Night and Day Part 28

Katharine's expression changed instantly.

'Because he's not allowed to come here,' she replied bitterly.

Mrs Hilbery brushed this aside.

'Would there be time to send for him before luncheon?' she asked.

Katharine looked at her as if, indeed, she were some magician. Once more she felt that instead of being a grown woman, used to advise and command, she was only a foot or two raised above the long gra.s.s and the little flowers and entirely dependent upon the figure of indefinite size whose head went up into the sky, whose hand was in hers, for guidance.

'I'm not happy without him,' she said simply.

Mrs Hilbery nodded her head in a manner which indicated complete understanding, and the immediate conception of certain plans for the future. She swept up her flowers, breathed in their sweetness, and, humming a little song about a miller's daughter,3 left the room. left the room.

The case upon which Ralph Denham was engaged that afternoon was not apparently receiving his full attention, and yet the affairs of the late John Leake of Dublin were sufficiently confused to need all the care that a solicitor could bestow upon them, if the widow Leake and the five Leake children of tender age were to receive any pittance at all. But the appeal to Ralph's humanity had little chance of being heard to-day; he was no longer a model of concentration. The part.i.tion so carefully erected between the different sections of his life had been broken down, with the result that though his eyes were fixed upon the last Will and Testament, he saw through the page a certain drawing-room in Cheyne Walk.

He tried every device that had proved effective in the past for keeping up the part.i.tions of the mind, until he could decently go home; but a little to his alarm he found himself a.s.sailed so persistently, as if from outside, by Katharine, that he launched forth desperately into an imaginary interview with her. She obliterated a bookcase full of law reports, and the corners and lines of the room underwent a curious softening of outline like that which sometimes makes a room unfamiliar at the moment of waking from sleep. By degrees, a pulse or stress began to beat at regular intervals in his mind, heaping his thoughts into waves to which words fitted themselves, and without much consciousness of what he was doing, he began to write on a sheet of draft paper what had the appearance of a poem lacking several words in each line. Not many lines had been set down, however, before he threw away his pen as violently as if that were responsible for his misdeeds, and tore the paper into many separate pieces. This was a sign that Katharine had a.s.serted herself and put to him a remark that could not be met poetically. Her remark was entirely destructive of poetry, since it was to the effect that poetry had nothing whatever to do with her; all her friends spent their lives in making up phrases, she said; all his feeling was an illusion, and next moment, as if to taunt him with his impotence, she had sunk into one of those dreamy states which took no account whatever of his existence. Ralph was roused by his pa.s.sionate attempts to attract her attention to the fact that he was standing in the middle of his little private room in Lincoln's Inn Fields at a considerable distance from Chelsea. The physical distance increased his desperation. He began pacing in circles until the process sickened him, and then took a sheet of paper for the composition of a letter which, he vowed before he began it, should be sent that same evening.

It was a difficult matter to put into words; poetry would have done it better justice, but he must abstain from poetry. In an infinite number of half-obliterated scratches he tried to convey to her the possibility that although human beings are woefully ill-adapted for communication, still, such communion is the best we know; moreover, they make it possible for each to have access to another world independent of personal affairs, a world of law, of philosophy, or more strangely a world such as he had had a glimpse of the other evening when together they seemed to be sharing something, creating something, an ideal-a vision flung out in advance of our actual circ.u.mstances. If this golden rim were quenched, if life were no longer circled by an illusion (but was it an illusion after all?), then it would be too dismal an affair to carry to an end; so he wrote with a sudden spurt of conviction which made clear way for a s.p.a.ce and left at least one sentence standing whole. Making every allowance for other desires, on the whole this conclusion appeared to him to justify their relations.h.i.+p. But the conclusion was mystical; it plunged him into thought. The difficulty with which even this amount was written, the inadequacy of the words, and the need of writing under them and over them others which, after all, did no better, led him to leave off before he was at all satisfied with his production, and unable to resist the conviction that such rambling would never be fit for Katharine's eye. He felt himself more cut off from her than ever. In idleness, and because he could do nothing further with words, he began to draw little figures in the blank s.p.a.ces, heads meant to resemble her head, blots fringed with flames meant to represent-perhaps the entire universe. From this occupation he was roused by the message that a lady wished to speak to him. He had scarcely time to run his hands through his hair in order to look as much like a solicitor as possible, and to cram his papers into his pocket, already overcome with shame that another eye should behold them, when he realized that his preparations were needless. The lady was Mrs Hilbery.

'I hope you're not disposing of somebody's fortune in a hurry,' she remarked, gazing at the doc.u.ments on his table, 'or cutting off an entail at one blow, because I want to ask you to do me a favour. And Anderson won't keep his horse waiting. (Anderson is a perfect tyrant, but he drove my dear father to the Abbey the day they buried him.) I made bold to come to you, Mr Denham, not exactly in search of legal a.s.sistance (though I don't know who I'd rather come to, if I were in trouble), but in order to ask your help in settling some tiresome little domestic affairs that have arisen in my absence. I've been to Stratford-on-Avon (I must tell you all about that one of these days), and there I got a letter from my sister-in-law, a dear kind goose who likes interfering with other people's children because she's got none of her own. (We're dreadfully afraid that she's going to lose the sight of one of her eyes, and I always feel that our physical ailments are so apt to turn into mental ailments I think Matthew Arnold says something of the same kind about Lord Byron.)4 But that's neither here nor there.' But that's neither here nor there.'

The effect of these parentheses, whether they were introduced for that purpose or represented a natural instinct on Mrs Hilbery's part to embellish the bareness of her discourse, gave Ralph time to perceive that she possessed all the facts of their situation and was come, somehow, in the capacity of amba.s.sador.

'I didn't come here to talk about Lord Byron,' Mrs Hilbery continued, with a little laugh, 'though I know that both you and Katharine, unlike other young people of your generation, still find him worth reading.' She paused. 'I'm so glad you've made Katharine read poetry, Mr Denham!' she exclaimed, 'and feel poetry, and look poetry! She can't talk it yet, but she will-oh, she will!'

Ralph, whose hand was grasped and whose tongue almost refused to articulate, somehow contrived to say that there were moments when he felt hopeless, utterly hopeless, though he gave no reason for this statement on his part.

'But you care for her?' Mrs Hilbery inquired.

'Good G.o.d!' he exclaimed, with a vehemence which admitted of no question.

'It's the Church of England service you both object to?' Mrs Hilbery inquired innocently.

'I don't care a d.a.m.n what service it is,' Ralph replied.

'You would marry her in Westminster Abbey if the worst came to the worst?' Mrs Hilbery inquired.

'I would marry her in St Paul's Cathedral,'5 Ralph replied. His doubts upon this point, which were always roused by Katharine's presence, had vanished completely, and his strongest wish in the world was to be with her immediately, since every second he was away from her he imagined her slipping farther and farther from him into one of those states of mind in which he was unrepresented. He wished to dominate her, to possess her. Ralph replied. His doubts upon this point, which were always roused by Katharine's presence, had vanished completely, and his strongest wish in the world was to be with her immediately, since every second he was away from her he imagined her slipping farther and farther from him into one of those states of mind in which he was unrepresented. He wished to dominate her, to possess her.

'Thank G.o.d!' exclaimed Mrs Hilbery. She thanked Him for a variety of blessings: for the conviction with which the young man spoke; and not least for the prospect that on her daughter's wedding-day the n.o.ble cadences, the stately periods, the ancient eloquence of the marriage service would resound over the heads of a distinguished congregation gathered together near the very spot where her father lay quiescent with the other poets of England. The tears filled her eyes; but she remembered simultaneously that her carriage was waiting, and with dim eyes she walked to the door. Denham followed her downstairs.

It was a strange drive. For Denham it was without exception the most unpleasant he had ever taken. His only wish was to go as straightly and quickly as possible to Cheyne Walk; but it soon appeared that Mrs Hilbery either ignored or thought fit to baffle this desire by interposing various errands of her own. She stopped the carriage at post-offices, and coffee-shops, and shops of inscrutable dignity where the aged attendants had to be greeted as old friends; and, catching sight of the dome of St Paul's above the irregular spires of Ludgate Hill,eb she pulled the cord impulsively, and gave directions that Anderson should drive them there. But Anderson had reasons of his own for discouraging afternoon wors.h.i.+p, and kept his horse's nose obstinately towards the west. After some minutes, Mrs Hilbery realized the situation, and accepted it good-humouredly, apologizing to Ralph for his disappointment. she pulled the cord impulsively, and gave directions that Anderson should drive them there. But Anderson had reasons of his own for discouraging afternoon wors.h.i.+p, and kept his horse's nose obstinately towards the west. After some minutes, Mrs Hilbery realized the situation, and accepted it good-humouredly, apologizing to Ralph for his disappointment.

'Never mind,' she said, 'we'll go to St Paul's another day, and it may turn out, though I can't promise that it will, will, that he'll take us past Westminster Abbey, which would be even better.' that he'll take us past Westminster Abbey, which would be even better.'

Ralph was scarcely aware of what she went on to say. Her mind and body both seemed to have floated into another region of quick-sailing clouds rapidly pa.s.sing across each other and enveloping everything in a vaporous indistinctness. Meanwhile he remained conscious of his own concentrated desire, his impotence to bring about anything he wished, and his increasing agony of impatience.

Suddenly Mrs Hilbery pulled the cord with such decision that even Anderson had to listen to the order which she leant out of the window to give him. The carriage pulled up abruptly in the middle of Whitehallec before a large building dedicated to one of our Government offices. In a second Mrs Hilbery was mounting the steps, and Ralph was left in too acute an irritation by this further delay even to speculate what errand took her now to the Board of Education. He was about to jump from the carriage and take a cab, when Mrs Hilbery reappeared talking genially to a figure who remained hidden behind her. before a large building dedicated to one of our Government offices. In a second Mrs Hilbery was mounting the steps, and Ralph was left in too acute an irritation by this further delay even to speculate what errand took her now to the Board of Education. He was about to jump from the carriage and take a cab, when Mrs Hilbery reappeared talking genially to a figure who remained hidden behind her.

'There's plenty of room for us all,' she was saying. 'Plenty of room. We could find s.p.a.ce for four four of you, William,' she added, opening the door, and Ralph found that Rodney had now joined their company. The two men glanced at each other. If distress, shame, discomfort in its most acute form were ever visible upon a human face, Ralph could read them all expressed beyond the eloquence of words upon the face of his unfortunate companion. But Mrs Hilbery was either completely unseeing or determined to appear so. She went on talking; she talked, it seemed to both the young men, to some one outside, up in the air. She talked about Shakespeare, she apostrophized the human race, she proclaimed the virtues of divine poetry, she began to recite verses which broke down in the middle. The great advantage of her discourse was that it was self-supporting. It nourished itself until Cheyne Walk was reached upon half a dozen grunts and murmurs. of you, William,' she added, opening the door, and Ralph found that Rodney had now joined their company. The two men glanced at each other. If distress, shame, discomfort in its most acute form were ever visible upon a human face, Ralph could read them all expressed beyond the eloquence of words upon the face of his unfortunate companion. But Mrs Hilbery was either completely unseeing or determined to appear so. She went on talking; she talked, it seemed to both the young men, to some one outside, up in the air. She talked about Shakespeare, she apostrophized the human race, she proclaimed the virtues of divine poetry, she began to recite verses which broke down in the middle. The great advantage of her discourse was that it was self-supporting. It nourished itself until Cheyne Walk was reached upon half a dozen grunts and murmurs.

'Now,' she said, alighting briskly at her door, 'here we are!' There was something airy and ironical in her voice and expression as she turned upon the doorstep and looked at them, which filled both Rodney and Denham with the same misgivings at having trusted their fortunes to such an amba.s.sador; and Rodney actually hesitated upon the threshold and murmured to Denham: 'You go in, Denham. I ... ' He was turning tail, but the door opening and the familiar look of the house a.s.serting its charm, he bolted in on the wake of the others, and the door shut upon his escape. Mrs Hilbery led the way upstairs. She took them to the drawing-room. The fire burnt as usual, the little tables were laid with china and silver. There was n.o.body there.

'Ah,' she said, 'Katharine's not here. She must be upstairs in her room. You have something to say to her, I know, Mr Denham. You can find your way?' she vaguely indicated the ceiling with a gesture of her hand. She had become suddenly serious and composed, mistress in her own house. The gesture with which she dismissed him had a dignity that Ralph never forgot. She seemed to make him free with a wave of her hand to all that she possessed. He left the room.

The Hilberys' house was tall, possessing many stories and pa.s.sages with closed doors, all, once he had pa.s.sed the drawing-room floor, unknown to Ralph. He mounted as high as he could and knocked at the first door he came to.

'May I come in?' he asked.

A voice from within answered 'Yes.'

He was conscious of a large window, full of light, of a bare table, and of a long looking-gla.s.s. Katharine had risen, and was standing with some white papers in her hand, which slowly fluttered to the ground as she saw her visitor. The explanation was a short one. The sounds were inarticulate; no one could have understood the meaning save themselves. As if the forces of the world were all at work to tear them asunder they sat, clasping hands, near enough to be taken even by the malicious eye of Time himself for a united couple, an indivisible unit.

'Don't move, don't go,' she begged of him, when he stooped to gather 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 someone 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 a.s.surance 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 cl.u.s.tered round her since he first saw her pouring out tea on a Sunday afternoon. It represented by its circ.u.mference 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 halo6 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: 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 a.s.surance 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 pus.h.i.+ng 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 'Ca.s.sandra!' with such heartiness at the sight of Ca.s.sandra Otway standing by the dining-room table that she put her finger to her lips and begged him to be quiet.

'n.o.body 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 Ca.s.sandra had her uncle's commands and anger too vividly in 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. Ca.s.sandra'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. Ca.s.sandra 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 a 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 Ca.s.sandra, said: 'I believe it will fit you without any alteration.'

These words would not have been enough to convince Ca.s.sandra 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?' Ca.s.sandra 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 us 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 a.s.sure you everything's perfectly all right,' said Ralph. 'Let me tell William-'

He was about, in spite of Ca.s.sandra's protest, to reach the door, when Mrs Hilbery, either warned by the parlourmaid or conscious with her usual prescience of the need for her intervention, opened the door and smilingly surveyed them.

'My dear Ca.s.sandra!' 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 Ca.s.sandra!' She seemed to have proved something to her own satisfaction, although n.o.body felt certain precisely what thing it was.

'I find Ca.s.sandra,' she repeated.

'She missed her train,' Katharine interposed, seeing that Ca.s.sandra 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 Ca.s.sandra 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 Ca.s.sandra 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 n.o.ble 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 Ca.s.sandra.'

'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,' Ca.s.sandra 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 Ca.s.sandra. '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 behaviour, 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 instructions. She had plunged them all into the most odious confusion. He waited a moment, and then, with much preliminary rattling of the handle, opened the door a second time. They had all regained their places; some incident of an absurd nature had now set them laughing and looking under the table, so that his entrance pa.s.sed momentarily unperceived. Katharine, with flushed cheeks, raised her head and said: 'Well, that's my last attempt at the dramatic.'

'It's astonis.h.i.+ng what a distance they roll,' said Ralph, stooping to turn up the corner of the hearthrug.

'Don't trouble-don't bother. We shall find it-' Mrs Hilbery began, and then saw her husband and exclaimed: 'Oh, Trevor, we're looking for Ca.s.sandra's engagement-ring!'

Mr Hilbery looked instinctively at the carpet. Remarkably enough, the ring had rolled to the very point where he stood. He saw the rubies touching the tip of his boot. Such is the force of habit that he could not refrain from stooping, with an absurd little thrill of pleasure at being the one to find what others were looking for, and, picking the ring up, he presented it, with a bow that was extremely courtly, to Ca.s.sandra. Whether the making of a bow released automatically feelings of complaisance and urbanity, Mr Hilbery found his resentment completely washed away during the second in which he bent and straightened himself. Ca.s.sandra dared to offer her cheek and received his embrace. He nodded with some degree of stiffness to Rodney and Denham, who had both risen upon seeing him, and now all together sat down. Mrs Hilbery seemed to have been waiting for the entrance of her husband, and for this precise moment in order to put to him a question which, from the ardour with which she announced it, had evidently been pressing for utterance for some time past.

'Oh, Trevor, please tell me, what was the date of the first performance of Hamlet Hamlet?'ed In order to answer her Mr Hilbery had to have recourse to the exact scholars.h.i.+p of William Rodney, and before he had given his excellent authorities for believing as he believed, Rodney felt himself admitted once more to the society of the civilized and sanctioned by the authority of no less a person than Shakespeare himself. The power of literature, which had temporarily deserted Mr Hilbery, now came back to him, pouring over the raw ugliness of human affairs its soothing balm, and providing a form into which such pa.s.sions as he had felt so painfully the night before could be moulded so that they fell roundly from the tongue in shapely phrases, hurting n.o.body. He was sufficiently sure of his command of language at length to look at Katharine and again at Denham. All this talk about Shakespeare had acted as a soporific, or rather as an incantation upon Katharine. She leant back in her chair at the head of the tea-table, perfectly silent, looking vaguely past them all, receiving the most generalized ideas of human heads against pictures, against yellow-tinted walls, against curtains of deep crimson velvet. Denham, to whom he turned next, shared her immobility under his gaze. But beneath his restraint and calm it was possible to detect a resolution, a will, set now with unalterable tenacity, which made such turns of speech as Mr Hilbery had at command appear oddly irrelevant. At any rate, he said nothing. He respected the young man; he was a very able young man; he was likely to get his own way. He could, he thought, looking at his still and very dignified head, understand Katharine's preference, and, as he thought this, he was surprised by a pang of acute jealousy. She might have married Rodney without causing him a twinge. This man she loved. Or what was the state of affairs between them? An extraordinary confusion of emotion was beginning to get the better of him, when Mrs Hilbery, who had been conscious of a sudden pause in the conversation, and had looked wistfully at her daughter once or twice, remarked: 'Don't stay if you want to go, Katharine. There's the little room over there. Perhaps you and Ralph-'

'We're engaged,' said Katharine, waking with a start, and looking straight at her father. He was taken aback by the directness of the statement; he exclaimed as if an unexpected blow had struck him. Had he loved her to see her swept away by this torrent, to have her taken from him by this uncontrollable force, to stand by helpless, ignored? Oh, how he loved her! How he loved her! He nodded very curtly to Denham.

'I gathered something of the kind last night,' he said. 'I hope you'll deserve her.' But he never looked at his daughter, and strode out of the room, leaving in the minds of the women a sense, half of awe, half of amus.e.m.e.nt, at the extravagant, inconsiderate, uncivilized male, outraged somehow and gone bellowing to his lair with a roar which still sometimes reverberates in the most polished of drawing-rooms. Then Katharine, looking at the shut door, looked down again, to hide her tears.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

THE LAMPS WERE LIT; their l.u.s.tre reflected itself in the polished wood; good wine was pa.s.sed round the dinner-table; before the meal was far advanced civilization had triumphed, and Mr Hilbery presided over a feast which came to wear more and more surely an aspect, cheerful, dignified, promising well for the future. To judge from the expression in Katharine's eyes it promised something-but he checked the approach to sentimentality. He poured out wine; he bade Denham help himself They went upstairs and he saw Katharine and Denham abstract themselves directly Ca.s.sandra had asked whether she might not play him something-some Mozart? some Beethoven? She sat down to the piano; the door closed softly behind them. His eyes rested on the closed door for some seconds unwaveringly, but, by degrees, the look of expectation died out of them, and with a sigh he listened to the music.

Katharine and Ralph were agreed with scarcely a word of discussion as to what they wished to do, and in a moment she joined him in the hall dressed for walking. The night was still and moonlit, fit for walking, though any night would have seemed so to them, desiring more than anything movement, freedom from scrutiny, silence, and the open air.

'At last!' she breathed, as the front door shut. She told him how she had waited, fidgeted, thought he was never coming, listened for the sound of doors, half expected to see him again under the lamp-post, looking at the house. They turned and looked at the serene front with its gold-rimmed windows, to him the shrine of so much adoration. In spite of her laugh and the little pressure of mockery on his arm, he would not resign his belief, but with her hand resting there, her voice quickened and mysteriously moving in his ears, he had not time-he had not the same inclination-other objects drew his attention.

How they came to find themselves walking down a street with many lamps, corners radiant with light, and a steady succession of motor-omnibuses plying both ways along it, they could neither of them tell; nor account for the impulse which led them suddenly to select one of these wayfarers and mount to the very front seat. After curving through streets of comparative darkness, so narrow that shadows on the blinds were pressed within a few feet of their faces, they came to one of those great knots of activity where the lights, having drawn close together, thin out again and take their separate ways. They were borne on until they saw the spires of the city churches pale and flat against the sky.

Are you cold?' he asked, as they stopped by Temple Bar.ee 'Yes, I am rather,' she replied, becoming conscious that the splendid race of lights drawn past her eyes by the superb curving and swerving of the monster on which she sat was at an end. They had followed some such course in their thoughts too; they had been borne on, victors in the forefront of some triumphal car, spectators of a pageant enacted for them, masters of life. But standing on the pavement alone, this exaltation left them; they were glad to be alone together. Ralph stood still for a moment to light his pipe beneath a lamp.

She looked at his face isolated in the little circle of light. 'Oh, that cottage,' she said. 'We must take it and go there.'

'And leave all this?' he inquired.

As you like,' she replied. She thought, looking at the sky above Chancery Lane, how the roof was the same everywhere; how she was now secure of all that this lofty blue and its steadfast lights meant to her; reality, was it, figures, love, truth?

'I've something on my mind,' said Ralph abruptly. 'I mean I've been thinking of Mary Datchet. We're very near her rooms now. Would you mind if we went there?'

She had turned before she answered him. She had no wish to see any one to-night; it seemed to her that the immense riddle was answered; the problem had been solved; she held in her hands for one brief moment the globe which we spend our lives in trying to shape, round, whole, and entire from the confusion of chaos. To see Mary was to risk the destruction of this globe.

'Did you treat her badly?' she asked rather mechanically, walking on.

'I could defend myself,' he said, almost defiantly. 'But what's the use, if one feels a thing? I won't be with her a minute,' he said. 'I'll just tell her-'

'Of course, you must tell her,' said Katharine, and now felt anxious for him to do what appeared to be necessary if he, too, were to hold his globe for a moment round, whole, and entire.

'I wish-I wish-' she sighed, for melancholy came over her and obscured at least a section of her clear vision. The globe swam before her as if obscured by tears.

'I regret nothing,' said Ralph firmly. She leant towards him almost as if she could thus see what he saw. She thought how obscure he still was to her, save only that more and more constantly he appeared to her a fire burning through its smoke, a source of life.

'Go on,' she said. 'You regret nothing-'

'Nothing-nothing,' he repeated.

'What a fire!' she thought to herself She thought of him blazing splendidly in the night, yet so obscure that to hold his arm, as she held it, was only to touch the opaque substance surrounding the flame that roared upwards.

'Why nothing?' she asked hurriedly, in order that he might say more and so make more splendid, more red, more darkly intertwined with smoke this flame rus.h.i.+ng upwards.

'What are you thinking of, Katharine?' he asked suspiciously, noticing her tone of dreaminess and the inapt words.

'I was thinking of you-yes, I swear it. Always of you, but you take such strange shapes in my mind. You've destroyed my loneliness. Am I to tell you how I see you? No, tell me-tell me from the beginning.'

Beginning with spasmodic words, he went on to speak more and more fluently, more and more pa.s.sionately, feeling her leaning towards him, listening with wonder like a child, with grat.i.tude, like a woman. She interrupted him gravely now and then.

'But it was foolish to stand outside and look at the windows. Suppose William hadn't seen you. Would you have gone to bed?'

He capped her reproof with wonderment that a woman of her age could have stood in Kingsway looking at the traffic until she forgot.

'But it was then I first knew I loved you!' she exclaimed.

'Tell me from the beginning,' he begged her.

'No, I'm a person who can't tell things,' she pleaded. 'I shall say something ridiculous-something about flames-fires. No, I can't tell you.'

But he persuaded her into a broken statement, beautiful to him, charged with extreme excitement as she spoke of the dark red fire, and the smoke twined round it, making him feel that he had stepped over the threshold into the faintly lit vastness of another mind, stirring with shapes, so large, so dim, unveiling themselves only in flashes, and moving away again into the darkness, engulfed by it. They had walked by this time to the street in which Mary lived, and being engrossed by what they said and partly saw, pa.s.sed her staircase without looking up. At this time of night there was no traffic and scarcely any foot-pa.s.sengers, so that they could pace slowly without interruption, arm-in-arm, raising their hands now and then to draw something upon the vast blue curtain of the sky.