CHAPTER VI
Of all the hours of an ordinary working week-day, which are thepleasantest to look forward to and to look back upon? If a singleinstance is of use in framing a theory, it may be said that the minutesbetween nine-twenty-five and nine-thirty in the morning had a singularcharm for Mary Datchet. She spent them in a very enviable frame of mind;her contentment was almost unalloyed. High in the air as her flat was,some beams from the morning sun reached her even in November, strikingstraight at curtain, chair, and carpet, and painting there three bright,true spaces of green, blue, and purple, upon which the eye rested with apleasure which gave physical warmth to the body.
There were few mornings when Mary did not look up, as she bent tolace her boots, and as she followed the yellow rod from curtain tobreakfast-table she usually breathed some sigh of thankfulness that herlife provided her with such moments of pure enjoyment. She was robbingno one of anything, and yet, to get so much pleasure from simple things,such as eating one's breakfast alone in a room which had nice colors init, clean from the skirting of the boards to the corners of the ceiling,seemed to suit her so thoroughly that she used at first to hunt aboutfor some one to apologize to, or for some flaw in the situation. She hadnow been six months in London, and she could find no flaw, but that, asshe invariably concluded by the time her boots were laced, was solelyand entirely due to the fact that she had her work. Every day, as shestood with her dispatch-box in her hand at the door of her flat, andgave one look back into the room to see that everything was straightbefore she left, she said to herself that she was very glad that shewas going to leave it all, that to have sat there all day long, in theenjoyment of leisure, would have been intolerable.
Out in the street she liked to think herself one of the workers who,at this hour, take their way in rapid single file along all the broadpavements of the city, with their heads slightly lowered, as if alltheir effort were to follow each other as closely as might be; so thatMary used to figure to herself a straight rabbit-run worn by theirunswerving feet upon the pavement. But she liked to pretend that she wasindistinguishable from the rest, and that when a wet day drove her tothe Underground or omnibus, she gave and took her share of crowd andwet with clerks and typists and commercial men, and shared with themthe serious business of winding-up the world to tick for anotherfour-and-twenty hours.
Thus thinking, on the particular morning in question, she made her awayacross Lincoln's Inn Fields and up Kingsway, and so through SouthamptonRow until she reached her office in Russell Square. Now and then shewould pause and look into the window of some bookseller or flower shop,where, at this early hour, the goods were being arranged, and empty gapsbehind the plate glass revealed a state of undress. Mary felt kindlydisposed towards the shopkeepers, and hoped that they would trick themidday public into purchasing, for at this hour of the morning sheranged herself entirely on the side of the shopkeepers and bank clerks,and regarded all who slept late and had money to spend as her enemyand natural prey. And directly she had crossed the road at Holborn, herthoughts all came naturally and regularly to roost upon her work, andshe forgot that she was, properly speaking, an amateur worker, whoseservices were unpaid, and could hardly be said to wind the world up forits daily task, since the world, so far, had shown very little desire totake the boons which Mary's society for woman's suffrage had offered it.
She was thinking all the way up Southampton Row of notepaper andfoolscap, and how an economy in the use of paper might be effected(without, of course, hurting Mrs. Seal's feelings), for she was certainthat the great organizers always pounce, to begin with, upon trifleslike these, and build up their triumphant reforms upon a basis ofabsolute solidity; and, without acknowledging it for a moment, MaryDatchet was determined to be a great organizer, and had already doomedher society to reconstruction of the most radical kind. Once or twicelately, it is true, she had started, broad awake, before turning intoRussell Square, and denounced herself rather sharply for being alreadyin a groove, capable, that is, of thinking the same thoughts everymorning at the same hour, so that the chestnut-colored brick of theRussell Square houses had some curious connection with her thoughtsabout office economy, and served also as a sign that she should getinto trim for meeting Mr. Clacton, or Mrs. Seal, or whoever might bebeforehand with her at the office. Having no religious belief, she wasthe more conscientious about her life, examining her position from timeto time very seriously, and nothing annoyed her more than to find one ofthese bad habits nibbling away unheeded at the precious substance. Whatwas the good, after all, of being a woman if one didn't keep fresh, andcram one's life with all sorts of views and experiments? Thus she alwaysgave herself a little shake, as she turned the corner, and, as often asnot, reached her own door whistling a snatch of a Somersetshire ballad.
The suffrage office was at the top of one of the large Russell Squarehouses, which had once been lived in by a great city merchant and hisfamily, and was now let out in slices to a number of societies whichdisplayed assorted initials upon doors of ground glass, and kept, eachof them, a typewriter which clicked busily all day long. The oldhouse, with its great stone staircase, echoed hollowly to the sound oftypewriters and of errand-boys from ten to six. The noise of differenttypewriters already at work, disseminating their views upon theprotection of native races, or the value of cereals as foodstuffs,quickened Mary's steps, and she always ran up the last flight of stepswhich led to her own landing, at whatever hour she came, so as to gether typewriter to take its place in competition with the rest.
She sat herself down to her letters, and very soon all thesespeculations were forgotten, and the two lines drew themselves betweenher eyebrows, as the contents of the letters, the office furniture, andthe sounds of activity in the next room gradually asserted their swayupon her. By eleven o'clock the atmosphere of concentration was runningso strongly in one direction that any thought of a different order couldhardly have survived its birth more than a moment or so. The task whichlay before her was to organize a series of entertainments, the profitsof which were to benefit the society, which drooped for want of funds.It was her first attempt at organization on a large scale, and she meantto achieve something remarkable. She meant to use the cumbrous machineto pick out this, that, and the other interesting person from the muddleof the world, and to set them for a week in a pattern which mustcatch the eyes of Cabinet Ministers, and the eyes once caught, the oldarguments were to be delivered with unexampled originality. Such wasthe scheme as a whole; and in contemplation of it she would become quiteflushed and excited, and have to remind herself of all the details thatintervened between her and success.
The door would open, and Mr. Clacton would come in to search for acertain leaflet buried beneath a pyramid of leaflets. He was a thin,sandy-haired man of about thirty-five, spoke with a Cockney accent, andhad about him a frugal look, as if nature had not dealt generously withhim in any way, which, naturally, prevented him from dealing generouslywith other people. When he had found his leaflet, and offered a fewjocular hints upon keeping papers in order, the typewriting would stopabruptly, and Mrs. Seal would burst into the room with a letter whichneeded explanation in her hand. This was a more serious interruptionthan the other, because she never knew exactly what she wanted, andhalf a dozen requests would bolt from her, no one of which was clearlystated. Dressed in plum-colored velveteen, with short, gray hair, and aface that seemed permanently flushed with philanthropic enthusiasm,she was always in a hurry, and always in some disorder. She wore twocrucifixes, which got themselves entangled in a heavy gold chain uponher breast, and seemed to Mary expressive of her mental ambiguity. Onlyher vast enthusiasm and her worship of Miss Markham, one of the pioneersof the society, kept her in her place, for which she had no soundqualification.
So the morning wore on, and the pile of letters grew, and Mary felt, atlast, that she was the center ganglion of a very fine network of nerveswhich fell over England, and one of these days, when she touched theheart of the system, would begin feeling and rushing togethe
r andemitting their splendid blaze of revolutionary fireworks--for some suchmetaphor represents what she felt about her work, when her brain hadbeen heated by three hours of application.
Shortly before one o'clock Mr. Clacton and Mrs. Seal desisted from theirlabors, and the old joke about luncheon, which came out regularlyat this hour, was repeated with scarcely any variation of words.Mr. Clacton patronized a vegetarian restaurant; Mrs. Seal broughtsandwiches, which she ate beneath the plane-trees in Russell Square;while Mary generally went to a gaudy establishment, upholstered in redplush, near by, where, much to the vegetarian's disapproval, you couldbuy steak, two inches thick, or a roast section of fowl, swimming in apewter dish.
"The bare branches against the sky do one so much GOOD," Mrs. Sealasserted, looking out into the Square.
"But one can't lunch off trees, Sally," said Mary.
"I confess I don't know how you manage it, Miss Datchet," Mr. Clactonremarked. "I should sleep all the afternoon, I know, if I took a heavymeal in the middle of the day."
"What's the very latest thing in literature?" Mary asked, good-humoredlypointing to the yellow-covered volume beneath Mr. Clacton's arm, for heinvariably read some new French author at lunch-time, or squeezed ina visit to a picture gallery, balancing his social work with an ardentculture of which he was secretly proud, as Mary had very soon divined.
So they parted and Mary walked away, wondering if they guessed that shereally wanted to get away from them, and supposing that they had notquite reached that degree of subtlety. She bought herself an eveningpaper, which she read as she ate, looking over the top of it againand again at the queer people who were buying cakes or imparting theirsecrets, until some young woman whom she knew came in, and she calledout, "Eleanor, come and sit by me," and they finished their lunchtogether, parting on the strip of pavement among the different lines oftraffic with a pleasant feeling that they were stepping once more intotheir separate places in the great and eternally moving pattern of humanlife.
But, instead of going straight back to the office to-day, Mary turnedinto the British Museum, and strolled down the gallery with the shapesof stone until she found an empty seat directly beneath the gaze of theElgin marbles. She looked at them, and seemed, as usual, borne up onsome wave of exaltation and emotion, by which her life at once becamesolemn and beautiful--an impression which was due as much, perhaps,to the solitude and chill and silence of the gallery as to the actualbeauty of the statues. One must suppose, at least, that her emotionswere not purely esthetic, because, after she had gazed at the Ulyssesfor a minute or two, she began to think about Ralph Denham. So securedid she feel with these silent shapes that she almost yielded to animpulse to say "I am in love with you" aloud. The presence of thisimmense and enduring beauty made her almost alarmingly conscious of herdesire, and at the same time proud of a feeling which did not displayanything like the same proportions when she was going about her dailywork.
She repressed her impulse to speak aloud, and rose and wandered aboutrather aimlessly among the statues until she found herself in anothergallery devoted to engraved obelisks and winged Assyrian bulls, and heremotion took another turn. She began to picture herself traveling withRalph in a land where these monsters were couchant in the sand. "For,"she thought to herself, as she gazed fixedly at some information printedbehind a piece of glass, "the wonderful thing about you is that you'reready for anything; you're not in the least conventional, like mostclever men."
And she conjured up a scene of herself on a camel's back, in the desert,while Ralph commanded a whole tribe of natives.
"That is what you can do," she went on, moving on to the next statue."You always make people do what you want."
A glow spread over her spirit, and filled her eyes with brightness.Nevertheless, before she left the Museum she was very far from saying,even in the privacy of her own mind, "I am in love with you," and thatsentence might very well never have framed itself. She was, indeed,rather annoyed with herself for having allowed such an ill-consideredbreach of her reserve, weakening her powers of resistance, she felt,should this impulse return again. For, as she walked along the street toher office, the force of all her customary objections to being in lovewith any one overcame her. She did not want to marry at all. It seemedto her that there was something amateurish in bringing love into touchwith a perfectly straightforward friendship, such as hers was withRalph, which, for two years now, had based itself upon common interestsin impersonal topics, such as the housing of the poor, or the taxationof land values.
But the afternoon spirit differed intrinsically from the morning spirit.Mary found herself watching the flight of a bird, or making drawings ofthe branches of the plane-trees upon her blotting-paper. People came into see Mr. Clacton on business, and a seductive smell of cigarette smokeissued from his room. Mrs. Seal wandered about with newspaper cuttings,which seemed to her either "quite splendid" or "really too bad forwords." She used to paste these into books, or send them to her friends,having first drawn a broad bar in blue pencil down the margin, aproceeding which signified equally and indistinguishably the depths ofher reprobation or the heights of her approval.
About four o'clock on that same afternoon Katharine Hilbery was walkingup Kingsway. The question of tea presented itself. The street lamps werebeing lit already, and as she stood still for a moment beneath one ofthem, she tried to think of some neighboring drawing-room where therewould be firelight and talk congenial to her mood. That mood, owing tothe spinning traffic and the evening veil of unreality, was ill-adaptedto her home surroundings. Perhaps, on the whole, a shop was the bestplace in which to preserve this queer sense of heightened existence.At the same time she wished to talk. Remembering Mary Datchet and herrepeated invitations, she crossed the road, turned into Russell Square,and peered about, seeking for numbers with a sense of adventure that wasout of all proportion to the deed itself. She found herself in a dimlylighted hall, unguarded by a porter, and pushed open the first swingdoor. But the office-boy had never heard of Miss Datchet. Did she belongto the S.R.F.R.? Katharine shook her head with a smile of dismay. Avoice from within shouted, "No. The S.G.S.--top floor."
Katharine mounted past innumerable glass doors, with initials on them,and became steadily more and more doubtful of the wisdom of her venture.At the top she paused for a moment to breathe and collect herself.She heard the typewriter and formal professional voices inside, notbelonging, she thought, to any one she had ever spoken to. She touchedthe bell, and the door was opened almost immediately by Mary herself.Her face had to change its expression entirely when she saw Katharine.
"You!" she exclaimed. "We thought you were the printer." Still holdingthe door open, she called back, "No, Mr. Clacton, it's not Penningtons.I should ring them up again--double three double eight, Central. Well,this is a surprise. Come in," she added. "You're just in time for tea."
The light of relief shone in Mary's eyes. The boredom of the afternoonwas dissipated at once, and she was glad that Katharine had found themin a momentary press of activity, owing to the failure of the printer tosend back certain proofs.
The unshaded electric light shining upon the table covered with papersdazed Katharine for a moment. After the confusion of her twilight walk,and her random thoughts, life in this small room appeared extremelyconcentrated and bright. She turned instinctively to look out of thewindow, which was uncurtained, but Mary immediately recalled her.
"It was very clever of you to find your way," she said, and Katharinewondered, as she stood there, feeling, for the moment, entirely detachedand unabsorbed, why she had come. She looked, indeed, to Mary's eyesstrangely out of place in the office. Her figure in the long cloak,which took deep folds, and her face, which was composed into a mask ofsensitive apprehension, disturbed Mary for a moment with a sense ofthe presence of some one who was of another world, and, therefore,subversive of her world. She became immediately anxious that Katharineshould be impressed by the importance of her world, and hoped thatneither Mrs. Seal nor Mr. Clacton would
appear until the impression ofimportance had been received. But in this she was disappointed. Mrs.Seal burst into the room holding a kettle in her hand, which she setupon the stove, and then, with inefficient haste, she set light to thegas, which flared up, exploded, and went out.
"Always the way, always the way," she muttered. "Kit Markham is the onlyperson who knows how to deal with the thing."
Mary had to go to her help, and together they spread the table, andapologized for the disparity between the cups and the plainness of thefood.
"If we had known Miss Hilbery was coming, we should have bought a cake,"said Mary, upon which Mrs. Seal looked at Katharine for the first time,suspiciously, because she was a person who needed cake.
Here Mr. Clacton opened the door, and came in, holding a typewrittenletter in his hand, which he was reading aloud.
"Salford's affiliated," he said.
"Well done, Salford!" Mrs. Seal exclaimed enthusiastically, thumping theteapot which she held upon the table, in token of applause.
"Yes, these provincial centers seem to be coming into line at last,"said Mr. Clacton, and then Mary introduced him to Miss Hilbery, andhe asked her, in a very formal manner, if she were interested "in ourwork."
"And the proofs still not come?" said Mrs. Seal, putting both her elbowson the table, and propping her chin on her hands, as Mary began to pourout tea. "It's too bad--too bad. At this rate we shall miss thecountry post. Which reminds me, Mr. Clacton, don't you think we shouldcircularize the provinces with Partridge's last speech? What? You've notread it? Oh, it's the best thing they've had in the House this Session.Even the Prime Minister--"
But Mary cut her short.
"We don't allow shop at tea, Sally," she said firmly. "We fine her apenny each time she forgets, and the fines go to buying a plum cake,"she explained, seeking to draw Katharine into the community. She hadgiven up all hope of impressing her.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Mrs. Seal apologized. "It's my misfortune to bean enthusiast," she said, turning to Katharine. "My father's daughtercould hardly be anything else. I think I've been on as many committeesas most people. Waifs and Strays, Rescue Work, Church Work, C. O.S.--local branch--besides the usual civic duties which fall to one as ahouseholder. But I've given them all up for our work here, and I don'tregret it for a second," she added. "This is the root question, I feel;until women have votes--"
"It'll be sixpence, at least, Sally," said Mary, bringing her fist downon the table. "And we're all sick to death of women and their votes."
Mrs. Seal looked for a moment as though she could hardly believe herears, and made a deprecating "tut-tut-tut" in her throat, lookingalternately at Katharine and Mary, and shaking her head as she did so.Then she remarked, rather confidentially to Katharine, with a little nodin Mary's direction:
"She's doing more for the cause than any of us. She's giving heryouth--for, alas! when I was young there were domestic circumstances--"she sighed, and stopped short.
Mr. Clacton hastily reverted to the joke about luncheon, and explainedhow Mrs. Seal fed on a bag of biscuits under the trees, whatever theweather might be, rather, Katharine thought, as though Mrs. Seal were apet dog who had convenient tricks.
"Yes, I took my little bag into the square," said Mrs. Seal, with theself-conscious guilt of a child owning some fault to its elders. "It wasreally very sustaining, and the bare boughs against the sky do oneso much GOOD. But I shall have to give up going into the square," sheproceeded, wrinkling her forehead. "The injustice of it! Why should Ihave a beautiful square all to myself, when poor women who need resthave nowhere at all to sit?" She looked fiercely at Katharine, givingher short locks a little shake. "It's dreadful what a tyrant one stillis, in spite of all one's efforts. One tries to lead a decent life,but one can't. Of course, directly one thinks of it, one sees that ALLsquares should be open to EVERY ONE. Is there any society with thatobject, Mr. Clacton? If not, there should be, surely."
"A most excellent object," said Mr. Clacton in his professional manner."At the same time, one must deplore the ramification of organizations,Mrs. Seal. So much excellent effort thrown away, not to speak of pounds,shillings, and pence. Now how many organizations of a philanthropicnature do you suppose there are in the City of London itself, MissHilbery?" he added, screwing his mouth into a queer little smile, as ifto show that the question had its frivolous side.
Katharine smiled, too. Her unlikeness to the rest of them had, by thistime, penetrated to Mr. Clacton, who was not naturally observant, andhe was wondering who she was; this same unlikeness had subtly stimulatedMrs. Seal to try and make a convert of her. Mary, too, looked at heralmost as if she begged her to make things easy. For Katharine had shownno disposition to make things easy. She had scarcely spoken, and hersilence, though grave and even thoughtful, seemed to Mary the silence ofone who criticizes.
"Well, there are more in this house than I'd any notion of," she said."On the ground floor you protect natives, on the next you emigrate womenand tell people to eat nuts--"
"Why do you say that 'we' do these things?" Mary interposed, rathersharply. "We're not responsible for all the cranks who choose to lodgein the same house with us."
Mr. Clacton cleared his throat and looked at each of the young ladiesin turn. He was a good deal struck by the appearance and manner of MissHilbery, which seemed to him to place her among those cultivated andluxurious people of whom he used to dream. Mary, on the other hand, wasmore of his own sort, and a little too much inclined to order him about.He picked up crumbs of dry biscuit and put them into his mouth withincredible rapidity.
"You don't belong to our society, then?" said Mrs. Seal.
"No, I'm afraid I don't," said Katharine, with such ready candor thatMrs. Seal was nonplussed, and stared at her with a puzzled expression,as if she could not classify her among the varieties of human beingsknown to her.
"But surely," she began.
"Mrs. Seal is an enthusiast in these matters," said Mr. Clacton, almostapologetically. "We have to remind her sometimes that others have aright to their views even if they differ from our own.... "Punch" hasa very funny picture this week, about a Suffragist and an agriculturallaborer. Have you seen this week's "Punch," Miss Datchet?"
Mary laughed, and said "No."
Mr. Clacton then told them the substance of the joke, which, however,depended a good deal for its success upon the expression which theartist had put into the people's faces. Mrs. Seal sat all the timeperfectly grave. Directly he had done speaking she burst out:
"But surely, if you care about the welfare of your sex at all, you mustwish them to have the vote?"
"I never said I didn't wish them to have the vote," Katharine protested.
"Then why aren't you a member of our society?" Mrs. Seal demanded.
Katharine stirred her spoon round and round, stared into the swirl ofthe tea, and remained silent. Mr. Clacton, meanwhile, framed a questionwhich, after a moment's hesitation, he put to Katharine.
"Are you in any way related, I wonder, to the poet Alardyce? Hisdaughter, I believe, married a Mr. Hilbery."
"Yes; I'm the poet's granddaughter," said Katharine, with a little sigh,after a pause; and for a moment they were all silent.
"The poet's granddaughter!" Mrs. Seal repeated, half to herself, with ashake of her head, as if that explained what was otherwise inexplicable.
The light kindled in Mr. Clacton's eye.
"Ah, indeed. That interests me very much," he said. "I owe a great debtto your grandfather, Miss Hilbery. At one time I could have repeatedthe greater part of him by heart. But one gets out of the way of readingpoetry, unfortunately. You don't remember him, I suppose?"
A sharp rap at the door made Katharine's answer inaudible. Mrs. Seallooked up with renewed hope in her eyes, and exclaiming:
"The proofs at last!" ran to open the door. "Oh, it's only Mr. Denham!"she cried, without any attempt to conceal her disappointment. Ralph,Katharine supposed, was a frequent visitor, for the only person hethought it necessar
y to greet was herself, and Mary at once explainedthe strange fact of her being there by saying:
"Katharine has come to see how one runs an office."
Ralph felt himself stiffen uncomfortably, as he said:
"I hope Mary hasn't persuaded you that she knows how to run an office?"
"What, doesn't she?" said Katharine, looking from one to the other.
At these remarks Mrs. Seal began to exhibit signs of discomposure, whichdisplayed themselves by a tossing movement of her head, and, as Ralphtook a letter from his pocket, and placed his finger upon a certainsentence, she forestalled him by exclaiming in confusion:
"Now, I know what you're going to say, Mr. Denham! But it was theday Kit Markham was here, and she upsets one so--with her wonderfulvitality, always thinking of something new that we ought to be doing andaren't--and I was conscious at the time that my dates were mixed. It hadnothing to do with Mary at all, I assure you."
"My dear Sally, don't apologize," said Mary, laughing. "Men are suchpedants--they don't know what things matter, and what things don't."
"Now, Denham, speak up for our sex," said Mr. Clacton in a jocularmanner, indeed, but like most insignificant men he was very quick toresent being found fault with by a woman, in argument with whom he wasfond of calling himself "a mere man." He wished, however, to enter intoa literary conservation with Miss Hilbery, and thus let the matter drop.
"Doesn't it seem strange to you, Miss Hilbery," he said, "that theFrench, with all their wealth of illustrious names, have no poet who cancompare with your grandfather? Let me see. There's Chenier and Hugoand Alfred de Musset--wonderful men, but, at the same time, there's arichness, a freshness about Alardyce--"
Here the telephone bell rang, and he had to absent himself with a smileand a bow which signified that, although literature is delightful, itis not work. Mrs. Seal rose at the same time, but remained hovering overthe table, delivering herself of a tirade against party government. "Forif I were to tell you what I know of back-stairs intrigue, and what canbe done by the power of the purse, you wouldn't credit me, Mr. Denham,you wouldn't, indeed. Which is why I feel that the only work for myfather's daughter--for he was one of the pioneers, Mr. Denham, and onhis tombstone I had that verse from the Psalms put, about the sowersand the seed.... And what wouldn't I give that he should be alive now,seeing what we're going to see--" but reflecting that the glories of thefuture depended in part upon the activity of her typewriter, she bobbedher head, and hurried back to the seclusion of her little room, fromwhich immediately issued sounds of enthusiastic, but obviously erratic,composition.
Mary made it clear at once, by starting a fresh topic of generalinterest, that though she saw the humor of her colleague, she did notintend to have her laughed at.
"The standard of morality seems to me frightfully low," she observedreflectively, pouring out a second cup of tea, "especially among womenwho aren't well educated. They don't see that small things matter,and that's where the leakage begins, and then we find ourselves indifficulties--I very nearly lost my temper yesterday," she went on,looking at Ralph with a little smile, as though he knew what happenedwhen she lost her temper. "It makes me very angry when people tell melies--doesn't it make you angry?" she asked Katharine.
"But considering that every one tells lies," Katharine remarked, lookingabout the room to see where she had put down her umbrella and herparcel, for there was an intimacy in the way in which Mary and Ralphaddressed each other which made her wish to leave them. Mary, on theother hand, was anxious, superficially at least, that Katharine shouldstay and so fortify her in her determination not to be in love withRalph.
Ralph, while lifting his cup from his lips to the table, had made up hismind that if Miss Hilbery left, he would go with her.
"I don't think that I tell lies, and I don't think that Ralph tellslies, do you, Ralph?" Mary continued.
Katharine laughed, with more gayety, as it seemed to Mary, thanshe could properly account for. What was she laughing at? At them,presumably. Katharine had risen, and was glancing hither and thither, atthe presses and the cupboards, and all the machinery of the office, asif she included them all in her rather malicious amusement, which causedMary to keep her eyes on her straightly and rather fiercely, as if shewere a gay-plumed, mischievous bird, who might light on the topmostbough and pick off the ruddiest cherry, without any warning. Two womenless like each other could scarcely be imagined, Ralph thought, lookingfrom one to the other. Next moment, he too, rose, and nodding to Mary,as Katharine said good-bye, opened the door for her, and followed herout.
Mary sat still and made no attempt to prevent them from going. For asecond or two after the door had shut on them her eyes rested on thedoor with a straightforward fierceness in which, for a moment, a certaindegree of bewilderment seemed to enter; but, after a brief hesitation,she put down her cup and proceeded to clear away the tea-things.
The impulse which had driven Ralph to take this action was the result ofa very swift little piece of reasoning, and thus, perhaps, was not quiteso much of an impulse as it seemed. It passed through his mind that ifhe missed this chance of talking to Katharine, he would have to facean enraged ghost, when he was alone in his room again, demanding anexplanation of his cowardly indecision. It was better, on the whole, torisk present discomfiture than to waste an evening bandying excusesand constructing impossible scenes with this uncompromising section ofhimself. For ever since he had visited the Hilberys he had been much atthe mercy of a phantom Katharine, who came to him when he sat alone, andanswered him as he would have her answer, and was always beside him tocrown those varying triumphs which were transacted almost every night,in imaginary scenes, as he walked through the lamplit streets home fromthe office. To walk with Katharine in the flesh would either feed thatphantom with fresh food, which, as all who nourish dreams are aware, isa process that becomes necessary from time to time, or refine it to sucha degree of thinness that it was scarcely serviceable any longer; andthat, too, is sometimes a welcome change to a dreamer. And all the timeRalph was well aware that the bulk of Katharine was not represented inhis dreams at all, so that when he met her he was bewildered by the factthat she had nothing to do with his dream of her.
When, on reaching the street, Katharine found that Mr. Denham proceededto keep pace by her side, she was surprised and, perhaps, a littleannoyed. She, too, had her margin of imagination, and to-night heractivity in this obscure region of the mind required solitude. If shehad had her way, she would have walked very fast down the TottenhamCourt Road, and then sprung into a cab and raced swiftly home. The viewshe had had of the inside of an office was of the nature of a dream toher. Shut off up there, she compared Mrs. Seal, and Mary Datchet, andMr. Clacton to enchanted people in a bewitched tower, with the spiders'webs looping across the corners of the room, and all the tools of thenecromancer's craft at hand; for so aloof and unreal and apart fromthe normal world did they seem to her, in the house of innumerabletypewriters, murmuring their incantations and concocting their drugs,and flinging their frail spiders' webs over the torrent of life whichrushed down the streets outside.
She may have been conscious that there was some exaggeration in thisfancy of hers, for she certainly did not wish to share it with Ralph.To him, she supposed, Mary Datchet, composing leaflets for CabinetMinisters among her typewriters, represented all that was interestingand genuine; and, accordingly, she shut them both out from all sharein the crowded street, with its pendant necklace of lamps, its lightedwindows, and its throng of men and women, which exhilarated her to suchan extent that she very nearly forgot her companion. She walked veryfast, and the effect of people passing in the opposite direction wasto produce a queer dizziness both in her head and in Ralph's, which settheir bodies far apart. But she did her duty by her companion almostunconsciously.
"Mary Datchet does that sort of work very well.... She's responsible forit, I suppose?"
"Yes. The others don't help at all.... Has she made a convert of you?"
"Oh no. T
hat is, I'm a convert already."
"But she hasn't persuaded you to work for them?"
"Oh dear no--that wouldn't do at all."
So they walked on down the Tottenham Court Road, parting and comingtogether again, and Ralph felt much as though he were addressing thesummit of a poplar in a high gale of wind.
"Suppose we get on to that omnibus?" he suggested.
Katharine acquiesced, and they climbed up, and found themselves alone ontop of it.
"But which way are you going?" Katharine asked, waking a little from thetrance into which movement among moving things had thrown her.
"I'm going to the Temple," Ralph replied, inventing a destination on thespur of the moment. He felt the change come over her as they sat downand the omnibus began to move forward. He imagined her contemplating theavenue in front of them with those honest sad eyes which seemed to sethim at such a distance from them. But the breeze was blowing in theirfaces; it lifted her hat for a second, and she drew out a pin and stuckit in again,--a little action which seemed, for some reason, to make herrather more fallible. Ah, if only her hat would blow off, and leave heraltogether disheveled, accepting it from his hands!
"This is like Venice," she observed, raising her hand. "The motor-cars,I mean, shooting about so quickly, with their lights."
"I've never seen Venice," he replied. "I keep that and some other thingsfor my old age."
"What are the other things?" she asked.
"There's Venice and India and, I think, Dante, too."
She laughed.
"Think of providing for one's old age! And would you refuse to seeVenice if you had the chance?"
Instead of answering her, he wondered whether he should tell hersomething that was quite true about himself; and as he wondered, he toldher.
"I've planned out my life in sections ever since I was a child, to makeit last longer. You see, I'm always afraid that I'm missing something--"
"And so am I!" Katharine exclaimed. "But, after all," she added, "whyshould you miss anything?"
"Why? Because I'm poor, for one thing," Ralph rejoined. "You, I suppose,can have Venice and India and Dante every day of your life."
She said nothing for a moment, but rested one hand, which was bareof glove, upon the rail in front of her, meditating upon a variety ofthings, of which one was that this strange young man pronounced Danteas she was used to hearing it pronounced, and another, that he had, mostunexpectedly, a feeling about life that was familiar to her. Perhaps,then, he was the sort of person she might take an interest in, if shecame to know him better, and as she had placed him among those whom shewould never want to know better, this was enough to make her silent.She hastily recalled her first view of him, in the little room wherethe relics were kept, and ran a bar through half her impressions, as onecancels a badly written sentence, having found the right one.
"But to know that one might have things doesn't alter the fact that onehasn't got them," she said, in some confusion. "How could I go to India,for example? Besides," she began impulsively, and stopped herself. Herethe conductor came round, and interrupted them. Ralph waited for her toresume her sentence, but she said no more.
"I have a message to give your father," he remarked. "Perhaps you wouldgive it him, or I could come--"
"Yes, do come," Katharine replied.
"Still, I don't see why you shouldn't go to India," Ralph began, inorder to keep her from rising, as she threatened to do.
But she got up in spite of him, and said good-bye with her usual air ofdecision, and left him with a quickness which Ralph connected now withall her movements. He looked down and saw her standing on the pavementedge, an alert, commanding figure, which waited its season to cross,and then walked boldly and swiftly to the other side. That gesture andaction would be added to the picture he had of her, but at present thereal woman completely routed the phantom one.