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The tendency of her spirit seemed to be in an altogether different
direction; and of a different nature. She had only to look at
Cassandra to see what the love that results in an engagement and
marriage means. She considered for a moment, and then said: “If you
don’t want to tell people yourselves, I’ll do it for you. I know
William has feelings about these matters that make it very difficult
for him to do anything.”
“Because he’s fearfully sensitive about other people’s feelings,” said
Cassandra. “The idea that he could upset Aunt Maggie or Uncle Trevor
would make him ill for weeks.”
This interpretation of what she was used to call William’s
conventionality was new to Katharine. And yet she felt it now to be
the true one.
“Yes, you’re right,” she said.
“And then he worships beauty. He wants life to be beautiful in every
part of it. Have you ever noticed how exquisitely he finishes
everything? Look at the address on that envelope. Every letter is
perfect.”
Whether this applied also to the sentiments expressed in the letter,
Katharine was not so sure; but when William’s solicitude was spent
upon Cassandra it not only failed to irritate her, as it had done when
she was the object of it, but appeared, as Cassandra said, the fruit
of his love of beauty.
“Yes,” she said, “he loves beauty.”
“I hope we shall have a great many children,” said Cassandra. “He
loves children.”
This remark made Katharine realize the depths of their intimacy better
than any other words could have done; she was jealous for one moment;
but the next she was humiliated. She had known William for years, and
she had never once guessed that he loved children. She looked at the
queer glow of exaltation in Cassandra’s eyes, through which she was
beholding the true spirit of a human being, and wished that she would
go on talking about William for ever. Cassandra was not unwilling to
gratify her. She talked on. The morning slipped away. Katharine
scarcely changed her position on the edge of her father’s
writing-table, and Cassandra never opened the “History of England.”
And yet it must be confessed that there were vast lapses in the
attention which Katharine bestowed upon her cousin. The atmosphere was
wonderfully congenial for thoughts of her own. She lost herself
sometimes in such deep reverie that Cassandra, pausing, could look at
her for moments unperceived. What could Katharine be thinking about,
unless it were Ralph Denham? She was satisfied, by certain random
replies, that Katharine had wandered a little from the subject of
William’s perfections. But Katharine made no sign. She always ended
these pauses by saying something so natural that Cassandra was deluded
into giving fresh examples of her absorbing theme. Then they lunched,
and the only sign that Katharine gave of abstraction was to forget to
help the pudding. She looked so like her mother, as she sat there
oblivious of the tapioca, that Cassandra was startled into exclaiming:
“How like Aunt Maggie you look!”
“Nonsense,” said Katharine, with more irritation than the remark
seemed to call for.
In truth, now that her mother was away, Katharine did feel less
sensible than usual, but as she argued it to herself, there was much
less need for sense. Secretly, she was a little shaken by the evidence
which the morning had supplied of her immense capacity for—what could
one call it?—rambling over an infinite variety of thoughts that were
too foolish to be named. She was, for example, walking down a road in
Northumberland in the August sunset; at the inn she left her
companion, who was Ralph Denham, and was transported, not so much by
her own feet as by some invisible means, to the top of a high hill.
Here the scents, the sounds among the dry heather-roots, the
grass-blades pressed upon the palm of her hand, were all so
perceptible that she could experience each one separately. After this
her mind made excursions into the dark of the air, or settled upon the
surface of the sea, which could be discovered over there, or with
equal unreason it returned to its couch of bracken beneath the stars
of midnight, and visited the snow valleys of the moon. These fancies
would have been in no way strange, since the walls of every mind are
decorated with some such tracery, but she found herself suddenly
pursuing such thoughts with an extreme ardor, which became a desire to
change her actual condition for something matching the conditions of
her dream. Then she started; then she awoke to the fact that Cassandra
was looking at her in amazement.
Cassandra would have liked to feel certain that, when Katharine made
no reply at all or one wide of the mark, she was making up her mind to
get married at once, but it was difficult, if this were so, to account
for some remarks that Katharine let fall about the future. She
recurred several times to the summer, as if she meant to spend that
season in solitary wandering. She seemed to have a plan in her mind
which required Bradshaws and the names of inns.
Cassandra was driven finally, by her own unrest, to put on her clothes
and wander out along the streets of Chelsea, on the pretence that she
must buy something. But, in her ignorance of the way, she became
panic-stricken at the thought of being late, and no sooner had she
found the shop she wanted, than she fled back again in order to be at
home when William came. He came, indeed, five minutes after she had
sat down by the tea-table, and she had the happiness of receiving him
alone. His greeting put her doubts of his affection at rest, but the
first question he asked was:
“Has Katharine spoken to you?”
“Yes. But she says she’s not engaged. She doesn’t seem to think she’s
ever going to be engaged.”
William frowned, and looked annoyed.
“They telephoned this morning, and she behaves very oddly. She forgets
to help the pudding,” Cassandra added by way of cheering him.
“My dear child, after what I saw and heard last night, it’s not a
question of guessing or suspecting. Either she’s engaged to him—or—”
He left his sentence unfinished, for at this point Katharine herself
appeared. With his recollections of the scene the night before, he was
too self-conscious even to look at her, and it was not until she told
him of her mother’s visit to Stratford-on-Avon that he raised his
eyes. It was clear that he was greatly relieved. He looked round him
now, as if he felt at his ease, and Cassandra exclaimed:
“Don’t you think everything looks quite different?”
“You’ve moved the sofa?” he asked.
“No. Nothing’s been touched,” said Katharine. “Everything’s exactly
the same.” But as she said this, with a decision which seemed to make
it imply that more than the sofa was unchanged, she held out a cup
into which she had forgotten to pour any tea. Being told of her
forgetfulness, she frowned with annoyance, and said that Cassandra was
demoralizing her. The glance she cast upon them, and the resolute way
in which she plunged them into speech, made William and Cassandra feel
like children who had been caught prying. They followed her
obediently, making conversation. Any one coming in might have judged
them acquaintances met, perhaps, for the third time. If that were so,
one must have concluded that the hostess suddenly bethought her of an
engagement pressing for fulfilment. First Katharine looked at her
watch, and then she asked William to tell her the right time. When
told that it was ten minutes to five she rose at once, and said:
“Then I’m afraid I must go.”
She left the room, holding her unfinished bread and butter in her
hand. William glanced at Cassandra.
“Well, she IS queer!” Cassandra exclaimed.
William looked perturbed. He knew more of Katharine than Cassandra
did, but even he could not tell—. In a second Katharine was back
again dressed in outdoor things, still holding her bread and butter in
her bare hand.
“If I’m late, don’t wait for me,” she said. “I shall have dined,” and
so saying, she left them.
“But she can’t—” William exclaimed, as the door shut, “not without
any gloves and bread and butter in her hand!” They ran to the window,
and saw her walking rapidly along the street towards the City. Then
she vanished.
“She must have gone to meet Mr. Denham,” Cassandra exclaimed.
“Goodness knows!” William interjected.
The incident impressed them both as having something queer and ominous
about it out of all proportion to its surface strangeness.
“It’s the sort of way Aunt Maggie behaves,” said Cassandra, as if in
explanation.
William shook his head, and paced up and down the room looking
extremely perturbed.
“This is what I’ve been foretelling,” he burst out. “Once set the
ordinary conventions aside—Thank Heaven Mrs. Hilbery is away. But
there’s Mr. Hilbery. How are we to explain it to him? I shall have to
leave you.”
“But Uncle Trevor won’t be back for hours, William!” Cassandra
implored.
“You never can tell. He may be on his way already. Or suppose Mrs.
Milvain—your Aunt Celia—or Mrs. Cosham, or any other of your aunts
or uncles should be shown in and find us alone together. You know what
they’re saying about us already.”
Cassandra was equally stricken by the sight of William’s agitation,
and appalled by the prospect of his desertion.
“We might hide,” she exclaimed wildly, glancing at the curtain which
separated the room with the relics.
“I refuse entirely to get under the table,” said William
sarcastically.
She saw that he was losing his temper with the difficulties of the
situation. Her instinct told her that an appeal to his affection, at
this moment, would be extremely ill-judged. She controlled herself,
sat down, poured out a fresh cup of tea, and sipped it quietly. This
natural action, arguing complete self-mastery, and showing her in one
of those feminine attitudes which William found adorable, did more
than any argument to compose his agitation. It appealed to his
chivalry. He accepted a cup. Next she asked for a slice of cake. By
the time the cake was eaten and the tea drunk the personal question
had lapsed, and they were discussing poetry. Insensibly they turned
from the question of dramatic poetry in general, to the particular
example which reposed in William’s pocket, and when the maid came in
to clear away the tea-things, William had asked permission to read a
short passage aloud, “unless it bored her?”
Cassandra bent her head in silence, but she showed a little of what
she felt in her eyes, and thus fortified, William felt confident that
it would take more than Mrs. Milvain herself to rout him from his
position. He read aloud.
Meanwhile Katharine walked rapidly along the street. If called upon to
explain her impulsive action in leaving the tea-table, she could have
traced it to no better cause than that William had glanced at
Cassandra; Cassandra at William. Yet, because they had glanced, her
position was impossible. If one forgot to pour out a cup of tea they
rushed to the conclusion that she was engaged to Ralph Denham. She
knew that in half an hour or so the door would open, and Ralph Denham
would appear. She could not sit there and contemplate seeing him with
William’s and Cassandra’s eyes upon them, judging their exact degree
of intimacy, so that they might fix the wedding-day. She promptly
decided that she would meet Ralph out of doors;
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