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practice.”
“Nonsense, William. You may come of the oldest family in Devonshire,
but that’s no reason why you should mind being seen alone with me on
the Embankment.”
“I’m ten years older than you are, Katharine, and I know more of the
world than you do.”
“Very well. Leave me and go home.”
Rodney looked back over his shoulder and perceived that they were
being followed at a short distance by a taxicab, which evidently
awaited his summons. Katharine saw it, too, and exclaimed:
“Don’t call that cab for me, William. I shall walk.”
“Nonsense, Katharine; you’ll do nothing of the kind. It’s nearly
twelve o’clock, and we’ve walked too far as it is.”
Katharine laughed and walked on so quickly that both Rodney and the
taxicab had to increase their pace to keep up with her.
“Now, William,” she said, “if people see me racing along the
Embankment like this they WILL talk. You had far better say
good-night, if you don’t want people to talk.”
At this William beckoned, with a despotic gesture, to the cab with one
hand, and with the other he brought Katharine to a standstill.
“Don’t let the man see us struggling, for God’s sake!” he murmured.
Katharine stood for a moment quite still.
“There’s more of the old maid in you than the poet,” she observed
briefly.
William shut the door sharply, gave the address to the driver, and
turned away, lifting his hat punctiliously high in farewell to the
invisible lady.
He looked back after the cab twice, suspiciously, half expecting that
she would stop it and dismount; but it bore her swiftly on, and was
soon out of sight. William felt in the mood for a short soliloquy of
indignation, for Katharine had contrived to exasperate him in more
ways than one.
“Of all the unreasonable, inconsiderate creatures I’ve ever known,
she’s the worst!” he exclaimed to himself, striding back along the
Embankment. “Heaven forbid that I should ever make a fool of myself
with her again. Why, I’d sooner marry the daughter of my landlady than
Katharine Hilbery! She’d leave me not a moment’s peace—and she’d
never understand me—never, never, never!”
Uttered aloud and with vehemence so that the stars of Heaven might
hear, for there was no human being at hand, these sentiments sounded
satisfactorily irrefutable. Rodney quieted down, and walked on in
silence, until he perceived some one approaching him, who had
something, either in his walk or his dress, which proclaimed that he
was one of William’s acquaintances before it was possible to tell
which of them he was. It was Denham who, having parted from Sandys at
the bottom of his staircase, was now walking to the Tube at Charing
Cross, deep in the thoughts which his talk with Sandys had suggested.
He had forgotten the meeting at Mary Datchet’s rooms, he had forgotten
Rodney, and metaphors and Elizabethan drama, and could have sworn that
he had forgotten Katharine Hilbery, too, although that was more
disputable. His mind was scaling the highest pinnacles of its alps,
where there was only starlight and the untrodden snow. He cast strange
eyes upon Rodney, as they encountered each other beneath a lamp-post.
“Ha!” Rodney exclaimed.
If he had been in full possession of his mind, Denham would probably
have passed on with a salutation. But the shock of the interruption
made him stand still, and before he knew what he was doing, he had
turned and was walking with Rodney in obedience to Rodney’s invitation
to come to his rooms and have something to drink. Denham had no wish
to drink with Rodney, but he followed him passively enough. Rodney was
gratified by this obedience. He felt inclined to be communicative with
this silent man, who possessed so obviously all the good masculine
qualities in which Katharine now seemed lamentably deficient.
“You do well, Denham,” he began impulsively, “to have nothing to do
with young women. I offer you my experience—if one trusts them one
invariably has cause to repent. Not that I have any reason at this
moment,” he added hastily, “to complain of them. It’s a subject that
crops up now and again for no particular reason. Miss Datchet, I dare
say, is one of the exceptions. Do you like Miss Datchet?”
These remarks indicated clearly enough that Rodney’s nerves were in a
state of irritation, and Denham speedily woke to the situation of the
world as it had been one hour ago. He had last seen Rodney walking
with Katharine. He could not help regretting the eagerness with which
his mind returned to these interests, and fretted him with the old
trivial anxieties. He sank in his own esteem. Reason bade him break
from Rodney, who clearly tended to become confidential, before he had
utterly lost touch with the problems of high philosophy. He looked
along the road, and marked a lamp-post at a distance of some hundred
yards, and decided that he would part from Rodney when they reached
this point.
“Yes, I like Mary; I don’t see how one could help liking her,” he
remarked cautiously, with his eye on the lamp-post.
“Ah, Denham, you’re so different from me. You never give yourself
away. I watched you this evening with Katharine Hilbery. My instinct
is to trust the person I’m talking to. That’s why I’m always being
taken in, I suppose.”
Denham seemed to be pondering this statement of Rodney’s, but, as a
matter of fact, he was hardly conscious of Rodney and his revelations,
and was only concerned to make him mention Katharine again before they
reached the lamp-post.
“Who’s taken you in now?” he asked. “Katharine Hilbery?”
Rodney stopped and once more began beating a kind of rhythm, as if he
were marking a phrase in a symphony, upon the smooth stone balustrade
of the Embankment.
“Katharine Hilbery,” he repeated, with a curious little chuckle. “No,
Denham, I have no illusions about that young woman. I think I made
that plain to her to-night. But don’t run away with a false
impression,” he continued eagerly, turning and linking his arm through
Denham’s, as though to prevent him from escaping; and, thus compelled,
Denham passed the monitory lamp-post, to which, in passing, he
breathed an excuse, for how could he break away when Rodney’s arm was
actually linked in his? “You must not think that I have any bitterness
against her—far from it. It’s not altogether her fault, poor girl.
She lives, you know, one of those odious, self-centered lives—at
least, I think them odious for a woman—feeding her wits upon
everything, having control of everything, getting far too much her own
way at home—spoilt, in a sense, feeling that every one is at her
feet, and so not realizing how she hurts—that is, how rudely she
behaves to people who haven’t all her advantages. Still, to do her
justice, she’s no fool,” he added, as if to warn Denham not to take
any liberties. “She has taste. She has sense. She can understand you
when you talk to her. But she’s a woman, and there’s an end of it,” he
added, with another little chuckle, and dropped Denham’s arm.
“And did you tell her all this to-night?” Denham asked.
“Oh dear me, no. I should never think of telling Katharine the truth
about herself. That wouldn’t do at all. One has to be in an attitude
of adoration in order to get on with Katharine.
“Now I’ve learnt that she’s refused to marry him why don’t I go home?”
Denham thought to himself. But he went on walking beside Rodney, and
for a time they did not speak, though Rodney hummed snatches of a tune
out of an opera by Mozart. A feeling of contempt and liking combine
very naturally in the mind of one to whom another has just spoken
unpremeditatedly, revealing rather more of his private feelings than
he intended to reveal. Denham began to wonder what sort of person
Rodney was, and at the same time Rodney began to think about Denham.
“You’re a slave like me, I suppose?” he asked.
“A solicitor, yes.”
“I sometimes wonder why we don’t chuck it. Why don’t you emigrate,
Denham? I should have thought that would suit you.”
“I’ve a family.”
“I’m often on the point of going myself. And then I know I couldn’t
live without this”—and he waved his hand towards the City of London,
which wore, at this moment, the appearance of a town cut out of gray-blue cardboard, and pasted flat against the sky, which was of a deeper
blue.
“There are one or two people I’m fond of, and there’s a little good
music, and a few pictures, now and then—just enough to keep one
dangling about here. Ah, but I couldn’t live with savages! Are you
fond of books? Music? Pictures? D’you care at all for first editions?
I’ve got a few nice things up here, things I pick up cheap, for I
can’t afford to give what they ask.”
They had reached a small court of high eighteenth-century houses, in
one of which Rodney had his rooms. They climbed a very steep
staircase, through whose uncurtained windows the moonlight fell,
illuminating the banisters with their twisted pillars, and the piles
of plates set on the window-sills, and jars half-full of milk.
Rodney’s rooms were small, but the sitting-room window looked out into
a courtyard, with its flagged pavement, and its single tree, and
across to the flat red-brick fronts of the opposite houses, which
would not have surprised Dr. Johnson, if he had come out of his grave
for a turn in the moonlight. Rodney lit his lamp, pulled his curtains,
offered Denham a chair, and, flinging the manuscript of his paper on
the Elizabethan use of Metaphor on to the table, exclaimed:
“Oh dear me, what a waste of time! But it’s over now, and so we may
think no more about it.”
He then busied himself very dexterously in lighting a fire, producing
glasses, whisky, a cake, and cups and saucers. He put on a faded
crimson dressing-gown, and a pair of red slippers, and advanced to
Denham with a tumbler in one hand and a well-burnished book in the
other.
“The Baskerville Congreve,” said Rodney, offering it to his guest. “I
couldn’t read him in a cheap edition.”
When he was seen thus among his books and his valuables, amiably
anxious to make his visitor comfortable, and moving about with
something of the dexterity and grace of a Persian cat, Denham relaxed
his critical attitude, and felt more at home with Rodney than he would
have done with many men better known to him. Rodney’s room was the
room of a person who cherishes a great many personal tastes, guarding
them from the rough blasts of the public with scrupulous attention.
His papers and his books rose in jagged mounds on table and floor,
round which he skirted with nervous care lest his dressing-gown might
disarrange them ever so slightly. On a chair stood a stack of
photographs of statues and pictures, which it was his habit to
exhibit, one by one, for the space of a day or two. The books on his
shelves were as orderly as regiments of soldiers, and the backs of
them shone like so many bronze beetle-wings; though, if you took one
from its place you saw a shabbier volume behind it, since space was
limited. An oval Venetian mirror stood above the fireplace, and
reflected duskily in its spotted depths the faint yellow and crimson
of a jarful of tulips which stood among the letters and pipes and
cigarettes upon the mantelpiece. A small piano occupied a corner of
the room,
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