Night and Day
asked. “Shall I tell him that? If so, what reason shall I give him?”
“Of course you can’t tell him that,” said Mary, controlling herself.
“I believe I shall, though,” said Katharine suddenly.
“I lost my temper, Katharine; I shouldn’t have said what I did.”
“The whole thing’s foolish,” said Katharine, peremptorily. “That’s what
I say. It’s not worth it.” She spoke with unnecessary vehemence, but it
was not directed against Mary Datchet. Their animosity had completely
disappeared, and upon both of them a cloud of difficulty and darkness
rested, obscuring the future, in which they had both to find a way.
“No, no, it’s not worth it,” Katharine repeated. “Suppose, as you say,
it’s out of the question—this friendship; he falls in love with me. I
don’t want that. Still,” she added, “I believe you exaggerate; love’s
not everything; marriage itself is only one of the things—” They had
reached the main thoroughfare, and stood looking at the omnibuses and
passers-by, who seemed, for the moment, to illustrate what Katharine
had said of the diversity of human interests. For both of them it had
become one of those moments of extreme detachment, when it seems
unnecessary ever again to shoulder the burden of happiness and
self-assertive existence. Their neighbors were welcome to their
possessions.
“I don’t lay down any rules,” said Mary, recovering herself first, as
they turned after a long pause of this description. “All I say is that
you should know what you’re about—for certain; but,” she added, “I
expect you do.”
At the same time she was profoundly perplexed, not only by what she
knew of the arrangements for Katharine’s marriage, but by the
impression which she had of her, there on her arm, dark and
inscrutable.
They walked back again and reached the steps which led up to Mary’s
flat. Here they stopped and paused for a moment, saying nothing.
“You must go in,” said Katharine, rousing herself. “He’s waiting all
this time to go on with his reading.” She glanced up at the lighted
window near the top of the house, and they both looked at it and waited
for a moment. A flight of semicircular steps ran up to the hall, and
Mary slowly mounted the first two or three, and paused, looking down
upon Katharine.
“I think you underrate the value of that emotion,” she said slowly, and
a little awkwardly. She climbed another step and looked down once more
upon the figure that was only partly lit up, standing in the street
with a colorless face turned upwards. As Mary hesitated, a cab came by
and Katharine turned and stopped it, saying as she opened the door:
“Remember, I want to belong to your society—remember,” she added,
having to raise her voice a little, and shutting the door upon the rest
of her words.
Mary mounted the stairs step by step, as if she had to lift her body up
an extremely steep ascent. She had had to wrench herself forcibly away
from Katharine, and every step vanquished her desire. She held on
grimly, encouraging herself as though she were actually making some
great physical effort in climbing a height. She was conscious that Mr.
Basnett, sitting at the top of the stairs with his documents, offered
her solid footing if she were capable of reaching it. The knowledge
gave her a faint sense of exaltation.
Mr. Basnett raised his eyes as she opened the door.
“I’ll go on where I left off,” he said. “Stop me if you want anything
explained.”
He had been re-reading the document, and making pencil notes in the
margin while he waited, and he went on again as if there had been no
interruption. Mary sat down among the flat cushions, lit another
cigarette, and listened with a frown upon her face.
Katharine leant back in the corner of the cab that carried her to
Chelsea, conscious of fatigue, and conscious, too, of the sober and
satisfactory nature of such industry as she had just witnessed. The
thought of it composed and calmed her. When she reached home she let
herself in as quietly as she could, in the hope that the household was
already gone to bed. But her excursion had occupied less time than she
thought, and she heard sounds of unmistakable liveliness upstairs. A
door opened, and she drew herself into a ground-floor room in case the
sound meant that Mr. Peyton were taking his leave. From where she stood
she could see the stairs, though she was herself invisible. Some one
was coming down the stairs, and now she saw that it was William Rodney.
He looked a little strange, as if he were walking in his sleep; his
lips moved as if he were acting some part to himself. He came down very
slowly, step by step, with one hand upon the banisters to guide
himself. She thought he looked as if he were in some mood of high
exaltation, which it made her uncomfortable to witness any longer
unseen. She stepped into the hall. He gave a great start upon seeing
her and stopped.
“Katharine!” he exclaimed. “You’ve been out?” he asked.
“Yes.... Are they still up?”
He did not answer, and walked into the ground-floor room through the
door which stood open.
“It’s been more wonderful than I can tell you,” he said, “I’m
incredibly happy—”
He was scarcely addressing her, and she said nothing. For a moment they
stood at opposite sides of a table saying nothing. Then he asked her
quickly, “But tell me, how did it seem to you? What did you think,
Katharine? Is there a chance that she likes me? Tell me, Katharine!”
Before she could answer a door opened on the landing above and
disturbed them. It disturbed William excessively. He started back,
walked rapidly into the hall, and said in a loud and ostentatiously
ordinary tone:
“Good night, Katharine. Go to bed now. I shall see you soon. I hope I
shall be able to come to-morrow.”
Next moment he was gone. She went upstairs and found Cassandra on the
landing. She held two or three books in her hand, and she was stooping
to look at others in a little bookcase. She said that she could never
tell which book she wanted to read in bed, poetry, biography, or
metaphysics.
“What do you read in bed, Katharine?” she asked, as they walked
upstairs side by side.
“Sometimes one thing—sometimes another,” said Katharine vaguely.
Cassandra looked at her.
“D’you know, you’re extraordinarily queer,” she said. “Every one seems
to me a little queer. Perhaps it’s the effect of London.”
“Is William queer, too?” Katharine asked.
“Well, I think he is a little,” Cassandra replied. “Queer, but very
fascinating. I shall read Milton to-night. It’s been one of the
happiest nights of my life, Katharine,” she added, looking with shy
devotion at her cousin’s beautiful face.
CHAPTER XXVII
London, in the first days of spring, has buds that open and flowers
that suddenly shake their petals—white, purple, or crimson—in
competition with the display in the garden beds, although these city
flowers are merely so many doors flung wide in Bond Street and the
neighborhood, inviting you to look at a picture, or hear a symphony, or
merely crowd and crush yourself among all sorts of vocal, excitable,
brightly colored human beings. But, all the same, it is no mean rival
to the quieter process of vegetable florescence. Whether or not there
is a generous motive at the root, a desire to share and impart, or
whether the animation is purely that of insensate fervor and friction,
the effect, while it lasts, certainly encourages those who are young,
and those who are ignorant, to think the world one great bazaar, with
banners fluttering and divans heaped with spoils from every quarter of
the globe for their delight.
As Cassandra Otway went about London provided with shillings that
opened turnstiles, or more often with large white cards that
disregarded turnstiles, the city seemed to her the most lavish and
hospitable of hosts. After visiting the National Gallery, or Hertford
House, or hearing Brahms or Beethoven at the Bechstein Hall, she would
come back to find a new person awaiting her, in whose soul were
imbedded some grains of the invaluable substance which she still called
reality, and still believed that she could find. The Hilberys, as the
saying is, “knew every one,” and that arrogant claim was certainly
upheld by the number of houses which, within a certain area, lit their
lamps at night, opened their doors after 3 p. m., and admitted the
Hilberys to their dining-rooms, say, once a month. An indefinable
freedom and authority of manner, shared by most of the people who lived
in these houses, seemed to indicate that whether it was a question of
art, music, or government, they were well within the gates, and could
smile indulgently at the vast mass of humanity which is forced to wait
and struggle, and pay for entrance with common coin at the door. The
gates opened instantly to admit Cassandra. She was naturally critical
of what went on inside, and inclined to quote what Henry would have
said; but she often succeeded in contradicting Henry, in his absence,
and invariably paid her partner at dinner, or the kind old lady who
remembered her grandmother, the compliment of believing that there was
meaning in what they said. For the sake of the light in her eager eyes,
much crudity of expression and some untidiness of person were forgiven
her. It was generally felt that, given a year or two of experience,
introduced to good dressmakers, and preserved from bad influences, she
would be an acquisition. Those elderly ladies, who sit on the edge of
ballrooms sampling the stuff of humanity between finger and thumb and
breathing so evenly that the necklaces, which rise and fall upon their
breasts, seem to represent some elemental force, such as the waves upon
the ocean of humanity, concluded, a little smilingly, that she would
do. They meant that she would in all probability marry some young man
whose mother they respected.
William Rodney was fertile in suggestions. He knew of little galleries,
and select concerts, and private performances, and somehow made time to
meet Katharine and Cassandra, and to give them tea or dinner or supper
in his rooms afterwards. Each one of her fourteen days thus promised to
bear some bright illumination in its sober text. But Sunday approached.
The day is usually dedicated to Nature. The weather was almost kindly
enough for an expedition. But Cassandra rejected Hampton Court,
Greenwich, Richmond, and Kew in favor of the Zoological Gardens. She
had once trifled with the psychology of animals, and still knew
something about inherited characteristics. On Sunday afternoon,
therefore, Katharine, Cassandra, and William Rodney drove off to the
Zoo. As their cab approached the entrance, Katharine bent forward and
waved her hand to a young man who was walking rapidly in the same
direction.
“There’s Ralph Denham!” she exclaimed. “I told him to meet us here,”
she added. She had even come provided with a ticket for him. William’s
objection that he would not be admitted was, therefore, silenced
directly. But the way in which the two men greeted each other was
significant of what was going to happen. As soon as they had admired
the little birds in the large cage William and Cassandra lagged behind,
and Ralph and Katharine pressed on rather in advance. It was an
arrangement in which William took his part, and one that suited his
convenience, but he was annoyed all the same. He thought that Katharine
should have told him that she had invited Denham to meet them.
“One of Katharine’s friends,” he said rather sharply. It was clear that
he was irritated, and Cassandra felt for his annoyance. They were
standing by the pen of some Oriental hog, and she was prodding the
brute gently with the point of her umbrella, when a thousand little
observations seemed, in some way, to collect in one center. The center