Night and Day
remembering some line from a play or poem where the heroine bore down
thus with feathers flying and airs saluting her. The greenery and the
high presences of the trees surrounded her as if they stood forth at
her coming. He rose, and she saw him; her little exclamation proved
that she was glad to find him, and then that she blamed herself for
being late.
“Why did you never tell me? I didn’t know there was this,” she
remarked, alluding to the lake, the broad green space, the vista of
trees, with the ruffled gold of the Thames in the distance and the
Ducal castle standing in its meadows. She paid the rigid tail of the
Ducal lion the tribute of incredulous laughter.
“You’ve never been to Kew?” Denham remarked.
But it appeared that she had come once as a small child, when the
geography of the place was entirely different, and the fauna included
certainly flamingoes and, possibly, camels. They strolled on,
refashioning these legendary gardens. She was, as he felt, glad merely
to stroll and loiter and let her fancy touch upon anything her eyes
encountered—a bush, a park-keeper, a decorated goose—as if the
relaxation soothed her. The warmth of the afternoon, the first of
spring, tempted them to sit upon a seat in a glade of beech-trees, with
forest drives striking green paths this way and that around them. She
sighed deeply.
“It’s so peaceful,” she said, as if in explanation of her sigh. Not a
single person was in sight, and the stir of the wind in the branches,
that sound so seldom heard by Londoners, seemed to her as if wafted
from fathomless oceans of sweet air in the distance.
While she breathed and looked, Denham was engaged in uncovering with
the point of his stick a group of green spikes half smothered by the
dead leaves. He did this with the peculiar touch of the botanist. In
naming the little green plant to her he used the Latin name, thus
disguising some flower familiar even to Chelsea, and making her
exclaim, half in amusement, at his knowledge. Her own ignorance was
vast, she confessed. What did one call that tree opposite, for
instance, supposing one condescended to call it by its English name?
Beech or elm or sycamore? It chanced, by the testimony of a dead leaf,
to be oak; and a little attention to a diagram which Denham proceeded
to draw upon an envelope soon put Katharine in possession of some of
the fundamental distinctions between our British trees. She then asked
him to inform her about flowers. To her they were variously shaped and
colored petals, poised, at different seasons of the year, upon very
similar green stalks; but to him they were, in the first instance,
bulbs or seeds, and later, living things endowed with sex, and pores,
and susceptibilities which adapted themselves by all manner of
ingenious devices to live and beget life, and could be fashioned squat
or tapering, flame-colored or pale, pure or spotted, by processes which
might reveal the secrets of human existence. Denham spoke with
increasing ardor of a hobby which had long been his in secret. No
discourse could have worn a more welcome sound in Katharine’s ears. For
weeks she had heard nothing that made such pleasant music in her mind.
It wakened echoes in all those remote fastnesses of her being where
loneliness had brooded so long undisturbed.
She wished he would go on for ever talking of plants, and showing her
how science felt not quite blindly for the law that ruled their endless
variations. A law that might be inscrutable but was certainly
omnipotent appealed to her at the moment, because she could find
nothing like it in possession of human lives. Circumstances had long
forced her, as they force most women in the flower of youth, to
consider, painfully and minutely, all that part of life which is
conspicuously without order; she had had to consider moods and wishes,
degrees of liking or disliking, and their effect upon the destiny of
people dear to her; she had been forced to deny herself any
contemplation of that other part of life where thought constructs a
destiny which is independent of human beings. As Denham spoke, she
followed his words and considered their bearing with an easy vigor
which spoke of a capacity long hoarded and unspent. The very trees and
the green merging into the blue distance became symbols of the vast
external world which recks so little of the happiness, of the marriages
or deaths of individuals. In order to give her examples of what he was
saying, Denham led the way, first to the Rock Garden, and then to the
Orchid House.
For him there was safety in the direction which the talk had taken. His
emphasis might come from feelings more personal than those science
roused in him, but it was disguised, and naturally he found it easy to
expound and explain. Nevertheless, when he saw Katharine among the
orchids, her beauty strangely emphasized by the fantastic plants, which
seemed to peer and gape at her from striped hoods and fleshy throats,
his ardor for botany waned, and a more complex feeling replaced it. She
fell silent. The orchids seemed to suggest absorbing reflections. In
defiance of the rules she stretched her ungloved hand and touched one.
The sight of the rubies upon her finger affected him so disagreeably
that he started and turned away. But next moment he controlled himself;
he looked at her taking in one strange shape after another with the
contemplative, considering gaze of a person who sees not exactly what
is before him, but gropes in regions that lie beyond it. The far-away
look entirely lacked self-consciousness. Denham doubted whether she
remembered his presence. He could recall himself, of course, by a word
or a movement—but why? She was happier thus. She needed nothing that he
could give her. And for him, too, perhaps, it was best to keep aloof,
only to know that she existed, to preserve what he already had—perfect,
remote, and unbroken. Further, her still look, standing among the
orchids in that hot atmosphere, strangely illustrated some scene that
he had imagined in his room at home. The sight, mingling with his
recollection, kept him silent when the door was shut and they were
walking on again.
But though she did not speak, Katharine had an uneasy sense that
silence on her part was selfishness. It was selfish of her to continue,
as she wished to do, a discussion of subjects not remotely connected
with any human beings. She roused herself to consider their exact
position upon the turbulent map of the emotions. Oh yes—it was a
question whether Ralph Denham should live in the country and write a
book; it was getting late; they must waste no more time; Cassandra
arrived to-night for dinner; she flinched and roused herself, and
discovered that she ought to be holding something in her hands. But
they were empty. She held them out with an exclamation.
“I’ve left my bag somewhere—where?” The gardens had no points of the
compass, so far as she was concerned. She had been walking for the most
part on grass—that was all she knew. Even the road to the Orchid House
had now split itself into three. But there was no bag in the Orchid
House. It must, therefore, have been left upon the seat. They retraced
their steps in the preoccupied manner of people who have to think about
something that is lost. What did this bag look like? What did it
contain?
“A purse—a ticket—some letters, papers,” Katharine counted, becoming
more agitated as she recalled the list. Denham went on quickly in
advance of her, and she heard him shout that he had found it before she
reached the seat. In order to make sure that all was safe she spread
the contents on her knee. It was a queer collection, Denham thought,
gazing with the deepest interest. Loose gold coins were tangled in a
narrow strip of lace; there were letters which somehow suggested the
extreme of intimacy; there were two or three keys, and lists of
commissions against which crosses were set at intervals. But she did
not seem satisfied until she had made sure of a certain paper so folded
that Denham could not judge what it contained. In her relief and
gratitude she began at once to say that she had been thinking over what
Denham had told her of his plans.
He cut her short. “Don’t let’s discuss that dreary business.”
“But I thought—”
“It’s a dreary business. I ought never to have bothered you—”
“Have you decided, then?”
He made an impatient sound. “It’s not a thing that matters.”
She could only say rather flatly, “Oh!”
“I mean it matters to me, but it matters to no one else. Anyhow,” he
continued, more amiably, “I see no reason why you should be bothered
with other people’s nuisances.”
She supposed that she had let him see too clearly her weariness of this
side of life.
“I’m afraid I’ve been absent-minded,” she began, remembering how often
William had brought this charge against her.
“You have a good deal to make you absent-minded,” he replied.
“Yes,” she replied, flushing. “No,” she contradicted herself. “Nothing
particular, I mean. But I was thinking about plants. I was enjoying
myself. In fact, I’ve seldom enjoyed an afternoon more. But I want to
hear what you’ve settled, if you don’t mind telling me.”
“Oh, it’s all settled,” he replied. “I’m going to this infernal cottage
to write a worthless book.”
“How I envy you,” she replied, with the utmost sincerity.
“Well, cottages are to be had for fifteen shillings a week.”
“Cottages are to be had—yes,” she replied. “The question is—” She
checked herself. “Two rooms are all I should want,” she continued, with
a curious sigh; “one for eating, one for sleeping. Oh, but I should
like another, a large one at the top, and a little garden where one
could grow flowers. A path—so—down to a river, or up to a wood, and the
sea not very far off, so that one could hear the waves at night. Ships
just vanishing on the horizon—” She broke off. “Shall you be near the
sea?”
“My notion of perfect happiness,” he began, not replying to her
question, “is to live as you’ve said.”
“Well, now you can. You will work, I suppose,” she continued; “you’ll
work all the morning and again after tea and perhaps at night. You
won’t have people always coming about you to interrupt.”
“How far can one live alone?” he asked. “Have you tried ever?”
“Once for three weeks,” she replied. “My father and mother were in
Italy, and something happened so that I couldn’t join them. For three
weeks I lived entirely by myself, and the only person I spoke to was a
stranger in a shop where I lunched—a man with a beard. Then I went back
to my room by myself and—well, I did what I liked. It doesn’t make me
out an amiable character, I’m afraid,” she added, “but I can’t endure
living with other people. An occasional man with a beard is
interesting; he’s detached; he lets me go my way, and we know we shall
never meet again. Therefore, we are perfectly sincere—a thing not
possible with one’s friends.”
“Nonsense,” Denham replied abruptly.
“Why ‘nonsense’?” she inquired.
“Because you don’t mean what you say,” he expostulated.
“You’re very positive,” she said, laughing and looking at him. How
arbitrary, hot-tempered, and imperious he was! He had asked her to come
to Kew to advise him; he then told her that he had settled the question
already; he then proceeded to find fault with her. He was the very
opposite of William Rodney, she thought; he was shabby, his clothes
were badly made, he was ill versed in the amenities of life; he was
tongue-tied and awkward to the verge of obliterating his real
character. He was awkwardly silent; he was awkwardly emphatic. And yet
she liked him.
“I don’t mean what I say,” she repeated good-humoredly. “Well—?”
“I doubt whether you make absolute sincerity your standard in life,” he
answered significantly.