CHAPTER XXX
The day was so different from other days to three people in the housethat the common routine of household life--the maid waiting at table,Mrs. Hilbery writing a letter, the clock striking, and the door opening,and all the other signs of long-established civilization appearedsuddenly to have no meaning save as they lulled Mr. and Mrs. Hilberyinto the belief that nothing unusual had taken place. It chanced thatMrs. Hilbery was depressed without visible cause, unless a certaincrudeness verging upon coarseness in the temper of her favoriteElizabethans could be held responsible for the mood. At any rate, shehad shut up "The Duchess of Malfi" with a sigh, and wished to know, soshe told Rodney at dinner, whether there wasn't some young writer witha touch of the great spirit--somebody who made you believe that lifewas BEAUTIFUL? She got little help from Rodney, and after singingher plaintive requiem for the death of poetry by herself, she charmedherself into good spirits again by remembering the existence of Mozart.She begged Cassandra to play to her, and when they went upstairsCassandra opened the piano directly, and did her best to create anatmosphere of unmixed beauty. At the sound of the first notes Katharineand Rodney both felt an enormous sense of relief at the license whichthe music gave them to loosen their hold upon the mechanism of behavior.They lapsed into the depths of thought. Mrs. Hilbery was soon spiritedaway into a perfectly congenial mood, that was half reverie and halfslumber, half delicious melancholy and half pure bliss. Mr. Hilberyalone attended. He was extremely musical, and made Cassandra aware thathe listened to every note. She played her best, and won his approval.Leaning slightly forward in his chair, and turning his little greenstone, he weighed the intention of her phrases approvingly, but stoppedher suddenly to complain of a noise behind him. The window was unhasped.He signed to Rodney, who crossed the room immediately to put the matterright. He stayed a moment longer by the window than was, perhaps,necessary, and having done what was needed, drew his chair a littlecloser than before to Katharine's side. The music went on. Under coverof some exquisite run of melody, he leant towards her and whisperedsomething. She glanced at her father and mother, and a moment later leftthe room, almost unobserved, with Rodney.
"What is it?" she asked, as soon as the door was shut.
Rodney made no answer, but led her downstairs into the dining-room onthe ground floor. Even when he had shut the door he said nothing, butwent straight to the window and parted the curtains. He beckoned toKatharine.
"There he is again," he said. "Look, there--under the lamp-post."
Katharine looked. She had no idea what Rodney was talking about. A vaguefeeling of alarm and mystery possessed her. She saw a man standing onthe opposite side of the road facing the house beneath a lamp-post. Asthey looked the figure turned, walked a few steps, and came back againto his old position. It seemed to her that he was looking fixedly ather, and was conscious of her gaze on him. She knew, in a flash, who theman was who was watching them. She drew the curtain abruptly.
"Denham," said Rodney. "He was there last night too." He spoke sternly.His whole manner had become full of authority. Katharine felt almostas if he accused her of some crime. She was pale and uncomfortablyagitated, as much by the strangeness of Rodney's behavior as by thesight of Ralph Denham.
"If he chooses to come--" she said defiantly.
"You can't let him wait out there. I shall tell him to come in." Rodneyspoke with such decision that when he raised his arm Katharine expectedhim to draw the curtain instantly. She caught his hand with a littleexclamation.
"Wait!" she cried. "I don't allow you."
"You can't wait," he replied. "You've gone too far." His hand remainedupon the curtain. "Why don't you admit, Katharine," he broke out,looking at her with an expression of contempt as well as of anger, "thatyou love him? Are you going to treat him as you treated me?"
She looked at him, wondering, in spite of all her perplexity, at thespirit that possessed him.
"I forbid you to draw the curtain," she said.
He reflected, and then took his hand away.
"I've no right to interfere," he concluded. "I'll leave you. Or, if youlike, we'll go back to the drawing-room."
"No. I can't go back," she said, shaking her head. She bent her head inthought.
"You love him, Katharine," Rodney said suddenly. His tone had lostsomething of its sternness, and might have been used to urge a child toconfess its fault. She raised her eyes and fixed them upon him.
"I love him?" she repeated. He nodded. She searched his face, as iffor further confirmation of his words, and, as he remained silent andexpectant, turned away once more and continued her thoughts. He observedher closely, but without stirring, as if he gave her time to make up hermind to fulfil her obvious duty. The strains of Mozart reached them fromthe room above.
"Now," she said suddenly, with a sort of desperation, rising from herchair and seeming to command Rodney to fulfil his part. He drew thecurtain instantly, and she made no attempt to stop him. Their eyes atonce sought the same spot beneath the lamp-post.
"He's not there!" she exclaimed.
No one was there. William threw the window up and looked out. Thewind rushed into the room, together with the sound of distant wheels,footsteps hurrying along the pavement, and the cries of sirens hootingdown the river.
"Denham!" William cried.
"Ralph!" said Katharine, but she spoke scarcely louder than she mighthave spoken to some one in the same room. With their eyes fixed uponthe opposite side of the road, they did not notice a figure close to therailing which divided the garden from the street. But Denham had crossedthe road and was standing there. They were startled by his voice closeat hand.
"Rodney!"
"There you are! Come in, Denham." Rodney went to the front door andopened it. "Here he is," he said, bringing Ralph with him into thedining-room where Katharine stood, with her back to the open window.Their eyes met for a second. Denham looked half dazed by the stronglight, and, buttoned in his overcoat, with his hair ruffled across hisforehead by the wind, he seemed like somebody rescued from an open boatout at sea. William promptly shut the window and drew the curtains. Heacted with a cheerful decision as if he were master of the situation,and knew exactly what he meant to do.
"You're the first to hear the news, Denham," he said. "Katharine isn'tgoing to marry me, after all."
"Where shall I put--" Ralph began vaguely, holding out his hat andglancing about him; he balanced it carefully against a silver bowl thatstood upon the sideboard. He then sat himself down rather heavily atthe head of the oval dinner-table. Rodney stood on one side of him andKatharine on the other. He appeared to be presiding over some meetingfrom which most of the members were absent. Meanwhile, he waited, andhis eyes rested upon the glow of the beautifully polished mahoganytable.
"William is engaged to Cassandra," said Katharine briefly.
At that Denham looked up quickly at Rodney. Rodney's expression changed.He lost his self-possession. He smiled a little nervously, and then hisattention seemed to be caught by a fragment of melody from the floorabove. He seemed for a moment to forget the presence of the others. Heglanced towards the door.
"I congratulate you," said Denham.
"Yes, yes. We're all mad--quite out of our minds, Denham," he said."It's partly Katharine's doing--partly mine." He looked oddly round theroom as if he wished to make sure that the scene in which he playeda part had some real existence. "Quite mad," he repeated. "EvenKatharine--" His gaze rested upon her finally, as if she, too, hadchanged from his old view of her. He smiled at her as if to encourageher. "Katharine shall explain," he said, and giving a little nod toDenham, he left the room.
Katharine sat down at once, and leant her chin upon her hands. So longas Rodney was in the room the proceedings of the evening had seemed tobe in his charge, and had been marked by a certain unreality. Now thatshe was alone with Ralph she felt at once that a constraint had beentaken from them both. She felt that they were alone at the bottom of thehouse, which rose, story upon story, upon the
top of them.
"Why were you waiting out there?" she asked.
"For the chance of seeing you," he replied.
"You would have waited all night if it hadn't been for William. It'swindy too. You must have been cold. What could you see? Nothing but ourwindows."
"It was worth it. I heard you call me."
"I called you?" She had called unconsciously.
"They were engaged this morning," she told him, after a pause.
"You're glad?" he asked.
She bent her head. "Yes, yes," she sighed. "But you don't know how goodhe is--what he's done for me--" Ralph made a sound of understanding."You waited there last night too?" she asked.
"Yes. I can wait," Denham replied.
The words seemed to fill the room with an emotion which Katharineconnected with the sound of distant wheels, the footsteps hurrying alongthe pavement, the cries of sirens hooting down the river, the darknessand the wind. She saw the upright figure standing beneath the lamp-post.
"Waiting in the dark," she said, glancing at the window, as if he sawwhat she was seeing. "Ah, but it's different--" She broke off. "I'm notthe person you think me. Until you realize that it's impossible--"
Placing her elbows on the table, she slid her ruby ring up and downher finger abstractedly. She frowned at the rows of leather-boundbooks opposite her. Ralph looked keenly at her. Very pale, but sternlyconcentrated upon her meaning, beautiful but so little aware of herselfas to seem remote from him also, there was something distant andabstract about her which exalted him and chilled him at the same time.
"No, you're right," he said. "I don't know you. I've never known you."
"Yet perhaps you know me better than any one else," she mused.
Some detached instinct made her aware that she was gazing at a bookwhich belonged by rights to some other part of the house. She walkedover to the shelf, took it down, and returned to her seat, placingthe book on the table between them. Ralph opened it and looked at theportrait of a man with a voluminous white shirt-collar, which formed thefrontispiece.
"I say I do know you, Katharine," he affirmed, shutting the book. "It'sonly for moments that I go mad."
"Do you call two whole nights a moment?"
"I swear to you that now, at this instant, I see you precisely as youare. No one has ever known you as I know you.... Could you have takendown that book just now if I hadn't known you?"
"That's true," she replied, "but you can't think how I'm divided--howI'm at my ease with you, and how I'm bewildered. The unreality--thedark--the waiting outside in the wind--yes, when you look at me, notseeing me, and I don't see you either.... But I do see," she went onquickly, changing her position and frowning again, "heaps of things,only not you."
"Tell me what you see," he urged.
But she could not reduce her vision to words, since it was no singleshape colored upon the dark, but rather a general excitement, anatmosphere, which, when she tried to visualize it, took form as a windscouring the flanks of northern hills and flashing light upon cornfieldsand pools.
"Impossible," she sighed, laughing at the ridiculous notion of puttingany part of this into words.
"Try, Katharine," Ralph urged her.
"But I can't--I'm talking a sort of nonsense--the sort of nonsense onetalks to oneself." She was dismayed by the expression of longing anddespair upon his face. "I was thinking about a mountain in the North ofEngland," she attempted. "It's too silly--I won't go on."
"We were there together?" he pressed her.
"No. I was alone." She seemed to be disappointing the desire of a child.His face fell.
"You're always alone there?"
"I can't explain." She could not explain that she was essentiallyalone there. "It's not a mountain in the North of England. It's animagination--a story one tells oneself. You have yours too?"
"You're with me in mine. You're the thing I make up, you see."
"Oh, I see," she sighed. "That's why it's so impossible." She turnedupon him almost fiercely. "You must try to stop it," she said.
"I won't," he replied roughly, "because I--" He stopped. He realizedthat the moment had come to impart that news of the utmost importancewhich he had tried to impart to Mary Datchet, to Rodney upon theEmbankment, to the drunken tramp upon the seat. How should he offer itto Katharine? He looked quickly at her. He saw that she was only halfattentive to him; only a section of her was exposed to him. The sightroused in him such desperation that he had much ado to control hisimpulse to rise and leave the house. Her hand lay loosely curled uponthe table. He seized it and grasped it firmly as if to make sure of herexistence and of his own. "Because I love you, Katharine," he said.
Some roundness or warmth essential to that statement was absent fromhis voice, and she had merely to shake her head very slightly for himto drop her hand and turn away in shame at his own impotence. He thoughtthat she had detected his wish to leave her. She had discerned the breakin his resolution, the blankness in the heart of his vision. It was truethat he had been happier out in the street, thinking of her, than nowthat he was in the same room with her. He looked at her with a guiltyexpression on his face. But her look expressed neither disappointmentnor reproach. Her pose was easy, and she seemed to give effect to a moodof quiet speculation by the spinning of her ruby ring upon the polishedtable. Denham forgot his despair in wondering what thoughts now occupiedher.
"You don't believe me?" he said. His tone was humble, and made her smileat him.
"As far as I understand you--but what should you advise me to do withthis ring?" she asked, holding it out.
"I should advise you to let me keep it for you," he replied, in the sametone of half-humorous gravity.
"After what you've said, I can hardly trust you--unless you'll unsaywhat you've said?"
"Very well. I'm not in love with you."
"But I think you ARE in love with me.... As I am with you," she addedcasually enough. "At least," she said slipping her ring back to its oldposition, "what other word describes the state we're in?"
She looked at him gravely and inquiringly, as if in search of help.
"It's when I'm with you that I doubt it, not when I'm alone," he stated.
"So I thought," she replied.
In order to explain to her his state of mind, Ralph recounted hisexperience with the photograph, the letter, and the flower picked atKew. She listened very seriously.
"And then you went raving about the streets," she mused. "Well, it's badenough. But my state is worse than yours, because it hasn't anythingto do with facts. It's an hallucination, pure and simple--anintoxication.... One can be in love with pure reason?" she hazarded."Because if you're in love with a vision, I believe that that's what I'min love with."
This conclusion seemed fantastic and profoundly unsatisfactory to Ralph,but after the astonishing variations of his own sentiments during thepast half-hour he could not accuse her of fanciful exaggeration.
"Rodney seems to know his own mind well enough," he said almostbitterly. The music, which had ceased, had now begun again, and themelody of Mozart seemed to express the easy and exquisite love of thetwo upstairs.
"Cassandra never doubted for a moment. But we--" she glanced at him asif to ascertain his position, "we see each other only now and then--"
"Like lights in a storm--"
"In the midst of a hurricane," she concluded, as the window shookbeneath the pressure of the wind. They listened to the sound in silence.
Here the door opened with considerable hesitation, and Mrs. Hilbery'shead appeared, at first with an air of caution, but having made surethat she had admitted herself to the dining-room and not to some moreunusual region, she came completely inside and seemed in no way takenaback by the sight she saw. She seemed, as usual, bound on some quest ofher own which was interrupted pleasantly but strangely by running intoone of those queer, unnecessary ceremonies that other people thought fitto indulge in.
"Please don't let me interrupt you, Mr.--" she was at a loss, as usual,
for the name, and Katharine thought that she did not recognize him. "Ihope you've found something nice to read," she added, pointing to thebook upon the table. "Byron--ah, Byron. I've known people who knew LordByron," she said.
Katharine, who had risen in some confusion, could not help smiling atthe thought that her mother found it perfectly natural and desirablethat her daughter should be reading Byron in the dining-room late atnight alone with a strange young man. She blessed a disposition thatwas so convenient, and felt tenderly towards her mother and her mother'seccentricities. But Ralph observed that although Mrs. Hilbery held thebook so close to her eyes she was not reading a word.
"My dear mother, why aren't you in bed?" Katharine exclaimed, changingastonishingly in the space of a minute to her usual condition ofauthoritative good sense. "Why are you wandering about?"
"I'm sure I should like your poetry better than I like Lord Byron's,"said Mrs. Hilbery, addressing Ralph Denham.
"Mr. Denham doesn't write poetry; he has written articles for father,for the Review," Katharine said, as if prompting her memory.
"Oh dear! How dull!" Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed, with a sudden laugh thatrather puzzled her daughter.
Ralph found that she had turned upon him a gaze that was at once veryvague and very penetrating.
"But I'm sure you read poetry at night. I always judge by the expressionof the eyes," Mrs. Hilbery continued. ("The windows of the soul," sheadded parenthetically.) "I don't know much about the law," she wenton, "though many of my relations were lawyers. Some of them lookedvery handsome, too, in their wigs. But I think I do know a littleabout poetry," she added. "And all the things that aren't writtendown, but--but--" She waved her hand, as if to indicate the wealth ofunwritten poetry all about them. "The night and the stars, the dawncoming up, the barges swimming past, the sun setting.... Ah dear," shesighed, "well, the sunset is very lovely too. I sometimes think thatpoetry isn't so much what we write as what we feel, Mr. Denham."
During this speech of her mother's Katharine had turned away, andRalph felt that Mrs. Hilbery was talking to him apart, with a desireto ascertain something about him which she veiled purposely by thevagueness of her words. He felt curiously encouraged and heartened bythe beam in her eye rather than by her actual words. From the distanceof her age and sex she seemed to be waving to him, hailing him as a shipsinking beneath the horizon might wave its flag of greeting to anothersetting out upon the same voyage. He bent his head, saying nothing, butwith a curious certainty that she had read an answer to her inquiry thatsatisfied her. At any rate, she rambled off into a description of theLaw Courts which turned to a denunciation of English justice, which,according to her, imprisoned poor men who couldn't pay their debts."Tell me, shall we ever do without it all?" she asked, but at this pointKatharine gently insisted that her mother should go to bed. Looking backfrom half-way up the staircase, Katharine seemed to see Denham's eyeswatching her steadily and intently with an expression that she hadguessed in them when he stood looking at the windows across the road.