CHAPTER X
Messrs. Grateley and Hooper, the solicitors in whose firm Ralph Denhamwas clerk, had their office in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and there RalphDenham appeared every morning very punctually at ten o'clock. Hispunctuality, together with other qualities, marked him out among theclerks for success, and indeed it would have been safe to wager that inten years' time or so one would find him at the head of his profession,had it not been for a peculiarity which sometimes seemed to makeeverything about him uncertain and perilous. His sister Joan had alreadybeen disturbed by his love of gambling with his savings. Scrutinizinghim constantly with the eye of affection, she had become aware of acurious perversity in his temperament which caused her much anxiety, andwould have caused her still more if she had not recognized the germsof it in her own nature. She could fancy Ralph suddenly sacrificing hisentire career for some fantastic imagination some cause or idea or even(so her fancy ran) for some woman seen from a railway train, hanging upclothes in a back yard. When he had found this beauty or this cause,no force, she knew, would avail to restrain him from pursuit of it. Shesuspected the East also, and always fidgeted herself when she saw himwith a book of Indian travels in his hand, as though he were suckingcontagion from the page. On the other hand, no common love affair, hadthere been such a thing, would have caused her a moment's uneasinesswhere Ralph was concerned. He was destined in her fancy for somethingsplendid in the way of success or failure, she knew not which.
And yet nobody could have worked harder or done better in all therecognized stages of a young man's life than Ralph had done, and Joanhad to gather materials for her fears from trifles in her brother'sbehavior which would have escaped any other eye. It was natural thatshe should be anxious. Life had been so arduous for all of them fromthe start that she could not help dreading any sudden relaxation of hisgrasp upon what he held, though, as she knew from inspection of her ownlife, such sudden impulse to let go and make away from the disciplineand the drudgery was sometimes almost irresistible. But with Ralph,if he broke away, she knew that it would be only to put himself underharsher constraint; she figured him toiling through sandy deserts undera tropical sun to find the source of some river or the haunt of somefly; she figured him living by the labor of his hands in some city slum,the victim of one of those terrible theories of right and wrong whichwere current at the time; she figured him prisoner for life in the houseof a woman who had seduced him by her misfortunes. Half proudly, andwholly anxiously, she framed such thoughts, as they sat, late at night,talking together over the gas-stove in Ralph's bedroom.
It is likely that Ralph would not have recognized his own dream of afuture in the forecasts which disturbed his sister's peace of mind.Certainly, if any one of them had been put before him he would haverejected it with a laugh, as the sort of life that held no attractionsfor him. He could not have said how it was that he had put these absurdnotions into his sister's head. Indeed, he prided himself upon beingwell broken into a life of hard work, about which he had no sort ofillusions. His vision of his own future, unlike many such forecasts,could have been made public at any moment without a blush; he attributedto himself a strong brain, and conferred on himself a seat in the Houseof Commons at the age of fifty, a moderate fortune, and, with luck,an unimportant office in a Liberal Government. There was nothingextravagant in a forecast of that kind, and certainly nothingdishonorable. Nevertheless, as his sister guessed, it needed all Ralph'sstrength of will, together with the pressure of circumstances, tokeep his feet moving in the path which led that way. It needed, inparticular, a constant repetition of a phrase to the effect that heshared the common fate, found it best of all, and wished for no other;and by repeating such phrases he acquired punctuality and habits ofwork, and could very plausibly demonstrate that to be a clerk in asolicitor's office was the best of all possible lives, and that otherambitions were vain.
But, like all beliefs not genuinely held, this one depended very muchupon the amount of acceptance it received from other people, and inprivate, when the pressure of public opinion was removed, Ralph lethimself swing very rapidly away from his actual circumstances uponstrange voyages which, indeed, he would have been ashamed to describe.In these dreams, of course, he figured in noble and romantic parts, butself-glorification was not the only motive of them. They gave outletto some spirit which found no work to do in real life, for, with thepessimism which his lot forced upon him, Ralph had made up his mind thatthere was no use for what, contemptuously enough, he called dreams, inthe world which we inhabit. It sometimes seemed to him that this spiritwas the most valuable possession he had; he thought that by means ofit he could set flowering waste tracts of the earth, cure many ills, orraise up beauty where none now existed; it was, too, a fierce and potentspirit which would devour the dusty books and parchments on the officewall with one lick of its tongue, and leave him in a minute standing innakedness, if he gave way to it. His endeavor, for many years, had beento control the spirit, and at the age of twenty-nine he thought he couldpride himself upon a life rigidly divided into the hours of work andthose of dreams; the two lived side by side without harming each other.As a matter of fact, this effort at discipline had been helped by theinterests of a difficult profession, but the old conclusion to whichRalph had come when he left college still held sway in his mind, andtinged his views with the melancholy belief that life for most peoplecompels the exercise of the lower gifts and wastes the precious ones,until it forces us to agree that there is little virtue, as wellas little profit, in what once seemed to us the noblest part of ourinheritance.
Denham was not altogether popular either in his office or among hisfamily. He was too positive, at this stage of his career, as to what wasright and what wrong, too proud of his self-control, and, as is naturalin the case of persons not altogether happy or well suited in theirconditions, too apt to prove the folly of contentment, if he foundany one who confessed to that weakness. In the office his ratherostentatious efficiency annoyed those who took their own work morelightly, and, if they foretold his advancement, it was not altogethersympathetically. Indeed, he appeared to be rather a hard andself-sufficient young man, with a queer temper, and manners that wereuncompromisingly abrupt, who was consumed with a desire to get on in theworld, which was natural, these critics thought, in a man of no means,but not engaging.
The young men in the office had a perfect right to these opinions,because Denham showed no particular desire for their friendship. Heliked them well enough, but shut them up in that compartment of lifewhich was devoted to work. Hitherto, indeed, he had found littledifficulty in arranging his life as methodically as he arranged hisexpenditure, but about this time he began to encounter experiences whichwere not so easy to classify. Mary Datchet had begun this confusion twoyears ago by bursting into laughter at some remark of his, almost thefirst time they met. She could not explain why it was. She thought himquite astonishingly odd. When he knew her well enough to tell her how hespent Monday and Wednesday and Saturday, she was still more amused; shelaughed till he laughed, too, without knowing why. It seemed to her veryodd that he should know as much about breeding bulldogs as any man inEngland; that he had a collection of wild flowers found near Londonand his weekly visit to old Miss Trotter at Ealing, who was an authorityupon the science of Heraldry, never failed to excite her laughter. Shewanted to know everything, even the kind of cake which the old ladysupplied on these occasions; and their summer excursions to churchesin the neighborhood of London for the purpose of taking rubbings of thebrasses became most important festivals, from the interest she took inthem. In six months she knew more about his odd friends and hobbies thanhis own brothers and sisters knew, after living with him all his life;and Ralph found this very pleasant, though disordering, for his own viewof himself had always been profoundly serious.
Certainly it was very pleasant to be with Mary Datchet and to become,directly the door was shut, quite a different sort of person, eccentricand lovable, with scarcely any likeness to the self most people knew. Hebecame less
serious, and rather less dictatorial at home, for he was aptto hear Mary laughing at him, and telling him, as she was fond of doing,that he knew nothing at all about anything. She made him, also, take aninterest in public questions, for which she had a natural liking; andwas in process of turning him from Tory to Radical, after a courseof public meetings, which began by boring him acutely, and ended byexciting him even more than they excited her.
But he was reserved; when ideas started up in his mind, he divided themautomatically into those he could discuss with Mary, and those he mustkeep for himself. She knew this and it interested her, for she wasaccustomed to find young men very ready to talk about themselves, andhad come to listen to them as one listens to children, without anythought of herself. But with Ralph, she had very little of thismaternal feeling, and, in consequence, a much keener sense of her ownindividuality.
Late one afternoon Ralph stepped along the Strand to an interview witha lawyer upon business. The afternoon light was almost over, and alreadystreams of greenish and yellowish artificial light were being pouredinto an atmosphere which, in country lanes, would now have been softwith the smoke of wood fires; and on both sides of the road the shopwindows were full of sparkling chains and highly polished leathercases, which stood upon shelves made of thick plate-glass. None of thesedifferent objects was seen separately by Denham, but from all of them hedrew an impression of stir and cheerfulness. Thus it came about that hesaw Katharine Hilbery coming towards him, and looked straight at her, asif she were only an illustration of the argument that was going forwardin his mind. In this spirit he noticed the rather set expression inher eyes, and the slight, half-conscious movement of her lips, which,together with her height and the distinction of her dress, made her lookas if the scurrying crowd impeded her, and her direction were differentfrom theirs. He noticed this calmly; but suddenly, as he passed her, hishands and knees began to tremble, and his heart beat painfully. She didnot see him, and went on repeating to herself some lines which had stuckto her memory: "It's life that matters, nothing but life--the processof discovering--the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discoveryitself at all." Thus occupied, she did not see Denham, and he had notthe courage to stop her. But immediately the whole scene in the Strandwore that curious look of order and purpose which is imparted to themost heterogeneous things when music sounds; and so pleasant was thisimpression that he was very glad that he had not stopped her, afterall. It grew slowly fainter, but lasted until he stood outside thebarrister's chambers.
When his interview with the barrister was over, it was too late to goback to the office. His sight of Katharine had put him queerly out oftune for a domestic evening. Where should he go? To walk through thestreets of London until he came to Katharine's house, to look up at thewindows and fancy her within, seemed to him possible for a moment;and then he rejected the plan almost with a blush as, with a curiousdivision of consciousness, one plucks a flower sentimentally and throwsit away, with a blush, when it is actually picked. No, he would go andsee Mary Datchet. By this time she would be back from her work.
To see Ralph appear unexpectedly in her room threw Mary for a second offher balance. She had been cleaning knives in her little scullery,and when she had let him in she went back again, and turned on thecold-water tap to its fullest volume, and then turned it off again."Now," she thought to herself, as she screwed it tight, "I'm not goingto let these silly ideas come into my head.... Don't you think Mr.Asquith deserves to be hanged?" she called back into the sitting-room,and when she joined him, drying her hands, she began to tell him aboutthe latest evasion on the part of the Government with respect to theWomen's Suffrage Bill. Ralph did not want to talk about politics, buthe could not help respecting Mary for taking such an interest in publicquestions. He looked at her as she leant forward, poking the fire, andexpressing herself very clearly in phrases which bore distantly thetaint of the platform, and he thought, "How absurd Mary would think meif she knew that I almost made up my mind to walk all the way to Chelseain order to look at Katharine's windows. She wouldn't understand it, butI like her very much as she is."
For some time they discussed what the women had better do; and as Ralphbecame genuinely interested in the question, Mary unconsciously lether attention wander, and a great desire came over her to talk to Ralphabout her own feelings; or, at any rate, about something personal, sothat she might see what he felt for her; but she resisted this wish. Butshe could not prevent him from feeling her lack of interest in what hewas saying, and gradually they both became silent. One thought afteranother came up in Ralph's mind, but they were all, in some way,connected with Katharine, or with vague feelings of romance andadventure such as she inspired. But he could not talk to Mary about suchthoughts; and he pitied her for knowing nothing of what he was feeling."Here," he thought, "is where we differ from women; they have no senseof romance."
"Well, Mary," he said at length, "why don't you say something amusing?"
His tone was certainly provoking, but, as a general rule, Mary was noteasily provoked. This evening, however, she replied rather sharply:
"Because I've got nothing amusing to say, I suppose."
Ralph thought for a moment, and then remarked:
"You work too hard. I don't mean your health," he added, as she laughedscornfully, "I mean that you seem to me to be getting wrapped up in yourwork."
"And is that a bad thing?" she asked, shading her eyes with her hand.
"I think it is," he returned abruptly.
"But only a week ago you were saying the opposite." Her tone wasdefiant, but she became curiously depressed. Ralph did not perceive it,and took this opportunity of lecturing her, and expressing his latestviews upon the proper conduct of life. She listened, but her mainimpression was that he had been meeting some one who had influenced him.He was telling her that she ought to read more, and to see thatthere were other points of view as deserving of attention as her own.Naturally, having last seen him as he left the office in companywith Katharine, she attributed the change to her; it was likely thatKatharine, on leaving the scene which she had so clearly despised, hadpronounced some such criticism, or suggested it by her own attitude.But she knew that Ralph would never admit that he had been influenced byanybody.
"You don't read enough, Mary," he was saying. "You ought to read morepoetry."
It was true that Mary's reading had been rather limited to such worksas she needed to know for the sake of examinations; and her time forreading in London was very little. For some reason, no one likes to betold that they do not read enough poetry, but her resentment was onlyvisible in the way she changed the position of her hands, and in thefixed look in her eyes. And then she thought to herself, "I'm behavingexactly as I said I wouldn't behave," whereupon she relaxed all hermuscles and said, in her reasonable way:
"Tell me what I ought to read, then."
Ralph had unconsciously been irritated by Mary, and he now deliveredhimself of a few names of great poets which were the text for adiscourse upon the imperfection of Mary's character and way of life.
"You live with your inferiors," he said, warming unreasonably, as heknew, to his text. "And you get into a groove because, on the whole,it's rather a pleasant groove. And you tend to forget what you're therefor. You've the feminine habit of making much of details. You don't seewhen things matter and when they don't. And that's what's the ruin ofall these organizations. That's why the Suffragists have never doneanything all these years. What's the point of drawing-room meetings andbazaars? You want to have ideas, Mary; get hold of something big; nevermind making mistakes, but don't niggle. Why don't you throw it all upfor a year, and travel?--see something of the world. Don't be contentto live with half a dozen people in a backwater all your life. But youwon't," he concluded.
"I've rather come to that way of thinking myself--about myself, I mean,"said Mary, surprising him by her acquiescence. "I should like to gosomewhere far away."
For a moment they were both silent. Ralph then said:
"But look here, Mary, you haven't been taking this seriously, have you?"His irritation was spent, and the depression, which she could not keepout of her voice, made him feel suddenly with remorse that he had beenhurting her.
"You won't go away, will you?" he asked. And as she said nothing, headded, "Oh no, don't go away."
"I don't know exactly what I mean to do," she replied. She hoveredon the verge of some discussion of her plans, but she received noencouragement. He fell into one of his queer silences, which seemed toMary, in spite of all her precautions, to have reference to what shealso could not prevent herself from thinking about--their feelingfor each other and their relationship. She felt that the two lines ofthought bored their way in long, parallel tunnels which came very closeindeed, but never ran into each other.
When he had gone, and he left her without breaking his silence more thanwas needed to wish her good night, she sat on for a time, reviewing whathe had said. If love is a devastating fire which melts the whole beinginto one mountain torrent, Mary was no more in love with Denham thanshe was in love with her poker or her tongs. But probably these extremepassions are very rare, and the state of mind thus depicted belongs tothe very last stages of love, when the power to resist has been eatenaway, week by week or day by day. Like most intelligent people, Marywas something of an egoist, to the extent, that is, of attaching greatimportance to what she felt, and she was by nature enough of a moralistto like to make certain, from time to time, that her feelings werecreditable to her. When Ralph left her she thought over her state ofmind, and came to the conclusion that it would be a good thing to learna language--say Italian or German. She then went to a drawer, which shehad to unlock, and took from it certain deeply scored manuscript pages.She read them through, looking up from her reading every now and thenand thinking very intently for a few seconds about Ralph. She did herbest to verify all the qualities in him which gave rise to emotions inher; and persuaded herself that she accounted reasonably for them all.Then she looked back again at her manuscript, and decided that to writegrammatical English prose is the hardest thing in the world. Butshe thought about herself a great deal more than she thought aboutgrammatical English prose or about Ralph Denham, and it may thereforebe disputed whether she was in love, or, if so, to which branch of thefamily her passion belonged.