Night and Day
the papers she had let fall. But he took them in his hands and, giving
her by a sudden impulse his own unfinished dissertation, with its
mystical conclusion, they read each other’s compositions in silence.
Katharine read his sheets to an end; Ralph followed her figures as far
as his mathematics would let him. They came to the end of their tasks
at about the same moment, and sat for a time in silence.
“Those were the papers you left on the seat at Kew,” said Ralph at
length. “You folded them so quickly that I couldn’t see what they
were.”
She blushed very deeply; but as she did not move or attempt to hide her
face she had the appearance of some one disarmed of all defences, or
Ralph likened her to a wild bird just settling with wings trembling to
fold themselves within reach of his hand. The moment of exposure had
been exquisitely painful—the light shed startlingly vivid. She had now
to get used to the fact that some one shared her loneliness. The
bewilderment was half shame and half the prelude to profound rejoicing.
Nor was she unconscious that on the surface the whole thing must appear
of the utmost absurdity. She looked to see whether Ralph smiled, but
found his gaze fixed on her with such gravity that she turned to the
belief that she had committed no sacrilege but enriched herself,
perhaps immeasurably, perhaps eternally. She hardly dared steep herself
in the infinite bliss. But his glance seemed to ask for some assurance
upon another point of vital interest to him. It beseeched her mutely to
tell him whether what she had read upon his confused sheet had any
meaning or truth to her. She bent her head once more to the papers she
held.
“I like your little dot with the flames round it,” she said
meditatively.
Ralph nearly tore the page from her hand in shame and despair when he
saw her actually contemplating the idiotic symbol of his most confused
and emotional moments.
He was convinced that it could mean nothing to another, although
somehow to him it conveyed not only Katharine herself but all those
states of mind which had clustered round her since he first saw her
pouring out tea on a Sunday afternoon. It represented by its
circumference of smudges surrounding a central blot all that encircling
glow which for him surrounded, inexplicably, so many of the objects of
life, softening their sharp outline, so that he could see certain
streets, books, and situations wearing a halo almost perceptible to the
physical eye. Did she smile? Did she put the paper down wearily,
condemning it not only for its inadequacy but for its falsity? Was she
going to protest once more that he only loved the vision of her? But it
did not occur to her that this diagram had anything to do with her. She
said simply, and in the same tone of reflection:
“Yes, the world looks something like that to me too.”
He received her assurance with profound joy. Quietly and steadily there
rose up behind the whole aspect of life that soft edge of fire which
gave its red tint to the atmosphere and crowded the scene with shadows
so deep and dark that one could fancy pushing farther into their
density and still farther, exploring indefinitely. Whether there was
any correspondence between the two prospects now opening before them
they shared the same sense of the impending future, vast, mysterious,
infinitely stored with undeveloped shapes which each would unwrap for
the other to behold; but for the present the prospect of the future was
enough to fill them with silent adoration. At any rate, their further
attempts to communicate articulately were interrupted by a knock on the
door, and the entrance of a maid who, with a due sense of mystery,
announced that a lady wished to see Miss Hilbery, but refused to allow
her name to be given.
When Katharine rose, with a profound sigh, to resume her duties, Ralph
went with her, and neither of them formulated any guess, on their way
downstairs, as to who this anonymous lady might prove to be. Perhaps
the fantastic notion that she was a little black hunchback provided
with a steel knife, which she would plunge into Katharine’s heart,
appeared to Ralph more probable than another, and he pushed first into
the dining-room to avert the blow. Then he exclaimed “Cassandra!” with
such heartiness at the sight of Cassandra Otway standing by the
dining-room table that she put her finger to her lips and begged him to
be quiet.
“Nobody must know I’m here,” she explained in a sepulchral whisper. “I
missed my train. I have been wandering about London all day. I can bear
it no longer. Katharine, what am I to do?”
Katharine pushed forward a chair; Ralph hastily found wine and poured
it out for her. If not actually fainting, she was very near it.
“William’s upstairs,” said Ralph, as soon as she appeared to be
recovered. “I’ll go and ask him to come down to you.” His own happiness
had given him a confidence that every one else was bound to be happy
too. But Cassandra had her uncle’s commands and anger too vividly in
her mind to dare any such defiance. She became agitated and said that
she must leave the house at once. She was not in a condition to go, had
they known where to send her. Katharine’s common sense, which had been
in abeyance for the past week or two, still failed her, and she could
only ask, “But where’s your luggage?” in the vague belief that to take
lodgings depended entirely upon a sufficiency of luggage. Cassandra’s
reply, “I’ve lost my luggage,” in no way helped her to a conclusion.
“You’ve lost your luggage,” she repeated. Her eyes rested upon Ralph,
with an expression which seemed better fitted to accompany a profound
thanksgiving for his existence or some vow of eternal devotion than a
question about luggage. Cassandra perceived the look, and saw that it
was returned; her eyes filled with tears. She faltered in what she was
saying. She began bravely again to discuss the question of lodging when
Katharine, who seemed to have communicated silently with Ralph, and
obtained his permission, took her ruby ring from her finger and giving
it to Cassandra, said: “I believe it will fit you without any
alteration.”
These words would not have been enough to convince Cassandra of what
she very much wished to believe had not Ralph taken the bare hand in
his and demanded:
“Why don’t you tell us you’re glad?” Cassandra was so glad that the
tears ran down her cheeks. The certainty of Katharine’s engagement not
only relieved her of a thousand vague fears and self-reproaches, but
entirely quenched that spirit of criticism which had lately impaired
her belief in Katharine. Her old faith came back to her. She seemed to
behold her with that curious intensity which she had lost; as a being
who walks just beyond our sphere, so that life in their presence is a
heightened process, illuminating not only ourselves but a considerable
stretch of the surrounding world. Next moment she contrasted her own
lot with theirs and gave back the ring.
“I won’t take that unless William gives it me himself,” she said. “Keep
it for me, Katharine.”
“I assure you everything’s perfectly all right,” said Ralph. “Let me
tell William—”
He was about, in spite of Cassandra’s protest, to reach the door, when
Mrs. Hilbery, either warned by the parlor-maid or conscious with her
usual prescience of the need for her intervention, opened the door and
smilingly surveyed them.
“My dear Cassandra!” she exclaimed. “How delightful to see you back
again! What a coincidence!” she observed, in a general way. “William is
upstairs. The kettle boils over. Where’s Katharine, I say? I go to
look, and I find Cassandra!” She seemed to have proved something to her
own satisfaction, although nobody felt certain what thing precisely it
was.
“I find Cassandra,” she repeated.
“She missed her train,” Katharine interposed, seeing that Cassandra was
unable to speak.
“Life,” began Mrs. Hilbery, drawing inspiration from the portraits on
the wall apparently, “consists in missing trains and in finding—” But
she pulled herself up and remarked that the kettle must have boiled
completely over everything.
To Katharine’s agitated mind it appeared that this kettle was an
enormous kettle, capable of deluging the house in its incessant showers
of steam, the enraged representative of all those household duties
which she had neglected. She ran hastily up to the drawing-room, and
the rest followed her, for Mrs. Hilbery put her arm round Cassandra and
drew her upstairs. They found Rodney observing the kettle with
uneasiness but with such absence of mind that Katharine’s catastrophe
was in a fair way to be fulfilled. In putting the matter straight no
greetings were exchanged, but Rodney and Cassandra chose seats as far
apart as possible, and sat down with an air of people making a very
temporary lodgment. Either Mrs. Hilbery was impervious to their
discomfort, or chose to ignore it, or thought it high time that the
subject was changed, for she did nothing but talk about Shakespeare’s
tomb.
“So much earth and so much water and that sublime spirit brooding over
it all,” she mused, and went on to sing her strange, half-earthly song
of dawns and sunsets, of great poets, and the unchanged spirit of noble
loving which they had taught, so that nothing changes, and one age is
linked with another, and no one dies, and we all meet in spirit, until
she appeared oblivious of any one in the room. But suddenly her remarks
seemed to contract the enormously wide circle in which they were
soaring and to alight, airily and temporarily, upon matters of more
immediate moment.
“Katharine and Ralph,” she said, as if to try the sound. “William and
Cassandra.”
“I feel myself in an entirely false position,” said William
desperately, thrusting himself into this breach in her reflections.
“I’ve no right to be sitting here. Mr. Hilbery told me yesterday to
leave the house. I’d no intention of coming back again. I shall now—”
“I feel the same too,” Cassandra interrupted. “After what Uncle Trevor
said to me last night—”
“I have put you into a most odious position,” Rodney went on, rising
from his seat, in which movement he was imitated simultaneously by
Cassandra. “Until I have your father’s consent I have no right to speak
to you—let alone in this house, where my conduct”—he looked at
Katharine, stammered, and fell silent—“where my conduct has been
reprehensible and inexcusable in the extreme,” he forced himself to
continue. “I have explained everything to your mother. She is so
generous as to try and make me believe that I have done no harm—you
have convinced her that my behavior, selfish and weak as it was—selfish
and weak—” he repeated, like a speaker who has lost his notes.
Two emotions seemed to be struggling in Katharine; one the desire to
laugh at the ridiculous spectacle of William making her a formal speech
across the tea-table, the other a desire to weep at the sight of
something childlike and honest in him which touched her inexpressibly.
To every one’s surprise she rose, stretched out her hand, and said:
“You’ve nothing to reproach yourself with—you’ve been always—” but here
her voice died away, and the tears forced themselves into her eyes, and
ran down her cheeks, while William, equally moved, seized her hand and
pressed it to his lips. No one perceived that the drawing-room door had
opened itself sufficiently to admit at least half the person of Mr.
Hilbery, or saw him gaze at the scene round the tea-table with an
expression of the utmost disgust and expostulation. He withdrew unseen.
He paused outside on the landing trying to recover his self-control and
to decide what course he might with most dignity pursue. It was obvious
to him that his wife had entirely confused the meaning of his