CHAPTER XVIII
But other passengers were approaching Lincoln meanwhile by other roadson foot. A county town draws the inhabitants of all vicarages, farms,country houses, and wayside cottages, within a radius of ten miles atleast, once or twice a week to its streets; and among them, on thisoccasion, were Ralph Denham and Mary Datchet. They despised the roads,and took their way across the fields; and yet, from their appearance, itdid not seem as if they cared much where they walked so long as the waydid not actually trip them up. When they left the Vicarage, they hadbegun an argument which swung their feet along so rhythmically in timewith it that they covered the ground at over four miles an hour, and sawnothing of the hedgerows, the swelling plowland, or the mild blue sky.What they saw were the Houses of Parliament and the Government Officesin Whitehall. They both belonged to the class which is conscious ofhaving lost its birthright in these great structures and is seeking tobuild another kind of lodging for its own notion of law and government.Purposely, perhaps, Mary did not agree with Ralph; she loved to feel hermind in conflict with his, and to be certain that he spared her femalejudgment no ounce of his male muscularity. He seemed to argue asfiercely with her as if she were his brother. They were alike, however,in believing that it behooved them to take in hand the repair andreconstruction of the fabric of England. They agreed in thinking thatnature has not been generous in the endowment of our councilors. Theyagreed, unconsciously, in a mute love for the muddy field through whichthey tramped, with eyes narrowed close by the concentration of theirminds. At length they drew breath, let the argument fly away into thelimbo of other good arguments, and, leaning over a gate, opened theireyes for the first time and looked about them. Their feet tingledwith warm blood and their breath rose in steam around them. The bodilyexercise made them both feel more direct and less self-conscious thanusual, and Mary, indeed, was overcome by a sort of light-headednesswhich made it seem to her that it mattered very little what happenednext. It mattered so little, indeed, that she felt herself on the pointof saying to Ralph:
"I love you; I shall never love anybody else. Marry me or leave me;think what you like of me--I don't care a straw." At the moment,however, speech or silence seemed immaterial, and she merely clapped herhands together, and looked at the distant woods with the rust-like bloomon their brown, and the green and blue landscape through the steam ofher own breath. It seemed a mere toss-up whether she said, "I love you,"or whether she said, "I love the beech-trees," or only "I love--I love."
"Do you know, Mary," Ralph suddenly interrupted her, "I've made up mymind."
Her indifference must have been superficial, for it disappeared atonce. Indeed, she lost sight of the trees, and saw her own hand upon thetopmost bar of the gate with extreme distinctness, while he went on:
"I've made up my mind to chuck my work and live down here. I want you totell me about that cottage you spoke of. However, I suppose there'llbe no difficulty about getting a cottage, will there?" He spoke with anassumption of carelessness as if expecting her to dissuade him.
She still waited, as if for him to continue; she was convinced that insome roundabout way he approached the subject of their marriage.
"I can't stand the office any longer," he proceeded. "I don't know whatmy family will say; but I'm sure I'm right. Don't you think so?"
"Live down here by yourself?" she asked.
"Some old woman would do for me, I suppose," he replied. "I'm sick ofthe whole thing," he went on, and opened the gate with a jerk. Theybegan to cross the next field walking side by side.
"I tell you, Mary, it's utter destruction, working away, day after day,at stuff that doesn't matter a damn to any one. I've stood eight yearsof it, and I'm not going to stand it any longer. I suppose this allseems to you mad, though?"
By this time Mary had recovered her self-control.
"No. I thought you weren't happy," she said.
"Why did you think that?" he asked, with some surprise.
"Don't you remember that morning in Lincoln's Inn Fields?" she asked.
"Yes," said Ralph, slackening his pace and remembering Katharine andher engagement, the purple leaves stamped into the path, the white paperradiant under the electric light, and the hopelessness which seemed tosurround all these things.
"You're right, Mary," he said, with something of an effort, "though Idon't know how you guessed it."
She was silent, hoping that he might tell her the reason of hisunhappiness, for his excuses had not deceived her.
"I was unhappy--very unhappy," he repeated. Some six weeks separatedhim from that afternoon when he had sat upon the Embankment watching hisvisions dissolve in mist as the waters swam past and the sense of hisdesolation still made him shiver. He had not recovered in the least fromthat depression. Here was an opportunity for making himself face it,as he felt that he ought to; for, by this time, no doubt, it was only asentimental ghost, better exorcised by ruthless exposure to such an eyeas Mary's, than allowed to underlie all his actions and thoughts as hadbeen the case ever since he first saw Katharine Hilbery pouring out tea.He must begin, however, by mentioning her name, and this he found itimpossible to do. He persuaded himself that he could make an honeststatement without speaking her name; he persuaded himself that hisfeeling had very little to do with her.
"Unhappiness is a state of mind," he said, "by which I mean that it isnot necessarily the result of any particular cause."
This rather stilted beginning did not please him, and it became moreand more obvious to him that, whatever he might say, his unhappiness hadbeen directly caused by Katharine.
"I began to find my life unsatisfactory," he started afresh. "It seemedto me meaningless." He paused again, but felt that this, at any rate,was true, and that on these lines he could go on.
"All this money-making and working ten hours a day in an office, what'sit FOR? When one's a boy, you see, one's head is so full of dreams thatit doesn't seem to matter what one does. And if you're ambitious, you'reall right; you've got a reason for going on. Now my reasons ceased tosatisfy me. Perhaps I never had any. That's very likely now I come tothink of it. (What reason is there for anything, though?) Still, it'simpossible, after a certain age, to take oneself in satisfactorily. AndI know what carried me on"--for a good reason now occurred to him--"Iwanted to be the savior of my family and all that kind of thing. Iwanted them to get on in the world. That was a lie, of course--a kind ofself-glorification, too. Like most people, I suppose, I've lived almostentirely among delusions, and now I'm at the awkward stage of finding itout. I want another delusion to go on with. That's what my unhappinessamounts to, Mary."
There were two reasons that kept Mary very silent during this speech,and drew curiously straight lines upon her face. In the first place,Ralph made no mention of marriage; in the second, he was not speakingthe truth.
"I don't think it will be difficult to find a cottage," she said, withcheerful hardness, ignoring the whole of this statement. "You've gota little money, haven't you? Yes," she concluded, "I don't see why itshouldn't be a very good plan."
They crossed the field in complete silence. Ralph was surprised by herremark and a little hurt, and yet, on the whole, rather pleased. Hehad convinced himself that it was impossible to lay his case truthfullybefore Mary, and, secretly, he was relieved to find that he had notparted with his dream to her. She was, as he had always found her, thesensible, loyal friend, the woman he trusted; whose sympathy hecould count upon, provided he kept within certain limits. He was notdispleased to find that those limits were very clearly marked. When theyhad crossed the next hedge she said to him:
"Yes, Ralph, it's time you made a break. I've come to the sameconclusion myself. Only it won't be a country cottage in my case; it'llbe America. America!" she cried. "That's the place for me! They'll teachme something about organizing a movement there, and I'll come back andshow you how to do it."
If she meant consciously or unconsciously to belittle the seclusionand security of a country cottage, she did not succeed; f
or Ralph'sdetermination was genuine. But she made him visualize her in her owncharacter, so that he looked quickly at her, as she walked a little infront of him across the plowed field; for the first time that morning hesaw her independently of him or of his preoccupation with Katharine.He seemed to see her marching ahead, a rather clumsy but powerful andindependent figure, for whose courage he felt the greatest respect.
"Don't go away, Mary!" he exclaimed, and stopped.
"That's what you said before, Ralph," she returned, without looking athim. "You want to go away yourself and you don't want me to go away.That's not very sensible, is it?"
"Mary," he cried, stung by the remembrance of his exacting anddictatorial ways with her, "what a brute I've been to you!"
It took all her strength to keep the tears from springing, and to thrustback her assurance that she would forgive him till Doomsday if he chose.She was preserved from doing so only by a stubborn kind of respect forherself which lay at the root of her nature and forbade surrender, evenin moments of almost overwhelming passion. Now, when all was tempest andhigh-running waves, she knew of a land where the sun shone clear uponItalian grammars and files of docketed papers. Nevertheless, from theskeleton pallor of that land and the rocks that broke its surface,she knew that her life there would be harsh and lonely almost beyondendurance. She walked steadily a little in front of him across theplowed field. Their way took them round the verge of a wood of thintrees standing at the edge of a steep fold in the land. Looking betweenthe tree-trunks, Ralph saw laid out on the perfectly flat and richlygreen meadow at the bottom of the hill a small gray manor-house, withponds, terraces, and clipped hedges in front of it, a farm building orso at the side, and a screen of fir-trees rising behind, all perfectlysheltered and self-sufficient. Behind the house the hill rose again,and the trees on the farther summit stood upright against the sky, whichappeared of a more intense blue between their trunks. His mind at oncewas filled with a sense of the actual presence of Katharine; the grayhouse and the intense blue sky gave him the feeling of her presenceclose by. He leant against a tree, forming her name beneath his breath:
"Katharine, Katharine," he said aloud, and then, looking round, saw Marywalking slowly away from him, tearing a long spray of ivy from the treesas she passed them. She seemed so definitely opposed to the vision heheld in his mind that he returned to it with a gesture of impatience.
"Katharine, Katharine," he repeated, and seemed to himself to be withher. He lost his sense of all that surrounded him; all substantialthings--the hour of the day, what we have done and are about to do, thepresence of other people and the support we derive from seeing theirbelief in a common reality--all this slipped from him. So he might havefelt if the earth had dropped from his feet, and the empty blue hadhung all round him, and the air had been steeped in the presence of onewoman. The chirp of a robin on the bough above his head awakened him,and his awakenment was accompanied by a sigh. Here was the world inwhich he had lived; here the plowed field, the high road yonder, andMary, stripping ivy from the trees. When he came up with her he linkedhis arm through hers and said:
"Now, Mary, what's all this about America?"
There was a brotherly kindness in his voice which seemed to hermagnanimous, when she reflected that she had cut short his explanationsand shown little interest in his change of plan. She gave him herreasons for thinking that she might profit by such a journey, omittingthe one reason which had set all the rest in motion. He listenedattentively, and made no attempt to dissuade her. In truth, he foundhimself curiously eager to make certain of her good sense, and acceptedeach fresh proof of it with satisfaction, as though it helped him tomake up his mind about something. She forgot the pain he had caused her,and in place of it she became conscious of a steady tide of well-beingwhich harmonized very aptly with the tramp of their feet upon the dryroad and the support of his arm. The comfort was the more glowing inthat it seemed to be the reward of her determination to behave to himsimply and without attempting to be other than she was. Instead ofmaking out an interest in the poets, she avoided them instinctively, anddwelt rather insistently upon the practical nature of her gifts.
In a practical way she asked for particulars of his cottage, whichhardly existed in his mind, and corrected his vagueness.
"You must see that there's water," she insisted, with an exaggerationof interest. She avoided asking him what he meant to do in this cottage,and, at last, when all the practical details had been thrashed out asmuch as possible, he rewarded her by a more intimate statement.
"One of the rooms," he said, "must be my study, for, you see, Mary,I'm going to write a book." Here he withdrew his arm from hers, lit hispipe, and they tramped on in a sagacious kind of comradeship, the mostcomplete they had attained in all their friendship.
"And what's your book to be about?" she said, as boldly as if she hadnever come to grief with Ralph in talking about books. He told herunhesitatingly that he meant to write the history of the English villagefrom Saxon days to the present time. Some such plan had lain as a seedin his mind for many years; and now that he had decided, in a flash,to give up his profession, the seed grew in the space of twenty minutesboth tall and lusty. He was surprised himself at the positive way inwhich he spoke. It was the same with the question of his cottage. Thathad come into existence, too, in an unromantic shape--a square whitehouse standing just off the high road, no doubt, with a neighbor whokept a pig and a dozen squalling children; for these plans were shornof all romance in his mind, and the pleasure he derived from thinkingof them was checked directly it passed a very sober limit. So a sensibleman who has lost his chance of some beautiful inheritance might treadout the narrow bounds of his actual dwelling-place, and assure himselfthat life is supportable within its demesne, only one must grow turnipsand cabbages, not melons and pomegranates. Certainly Ralph took somepride in the resources of his mind, and was insensibly helped to righthimself by Mary's trust in him. She wound her ivy spray round herash-plant, and for the first time for many days, when alone with Ralph,set no spies upon her motives, sayings, and feelings, but surrenderedherself to complete happiness.
Thus talking, with easy silences and some pauses to look at the viewover the hedge and to decide upon the species of a little gray-brownbird slipping among the twigs, they walked into Lincoln, and afterstrolling up and down the main street, decided upon an inn where therounded window suggested substantial fare, nor were they mistaken. Forover a hundred and fifty years hot joints, potatoes, greens, and applepuddings had been served to generations of country gentlemen, and now,sitting at a table in the hollow of the bow window, Ralph and Mary tooktheir share of this perennial feast. Looking across the joint, half-waythrough the meal, Mary wondered whether Ralph would ever come to lookquite like the other people in the room. Would he be absorbed among theround pink faces, pricked with little white bristles, the calves fittedin shiny brown leather, the black-and-white check suits, which weresprinkled about in the same room with them? She half hoped so; shethought that it was only in his mind that he was different. She did notwish him to be too different from other people. The walk had given hima ruddy color, too, and his eyes were lit up by a steady, honest light,which could not make the simplest farmer feel ill at ease, or suggestto the most devout of clergymen a disposition to sneer at his faith. Sheloved the steep cliff of his forehead, and compared it to the brow of ayoung Greek horseman, who reins his horse back so sharply that ithalf falls on its haunches. He always seemed to her like a rider on aspirited horse. And there was an exaltation to her in being with him,because there was a risk that he would not be able to keep to the rightpace among other people. Sitting opposite him at the little table inthe window, she came back to that state of careless exaltation which hadovercome her when they halted by the gate, but now it was accompanied bya sense of sanity and security, for she felt that they had a feelingin common which scarcely needed embodiment in words. How silent hewas! leaning his forehead on his hand, now and then, and again lookingsteadily and gravely at the b
acks of the two men at the next table,with so little self-consciousness that she could almost watch his mindplacing one thought solidly upon the top of another; she thought thatshe could feel him thinking, through the shade of her fingers, andshe could anticipate the exact moment when he would put an end to histhought and turn a little in his chair and say:
"Well, Mary--?" inviting her to take up the thread of thought where hehad dropped it.
And at that very moment he turned just so, and said:
"Well, Mary?" with the curious touch of diffidence which she loved inhim.
She laughed, and she explained her laugh on the spur of the moment bythe look of the people in the street below. There was a motor-carwith an old lady swathed in blue veils, and a lady's maid on the seatopposite, holding a King Charles's spaniel; there was a country-womanwheeling a perambulator full of sticks down the middle of the road;there was a bailiff in gaiters discussing the state of the cattle marketwith a dissenting minister--so she defined them.
She ran over this list without any fear that her companion would thinkher trivial. Indeed, whether it was due to the warmth of the room or tothe good roast beef, or whether Ralph had achieved the process which iscalled making up one's mind, certainly he had given up testing the goodsense, the independent character, the intelligence shown in her remarks.He had been building one of those piles of thought, as ramshackle andfantastic as a Chinese pagoda, half from words let fall by gentlemen ingaiters, half from the litter in his own mind, about duck shooting andlegal history, about the Roman occupation of Lincoln and the relationsof country gentlemen with their wives, when, from all this disconnectedrambling, there suddenly formed itself in his mind the idea that hewould ask Mary to marry him. The idea was so spontaneous that it seemedto shape itself of its own accord before his eyes. It was then that heturned round and made use of his old, instinctive phrase:
"Well, Mary--?"
As it presented itself to him at first, the idea was so new andinteresting that he was half inclined to address it, without more ado,to Mary herself. His natural instinct to divide his thoughts carefullyinto two different classes before he expressed them to her prevailed.But as he watched her looking out of the window and describing the oldlady, the woman with the perambulator, the bailiff and the dissentingminister, his eyes filled involuntarily with tears. He would have likedto lay his head on her shoulder and sob, while she parted his hair withher fingers and soothed him and said:
"There, there. Don't cry! Tell me why you're crying--"; and they wouldclasp each other tight, and her arms would hold him like his mother's.He felt that he was very lonely, and that he was afraid of the otherpeople in the room.
"How damnable this all is!" he exclaimed abruptly.
"What are you talking about?" she replied, rather vaguely, still lookingout of the window.
He resented this divided attention more than, perhaps, he knew, and hethought how Mary would soon be on her way to America.
"Mary," he said, "I want to talk to you. Haven't we nearly done? Whydon't they take away these plates?"
Mary felt his agitation without looking at him; she felt convinced thatshe knew what it was that he wished to say to her.
"They'll come all in good time," she said; and felt it necessary todisplay her extreme calmness by lifting a salt-cellar and sweeping up alittle heap of bread-crumbs.
"I want to apologize," Ralph continued, not quite knowing what he wasabout to say, but feeling some curious instinct which urged him tocommit himself irrevocably, and to prevent the moment of intimacy frompassing.
"I think I've treated you very badly. That is, I've told you lies. Didyou guess that I was lying to you? Once in Lincoln's Inn Fields andagain to-day on our walk. I am a liar, Mary. Did you know that? Do youthink you do know me?"
"I think I do," she said.
At this point the waiter changed their plates.
"It's true I don't want you to go to America," he said, looking fixedlyat the table-cloth. "In fact, my feelings towards you seem to be utterlyand damnably bad," he said energetically, although forced to keep hisvoice low.
"If I weren't a selfish beast I should tell you to have nothing more todo with me. And yet, Mary, in spite of the fact that I believe what I'msaying, I also believe that it's good we should know each other--theworld being what it is, you see--" and by a nod of his head he indicatedthe other occupants of the room, "for, of course, in an ideal state ofthings, in a decent community even, there's no doubt you shouldn't haveanything to do with me--seriously, that is."
"You forget that I'm not an ideal character, either," said Mary, inthe same low and very earnest tones, which, in spite of being almostinaudible, surrounded their table with an atmosphere of concentrationwhich was quite perceptible to the other diners, who glanced at them nowand then with a queer mixture of kindness, amusement, and curiosity.
"I'm much more selfish than I let on, and I'm worldly a little--morethan you think, anyhow. I like bossing things--perhaps that's mygreatest fault. I've none of your passion for--" here she hesitated, andglanced at him, as if to ascertain what his passion was for--"for thetruth," she added, as if she had found what she sought indisputably.
"I've told you I'm a liar," Ralph repeated obstinately.
"Oh, in little things, I dare say," she said impatiently. "But not inreal ones, and that's what matters. I dare say I'm more truthful thanyou are in small ways. But I could never care"--she was surprised tofind herself speaking the word, and had to force herself to speak itout--"for any one who was a liar in that way. I love the truth a certainamount--a considerable amount--but not in the way you love it." Hervoice sank, became inaudible, and wavered as if she could scarcely keepherself from tears.
"Good heavens!" Ralph exclaimed to himself. "She loves me! Why did Inever see it before? She's going to cry; no, but she can't speak."
The certainty overwhelmed him so that he scarcely knew what he wasdoing; the blood rushed to his cheeks, and although he had quite madeup his mind to ask her to marry him, the certainty that she loved himseemed to change the situation so completely that he could not do it.He did not dare to look at her. If she cried, he did not know what heshould do. It seemed to him that something of a terrible and devastatingnature had happened. The waiter changed their plates once more.
In his agitation Ralph rose, turned his back upon Mary, and looked outof the window. The people in the street seemed to him only a dissolvingand combining pattern of black particles; which, for the moment,represented very well the involuntary procession of feelings andthoughts which formed and dissolved in rapid succession in his own mind.At one moment he exulted in the thought that Mary loved him; at thenext, it seemed that he was without feeling for her; her love wasrepulsive to him. Now he felt urged to marry her at once; now todisappear and never see her again. In order to control this disorderlyrace of thought he forced himself to read the name on the chemist's shopdirectly opposite him; then to examine the objects in the shop windows,and then to focus his eyes exactly upon a little group of women lookingin at the great windows of a large draper's shop. This discipline havinggiven him at least a superficial control of himself, he was about toturn and ask the waiter to bring the bill, when his eye was caught by atall figure walking quickly along the opposite pavement--a tall figure,upright, dark, and commanding, much detached from her surroundings. Sheheld her gloves in her left hand, and the left hand was bare. All thisRalph noticed and enumerated and recognized before he put a name to thewhole--Katharine Hilbery. She seemed to be looking for somebody. Hereyes, in fact, scanned both sides of the street, and for one second wereraised directly to the bow window in which Ralph stood; but she lookedaway again instantly without giving any sign that she had seen him. Thissudden apparition had an extraordinary effect upon him. It was as if hehad thought of her so intensely that his mind had formed the shapeof her, rather than that he had seen her in the flesh outside in thestreet. And yet he had not been thinking of her at all. The impressionwas so intense that he could not dismiss it, nor
even think whetherhe had seen her or merely imagined her. He sat down at once, and said,briefly and strangely, rather to himself than to Mary:
"That was Katharine Hilbery."
"Katharine Hilbery? What do you mean?" she asked, hardly understandingfrom his manner whether he had seen her or not.
"Katharine Hilbery," he repeated. "But she's gone now."
"Katharine Hilbery!" Mary thought, in an instant of blinding revelation"I've always known it was Katharine Hilbery!" She knew it all now.
After a moment of downcast stupor, she raised her eyes, looked steadilyat Ralph, and caught his fixed and dreamy gaze leveled at a point farbeyond their surroundings, a point that she had never reached in allthe time that she had known him. She noticed the lips just parted, thefingers loosely clenched, the whole attitude of rapt contemplation,which fell like a veil between them. She noticed everything about him;if there had been other signs of his utter alienation she would havesought them out, too, for she felt that it was only by heaping one truthupon another that she could keep herself sitting there, upright. Thetruth seemed to support her; it struck her, even as she looked at hisface, that the light of truth was shining far away beyond him; the lightof truth, she seemed to frame the words as she rose to go, shines on aworld not to be shaken by our personal calamities.
Ralph handed her her coat and her stick. She took them, fastened thecoat securely, grasped the stick firmly. The ivy spray was still twistedabout the handle; this one sacrifice, she thought, she might make tosentimentality and personality, and she picked two leaves from the ivyand put them in her pocket before she disencumbered her stick of therest of it. She grasped the stick in the middle, and settled her fur capclosely upon her head, as if she must be in trim for a long and stormywalk. Next, standing in the middle of the road, she took a slip of paperfrom her purse, and read out loud a list of commissions entrusted toher--fruit, butter, string, and so on and all the time she never spokedirectly to Ralph or looked at him.
Ralph heard her giving orders to attentive, rosy-checked men in whiteaprons, and in spite of his own preoccupation, he commented upon thedetermination with which she made her wishes known. Once more he began,automatically, to take stock of her characteristics. Standingthus, superficially observant and stirring the sawdust on the floormeditatively with the toe of his boot, he was roused by a musicaland familiar voice behind him, accompanied by a light touch upon hisshoulder.
"I'm not mistaken? Surely Mr. Denham? I caught a glimpse of your coatthrough the window, and I felt sure that I knew your coat. Have youseen Katharine or William? I'm wandering about Lincoln looking for theruins."
It was Mrs. Hilbery; her entrance created some stir in the shop; manypeople looked at her.
"First of all, tell me where I am," she demanded, but, catching sightof the attentive shopman, she appealed to him. "The ruins--my party iswaiting for me at the ruins. The Roman ruins--or Greek, Mr. Denham? Yourtown has a great many beautiful things in it, but I wish it hadn'tso many ruins. I never saw such delightful little pots of honey in mylife--are they made by your own bees? Please give me one of those littlepots, and tell me how I shall find my way to the ruins."
"And now," she continued, having received the information and the potof honey, having been introduced to Mary, and having insisted that theyshould accompany her back to the ruins, since in a town with so manyturnings, such prospects, such delightful little half-naked boysdabbling in pools, such Venetian canals, such old blue china in thecuriosity shops, it was impossible for one person all alone to findher way to the ruins. "Now," she exclaimed, "please tell me whatyou're doing here, Mr. Denham--for you ARE Mr. Denham, aren't you?" sheinquired, gazing at him with a sudden suspicion of her own accuracy."The brilliant young man who writes for the Review, I mean? Onlyyesterday my husband was telling me he thought you one of the cleverestyoung men he knew. Certainly, you've been the messenger of Providence tome, for unless I'd seen you I'm sure I should never have found the ruinsat all."
They had reached the Roman arch when Mrs. Hilbery caught sight of herown party, standing like sentinels facing up and down the road so as tointercept her if, as they expected, she had got lodged in some shop.
"I've found something much better than ruins!" she exclaimed. "I'vefound two friends who told me how to find you, which I could never havedone without them. They must come and have tea with us. What a pity thatwe've just had luncheon." Could they not somehow revoke that meal?
Katharine, who had gone a few steps by herself down the road, and wasinvestigating the window of an ironmonger, as if her mother might havegot herself concealed among mowing-machines and garden-shears, turnedsharply on hearing her voice, and came towards them. She was a greatdeal surprised to see Denham and Mary Datchet. Whether the cordialitywith which she greeted them was merely that which is natural to asurprise meeting in the country, or whether she was really glad to seethem both, at any rate she exclaimed with unusual pleasure as she shookhands:
"I never knew you lived here. Why didn't you say so, and we could havemet? And are you staying with Mary?" she continued, turning to Ralph."What a pity we didn't meet before."
Thus confronted at a distance of only a few feet by the real body of thewoman about whom he had dreamt so many million dreams, Ralph stammered;he made a clutch at his self-control; the color either came to hischeeks or left them, he knew not which; but he was determined to faceher and track down in the cold light of day whatever vestige of truththere might be in his persistent imaginations. He did not succeed insaying anything. It was Mary who spoke for both of them. He was struckdumb by finding that Katharine was quite different, in some strangeway, from his memory, so that he had to dismiss his old view in orderto accept the new one. The wind was blowing her crimson scarf across herface; the wind had already loosened her hair, which looped across thecorner of one of the large, dark eyes which, so he used to think, lookedsad; now they looked bright with the brightness of the sea struck by anunclouded ray; everything about her seemed rapid, fragmentary, and fullof a kind of racing speed. He realized suddenly that he had never seenher in the daylight before.
Meanwhile, it was decided that it was too late to go in search of ruinsas they had intended; and the whole party began to walk towards thestables where the carriage had been put up.
"Do you know," said Katharine, keeping slightly in advance of the restwith Ralph, "I thought I saw you this morning, standing at a window.But I decided that it couldn't be you. And it must have been you all thesame."
"Yes, I thought I saw you--but it wasn't you," he replied.
This remark, and the rough strain in his voice, recalled to her memoryso many difficult speeches and abortive meetings that she was jerkeddirectly back to the London drawing-room, the family relics, andthe tea-table; and at the same time recalled some half-finished orinterrupted remark which she had wanted to make herself or to hear fromhim--she could not remember what it was.
"I expect it was me," she said. "I was looking for my mother. It happensevery time we come to Lincoln. In fact, there never was a family sounable to take care of itself as ours is. Not that it very much matters,because some one always turns up in the nick of time to help us outof our scrapes. Once I was left in a field with a bull when I was ababy--but where did we leave the carriage? Down that street or thenext? The next, I think." She glanced back and saw that the others werefollowing obediently, listening to certain memories of Lincoln uponwhich Mrs. Hilbery had started. "But what are you doing here?" sheasked.
"I'm buying a cottage. I'm going to live here--as soon as I can find acottage, and Mary tells me there'll be no difficulty about that."
"But," she exclaimed, almost standing still in her surprise, "you willgive up the Bar, then?" It flashed across her mind that he must alreadybe engaged to Mary.
"The solicitor's office? Yes. I'm giving that up."
"But why?" she asked. She answered herself at once, with a curiouschange from rapid speech to an almost melancholy tone. "I think you'revery wise to give it up. Y
ou will be much happier."
At this very moment, when her words seemed to be striking a path intothe future for him, they stepped into the yard of an inn, and therebeheld the family coach of the Otways, to which one sleek horse wasalready attached, while the second was being led out of the stable doorby the hostler.
"I don't know what one means by happiness," he said briefly, having tostep aside in order to avoid a groom with a bucket. "Why do you think Ishall be happy? I don't expect to be anything of the kind. I expect tobe rather less unhappy. I shall write a book and curse my charwoman--ifhappiness consists in that. What do you think?"
She could not answer because they were immediately surrounded by othermembers of the party--by Mrs. Hilbery, and Mary, Henry Otway, andWilliam.
Rodney went up to Katharine immediately and said to her:
"Henry is going to drive home with your mother, and I suggest that theyshould put us down half-way and let us walk back."
Katharine nodded her head. She glanced at him with an oddly furtiveexpression.
"Unfortunately we go in opposite directions, or we might have given youa lift," he continued to Denham. His manner was unusually peremptory; heseemed anxious to hasten the departure, and Katharine looked at him fromtime to time, as Denham noticed, with an expression half of inquiry,half of annoyance. She at once helped her mother into her cloak, andsaid to Mary:
"I want to see you. Are you going back to London at once? I willwrite." She half smiled at Ralph, but her look was a little overcast bysomething she was thinking, and in a very few minutes the Otway carriagerolled out of the stable yard and turned down the high road leading tothe village of Lampsher.
The return drive was almost as silent as the drive from home had beenin the morning; indeed, Mrs. Hilbery leant back with closed eyes inher corner, and either slept or feigned sleep, as her habit was in theintervals between the seasons of active exertion, or continued the storywhich she had begun to tell herself that morning.
About two miles from Lampsher the road ran over the rounded summit ofthe heath, a lonely spot marked by an obelisk of granite, setting forththe gratitude of some great lady of the eighteenth century who had beenset upon by highwaymen at this spot and delivered from death just ashope seemed lost. In summer it was a pleasant place, for the deep woodson either side murmured, and the heather, which grew thick round thegranite pedestal, made the light breeze taste sweetly; in winter thesighing of the trees was deepened to a hollow sound, and the heath wasas gray and almost as solitary as the empty sweep of the clouds aboveit.
Here Rodney stopped the carriage and helped Katharine to alight. Henry,too, gave her his hand, and fancied that she pressed it very slightlyin parting as if she sent him a message. But the carriage rolled onimmediately, without wakening Mrs. Hilbery, and left the couple standingby the obelisk. That Rodney was angry with her and had made thisopportunity for speaking to her, Katharine knew very well; she wasneither glad nor sorry that the time had come, nor, indeed, knew what toexpect, and thus remained silent. The carriage grew smaller and smallerupon the dusky road, and still Rodney did not speak. Perhaps, shethought, he waited until the last sign of the carriage had disappearedbeneath the curve of the road and they were left entirely alone. Tocloak their silence she read the writing on the obelisk, to do which shehad to walk completely round it. She was murmuring a word to two of thepious lady's thanks above her breath when Rodney joined her. In silencethey set out along the cart-track which skirted the verge of the trees.
To break the silence was exactly what Rodney wished to do, and yet couldnot do to his own satisfaction. In company it was far easier to approachKatharine; alone with her, the aloofness and force of her characterchecked all his natural methods of attack. He believed that she hadbehaved very badly to him, but each separate instance of unkindnessseemed too petty to be advanced when they were alone together.
"There's no need for us to race," he complained at last; upon which sheimmediately slackened her pace, and walked too slowly to suit him. Indesperation he said the first thing he thought of, very peevishly andwithout the dignified prelude which he had intended.
"I've not enjoyed my holiday."
"No?"
"No. I shall be glad to get back to work again."
"Saturday, Sunday, Monday--there are only three days more," she counted.
"No one enjoys being made a fool of before other people," he blurtedout, for his irritation rose as she spoke, and got the better of his aweof her, and was inflamed by that awe.
"That refers to me, I suppose," she said calmly.
"Every day since we've been here you've done something to make me appearridiculous," he went on. "Of course, so long as it amuses you, you'rewelcome; but we have to remember that we are going to spend our livestogether. I asked you, only this morning, for example, to come out andtake a turn with me in the garden. I was waiting for you ten minutes,and you never came. Every one saw me waiting. The stable-boys saw me.I was so ashamed that I went in. Then, on the drive you hardly spoke tome. Henry noticed it. Every one notices it.... You find no difficulty intalking to Henry, though."
She noted these various complaints and determined philosophicallyto answer none of them, although the last stung her to considerableirritation. She wished to find out how deep his grievance lay.
"None of these things seem to me to matter," she said.
"Very well, then. I may as well hold my tongue," he replied.
"In themselves they don't seem to me to matter; if they hurt you, ofcourse they matter," she corrected herself scrupulously. Her tone ofconsideration touched him, and he walked on in silence for a space.
"And we might be so happy, Katharine!" he exclaimed impulsively, anddrew her arm through his. She withdrew it directly.
"As long as you let yourself feel like this we shall never be happy,"she said.
The harshness, which Henry had noticed, was again unmistakable in hermanner. William flinched and was silent. Such severity, accompaniedby something indescribably cold and impersonal in her manner, hadconstantly been meted out to him during the last few days, always in thecompany of others. He had recouped himself by some ridiculous display ofvanity which, as he knew, put him still more at her mercy. Now thathe was alone with her there was no stimulus from outside to draw hisattention from his injury. By a considerable effort of self-control heforced himself to remain silent, and to make himself distinguish whatpart of his pain was due to vanity, what part to the certainty that nowoman really loving him could speak thus.
"What do I feel about Katharine?" he thought to himself. It was clearthat she had been a very desirable and distinguished figure, themistress of her little section of the world; but more than that, she wasthe person of all others who seemed to him the arbitress of life, thewoman whose judgment was naturally right and steady, as his had neverbeen in spite of all his culture. And then he could not see her comeinto a room without a sense of the flowing of robes, of the flowering ofblossoms, of the purple waves of the sea, of all things that are lovelyand mutable on the surface but still and passionate in their heart.
"If she were callous all the time and had only led me on to laugh at meI couldn't have felt that about her," he thought. "I'm not a fool, afterall. I can't have been utterly mistaken all these years. And yet, whenshe speaks to me like that! The truth of it is," he thought, "that I'vegot such despicable faults that no one could help speaking to melike that. Katharine is quite right. And yet those are not my seriousfeelings, as she knows quite well. How can I change myself? What wouldmake her care for me?" He was terribly tempted here to break the silenceby asking Katharine in what respects he could change himself to suither; but he sought consolation instead by running over the list of hisgifts and acquirements, his knowledge of Greek and Latin, his knowledgeof art and literature, his skill in the management of meters, and hisancient west-country blood. But the feeling that underlay all thesefeelings and puzzled him profoundly and kept him silent was thecertainty that he loved Katharine as sincerely as he had it
in him tolove any one. And yet she could speak to him like that! In a sort ofbewilderment he lost all desire to speak, and would quite readily havetaken up some different topic of conversation if Katharine had startedone. This, however, she did not do.
He glanced at her, in case her expression might help him to understandher behavior. As usual, she had quickened her pace unconsciously, andwas now walking a little in front of him; but he could gain littleinformation from her eyes, which looked steadily at the brown heather,or from the lines drawn seriously upon her forehead. Thus to lose touchwith her, for he had no idea what she was thinking, was so unpleasant tohim that he began to talk about his grievances again, without, however,much conviction in his voice.
"If you have no feeling for me, wouldn't it be kinder to say so to me inprivate?"
"Oh, William," she burst out, as if he had interrupted some absorbingtrain of thought, "how you go on about feelings! Isn't it better not totalk so much, not to be worrying always about small things that don'treally matter?"
"That's the question precisely," he exclaimed. "I only want you to tellme that they don't matter. There are times when you seem indifferent toeverything. I'm vain, I've a thousand faults; but you know they're noteverything; you know I care for you."
"And if I say that I care for you, don't you believe me?"
"Say it, Katharine! Say it as if you meant it! Make me feel that youcare for me!"
She could not force herself to speak a word. The heather was growing dimaround them, and the horizon was blotted out by white mist. To ask herfor passion or for certainty seemed like asking that damp prospect forfierce blades of fire, or the faded sky for the intense blue vault ofJune.
He went on now to tell her of his love for her, in words which bore,even to her critical senses, the stamp of truth; but none of thistouched her, until, coming to a gate whose hinge was rusty, he heavedit open with his shoulder, still talking and taking no account of hiseffort. The virility of this deed impressed her; and yet, normally, sheattached no value to the power of opening gates. The strength of muscleshas nothing to do on the face of it with the strength of affections;nevertheless, she felt a sudden concern for this power running to wasteon her account, which, combined with a desire to keep possession of thatstrangely attractive masculine power, made her rouse herself from hertorpor.
Why should she not simply tell him the truth--which was that she hadaccepted him in a misty state of mind when nothing had its right shapeor size? that it was deplorable, but that with clearer eyesight marriagewas out of the question? She did not want to marry any one. She wantedto go away by herself, preferably to some bleak northern moor, andthere study mathematics and the science of astronomy. Twenty words wouldexplain the whole situation to him. He had ceased to speak; he had toldher once more how he loved her and why. She summoned her courage, fixedher eyes upon a lightning-splintered ash-tree, and, almost as if shewere reading a writing fixed to the trunk, began:
"I was wrong to get engaged to you. I shall never make you happy. I havenever loved you."
"Katharine!" he protested.
"No, never," she repeated obstinately. "Not rightly. Don't you see, Ididn't know what I was doing?"
"You love some one else?" he cut her short.
"Absolutely no one."
"Henry?" he demanded.
"Henry? I should have thought, William, even you--"
"There is some one," he persisted. "There has been a change in the lastfew weeks. You owe it to me to be honest, Katharine."
"If I could, I would," she replied.
"Why did you tell me you would marry me, then?" he demanded.
Why, indeed? A moment of pessimism, a sudden conviction of theundeniable prose of life, a lapse of the illusion which sustains youthmidway between heaven and earth, a desperate attempt to reconcileherself with facts--she could only recall a moment, as of waking from adream, which now seemed to her a moment of surrender. But who could givereasons such as these for doing what she had done? She shook her headvery sadly.
"But you're not a child--you're not a woman of moods," Rodney persisted."You couldn't have accepted me if you hadn't loved me!" he cried.
A sense of her own misbehavior, which she had succeeded in keeping fromher by sharpening her consciousness of Rodney's faults, now swept overher and almost overwhelmed her. What were his faults in comparison withthe fact that he cared for her? What were her virtues in comparison withthe fact that she did not care for him? In a flash the conviction thatnot to care is the uttermost sin of all stamped itself upon her inmostthought; and she felt herself branded for ever.
He had taken her arm, and held her hand firmly in his, nor had she theforce to resist what now seemed to her his enormously superior strength.Very well; she would submit, as her mother and her aunt and most women,perhaps, had submitted; and yet she knew that every second of suchsubmission to his strength was a second of treachery to him.
"I did say I would marry you, but it was wrong," she forced herselfto say, and she stiffened her arm as if to annul even the seemingsubmission of that separate part of her; "for I don't love you,William; you've noticed it, every one's noticed it; why should we go onpretending? When I told you I loved you, I was wrong. I said what I knewto be untrue."
As none of her words seemed to her at all adequate to represent whatshe felt, she repeated them, and emphasized them without realizingthe effect that they might have upon a man who cared for her. She wascompletely taken aback by finding her arm suddenly dropped; then she sawhis face most strangely contorted; was he laughing, it flashed acrossher? In another moment she saw that he was in tears. In her bewildermentat this apparition she stood aghast for a second. With a desperate sensethat this horror must, at all costs, be stopped, she then put her armsabout him, drew his head for a moment upon her shoulder, and led him on,murmuring words of consolation, until he heaved a great sigh. They heldfast to each other; her tears, too, ran down her cheeks; and were bothquite silent. Noticing the difficulty with which he walked, and feelingthe same extreme lassitude in her own limbs, she proposed that theyshould rest for a moment where the bracken was brown and shriveledbeneath an oak-tree. He assented. Once more he gave a great sigh, andwiped his eyes with a childlike unconsciousness, and began to speakwithout a trace of his previous anger. The idea came to her that theywere like the children in the fairy tale who were lost in a wood, andwith this in her mind she noticed the scattering of dead leaves allround them which had been blown by the wind into heaps, a foot or twodeep, here and there.
"When did you begin to feel this, Katharine?" he said; "for it isn'ttrue to say that you've always felt it. I admit I was unreasonablethe first night when you found that your clothes had been left behind.Still, where's the fault in that? I could promise you never to interferewith your clothes again. I admit I was cross when I found you upstairswith Henry. Perhaps I showed it too openly. But that's not unreasonableeither when one's engaged. Ask your mother. And now this terriblething--" He broke off, unable for the moment to proceed any further."This decision you say you've come to--have you discussed it with anyone? Your mother, for example, or Henry?"
"No, no, of course not," she said, stirring the leaves with her hand."But you don't understand me, William--"
"Help me to understand you--"
"You don't understand, I mean, my real feelings; how could you? I'veonly now faced them myself. But I haven't got the sort of feeling--love,I mean--I don't know what to call it"--she looked vaguely towards thehorizon sunk under mist--"but, anyhow, without it our marriage would bea farce--"
"How a farce?" he asked. "But this kind of analysis is disastrous!" heexclaimed.
"I should have done it before," she said gloomily.
"You make yourself think things you don't think," he continued, becomingdemonstrative with his hands, as his manner was. "Believe me, Katharine,before we came here we were perfectly happy. You were full of plans forour house--the chair-covers, don't you remember?--like any other womanwho is about to be married. Now, for
no reason whatever, you begin tofret about your feeling and about my feeling, with the usual result. Iassure you, Katharine, I've been through it all myself. At one time Iwas always asking myself absurd questions which came to nothing either.What you want, if I may say so, is some occupation to take you outof yourself when this morbid mood comes on. If it hadn't been for mypoetry, I assure you, I should often have been very much in the samestate myself. To let you into a secret," he continued, with his littlechuckle, which now sounded almost assured, "I've often gone home fromseeing you in such a state of nerves that I had to force myself to writea page or two before I could get you out of my head. Ask Denham; he'lltell you how he met me one night; he'll tell you what a state he foundme in."
Katharine started with displeasure at the mention of Ralph's name. Thethought of the conversation in which her conduct had been made a subjectfor discussion with Denham roused her anger; but, as she instantly felt,she had scarcely the right to grudge William any use of her name, seeingwhat her fault against him had been from first to last. And yet Denham!She had a view of him as a judge. She figured him sternly weighinginstances of her levity in this masculine court of inquiry into femininemorality and gruffly dismissing both her and her family with somehalf-sarcastic, half-tolerant phrase which sealed her doom, as far ashe was concerned, for ever. Having met him so lately, the sense of hischaracter was strong in her. The thought was not a pleasant one fora proud woman, but she had yet to learn the art of subduing herexpression. Her eyes fixed upon the ground, her brows drawn together,gave William a very fair picture of the resentment that she was forcingherself to control. A certain degree of apprehension, occasionallyculminating in a kind of fear, had always entered into his love for her,and had increased, rather to his surprise, in the greater intimacy oftheir engagement. Beneath her steady, exemplary surface ran a vein ofpassion which seemed to him now perverse, now completely irrational, forit never took the normal channel of glorification of him and his doings;and, indeed, he almost preferred the steady good sense, which had alwaysmarked their relationship, to a more romantic bond. But passion she had,he could not deny it, and hitherto he had tried to see it employed inhis thoughts upon the lives of the children who were to be born to them.
"She will make a perfect mother--a mother of sons," he thought; butseeing her sitting there, gloomy and silent, he began to have his doubtson this point. "A farce, a farce," he thought to himself. "She said thatour marriage would be a farce," and he became suddenly aware of theirsituation, sitting upon the ground, among the dead leaves, not fiftyyards from the main road, so that it was quite possible for some onepassing to see and recognize them. He brushed off his face any tracethat might remain of that unseemly exhibition of emotion. But he wasmore troubled by Katharine's appearance, as she sat rapt in thought uponthe ground, than by his own; there was something improper to him in herself-forgetfulness. A man naturally alive to the conventions of society,he was strictly conventional where women were concerned, and especiallyif the women happened to be in any way connected with him. He noticedwith distress the long strand of dark hair touching her shoulder and twoor three dead beech-leaves attached to her dress; but to recall hermind in their present circumstances to a sense of these details wasimpossible. She sat there, seeming unconscious of everything. Hesuspected that in her silence she was reproaching herself; but he wishedthat she would think of her hair and of the dead beech-leaves, whichwere of more immediate importance to him than anything else. Indeed,these trifles drew his attention strangely from his own doubtful anduneasy state of mind; for relief, mixing itself with pain, stirred up amost curious hurry and tumult in his breast, almost concealing hisfirst sharp sense of bleak and overwhelming disappointment. In order torelieve this restlessness and close a distressingly ill-ordered scene,he rose abruptly and helped Katharine to her feet. She smiled a littleat the minute care with which he tidied her and yet, when he brushed thedead leaves from his own coat, she flinched, seeing in that action thegesture of a lonely man.
"William," she said, "I will marry you. I will try to make you happy."