‘Yes?’
‘Why shouldn’t you be happy too?’
‘I am quite happy,’ Katharine replied.
‘I mean as I am. Katharine,’ she said impulsively, ‘do let’s be married on the same day.’
‘To the same man?’
‘Oh no. But why shouldn’t you marry—some one else?’
‘Here’s your Macaulay,’ said Katharine, turning round with the book in her hand. ‘I should say you’d better begin to read at once if you mean to be educated by tea-time.’
‘Damn Lord Macaulay!’ cried Cassandra, slapping the book upon the table. ‘Would you rather not talk?’
‘We’ve talked enough already,’ Katharine replied evasively.
‘I know I shan’t be able to settle to Macaulay,’ said Cassandra, looking ruefully at the dull red cover of the prescribed volume, which, however, possessed a talismanic property, since William admired it. He had advised a little serious reading for the morning hours.
‘Have you read Macaulay?’ she asked.
‘No. William never tried to educate me.’ As she spoke she saw the light fade from Cassandra’s face, as if she had implied some other, more mysterious, relationship. She was stung with compunction. She marvelled at her own rashness in having influenced the life of another, as she had influenced Cassandra’s life.
‘We weren’t serious,’ she said quickly.
‘But I’m fearfully serious,’ said Cassandra, with a little shudder, and her look showed that she spoke the truth. She turned and glanced at Katharine as she had never glanced at her before. There was fear in her glance, which darted on her and then dropped guiltily. Oh, Katharine had everything—beauty, mind, character. She could never compete with Katharine; she could never be safe so long as Katharine brooded over her, dominating her, disposing of her. She called her cold, unseeing, unscrupulous, but the only sign she gave outwardly was a curious one—she reached out her hand and grasped the volume of history. At that moment the bell of the telephone rang and Katharine went to answer it. Cassandra, released from observation, dropped her book and clenched her hands. She suffered more fiery torture in those few minutes than she had suffered in the whole of her life; she learnt more of her capacities for feeling. But when Katharine reappeared she was calm, and had gained a look of dignity that was new to her.
‘Was that him?’ she asked.
‘It was Ralph Denham,’ Katharine replied.
‘I meant Ralph Denham.’
‘Why did you mean Ralph Denham? What has William told you about Ralph Denham?’ The accusation that Katharine was calm, callous, and indifferent was not possible in face of her present air of animation. She gave Cassandra no time to frame an answer. ‘Now, when are you and William going to be married?’ she asked.
Cassandra made no reply for some moments. It was, indeed, a very difficult question to answer. In conversation the night before, William had indicated to Cassandra that, in his belief, Katharine was becoming engaged to Ralph Denham in the dining-room. Cassandra, in the rosy light of her own circumstances, had been disposed to think that the matter must be settled already. But a letter which she had received that morning from William, while ardent in its expression of affection, had conveyed to her obliquely that he would prefer the announcement of their engagement to coincide with that of Katharine’s. This document Cassandra now produced, and read aloud, with considerable excisions and much hesitation.
‘ ... a thousand pities—ahem—I fear we shall cause a great deal of natural annoyance. If, on the other hand what I have reason to think will happen, should happen—within reasonable time, and the present position is not in any way offensive to you, delay would, in my opinion, serve all our interests better than a premature explanation, which is bound to cause more surprise than is desirable—’
‘Very like William,’ Katharine exclaimed, having gathered the drift of these remarks with a speed that, by itself, disconcerted Cassandra.
‘I quite understand his feelings,’ Cassandra replied. ‘I quite agree with them. I think it would be much better, if you intend to marry Mr Denham, that we should wait as William says.’
‘But, then, if I don’t marry him for months—or, perhaps, not at all?’
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 cancelled 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 savour 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 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: