Night and Day
range of qualities which are never found united in one person and
seldom in half a dozen people. Where Katharine was simple, Cassandra
was complex; where Katharine was solid and direct, Cassandra was vague
and evasive. In short, they represented very well the manly and the
womanly sides of the feminine nature, and, for foundation, there was
the profound unity of common blood between them. If Cassandra adored
Katharine she was incapable of adoring any one without refreshing her
spirit with frequent draughts of raillery and criticism, and Katharine
enjoyed her laughter at least as much as her respect.
Respect was certainly uppermost in Cassandra’s mind at the present
moment. Katharine’s engagement had appealed to her imagination as the
first engagement in a circle of contemporaries is apt to appeal to the
imaginations of the others; it was solemn, beautiful, and mysterious;
it gave both parties the important air of those who have been initiated
into some rite which is still concealed from the rest of the group. For
Katharine’s sake Cassandra thought William a most distinguished and
interesting character, and welcomed first his conversation and then his
manuscript as the marks of a friendship which it flattered and
delighted her to inspire.
Katharine was still out when she arrived at Cheyne Walk. After greeting
her uncle and aunt and receiving, as usual, a present of two sovereigns
for “cab fares and dissipation” from Uncle Trevor, whose favorite niece
she was, she changed her dress and wandered into Katharine’s room to
await her. What a great looking-glass Katharine had, she thought, and
how mature all the arrangements upon the dressing-table were compared
to what she was used to at home. Glancing round, she thought that the
bills stuck upon a skewer and stood for ornament upon the mantelpiece
were astonishingly like Katharine, There wasn’t a photograph of William
anywhere to be seen. The room, with its combination of luxury and
bareness, its silk dressing-gowns and crimson slippers, its shabby
carpet and bare walls, had a powerful air of Katharine herself; she
stood in the middle of the room and enjoyed the sensation; and then,
with a desire to finger what her cousin was in the habit of fingering,
Cassandra began to take down the books which stood in a row upon the
shelf above the bed. In most houses this shelf is the ledge upon which
the last relics of religious belief lodge themselves as if, late at
night, in the heart of privacy, people, skeptical by day, find solace
in sipping one draught of the old charm for such sorrows or
perplexities as may steal from their hiding-places in the dark. But
there was no hymn-book here. By their battered covers and enigmatical
contents, Cassandra judged them to be old school-books belonging to
Uncle Trevor, and piously, though eccentrically, preserved by his
daughter. There was no end, she thought, to the unexpectedness of
Katharine. She had once had a passion for geometry herself, and, curled
upon Katharine’s quilt, she became absorbed in trying to remember how
far she had forgotten what she once knew. Katharine, coming in a little
later, found her deep in this characteristic pursuit.
“My dear,” Cassandra exclaimed, shaking the book at her cousin, “my
whole life’s changed from this moment! I must write the man’s name down
at once, or I shall forget—”
Whose name, what book, which life was changed Katharine proceeded to
ascertain. She began to lay aside her clothes hurriedly, for she was
very late.
“May I sit and watch you?” Cassandra asked, shutting up her book. “I
got ready on purpose.”
“Oh, you’re ready, are you?” said Katharine, half turning in the midst
of her operations, and looking at Cassandra, who sat, clasping her
knees, on the edge of the bed.
“There are people dining here,” she said, taking in the effect of
Cassandra from a new point of view. After an interval, the distinction,
the irregular charm, of the small face with its long tapering nose and
its bright oval eyes were very notable. The hair rose up off the
forehead rather stiffly, and, given a more careful treatment by
hairdressers and dressmakers, the light angular figure might possess a
likeness to a French lady of distinction in the eighteenth century.
“Who’s coming to dinner?” Cassandra asked, anticipating further
possibilities of rapture.
“There’s William, and, I believe, Aunt Eleanor and Uncle Aubrey.”
“I’m so glad William is coming. Did he tell you that he sent me his
manuscript? I think it’s wonderful—I think he’s almost good enough for
you, Katharine.”
“You shall sit next to him and tell him what you think of him.”
“I shan’t dare do that,” Cassandra asserted.
“Why? You’re not afraid of him, are you?”
“A little—because he’s connected with you.”
Katharine smiled.
“But then, with your well-known fidelity, considering that you’re
staying here at least a fortnight, you won’t have any illusions left
about me by the time you go. I give you a week, Cassandra. I shall see
my power fading day by day. Now it’s at the climax; but to-morrow it’ll
have begun to fade. What am I to wear, I wonder? Find me a blue dress,
Cassandra, over there in the long wardrobe.”
She spoke disconnectedly, handling brush and comb, and pulling out the
little drawers in her dressing-table and leaving them open. Cassandra,
sitting on the bed behind her, saw the reflection of her cousin’s face
in the looking-glass. The face in the looking-glass was serious and
intent, apparently occupied with other things besides the straightness
of the parting which, however, was being driven as straight as a Roman
road through the dark hair. Cassandra was impressed again by
Katharine’s maturity; and, as she enveloped herself in the blue dress
which filled almost the whole of the long looking-glass with blue light
and made it the frame of a picture, holding not only the slightly
moving effigy of the beautiful woman, but shapes and colors of objects
reflected from the background, Cassandra thought that no sight had ever
been quite so romantic. It was all in keeping with the room and the
house, and the city round them; for her ears had not yet ceased to
notice the hum of distant wheels.
They went downstairs rather late, in spite of Katharine’s extreme speed
in getting ready. To Cassandra’s ears the buzz of voices inside the
drawing-room was like the tuning up of the instruments of the
orchestra. It seemed to her that there were numbers of people in the
room, and that they were strangers, and that they were beautiful and
dressed with the greatest distinction, although they proved to be
mostly her relations, and the distinction of their clothing was
confined, in the eyes of an impartial observer, to the white waistcoat
which Rodney wore. But they all rose simultaneously, which was by
itself impressive, and they all exclaimed, and shook hands, and she was
introduced to Mr. Peyton, and the door sprang open, and dinner was
announced, and they filed off, William Rodney offering her his slightly
bent black arm, as she had secretly hoped he would. In short, had the
scene been looked at only through her eyes, it must have been described
as one of magical brilliancy. The pattern of the soup-plates, the stiff
folds of the napkins, which rose by the side of each plate in the shape
of arum lilies, the long sticks of bread tied with pink ribbon, the
silver dishes and the sea-colored champagne glasses, with the flakes of
gold congealed in their stems—all these details, together with a
curiously pervasive smell of kid gloves, contributed to her
exhilaration, which must be repressed, however, because she was grown
up, and the world held no more for her to marvel at.
The world held no more for her to marvel at, it is true; but it held
other people; and each other person possessed in Cassandra’s mind some
fragment of what privately she called “reality.” It was a gift that
they would impart if you asked them for it, and thus no dinner-party
could possibly be dull, and little Mr. Peyton on her right and William
Rodney on her left were in equal measure endowed with the quality which
seemed to her so unmistakable and so precious that the way people
neglected to demand it was a constant source of surprise to her. She
scarcely knew, indeed, whether she was talking to Mr. Peyton or to
William Rodney. But to one who, by degrees, assumed the shape of an
elderly man with a mustache, she described how she had arrived in
London that very afternoon, and how she had taken a cab and driven
through the streets. Mr. Peyton, an editor of fifty years, bowed his
bald head repeatedly, with apparent understanding. At least, he
understood that she was very young and pretty, and saw that she was
excited, though he could not gather at once from her words or remember
from his own experience what there was to be excited about. “Were there
any buds on the trees?” he asked. “Which line did she travel by?”
He was cut short in these amiable inquiries by her desire to know
whether he was one of those who read, or one of those who look out of
the window? Mr. Peyton was by no means sure which he did. He rather
thought he did both. He was told that he had made a most dangerous
confession. She could deduce his entire history from that one fact. He
challenged her to proceed; and she proclaimed him a Liberal Member of
Parliament.
William, nominally engaged in a desultory conversation with Aunt
Eleanor, heard every word, and taking advantage of the fact that
elderly ladies have little continuity of conversation, at least with
those whom they esteem for their youth and their sex, he asserted his
presence by a very nervous laugh.
Cassandra turned to him directly. She was enchanted to find that,
instantly and with such ease, another of these fascinating beings was
offering untold wealth for her extraction.
“There’s no doubt what _you_ do in a railway carriage, William,” she
said, making use in her pleasure of his first name. “You never _once_
look out of the window; you read _all_ the time.”
“And what facts do you deduce from that?” Mr. Peyton asked.
“Oh, that he’s a poet, of course,” said Cassandra. “But I must confess
that I knew that before, so it isn’t fair. I’ve got your manuscript
with me,” she went on, disregarding Mr. Peyton in a shameless way.
“I’ve got all sorts of things I want to ask you about it.”
William inclined his head and tried to conceal the pleasure that her
remark gave him. But the pleasure was not unalloyed. However
susceptible to flattery William might be, he would never tolerate it
from people who showed a gross or emotional taste in literature, and if
Cassandra erred even slightly from what he considered essential in this
respect he would express his discomfort by flinging out his hands and
wrinkling his forehead; he would find no pleasure in her flattery after
that.
“First of all,” she proceeded, “I want to know why you chose to write a
play?”
“Ah! You mean it’s not dramatic?”
“I mean that I don’t see what it would gain by being acted. But then
does Shakespeare gain? Henry and I are always arguing about
Shakespeare. I’m certain he’s wrong, but I can’t prove it because I’ve
only seen Shakespeare acted once in Lincoln. But I’m quite positive,”
she insisted, “that Shakespeare wrote for the stage.”
“You’re perfectly right,” Rodney exclaimed. “I was hoping you were on
that side. Henry’s wrong—entirely wrong. Of course, I’ve failed, as all
the moderns fail. Dear, dear, I wish I’d consulted you before.”
From this point they proceeded to go over, as far as memory served
them, the different aspects of Rodney’s drama. She said nothing that
jarred upon him, and untrained daring had the power to stimulate
experience to such an extent that Rodney was frequently seen to hold