CHAPTER XI
"It's life that matters, nothing but life--the process of discovering,the everlasting and perpetual process," said Katharine, as she passedunder the archway, and so into the wide space of King's Bench Walk, "notthe discovery itself at all." She spoke the last words looking up atRodney's windows, which were a semilucent red color, in her honor, asshe knew. He had asked her to tea with him. But she was in a mood whenit is almost physically disagreeable to interrupt the stride of one'sthought, and she walked up and down two or three times under the treesbefore approaching his staircase. She liked getting hold of some bookwhich neither her father or mother had read, and keeping it to herself,and gnawing its contents in privacy, and pondering the meaning withoutsharing her thoughts with any one, or having to decide whether the bookwas a good one or a bad one. This evening she had twisted the words ofDostoevsky to suit her mood--a fatalistic mood--to proclaim that theprocess of discovery was life, and that, presumably, the nature of one'sgoal mattered not at all. She sat down for a moment upon one of theseats; felt herself carried along in the swirl of many things;decided, in her sudden way, that it was time to heave all this thinkingoverboard, and rose, leaving a fishmonger's basket on the seat behindher. Two minutes later her rap sounded with authority upon Rodney'sdoor.
"Well, William," she said, "I'm afraid I'm late."
It was true, but he was so glad to see her that he forgot his annoyance.He had been occupied for over an hour in making things ready for her,and he now had his reward in seeing her look right and left, as sheslipped her cloak from her shoulders, with evident satisfaction,although she said nothing. He had seen that the fire burnt well;jam-pots were on the table, tin covers shone in the fender, and theshabby comfort of the room was extreme. He was dressed in his oldcrimson dressing-gown, which was faded irregularly, and had bright newpatches on it, like the paler grass which one finds on lifting a stone.He made the tea, and Katharine drew off her gloves, and crossed her legswith a gesture that was rather masculine in its ease. Nor did they talkmuch until they were smoking cigarettes over the fire, having placedtheir teacups upon the floor between them.
They had not met since they had exchanged letters about theirrelationship. Katharine's answer to his protestation had been short andsensible. Half a sheet of notepaper contained the whole of it, for shemerely had to say that she was not in love with him, and so could notmarry him, but their friendship would continue, she hoped, unchanged.She had added a postscript in which she stated, "I like your sonnet verymuch."
So far as William was concerned, this appearance of ease was assumed.Three times that afternoon he had dressed himself in a tail-coat, andthree times he had discarded it for an old dressing-gown; three times hehad placed his pearl tie-pin in position, and three times he had removedit again, the little looking-glass in his room being the witness ofthese changes of mind. The question was, which would Katharine prefer onthis particular afternoon in December? He read her note once more,and the postscript about the sonnet settled the matter. Evidently sheadmired most the poet in him; and as this, on the whole, agreed with hisown opinion, he decided to err, if anything, on the side of shabbiness.His demeanor was also regulated with premeditation he spoke little, andonly on impersonal matters; he wished her to realize that in visitinghim for the first time alone she was doing nothing remarkable, although,in fact, that was a point about which he was not at all sure.
Certainly Katharine seemed quite unmoved by any disturbing thoughts;and if he had been completely master of himself, he might, indeed,have complained that she was a trifle absent-minded. The ease, thefamiliarity of the situation alone with Rodney, among teacups andcandles, had more effect upon her than was apparent. She asked to lookat his books, and then at his pictures. It was while she held photographfrom the Greek in her hands that she exclaimed, impulsively, ifincongruously:
"My oysters! I had a basket," she explained, "and I've left itsomewhere. Uncle Dudley dines with us to-night. What in the world have Idone with them?"
She rose and began to wander about the room. William rose also, andstood in front of the fire, muttering, "Oysters, oysters--your basket ofoysters!" but though he looked vaguely here and there, as if the oystersmight be on the top of the bookshelf, his eyes returned always toKatharine. She drew the curtain and looked out among the scanty leavesof the plane-trees.
"I had them," she calculated, "in the Strand; I sat on a seat. Well,never mind," she concluded, turning back into the room abruptly, "I daresay some old creature is enjoying them by this time."
"I should have thought that you never forgot anything," Williamremarked, as they settled down again.
"That's part of the myth about me, I know," Katharine replied.
"And I wonder," William proceeded, with some caution, "what the truthabout you is? But I know this sort of thing doesn't interest you," headded hastily, with a touch of peevishness.
"No; it doesn't interest me very much," she replied candidly.
"What shall we talk about then?" he asked.
She looked rather whimsically round the walls of the room.
"However we start, we end by talking about the same thing--about poetry,I mean. I wonder if you realize, William, that I've never read evenShakespeare? It's rather wonderful how I've kept it up all these years."
"You've kept it up for ten years very beautifully, as far as I'mconcerned," he said.
"Ten years? So long as that?"
"And I don't think it's always bored you," he added.
She looked into the fire silently. She could not deny that the surfaceof her feeling was absolutely unruffled by anything in William'scharacter; on the contrary, she felt certain that she could deal withwhatever turned up. He gave her peace, in which she could think ofthings that were far removed from what they talked about. Even now,when he sat within a yard of her, how easily her mind ranged hither andthither! Suddenly a picture presented itself before her, without anyeffort on her part as pictures will, of herself in these very rooms; shehad come in from a lecture, and she held a pile of books in her hand,scientific books, and books about mathematics and astronomy whichshe had mastered. She put them down on the table over there. It was apicture plucked from her life two or three years hence, when she wasmarried to William; but here she checked herself abruptly.
She could not entirely forget William's presence, because, in spite ofhis efforts to control himself, his nervousness was apparent. On suchoccasions his eyes protruded more than ever, and his face had more thanever the appearance of being covered with a thin crackling skin, throughwhich every flush of his volatile blood showed itself instantly. By thistime he had shaped so many sentences and rejected them, felt so manyimpulses and subdued them, that he was a uniform scarlet.
"You may say you don't read books," he remarked, "but, all the same, youknow about them. Besides, who wants you to be learned? Leave that to thepoor devils who've got nothing better to do. You--you--ahem!--"
"Well, then, why don't you read me something before I go?" saidKatharine, looking at her watch.
"Katharine, you've only just come! Let me see now, what have I got toshow you?" He rose, and stirred about the papers on his table, as if indoubt; he then picked up a manuscript, and after spreading it smoothlyupon his knee, he looked up at Katharine suspiciously. He caught hersmiling.
"I believe you only ask me to read out of kindness," he burst out."Let's find something else to talk about. Who have you been seeing?"
"I don't generally ask things out of kindness," Katharine observed;"however, if you don't want to read, you needn't."
William gave a queer snort of exasperation, and opened his manuscriptonce more, though he kept his eyes upon her face as he did so. No facecould have been graver or more judicial.
"One can trust you, certainly, to say unpleasant things," he said,smoothing out the page, clearing his throat, and reading half a stanzato himself. "Ahem! The Princess is lost in the wood, and she hears thesound of a horn. (This would all be very pretty on the stage, but Ica
n't get the effect here.) Anyhow, Sylvano enters, accompanied bythe rest of the gentlemen of Gratian's court. I begin where hesoliloquizes." He jerked his head and began to read.
Although Katharine had just disclaimed any knowledge of literature, shelistened attentively. At least, she listened to the first twenty-fivelines attentively, and then she frowned. Her attention was only arousedagain when Rodney raised his finger--a sign, she knew, that the meterwas about to change.
His theory was that every mood has its meter. His mastery of meters wasvery great; and, if the beauty of a drama depended upon the varietyof measures in which the personages speak, Rodney's plays musthave challenged the works of Shakespeare. Katharine's ignorance ofShakespeare did not prevent her from feeling fairly certain that playsshould not produce a sense of chill stupor in the audience, such asovercame her as the lines flowed on, sometimes long and sometimes short,but always delivered with the same lilt of voice, which seemed to naileach line firmly on to the same spot in the hearer's brain. Still, shereflected, these sorts of skill are almost exclusively masculine; womenneither practice them nor know how to value them; and one's husband'sproficiency in this direction might legitimately increase one's respectfor him, since mystification is no bad basis for respect. No one coulddoubt that William was a scholar. The reading ended with the finish ofthe Act; Katharine had prepared a little speech.
"That seems to me extremely well written, William; although, of course,I don't know enough to criticize in detail."
"But it's the skill that strikes you--not the emotion?"
"In a fragment like that, of course, the skill strikes one most."
"But perhaps--have you time to listen to one more short piece? the scenebetween the lovers? There's some real feeling in that, I think. Denhamagrees that it's the best thing I've done."
"You've read it to Ralph Denham?" Katharine inquired, with surprise."He's a better judge than I am. What did he say?"
"My dear Katharine," Rodney exclaimed, "I don't ask you for criticism,as I should ask a scholar. I dare say there are only five men in Englandwhose opinion of my work matters a straw to me. But I trust you wherefeeling is concerned. I had you in my mind often when I was writingthose scenes. I kept asking myself, 'Now is this the sort of thingKatharine would like?' I always think of you when I'm writing,Katharine, even when it's the sort of thing you wouldn't know about.And I'd rather--yes, I really believe I'd rather--you thought well of mywriting than any one in the world."
This was so genuine a tribute to his trust in her that Katharine wastouched.
"You think too much of me altogether, William," she said, forgettingthat she had not meant to speak in this way.
"No, Katharine, I don't," he replied, replacing his manuscript in thedrawer. "It does me good to think of you."
So quiet an answer, followed as it was by no expression of love, butmerely by the statement that if she must go he would take her to theStrand, and would, if she could wait a moment, change his dressing-gownfor a coat, moved her to the warmest feeling of affection for him thatshe had yet experienced. While he changed in the next room, she stood bythe bookcase, taking down books and opening them, but reading nothing ontheir pages.
She felt certain that she would marry Rodney. How could one avoid it?How could one find fault with it? Here she sighed, and, putting thethought of marriage away, fell into a dream state, in which she becameanother person, and the whole world seemed changed. Being a frequentvisitor to that world, she could find her way there unhesitatingly. Ifshe had tried to analyze her impressions, she would have said that theredwelt the realities of the appearances which figure in our world; sodirect, powerful, and unimpeded were her sensations there, compared withthose called forth in actual life. There dwelt the things one might havefelt, had there been cause; the perfect happiness of which here we tastethe fragment; the beauty seen here in flying glimpses only. No doubtmuch of the furniture of this world was drawn directly from thepast, and even from the England of the Elizabethan age. However theembellishment of this imaginary world might change, two qualities wereconstant in it. It was a place where feelings were liberated from theconstraint which the real world puts upon them; and the process ofawakenment was always marked by resignation and a kind of stoicalacceptance of facts. She met no acquaintance there, as Denham did,miraculously transfigured; she played no heroic part. But therecertainly she loved some magnanimous hero, and as they swept togetheramong the leaf-hung trees of an unknown world, they shared the feelingswhich came fresh and fast as the waves on the shore. But the sands ofher liberation were running fast; even through the forest branches camesounds of Rodney moving things on his dressing-table; and Katharine wokeherself from this excursion by shutting the cover of the book she washolding, and replacing it in the bookshelf.
"William," she said, speaking rather faintly at first, like one sendinga voice from sleep to reach the living. "William," she repeated firmly,"if you still want me to marry you, I will."
Perhaps it was that no man could expect to have the most momentousquestion of his life settled in a voice so level, so toneless, sodevoid of joy or energy. At any rate William made no answer. She waitedstoically. A moment later he stepped briskly from his dressing-room, andobserved that if she wanted to buy more oysters he thought he knew wherethey could find a fishmonger's shop still open. She breathed deeply asigh of relief.
Extract from a letter sent a few days later by Mrs. Hilbery to hersister-in-law, Mrs. Milvain:
"... How stupid of me to forget the name in my telegram. Such a nice,rich, English name, too, and, in addition, he has all the graces ofintellect; he has read literally EVERYTHING. I tell Katharine, I shallalways put him on my right side at dinner, so as to have him by me whenpeople begin talking about characters in Shakespeare. They won't berich, but they'll be very, very happy. I was sitting in my room late onenight, feeling that nothing nice would ever happen to me again, when Iheard Katharine outside in the passage, and I thought to myself, 'ShallI call her in?' and then I thought (in that hopeless, dreary way onedoes think, with the fire going out and one's birthday just over), 'Whyshould I lay my troubles on HER?' But my little self-control had itsreward, for next moment she tapped at the door and came in, and sat onthe rug, and though we neither of us said anything, I felt so happy allof a second that I couldn't help crying, 'Oh, Katharine, when you cometo my age, how I hope you'll have a daughter, too!' You know how silentKatharine is. She was so silent, for such a long time, that in myfoolish, nervous state I dreaded something, I don't quite know what.And then she told me how, after all, she had made up her mind. She hadwritten. She expected him to-morrow. At first I wasn't glad at all. Ididn't want her to marry any one; but when she said, 'It will make nodifference. I shall always care for you and father most,' then I saw howselfish I was, and I told her she must give him everything, everything,everything! I told her I should be thankful to come second. But why,when everything's turned out just as one always hoped it would turn out,why then can one do nothing but cry, nothing but feel a desolate oldwoman whose life's been a failure, and now is nearly over, and age is socruel? But Katharine said to me, 'I am happy. I'm very happy.' Andthen I thought, though it all seemed so desperately dismal at the time,Katharine had said she was happy, and I should have a son, and it wouldall turn out so much more wonderfully than I could possibly imagine, forthough the sermons don't say so, I do believe the world is meant for usto be happy in. She told me that they would live quite near us, and seeus every day; and she would go on with the Life, and we should finish itas we had meant to. And, after all, it would be far more horrid ifshe didn't marry--or suppose she married some one we couldn't endure?Suppose she had fallen in love with some one who was married already?
"And though one never thinks any one good enough for the people one'sfond of, he has the kindest, truest instincts, I'm sure, and thoughhe seems nervous and his manner is not commanding, I only think thesethings because it's Katharine. And now I've written this, it comes overme that, of course, all the time, Katharine
has what he hasn't. Shedoes command, she isn't nervous; it comes naturally to her to rule andcontrol. It's time that she should give all this to some one who willneed her when we aren't there, save in our spirits, for whatever peoplesay, I'm sure I shall come back to this wonderful world where one'sbeen so happy and so miserable, where, even now, I seem to see myselfstretching out my hands for another present from the great Fairy Treewhose boughs are still hung with enchanting toys, though they are rarernow, perhaps, and between the branches one sees no longer the blue sky,but the stars and the tops of the mountains.
"One doesn't know any more, does one? One hasn't any advice to giveone's children. One can only hope that they will have the samevision and the same power to believe, without which life would be someaningless. That is what I ask for Katharine and her husband."