Night and Day
was one of intense and curious emotion. Were they happy? She dismissed
the question as she asked it, scorning herself for applying such simple
measures to the rare and splendid emotions of so unique a couple.
Nevertheless, her manner became immediately different, as if, for the
first time, she felt consciously womanly, and as if William might
conceivably wish later on to confide in her. She forgot all about the
psychology of animals, and the recurrence of blue eyes and brown, and
became instantly engrossed in her feelings as a woman who could
administer consolation, and she hoped that Katharine would keep ahead
with Mr. Denham, as a child who plays at being grown-up hopes that her
mother won’t come in just yet, and spoil the game. Or was it not rather
that she had ceased to play at being grown-up, and was conscious,
suddenly, that she was alarmingly mature and in earnest?
There was still unbroken silence between Katharine and Ralph Denham,
but the occupants of the different cages served instead of speech.
“What have you been doing since we met?” Ralph asked at length.
“Doing?” she pondered. “Walking in and out of other people’s houses. I
wonder if these animals are happy?” she speculated, stopping before a
gray bear, who was philosophically playing with a tassel which once,
perhaps, formed part of a lady’s parasol.
“I’m afraid Rodney didn’t like my coming,” Ralph remarked.
“No. But he’ll soon get over that,” she replied. The detachment
expressed by her voice puzzled Ralph, and he would have been glad if
she had explained her meaning further. But he was not going to press
her for explanations. Each moment was to be, as far as he could make
it, complete in itself, owing nothing of its happiness to explanations,
borrowing neither bright nor dark tints from the future.
“The bears seem happy,” he remarked. “But we must buy them a bag of
something. There’s the place to buy buns. Let’s go and get them.” They
walked to the counter piled with little paper bags, and each
simultaneously produced a shilling and pressed it upon the young lady,
who did not know whether to oblige the lady or the gentleman, but
decided, from conventional reasons, that it was the part of the
gentleman to pay.
“I wish to pay,” said Ralph peremptorily, refusing the coin which
Katharine tendered. “I have a reason for what I do,” he added, seeing
her smile at his tone of decision.
“I believe you have a reason for everything,” she agreed, breaking the
bun into parts and tossing them down the bears’ throats, “but I can’t
believe it’s a good one this time. What is your reason?”
He refused to tell her. He could not explain to her that he was
offering up consciously all his happiness to her, and wished, absurdly
enough, to pour every possession he had upon the blazing pyre, even his
silver and gold. He wished to keep this distance between them—the
distance which separates the devotee from the image in the shrine.
Circumstances conspired to make this easier than it would have been,
had they been seated in a drawing-room, for example, with a tea-tray
between them. He saw her against a background of pale grottos and sleek
hides; camels slanted their heavy-lidded eyes at her, giraffes
fastidiously observed her from their melancholy eminence, and the
pink-lined trunks of elephants cautiously abstracted buns from her
outstretched hands. Then there were the hothouses. He saw her bending
over pythons coiled upon the sand, or considering the brown rock
breaking the stagnant water of the alligators’ pool, or searching some
minute section of tropical forest for the golden eye of a lizard or the
indrawn movement of the green frogs’ flanks. In particular, he saw her
outlined against the deep green waters, in which squadrons of silvery
fish wheeled incessantly, or ogled her for a moment, pressing their
distorted mouths against the glass, quivering their tails straight out
behind them. Again, there was the insect house, where she lifted the
blinds of the little cages, and marveled at the purple circles marked
upon the rich tussore wings of some lately emerged and semi-conscious
butterfly, or at caterpillars immobile like the knobbed twigs of a
pale-skinned tree, or at slim green snakes stabbing the glass wall
again and again with their flickering cleft tongues. The heat of the
air, and the bloom of heavy flowers, which swam in water or rose
stiffly from great red jars, together with the display of curious
patterns and fantastic shapes, produced an atmosphere in which human
beings tended to look pale and to fall silent.
Opening the door of a house which rang with the mocking and profoundly
unhappy laughter of monkeys, they discovered William and Cassandra.
William appeared to be tempting some small reluctant animal to descend
from an upper perch to partake of half an apple. Cassandra was reading
out, in her high-pitched tones, an account of this creature’s secluded
disposition and nocturnal habits. She saw Katharine and exclaimed:
“Here you are! Do prevent William from torturing this unfortunate
aye-aye.”
“We thought we’d lost you,” said William. He looked from one to the
other, and seemed to take stock of Denham’s unfashionable appearance.
He seemed to wish to find some outlet for malevolence, but, failing
one, he remained silent. The glance, the slight quiver of the upper
lip, were not lost upon Katharine.
“William isn’t kind to animals,” she remarked. “He doesn’t know what
they like and what they don’t like.”
“I take it you’re well versed in these matters, Denham,” said Rodney,
withdrawing his hand with the apple.
“It’s mainly a question of knowing how to stroke them,” Denham replied.
“Which is the way to the Reptile House?” Cassandra asked him, not from
a genuine desire to visit the reptiles, but in obedience to her
new-born feminine susceptibility, which urged her to charm and
conciliate the other sex. Denham began to give her directions, and
Katharine and William moved on together.
“I hope you’ve had a pleasant afternoon,” William remarked.
“I like Ralph Denham,” she replied.
“Ça se voit,” William returned, with superficial urbanity.
Many retorts were obvious, but wishing, on the whole, for peace,
Katharine merely inquired:
“Are you coming back to tea?”
“Cassandra and I thought of having tea at a little shop in Portland
Place,” he replied. “I don’t know whether you and Denham would care to
join us.”
“I’ll ask him,” she replied, turning her head to look for him. But he
and Cassandra were absorbed in the aye-aye once more.
William and Katharine watched them for a moment, and each looked
curiously at the object of the other’s preference. But resting his eye
upon Cassandra, to whose elegance the dressmakers had now done justice,
William said sharply:
“If you come, I hope you won’t do your best to make me ridiculous.”
“If that’s what you’re afraid of I certainly shan’t come,” Katharine
replied.
They were professedly looking into the enormous central cage of
monkeys, and being thoroughly annoyed by William, she compared him to a
wretched misanthropical ape, huddled in a scrap of old shawl at the end
of a pole, darting peevish glances of suspicion and distrust at his
companions. Her tolerance was deserting her. The events of the past
week had worn it thin. She was in one of those moods, perhaps not
uncommon with either sex, when the other becomes very clearly
distinguished, and of contemptible baseness, so that the necessity of
association is degrading, and the tie, which at such moments is always
extremely close, drags like a halter round the neck. William’s exacting
demands and his jealousy had pulled her down into some horrible swamp
of her nature where the primeval struggle between man and woman still
rages.
“You seem to delight in hurting me,” William persisted. “Why did you
say that just now about my behavior to animals?” As he spoke he rattled
his stick against the bars of the cage, which gave his words an
accompaniment peculiarly exasperating to Katharine’s nerves.
“Because it’s true. You never see what any one feels,” she said. “You
think of no one but yourself.”
“That is not true,” said William. By his determined rattling he had now
collected the animated attention of some half-dozen apes. Either to
propitiate them, or to show his consideration for their feelings, he
proceeded to offer them the apple which he held.
The sight, unfortunately, was so comically apt in its illustration of
the picture in her mind, the ruse was so transparent, that Katharine
was seized with laughter. She laughed uncontrollably. William flushed
red. No display of anger could have hurt his feelings more profoundly.
It was not only that she was laughing at him; the detachment of the
sound was horrible.
“I don’t know what you’re laughing at,” he muttered, and, turning,
found that the other couple had rejoined them. As if the matter had
been privately agreed upon, the couples separated once more, Katharine
and Denham passing out of the house without more than a perfunctory
glance round them. Denham obeyed what seemed to be Katharine’s wish in
thus making haste. Some change had come over her. He connected it with
her laughter, and her few words in private with Rodney; he felt that
she had become unfriendly to him. She talked, but her remarks were
indifferent, and when he spoke her attention seemed to wander. This
change of mood was at first extremely disagreeable to him; but soon he
found it salutary. The pale drizzling atmosphere of the day affected
him, also. The charm, the insidious magic in which he had luxuriated,
were suddenly gone; his feeling had become one of friendly respect, and
to his great pleasure he found himself thinking spontaneously of the
relief of finding himself alone in his room that night. In his surprise
at the suddenness of the change, and at the extent of his freedom, he
bethought him of a daring plan, by which the ghost of Katharine could
be more effectually exorcised than by mere abstinence. He would ask her
to come home with him to tea. He would force her through the mill of
family life; he would place her in a light unsparing and revealing. His
family would find nothing to admire in her, and she, he felt certain,
would despise them all, and this, too, would help him. He felt himself
becoming more and more merciless towards her. By such courageous
measures any one, he thought, could end the absurd passions which were
the cause of so much pain and waste. He could foresee a time when his
experiences, his discovery, and his triumph were made available for
younger brothers who found themselves in the same predicament. He
looked at his watch, and remarked that the gardens would soon be
closed.
“Anyhow,” he added, “I think we’ve seen enough for one afternoon. Where
have the others got to?” He looked over his shoulder, and, seeing no
trace of them, remarked at once:
“We’d better be independent of them. The best plan will be for you to
come back to tea with me.”
“Why shouldn’t you come with me?” she asked.
“Because we’re next door to Highgate here,” he replied promptly.
She assented, having very little notion whether Highgate was next door
to Regent’s Park or not. She was only glad to put off her return to the
family tea-table in Chelsea for an hour or two. They proceeded with
dogged determination through the winding roads of Regent’s Park, and
the Sunday-stricken streets of the neighborhood, in the direction of
the Tube station. Ignorant of the way, she resigned herself entirely to
him, and found his silence a convenient cover beneath which to continue
her anger with Rodney.
When they stepped out of the train into the still grayer gloom of
Highgate, she wondered, for the first time, where he was taking her.