Night and Day
one room from the other was drawn apart, and Mrs. Hilbery and Augustus
Pelham stood in the doorway. Mrs. Hilbery stopped short. She looked at
her daughter, and at the man her daughter was to marry, with her
peculiar smile that always seemed to tremble on the brink of satire.
“The best of all my treasures, Mr. Pelham!” she exclaimed. “Don’t move,
Katharine. Sit still, William. Mr. Pelham will come another day.”
Mr. Pelham looked, smiled, bowed, and, as his hostess had moved on,
followed her without a word. The curtain was drawn again either by him
or by Mrs. Hilbery.
But her mother had settled the question somehow. Katharine doubted no
longer.
“As I told you last night,” she said, “I think it’s your duty, if
there’s a chance that you care for Cassandra, to discover what your
feeling is for her now. It’s your duty to her, as well as to me. But we
must tell my mother. We can’t go on pretending.”
“That is entirely in your hands, of course,” said Rodney, with an
immediate return to the manner of a formal man of honor.
“Very well,” said Katharine.
Directly he left her she would go to her mother, and explain that the
engagement was at an end—or it might be better that they should go
together?
“But, Katharine,” Rodney began, nervously attempting to stuff
Cassandra’s sheets back into their envelope; “if Cassandra—should
Cassandra—you’ve asked Cassandra to stay with you.”
“Yes; but I’ve not posted the letter.”
He crossed his knees in a discomfited silence. By all his codes it was
impossible to ask a woman with whom he had just broken off his
engagement to help him to become acquainted with another woman with a
view to his falling in love with her. If it was announced that their
engagement was over, a long and complete separation would inevitably
follow; in those circumstances, letters and gifts were returned; after
years of distance the severed couple met, perhaps at an evening party,
and touched hands uncomfortably with an indifferent word or two. He
would be cast off completely; he would have to trust to his own
resources. He could never mention Cassandra to Katharine again; for
months, and doubtless years, he would never see Katharine again;
anything might happen to her in his absence.
Katharine was almost as well aware of his perplexities as he was. She
knew in what direction complete generosity pointed the way; but
pride—for to remain engaged to Rodney and to cover his experiments hurt
what was nobler in her than mere vanity—fought for its life.
“I’m to give up my freedom for an indefinite time,” she thought, “in
order that William may see Cassandra here at his ease. He’s not the
courage to manage it without my help—he’s too much of a coward to tell
me openly what he wants. He hates the notion of a public breach. He
wants to keep us both.”
When she reached this point, Rodney pocketed the letter and elaborately
looked at his watch. Although the action meant that he resigned
Cassandra, for he knew his own incompetence and distrusted himself
entirely, and lost Katharine, for whom his feeling was profound though
unsatisfactory, still it appeared to him that there was nothing else
left for him to do. He was forced to go, leaving Katharine free, as he
had said, to tell her mother that the engagement was at an end. But to
do what plain duty required of an honorable man, cost an effort which
only a day or two ago would have been inconceivable to him. That a
relationship such as he had glanced at with desire could be possible
between him and Katharine, he would have been the first, two days ago,
to deny with indignation. But now his life had changed; his attitude
had changed; his feelings were different; new aims and possibilities
had been shown him, and they had an almost irresistible fascination and
force. The training of a life of thirty-five years had not left him
defenceless; he was still master of his dignity; he rose, with a mind
made up to an irrevocable farewell.
“I leave you, then,” he said, standing up and holding out his hand with
an effort that left him pale, but lent him dignity, “to tell your
mother that our engagement is ended by your desire.”
She took his hand and held it.
“You don’t trust me?” she said.
“I do, absolutely,” he replied.
“No. You don’t trust me to help you.... I could help you?”
“I’m hopeless without your help!” he exclaimed passionately, but
withdrew his hand and turned his back. When he faced her, she thought
that she saw him for the first time without disguise.
“It’s useless to pretend that I don’t understand what you’re offering,
Katharine. I admit what you say. Speaking to you perfectly frankly, I
believe at this moment that I do love your cousin; there is a chance
that, with your help, I might—but no,” he broke off, “it’s impossible,
it’s wrong—I’m infinitely to blame for having allowed this situation to
arise.”
“Sit beside me. Let’s consider sensibly—”
“Your sense has been our undoing—” he groaned.
“I accept the responsibility.”
“Ah, but can I allow that?” he exclaimed. “It would mean—for we must
face it, Katharine—that we let our engagement stand for the time
nominally; in fact, of course, your freedom would be absolute.”
“And yours too.”
“Yes, we should both be free. Let us say that I saw Cassandra once,
twice, perhaps, under these conditions; and then if, as I think
certain, the whole thing proves a dream, we tell your mother instantly.
Why not tell her now, indeed, under pledge of secrecy?”
“Why not? It would be over London in ten minutes, besides, she would
never even remotely understand.”
“Your father, then? This secrecy is detestable—it’s dishonorable.”
“My father would understand even less than my mother.”
“Ah, who could be expected to understand?” Rodney groaned; “but it’s
from your point of view that we must look at it. It’s not only asking
too much, it’s putting you into a position—a position in which I could
not endure to see my own sister.”
“We’re not brothers and sisters,” she said impatiently, “and if we
can’t decide, who can? I’m not talking nonsense,” she proceeded. “I’ve
done my best to think this out from every point of view, and I’ve come
to the conclusion that there are risks which have to be taken,—though I
don’t deny that they hurt horribly.”
“Katharine, you mind? You’ll mind too much.”
“No I shan’t,” she said stoutly. “I shall mind a good deal, but I’m
prepared for that; I shall get through it, because you will help me.
You’ll both help me. In fact, we’ll help each other. That’s a Christian
doctrine, isn’t it?”
“It sounds more like Paganism to me,” Rodney groaned, as he reviewed
the situation into which her Christian doctrine was plunging them.
And yet he could not deny that a divine relief possessed him, and that
the future, instead of wearing a lead-colored mask, now blossomed with
a thousand varied gaieties and excitements. He was actually to see
Cassandra within a week or perhaps less, and he was more anxious to
know the date of her arrival than he could own even to himself. It
seemed base to be so anxious to pluck this fruit of Katharine’s
unexampled generosity and of his own contemptible baseness. And yet,
though he used these words automatically, they had now no meaning. He
was not debased in his own eyes by what he had done, and as for
praising Katharine, were they not partners, conspirators, people bent
upon the same quest together, so that to praise the pursuit of a common
end as an act of generosity was meaningless. He took her hand and
pressed it, not in thanks so much as in an ecstasy of comradeship.
“We will help each other,” he said, repeating her words, seeking her
eyes in an enthusiasm of friendship.
Her eyes were grave but dark with sadness as they rested on him. “He’s
already gone,” she thought, “far away—he thinks of me no more.” And the
fancy came to her that, as they sat side by side, hand in hand, she
could hear the earth pouring from above to make a barrier between them,
so that, as they sat, they were separated second by second by an
impenetrable wall. The process, which affected her as that of being
sealed away and for ever from all companionship with the person she
cared for most, came to an end at last, and by common consent they
unclasped their fingers, Rodney touching hers with his lips, as the
curtain parted, and Mrs. Hilbery peered through the opening with her
benevolent and sarcastic expression to ask whether Katharine could
remember was it Tuesday or Wednesday, and did she dine in Westminster?
“Dearest William,” she said, pausing, as if she could not resist the
pleasure of encroaching for a second upon this wonderful world of love
and confidence and romance. “Dearest children,” she added, disappearing
with an impulsive gesture, as if she forced herself to draw the curtain
upon a scene which she refused all temptation to interrupt.
CHAPTER XXV
At a quarter-past three in the afternoon of the following Saturday
Ralph Denham sat on the bank of the lake in Kew Gardens, dividing the
dial-plate of his watch into sections with his forefinger. The just and
inexorable nature of time itself was reflected in his face. He might
have been composing a hymn to the unhasting and unresting march of that
divinity. He seemed to greet the lapse of minute after minute with
stern acquiescence in the inevitable order. His expression was so
severe, so serene, so immobile, that it seemed obvious that for him at
least there was a grandeur in the departing hour which no petty
irritation on his part was to mar, although the wasting time wasted
also high private hopes of his own.
His face was no bad index to what went on within him. He was in a
condition of mind rather too exalted for the trivialities of daily
life. He could not accept the fact that a lady was fifteen minutes late
in keeping her appointment without seeing in that accident the
frustration of his entire life. Looking at his watch, he seemed to look
deep into the springs of human existence, and by the light of what he
saw there altered his course towards the north and the midnight....
Yes, one’s voyage must be made absolutely without companions through
ice and black water—towards what goal? Here he laid his finger upon the
half-hour, and decided that when the minute-hand reached that point he
would go, at the same time answering the question put by another of the
many voices of consciousness with the reply that there was undoubtedly
a goal, but that it would need the most relentless energy to keep
anywhere in its direction. Still, still, one goes on, the ticking
seconds seemed to assure him, with dignity, with open eyes, with
determination not to accept the second-rate, not to be tempted by the
unworthy, not to yield, not to compromise. Twenty-five minutes past
three were now marked upon the face of the watch. The world, he assured
himself, since Katharine Hilbery was now half an hour behind her time,
offers no happiness, no rest from struggle, no certainty. In a scheme
of things utterly bad from the start the only unpardonable folly is
that of hope. Raising his eyes for a moment from the face of his watch,
he rested them upon the opposite bank, reflectively and not without a
certain wistfulness, as if the sternness of their gaze were still
capable of mitigation. Soon a look of the deepest satisfaction filled
them, though, for a moment, he did not move. He watched a lady who came
rapidly, and yet with a trace of hesitation, down the broad grass-walk
towards him. She did not see him. Distance lent her figure an
indescribable height, and romance seemed to surround her from the
floating of a purple veil which the light air filled and curved from
her shoulders.
“Here she comes, like a ship in full sail,” he said to himself, half