‘There are so many things that she doesn’t understand,’ he reflected, glancing at the letter to Cassandra which he had begun and laid aside. What prevented him from finishing the letter which he had so much enjoyed beginning? The reason was that Katharine might, at any moment, enter the room. The thought, implying his bondage to her, irritated him acutely. It occurred to him that he would leave the letter lying open for her to see, and he would take the opportunity of telling her that he had sent his play to Cassandra for her to criticize. Possibly, but not by any means certainly, this would annoy her-and as he reached the doubtful comfort of this conclusion, there was a knock on the door and Katharine came in. They kissed each other coldly and she made no apology for being late. Nevertheless, her mere presence moved him strangely; but he was determined that this should not weaken his resolution to make some kind of stand against her; to get at the truth about her. He let her make her own disposition of clothes and busied himself with the plates.
‘I’ve got a piece of news for you, Katharine,’ he said directly they sat down to table; ‘I shan’t get my holiday in April. We shall have to put off our marriage.’
He rapped the words out with a certain degree of brusqueness. Katharine started a little, as if the announcement disturbed her thoughts.
‘That won’t make any difference, will it? I mean the lease isn’t signed,’ she replied. ‘But why? What has happened?’
He told her, in an off-hand way, how one of his fellow clerks had broken down, and might have to be away for months, six months even, in which case they would have to think over their position. He said it in a way which struck her, at last, as oddly casual. She looked at him. There was no outward sign that he was annoyed with her. Was she well dressed? She thought sufficiently so. Perhaps she was late? She looked for a clock.
‘It’s a good thing we didn’t take the house then,’ she repeated thoughtfully.
‘It’ll mean, too, I’m afraid, that I shan’t be as free for a considerable time as I have been,’ he continued. She had time to reflect that she gained something by all this, though it was too soon to determine what. But the light which had been burning with such intensity as she came along was suddenly overclouded, as much by his manner as by his news. She had been prepared to meet opposition, which is simple to encounter compared with—she did not know what it was that she had to encounter. The meal passed in quiet, well-controlled talk about indifferent things. Music was not a subject about which she knew anything, but she liked him to tell her things; and could, she mused, as he talked, fancy the evenings of married life spent thus, over the fire; spent thus, or with a book, perhaps, for then she would have time to read her books, and to grasp firmly with every muscle of her unused mind what she longed to know. The atmosphere was very free. Suddenly William broke off. She looked up apprehensively, brushing aside these thoughts with annoyance.
‘Where should I address a letter to Cassandra?’ he asked her. It was obvious again that William had some meaning or other tonight, or was in some mood. ‘We’ve struck up a friendship,’ he added.
‘She’s at home, I think,’ Katharine replied.
‘They keep her too much at home,’ said William. ‘Why don’t you ask her to stay with you, and let her hear a little good music? I’ll just finish what I was saying, if you don’t mind, because I’m particularly anxious that she should hear to-morrow.’
Katharine sank back in her chair, and Rodney took the paper on his knees, and went on with his sentence. ‘Style, you know, is what we tend to neglect ’; but he was far more conscious of Katharine’s eye upon him than of what he was saying about style. He knew that she was looking at him, but whether with irritation or indifference he could not guess.
In truth, she had fallen sufficiently into his trap to feel uncomfortably roused and disturbed and unable to proceed on the lines laid down for herself. This indifferent, if not hostile, attitude on William’s part made it impossible to break off without animosity, largely and completely. Infinitely preferable was Mary’s state, she thought, where there was a simple thing to do and one did it. In fact, she could not help supposing that some littleness of nature had a part in all the refinements, reserves, and subtleties of feeling for which her friends and family were so distinguished. For example, although she liked Cassandra well enough, her fantastic method of life struck her as purely frivolous; now it was socialism, now it was silkworms, now it was music—which last she supposed was the cause of William’s sudden interest in her. Never before had William wasted the minutes of her presence in writing his letters. With a curious sense of light opening where all, hitherto, had been opaque, it dawned upon her that, after all, possibly, yes, probably, nay, certainly, the devotion which she had almost wearily taken for granted existed in a much slighter degree than she had suspected, or existed no longer. She looked at him attentively as if this discovery of hers must show traces in his face. Never had she seen so much to respect in his appearance, so much that attracted her by its sensitiveness and intelligence, although she saw these qualities as if they were those one responds to, dumbly, in the face of a stranger. The head bent over the paper, thoughtful as usual, had now a composure which seemed somehow to place it at a distance, like a face seen talking to some one else behind glass.
He wrote on, without raising his eyes. She would have spoken, but could not bring herself to ask him for signs of affection which she had no right to claim. The conviction that he was thus strange to her filled her with despondency, and illustrated quite beyond doubt the infinite loneliness of human beings. She had never felt the truth of this so strongly before. She looked away into the fire; it seemed to her that even physically they were now scarcely within speaking distance; and spiritually there was certainly no human being with whom she could claim comradeship; no dream that satisfied her as she was used to be satisfied; nothing remained in whose reality she could believe, save those abstract ideas—figures, laws, stars, facts, which she could hardly hold to for lack of knowledge and a kind of shame.
When Rodney owned to himself the folly of this prolonged silence, and the meanness of such devices, and looked up ready to seek some excuse for a good laugh, or opening for a confession, he was disconcerted by what he saw. Katharine seemed equally oblivious of what was bad or of what was good in him. Her expression suggested concentration upon something entirely remote from her surroundings. The carelessness of her attitude seemed to him rather masculine than feminine. His impulse to break up the constraint was chilled, and once more the exasperating sense of his own impotency returned to him. He could not help contrasting Katharine with his vision of the engaging, whimsical Cassandra; Katharine undemonstrative, inconsiderate, silent, and yet so notable that he could never do without her good opinion.
She veered round upon him a moment later, as if, when her train of thought was ended, she became aware of his presence.
‘Have you finished your letter?’ she asked. He thought he heard faint amusement in her tone, but not a trace of jealousy.
‘No, I’m not going to write any more to-night,’ he said. ‘I’m not in the mood for it for some reason. I can’t say what I want to say.’
‘Cassandra won’t know if it’s well written or badly written,’ Katharine remarked.
‘I’m not so sure about that. I should say she has a good deal of literary feeling.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Katharine indifferently. ‘You’ve been neglecting my education lately, by the way. I wish you’d read something. Let me choose a book.’ So speaking, she went across to his bookshelves and began looking in a desultory way among his books. Anything, she thought, was better than bickering or the strange silence which drove home to her the distance between them. As she pulled one book forward and then another she thought ironically of her own certainty not an hour ago; how it had vanished in a moment, how she was merely marking time as best she could, not knowing in the least where they stood, what they felt, or whether William loved her or not. More and more the condition of Mary’s mind seemed to her wonderful and enviable—if, indeed, it could be quite as she figured it if, indeed, simplicity existed for any one of the daughters of women.