Night and Day

Cassandra was silent. The prospect appalled her. Katharine had been telephoning to Ralph Denham; she looked queer, too; she must be, or about to become, engaged to him. But if Cassandra could have overheard the conversation upon the telephone, she would not have felt so certain that it tended in that direction. It was to this effect:

“I’m Ralph Denham speaking. I’m in my right senses now.”

“How long did you wait outside the house?”

“I went home and wrote you a letter. I tore it up.”

“I shall tear up everything too.”

“I shall come.”

“Yes. Come to-day.”

“I must explain to you – ”

“Yes. We must explain – ”

A long pause followed. Ralph began a sentence, which he canceled with the word, “Nothing.” Suddenly, together, at the same moment, they said good-bye. And yet, if the telephone had been miraculously connected with some higher atmosphere pungent with the scent of thyme and the savor of salt, Katharine could hardly have breathed in a keener sense of exhilaration. She ran downstairs on the crest of it. She was amazed to find herself already committed by William and Cassandra to marry the owner of the halting voice she had just heard on the telephone. 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.