‘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 Northumberlanddl 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 ardour, 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 Bradshaw’sdm 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.