Night and Day
at her own rashness in having influenced the life of another, as she
had influenced Cassandra’s life.
“We weren’t serious,” she said quickly.
“But I’m fearfully serious,” said Cassandra, with a little shudder, and
her look showed that she spoke the truth. She turned and glanced at
Katharine as she had never glanced at her before. There was fear in her
glance, which darted on her and then dropped guiltily. Oh, Katharine
had everything—beauty, mind, character. She could never compete with
Katharine; she could never be safe so long as Katharine brooded over
her, dominating her, disposing of her. She called her cold, unseeing,
unscrupulous, but the only sign she gave outwardly was a curious
one—she reached out her hand and grasped the volume of history. At that
moment the bell of the telephone rang and Katharine went to answer it.
Cassandra, released from observation, dropped her book and clenched her
hands. She suffered more fiery torture in those few minutes than she
had suffered in the whole of her life; she learnt more of her
capacities for feeling. But when Katharine reappeared she was calm, and
had gained a look of dignity that was new to her.
“Was that him?” she asked.
“It was Ralph Denham,” Katharine replied.
“I meant Ralph Denham.”
“Why did you mean Ralph Denham? What has William told you about Ralph
Denham?” The accusation that Katharine was calm, callous, and
indifferent was not possible in face of her present air of animation.
She gave Cassandra no time to frame an answer. “Now, when are you and
William going to be married?” she asked.
Cassandra made no reply for some moments. It was, indeed, a very
difficult question to answer. In conversation the night before, William
had indicated to Cassandra that, in his belief, Katharine was becoming
engaged to Ralph Denham in the dining-room. Cassandra, in the rosy
light of her own circumstances, had been disposed to think that the
matter must be settled already. But a letter which she had received
that morning from William, while ardent in its expression of affection,
had conveyed to her obliquely that he would prefer the announcement of
their engagement to coincide with that of Katharine’s. This document
Cassandra now produced, and read aloud, with considerable excisions and
much hesitation.
“... a thousand pities—ahem—I fear we shall cause a great deal of
natural annoyance. If, on the other hand, what I have reason to think
will happen, should happen—within reasonable time, and the present
position is not in any way offensive to you, delay would, in my
opinion, serve all our interests better than a premature explanation,
which is bound to cause more surprise than is desirable—”
“Very like William,” Katharine exclaimed, having gathered the drift of
these remarks with a speed that, by itself, disconcerted Cassandra.
“I quite understand his feelings,” Cassandra replied. “I quite agree
with them. I think it would be much better, if you intend to marry Mr.
Denham, that we should wait as William says.”
“But, then, if I don’t marry him for months—or, perhaps, not at all?”
Cassandra was silent. The prospect appalled her. Katharine had been
telephoning to Ralph Denham; she looked queer, too; she must be, or
about to become, engaged to him. But if Cassandra could have overheard
the conversation upon the telephone, she would not have felt so certain
that it tended in that direction. It was to this effect:
“I’m Ralph Denham speaking. I’m in my right senses now.”
“How long did you wait outside the house?”
“I went home and wrote you a letter. I tore it up.”
“I shall tear up everything too.”
“I shall come.”
“Yes. Come to-day.”
“I must explain to you—”
“Yes. We must explain—”
A long pause followed. Ralph began a sentence, which he canceled with
the word, “Nothing.” Suddenly, together, at the same moment, they said
good-bye. And yet, if the telephone had been miraculously connected
with some higher atmosphere pungent with the scent of thyme and the
savor of salt, Katharine could hardly have breathed in a keener sense
of exhilaration. She ran downstairs on the crest of it. She was amazed
to find herself already committed by William and Cassandra to marry the
owner of the halting voice she had just heard on the telephone. The
tendency of her spirit seemed to be in an altogether different
direction; and of a different nature. She had only to look at Cassandra
to see what the love that results in an engagement and marriage means.
She considered for a moment, and then said: “If you don’t want to tell
people yourselves, I’ll do it for you. I know William has feelings
about these matters that make it very difficult for him to do
anything.”
“Because he’s fearfully sensitive about other people’s feelings,” said
Cassandra. “The idea that he could upset Aunt Maggie or Uncle Trevor
would make him ill for weeks.”
This interpretation of what she was used to call William’s
conventionality was new to Katharine. And yet she felt it now to be the
true one.
“Yes, you’re right,” she said.
“And then he worships beauty. He wants life to be beautiful in every
part of it. Have you ever noticed how exquisitely he finishes
everything? Look at the address on that envelope. Every letter is
perfect.”
Whether this applied also to the sentiments expressed in the letter,
Katharine was not so sure; but when William’s solicitude was spent upon
Cassandra it not only failed to irritate her, as it had done when she
was the object of it, but appeared, as Cassandra said, the fruit of his
love of beauty.
“Yes,” she said, “he loves beauty.”
“I hope we shall have a great many children,” said Cassandra. “He loves
children.”
This remark made Katharine realize the depths of their intimacy better
than any other words could have done; she was jealous for one moment;
but the next she was humiliated. She had known William for years, and
she had never once guessed that he loved children. She looked at the
queer glow of exaltation in Cassandra’s eyes, through which she was
beholding the true spirit of a human being, and wished that she would
go on talking about William for ever. Cassandra was not unwilling to
gratify her. She talked on. The morning slipped away. Katharine
scarcely changed her position on the edge of her father’s
writing-table, and Cassandra never opened the “History of England.”
And yet it must be confessed that there were vast lapses in the
attention which Katharine bestowed upon her cousin. The atmosphere was
wonderfully congenial for thoughts of her own. She lost herself
sometimes in such deep reverie that Cassandra, pausing, could look at
her for moments unperceived. What could Katharine be thinking about,
unless it were Ralph Denham? She was satisfied, by certain random
replies, that Katharine had wandered a little from the subject of
William’s perfections. But Katharine made no sign. She always ended
these pauses by saying something so natural that Cassandra was deluded
into giving fresh examples of her absorbing theme. Then they lunched,
and the only sign that Katharine gave of abstraction was to forget to
help the pudding. She looked so like her mother, as she sat there
oblivious of the tapioca, that Cassandra was startled into exclaiming:
“How like Aunt Maggie you look!”
“Nonsense,” said Katharine, with more irritation than the remark seemed
to call for.
In truth, now that her mother was away, Katharine did feel less
sensible than usual, but as she argued it to herself, there was much
less need for sense. Secretly, she was a little shaken by the evidence
which the morning had supplied of her immense capacity for—what could
one call it?—rambling over an infinite variety of thoughts that were
too foolish to be named. She was, for example, walking down a road in
Northumberland in the August sunset; at the inn she left her companion,
who was Ralph Denham, and was transported, not so much by her own feet
as by some invisible means, to the top of a high hill. Here the scents,
the sounds among the dry heather-roots, the grass-blades pressed upon
the palm of her hand, were all so perceptible that she could experience
each one separately. After this her mind made excursions into the dark
of the air, or settled upon the surface of the sea, which could be
discovered over there, or with equal unreason it returned to its couch
of bracken beneath the stars of midnight, and visited the snow valleys
of the moon. These fancies would have been in no way strange, since the
walls of every mind are decorated with some such tracery, but she found
herself suddenly pursuing such thoughts with an extreme ardor, which
became a desire to change her actual condition for something matching
the conditions of her dream. Then she started; then she awoke to the
fact that Cassandra was looking at her in amazement.
Cassandra would have liked to feel certain that, when Katharine made no
reply at all or one wide of the mark, she was making up her mind to get
married at once, but it was difficult, if this were so, to account for
some remarks that Katharine let fall about the future. She recurred
several times to the summer, as if she meant to spend that season in
solitary wandering. She seemed to have a plan in her mind which
required Bradshaws and the names of inns.
Cassandra was driven finally, by her own unrest, to put on her clothes
and wander out along the streets of Chelsea, on the pretence that she
must buy something. But, in her ignorance of the way, she became
panic-stricken at the thought of being late, and no sooner had she
found the shop she wanted, than she fled back again in order to be at
home when William came. He came, indeed, five minutes after she had sat
down by the tea-table, and she had the happiness of receiving him
alone. His greeting put her doubts of his affection at rest, but the
first question he asked was:
“Has Katharine spoken to you?”
“Yes. But she says she’s not engaged. She doesn’t seem to think she’s
ever going to be engaged.”
William frowned, and looked annoyed.
“They telephoned this morning, and she behaves very oddly. She forgets
to help the pudding,” Cassandra added by way of cheering him.
“My dear child, after what I saw and heard last night, it’s not a
question of guessing or suspecting. Either she’s engaged to him—or—”
He left his sentence unfinished, for at this point Katharine herself
appeared. With his recollections of the scene the night before, he was
too self-conscious even to look at her, and it was not until she told
him of her mother’s visit to Stratford-on-Avon that he raised his eyes.
It was clear that he was greatly relieved. He looked round him now, as
if he felt at his ease, and Cassandra exclaimed:
“Don’t you think everything looks quite different?”
“You’ve moved the sofa?” he asked.
“No. Nothing’s been touched,” said Katharine. “Everything’s exactly the
same.” But as she said this, with a decision which seemed to make it
imply that more than the sofa was unchanged, she held out a cup into
which she had forgotten to pour any tea. Being told of her
forgetfulness, she frowned with annoyance, and said that Cassandra was
demoralizing her. The glance she cast upon them, and the resolute way
in which she plunged them into speech, made William and Cassandra feel
like children who had been caught prying. They followed her obediently,
making conversation. Any one coming in might have judged them
acquaintances met, perhaps, for the third time. If that were so, one
must have concluded that the hostess suddenly bethought her of an
engagement pressing for fulfilment. First Katharine looked at her
watch, and then she asked William to tell her the right time. When told
that it was ten minutes to five she rose at once, and said:
“Then I’m afraid I must go.”