Night and Day
Rodney turned away from the window.
“It’s all been a mistake,” he said. “I blame myself for it. I should
have known better. I let you persuade me in a moment of madness. I beg
you to forget my insanity, Katharine.”
“She wished even to persecute Cassandra!” Katharine burst out, not
listening to him. “She threatened to speak to her. She’s capable of
it—she’s capable of anything!”
“Mrs. Milvain is not tactful, I know, but you exaggerate, Katharine.
People are talking about us. She was right to tell us. It only confirms
my own feeling—the position is monstrous.”
At length Katharine realized some part of what he meant.
“You don’t mean that this influences you, William?” she asked in
amazement.
“It does,” he said, flushing. “It’s intensely disagreeable to me. I
can’t endure that people should gossip about us. And then there’s your
cousin—Cassandra—” He paused in embarrassment.
“I came here this morning, Katharine,” he resumed, with a change of
voice, “to ask you to forget my folly, my bad temper, my inconceivable
behavior. I came, Katharine, to ask whether we can’t return to the
position we were in before this—this season of lunacy. Will you take me
back, Katharine, once more and for ever?”
No doubt her beauty, intensified by emotion and enhanced by the flowers
of bright color and strange shape which she carried wrought upon
Rodney, and had its share in bestowing upon her the old romance. But a
less noble passion worked in him, too; he was inflamed by jealousy. His
tentative offer of affection had been rudely and, as he thought,
completely repulsed by Cassandra on the preceding day. Denham’s
confession was in his mind. And ultimately, Katharine’s dominion over
him was of the sort that the fevers of the night cannot exorcise.
“I was as much to blame as you were yesterday,” she said gently,
disregarding his question. “I confess, William, the sight of you and
Cassandra together made me jealous, and I couldn’t control myself. I
laughed at you, I know.”
“You jealous!” William exclaimed. “I assure you, Katharine, you’ve not
the slightest reason to be jealous. Cassandra dislikes me, so far as
she feels about me at all. I was foolish enough to try to explain the
nature of our relationship. I couldn’t resist telling her what I
supposed myself to feel for her. She refused to listen, very rightly.
But she left me in no doubt of her scorn.”
Katharine hesitated. She was confused, agitated, physically tired, and
had already to reckon with the violent feeling of dislike aroused by
her aunt which still vibrated through all the rest of her feelings. She
sank into a chair and dropped her flowers upon her lap.
“She charmed me,” Rodney continued. “I thought I loved her. But that’s
a thing of the past. It’s all over, Katharine. It was a dream—an
hallucination. We were both equally to blame, but no harm’s done if you
believe how truly I care for you. Say you believe me!”
He stood over her, as if in readiness to seize the first sign of her
assent. Precisely at that moment, owing, perhaps, to her vicissitudes
of feeling, all sense of love left her, as in a moment a mist lifts
from the earth. And when the mist departed a skeleton world and
blankness alone remained—a terrible prospect for the eyes of the living
to behold. He saw the look of terror in her face, and without
understanding its origin, took her hand in his. With the sense of
companionship returned a desire, like that of a child for shelter, to
accept what he had to offer her—and at that moment it seemed that he
offered her the only thing that could make it tolerable to live. She
let him press his lips to her cheek, and leant her head upon his arm.
It was the moment of his triumph. It was the only moment in which she
belonged to him and was dependent upon his protection.
“Yes, yes, yes,” he murmured, “you accept me, Katharine. You love me.”
For a moment she remained silent. He then heard her murmur:
“Cassandra loves you more than I do.”
“Cassandra?” he whispered.
“She loves you,” Katharine repeated. She raised herself and repeated
the sentence yet a third time. “She loves you.”
William slowly raised himself. He believed instinctively what Katharine
said, but what it meant to him he was unable to understand. Could
Cassandra love him? Could she have told Katharine that she loved him?
The desire to know the truth of this was urgent, unknown though the
consequences might be. The thrill of excitement associated with the
thought of Cassandra once more took possession of him. No longer was it
the excitement of anticipation and ignorance; it was the excitement of
something greater than a possibility, for now he knew her and had
measure of the sympathy between them. But who could give him certainty?
Could Katharine, Katharine who had lately lain in his arms, Katharine
herself the most admired of women? He looked at her, with doubt, and
with anxiety, but said nothing.
“Yes, yes,” she said, interpreting his wish for assurance, “it’s true.
I know what she feels for you.”
“She loves me?”
Katharine nodded.
“Ah, but who knows what I feel? How can I be sure of my feeling myself?
Ten minutes ago I asked you to marry me. I still wish it—I don’t know
what I wish—”
He clenched his hands and turned away. He suddenly faced her and
demanded: “Tell me what you feel for Denham.”
“For Ralph Denham?” she asked. “Yes!” she exclaimed, as if she had
found the answer to some momentarily perplexing question. “You’re
jealous of me, William; but you’re not in love with me. I’m jealous of
you. Therefore, for both our sakes, I say, speak to Cassandra at once.”
He tried to compose himself. He walked up and down the room; he paused
at the window and surveyed the flowers strewn upon the floor. Meanwhile
his desire to have Katharine’s assurance confirmed became so insistent
that he could no longer deny the overmastering strength of his feeling
for Cassandra.
“You’re right,” he exclaimed, coming to a standstill and rapping his
knuckles sharply upon a small table carrying one slender vase. “I love
Cassandra.”
As he said this, the curtains hanging at the door of the little room
parted, and Cassandra herself stepped forth.
“I have overheard every word!” she exclaimed.
A pause succeeded this announcement. Rodney made a step forward and
said:
“Then you know what I wish to ask you. Give me your answer—”
She put her hands before her face; she turned away and seemed to shrink
from both of them.
“What Katharine said,” she murmured. “But,” she added, raising her head
with a look of fear from the kiss with which he greeted her admission,
“how frightfully difficult it all is! Our feelings, I mean—yours and
mine and Katharine’s. Katharine, tell me, are we doing right?”
“Right—of course we’re doing right,” William answered her, “if, after
what you’ve heard, you can marry a man of such incomprehensible
confusion, such deplorable—”
“Don’t, William,” Katharine interposed; “Cassandra has heard us; she
can judge what we are; she knows better than we could tell her.”
But, still holding William’s hand, questions and desires welled up in
Cassandra’s heart. Had she done wrong in listening? Why did Aunt Celia
blame her? Did Katharine think her right? Above all, did William really
love her, for ever and ever, better than any one?
“I must be first with him, Katharine!” she exclaimed. “I can’t share
him even with you.”
“I shall never ask that,” said Katharine. She moved a little away from
where they sat and began half-consciously sorting her flowers.
“But you’ve shared with me,” Cassandra said. “Why can’t I share with
you? Why am I so mean? I know why it is,” she added. “We understand
each other, William and I. You’ve never understood each other. You’re
too different.”
“I’ve never admired anybody more,” William interposed.
“It’s not that”—Cassandra tried to enlighten him—“it’s understanding.”
“Have I never understood you, Katharine? Have I been very selfish?”
“Yes,” Cassandra interposed. “You’ve asked her for sympathy, and she’s
not sympathetic; you’ve wanted her to be practical, and she’s not
practical. You’ve been selfish; you’ve been exacting—and so has
Katharine—but it wasn’t anybody’s fault.”
Katharine had listened to this attempt at analysis with keen attention.
Cassandra’s words seemed to rub the old blurred image of life and
freshen it so marvelously that it looked new again. She turned to
William.
“It’s quite true,” she said. “It was nobody’s fault.”
“There are many things that he’ll always come to you for,” Cassandra
continued, still reading from her invisible book. “I accept that,
Katharine. I shall never dispute it. I want to be generous as you’ve
been generous. But being in love makes it more difficult for me.”
They were silent. At length William broke the silence.
“One thing I beg of you both,” he said, and the old nervousness of
manner returned as he glanced at Katharine. “We will never discuss
these matters again. It’s not that I’m timid and conventional, as you
think, Katharine. It’s that it spoils things to discuss them; it
unsettles people’s minds; and now we’re all so happy—”
Cassandra ratified this conclusion so far as she was concerned, and
William, after receiving the exquisite pleasure of her glance, with its
absolute affection and trust, looked anxiously at Katharine.
“Yes, I’m happy,” she assured him. “And I agree. We will never talk
about it again.”
“Oh, Katharine, Katharine!” Cassandra cried, holding out her arms while
the tears ran down her cheeks.
CHAPTER XXX
The day was so different from other days to three people in the house
that the common routine of household life—the maid waiting at table,
Mrs. Hilbery writing a letter, the clock striking, and the door
opening, and all the other signs of long-established civilization
appeared suddenly to have no meaning save as they lulled Mr. and Mrs.
Hilbery into the belief that nothing unusual had taken place. It
chanced that Mrs. Hilbery was depressed without visible cause, unless a
certain crudeness verging upon coarseness in the temper of her favorite
Elizabethans could be held responsible for the mood. At any rate, she
had shut up “The Duchess of Malfi” with a sigh, and wished to know, so
she told Rodney at dinner, whether there wasn’t some young writer with
a touch of the great spirit—somebody who made you believe that life was
_beautiful?_ She got little help from Rodney, and after singing her
plaintive requiem for the death of poetry by herself, she charmed
herself into good spirits again by remembering the existence of Mozart.
She begged Cassandra to play to her, and when they went upstairs
Cassandra opened the piano directly, and did her best to create an
atmosphere of unmixed beauty. At the sound of the first notes Katharine
and Rodney both felt an enormous sense of relief at the license which
the music gave them to loosen their hold upon the mechanism of
behavior. They lapsed into the depths of thought. Mrs. Hilbery was soon
spirited away into a perfectly congenial mood, that was half reverie
and half slumber, half delicious melancholy and half pure bliss. Mr.
Hilbery alone attended. He was extremely musical, and made Cassandra
aware that he listened to every note. She played her best, and won his
approval. Leaning slightly forward in his chair, and turning his little
green stone, he weighed the intention of her phrases approvingly, but
stopped her suddenly to complain of a noise behind him. The window was
unhasped. He signed to Rodney, who crossed the room immediately to put
the matter right. He stayed a moment longer by the window than was,
perhaps, necessary, and having done what was needed, drew his chair a
little closer than before to Katharine’s side. The music went on. Under