Meanwhile, it was decided that it was too late to go in search of ruins as they had intended; and the whole party began to walk towards the stables where the carriage had been put up.
‘Do you know,’ said Katharine, keeping slightly in advance of the rest with Ralph, ‘I thought I saw you this morning, standing at a window. But I decided that it couldn’t be you. And it must have been you all the same.’
‘Yes, I thought I saw you—but it wasn’t you,’ he replied.
This remark, and the rough strain in his voice, recalled to her memory so many difficult speeches and abortive meetings that she was jerked directly back to the London drawing-room, the family relics, and the tea-table; and at the same time recalled some half-finished or interrupted remark which she had wanted to make herself or to hear from him—she could not remember what it was.
‘I expect it was me,’ she said. ‘I was looking for my mother. It happens every time we come to Lincoln. In fact, there never was a family so unable to take care of itself as ours is. Not that it very much matters, because some one always turns up in the nick of time to help us out of our scrapes. Once I was left in a field with a bull when I was a baby—but where did we leave the carriage? Down that street or the next? The next, I think.’ She glanced back and saw that the others were following obediently, listening to certain memories of Lincoln upon which Mrs Hilbery had started. ‘But what are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘I’m buying a cottage. I’m going to live here—as soon as I can find a cottage, and Mary tells me there’ll be no difficulty about that.’
‘But,’ she exclaimed, almost standing still in her surprise, ‘you will give up the Bar, then?’ It flashed across her mind that he must already be engaged to Mary.
‘The solicitor’s office? Yes. I’m giving that up.’
‘But why?’ she asked. She answered herself at once, with a curious change from rapid speech to an almost melancholy tone. ‘I think you’re very wise to give it up. You will be much happier.’
At this very moment, when her words seemed to be striking a path into the future for him, they stepped into the yard of an inn, and there beheld the family coach of the Otways, to which one sleek horse was already attached, while the second was being led out of the stable door by the ostler. cf
‘I don’t know what one means by happiness,’ he said briefly, having to step aside in order to avoid a groom with a bucket. ‘Why do you think I shall be happy? I don’t expect to be anything of the kind. I expect to be rather less unhappy. I shall write a book and curse my charwoman—if happiness consists in that. What do you think?’
She could not answer because they were immediately surrounded by other members of the party—by Mrs Hilbery, and Mary, Henry Otway, and William.
Rodney went up to Katharine immediately and said to her:
‘Henry is going to drive home with your mother, and I suggest that they should put us down half-way and let us walk back.’
Katharine nodded her head. She glanced at him with an oddly furtive expression.
‘Unfortunately we go in opposite directions, or we might have given you a lift,’ he continued to Denham. His manner was unusually peremptory; he seemed anxious to hasten the departure, and Katharine looked at him from time to time, as Denham noticed, with an expression half of inquiry, half of annoyance. She at once helped her mother into her cloak, and said to Mary:
‘I want to see you. Are you going back to London at once? I will write.’ She half smiled at Ralph, but her look was a little overcast by something she was thinking, and in a very few minutes the Otway carriage rolled out of the stable yard and turned down the high road leading to the village of Lampsher.
The return drive was almost as silent as the drive from home had been in the morning; indeed, Mrs Hilbery leant back with closed eyes in her corner, and either slept or feigned sleep, as her habit was in the intervals between the seasons of active exertion, or continued the story which she had begun to tell herself that morning.
About two miles from Lampsher the road ran over the rounded summit of the heath, a lonely spot marked by an obelisk of granite,2 setting forth the gratitude of some great lady of the eighteenth century who had been set upon by highwaymen at this spot and delivered from death just as hope seemed lost. In summer it was a pleasant place, for the deep woods on either side murmured, and the heather, which grew thick round the granite pedestal, made the light breeze taste sweetly; in winter the sighing of the trees was deepened to a hollow sound, and the heath was as grey and almost as solitary as the empty sweep of the clouds above it.
Here Rodney stopped the carriage and helped Katharine to alight. Henry, too, gave her his hand, and fancied that she pressed it very slightly in parting as if she sent him a message. But the carriage rolled on immediately, without wakening Mrs Hilbery, and left the couple standing by the obelisk. That Rodney was angry with her and had made this opportunity for speaking to her, Katharine knew very well; she was neither glad nor sorry that the time had come, nor, indeed, knew what to expect, and thus remained silent. The carriage grew smaller and smaller upon the dusky road, and still Rodney did not speak. Perhaps, she thought, he waited until the last sign of the carriage had disappeared beneath the curve of the road and they were left entirely alone. To cloak their silence she read the writing on the obelisk, to do which she had to walk completely round it. She was murmuring a word to two of the pious lady’s thanks above her breath when Rodney joined her. In silence they set out along the cart-track which skirted the verge of the trees.
To break the silence was exactly what Rodney wished to do, and yet could not do to his own satisfaction. In company it was far easier to approach Katharine; alone with her, the aloofness and force of her character checked all his natural methods of attack. He believed that she had behaved very badly to him, but each separate instance of unkindness seemed too petty to be advanced when they were alone together.
‘There’s no need for us to race,’ he complained at last; upon which she immediately slackened her pace, and walked too slowly to suit him. In desperation he said the first thing he thought of, very peevishly and without the dignified prelude which he had intended.
‘I’ve not enjoyed my holiday.’
‘No?’
‘No. I shall be glad to get back to work again.’
‘Saturday, Sunday, Monday—there are only three days more,’ she counted.
‘No one enjoys being made a fool of before other people,’ he blurted out, for his irritation rose as she spoke, and got the better of his awe of her, and was inflamed by that awe.
‘That refers to me, I suppose,’ she said calmly.
‘Every day since we’ve been here you’ve done something to make me appear ridiculous,’ he went on. ‘Of course, so long as it amuses you, you’re welcome; but we have to remember that we are going to spend our lives together. I asked you, only this morning, for example, to come out and take a turn with me in the garden. I was waiting for you ten minutes, and you never came. Every one saw me waiting. The stable-boys saw me. I was so ashamed that I went in. Then, on the drive you hardly spoke to me. Henry noticed it. Every one notices it... You find no difficulty in talking to Henry, though.’
She noted these various complaints and determined philosophically to answer none of them, although the last stung her to considerable irritation. She wished to find out how deep his grievance lay.
‘None of these things seem to me to matter,’ she said.
‘Very well, then. I may as well hold my tongue,’ he replied.
‘In themselves they don’t seem to me to matter; if they hurt you, of course they matter,’ she corrected herself scrupulously. Her tone of consideration touched him, and he walked on in silence for a space.