish of apples was
set, keep the room inside very dark. But she turned her head away,
observing that this was not a method of thinking the matter out.
The only truth which she could discover was the truth of what she
herself felt—a frail beam when compared with the broad illumination
shed by the eyes of all the people who are in agreement to see
together; but having rejected the visionary voices, she had no choice
but to make this her guide through the dark masses which confronted
her. She tried to follow her beam, with an expression upon her face
which would have made any passer-by think her reprehensibly and almost
ridiculously detached from the surrounding scene. One would have felt
alarmed lest this young and striking woman were about to do something
eccentric. But her beauty saved her from the worst fate that can befall
a pedestrian; people looked at her, but they did not laugh. To seek a
true feeling among the chaos of the unfeelings or half-feelings of
life, to recognize it when found, and to accept the consequences of the
discovery, draws lines upon the smoothest brow, while it quickens the
light of the eyes; it is a pursuit which is alternately bewildering,
debasing, and exalting, and, as Katharine speedily found, her
discoveries gave her equal cause for surprise, shame, and intense
anxiety. Much depended, as usual, upon the interpretation of the word
love; which word came up again and again, whether she considered
Rodney, Denham, Mary Datchet, or herself; and in each case it seemed to
stand for something different, and yet for something unmistakable and
something not to be passed by. For the more she looked into the
confusion of lives which, instead of running parallel, had suddenly
intersected each other, the more distinctly she seemed to convince
herself that there was no other light on them than was shed by this
strange illumination, and no other path save the one upon which it
threw its beams. Her blindness in the case of Rodney, her attempt to
match his true feeling with her false feeling, was a failure never to
be sufficiently condemned; indeed, she could only pay it the tribute of
leaving it a black and naked landmark unburied by attempt at oblivion
or excuse.
With this to humiliate there was much to exalt. She thought of three
different scenes; she thought of Mary sitting upright and saying, “I’m
in love—I’m in love”; she thought of Rodney losing his
self-consciousness among the dead leaves, and speaking with the
abandonment of a child; she thought of Denham leaning upon the stone
parapet and talking to the distant sky, so that she thought him mad.
Her mind, passing from Mary to Denham, from William to Cassandra, and
from Denham to herself—if, as she rather doubted, Denham’s state of
mind was connected with herself—seemed to be tracing out the lines of
some symmetrical pattern, some arrangement of life, which invested, if
not herself, at least the others, not only with interest, but with a
kind of tragic beauty. She had a fantastic picture of them upholding
splendid palaces upon their bent backs. They were the lantern-bearers,
whose lights, scattered among the crowd, wove a pattern, dissolving,
joining, meeting again in combination. Half forming such conceptions as
these in her rapid walk along the dreary streets of South Kensington,
she determined that, whatever else might be obscure, she must further
the objects of Mary, Denham, William, and Cassandra. The way was not
apparent. No course of action seemed to her indubitably right. All she
achieved by her thinking was the conviction that, in such a cause, no
risk was too great; and that, far from making any rules for herself or
others, she would let difficulties accumulate unsolved, situations
widen their jaws unsatiated, while she maintained a position of
absolute and fearless independence. So she could best serve the people
who loved.
Read in the light of this exaltation, there was a new meaning in the
words which her mother had penciled upon the card attached to the bunch
of anemones. The door of the house in the Cromwell Road opened; gloomy
vistas of passage and staircase were revealed; such light as there was
seemed to be concentrated upon a silver salver of visiting-cards, whose
black borders suggested that the widow’s friends had all suffered the
same bereavement. The parlor-maid could hardly be expected to fathom
the meaning of the grave tone in which the young lady proffered the
flowers, with Mrs. Hilbery’s love; and the door shut upon the offering.
The sight of a face, the slam of a door, are both rather destructive of
exaltation in the abstract; and, as she walked back to Chelsea,
Katharine had her doubts whether anything would come of her resolves.
If you cannot make sure of people, however, you can hold fairly fast to
figures, and in some way or other her thought about such problems as
she was wont to consider worked in happily with her mood as to her
friends’ lives. She reached home rather late for tea.
On the ancient Dutch chest in the hall she perceived one or two hats,
coats, and walking-sticks, and the sound of voices reached her as she
stood outside the drawing-room door. Her mother gave a little cry as
she came in; a cry which conveyed to Katharine the fact that she was
late, that the teacups and milk-jugs were in a conspiracy of
disobedience, and that she must immediately take her place at the head
of the table and pour out tea for the guests. Augustus Pelham, the
diarist, liked a calm atmosphere in which to tell his stories; he liked
attention; he liked to elicit little facts, little stories, about the
past and the great dead, from such distinguished characters as Mrs.
Hilbery for the nourishment of his diary, for whose sake he frequented
tea-tables and ate yearly an enormous quantity of buttered toast. He,
therefore, welcomed Katharine with relief, and she had merely to shake
hands with Rodney and to greet the American lady who had come to be
shown the relics, before the talk started again on the broad lines of
reminiscence and discussion which were familiar to her.
Yet, even with this thick veil between them, she could not help looking
at Rodney, as if she could detect what had happened to him since they
met. It was in vain. His clothes, even the white slip, the pearl in his
tie, seemed to intercept her quick glance, and to proclaim the futility
of such inquiries of a discreet, urbane gentleman, who balanced his cup
of tea and poised a slice of bread and butter on the edge of the
saucer. He would not meet her eye, but that could be accounted for by
his activity in serving and helping, and the polite alacrity with which
he was answering the questions of the American visitor.
It was certainly a sight to daunt any one coming in with a head full of
theories about love. The voices of the invisible questioners were
reinforced by the scene round the table, and sounded with a tremendous
self-confidence, as if they had behind them the common sense of twenty
generations, together with the immediate approval of Mr. Augustus
Pelham, Mrs. Vermont Bankes, William Rodney, and, possibly, Mrs.
Hilbery herself. Katharine set her teeth, not entirely in the
metaphorical sense, for her hand, obeying the impulse towards definite
action, laid firmly upon the table beside her an envelope which she had
been grasping all this time in complete forgetfulness. The address was
uppermost, and a moment later she saw William’s eye rest upon it as he
rose to fulfil some duty with a plate. His expression instantly
changed. He did what he was on the point of doing, and then looked at
Katharine with a look which revealed enough of his confusion to show
her that he was not entirely represented by his appearance. In a minute
or two he proved himself at a loss with Mrs. Vermont Bankes, and Mrs.
Hilbery, aware of the silence with her usual quickness, suggested that,
perhaps, it was now time that Mrs. Bankes should be shown “our things.”
Katharine accordingly rose, and led the way to the little inner room
with the pictures and the books. Mrs. Bankes and Rodney followed her.
She turned on the lights, and began directly in her low, pleasant
voice: “This table is my grandfather’s writing-table. Most of the later
poems were written at it. And this is his pen—the last pen he ever
used.” She took it in her hand and paused for the right number of
seconds. “Here,” she continued, “is the original manuscript of the ‘Ode
to Winter.’ The early manuscripts are far less corrected than the later
ones, as you will see directly.... Oh, do take it yourself,” she added,
as Mrs. Bankes asked, in an awestruck tone of voice, for that
privilege, and began a preliminary unbuttoning of her white kid gloves.
“You are wonderfully like your grandfather, Miss Hilbery,” the American
lady observed, gazing from Katharine to the portrait, “especially about
the eyes. Come, now, I expect she writes poetry herself, doesn’t she?”
she asked in a jocular tone, turning to William. “Quite one’s ideal of
a poet, is it not, Mr. Rodney? I cannot tell you what a privilege I