‘Swift,’ she said, at last, taking out a volume at haphazard to settle this question at least. ‘Let us have some Swift.’
Rodney took the book, held it in front of him, inserted one finger between the pages, but said nothing. His face wore a queer expression of deliberation, as if he were weighing one thing with another, and would not say anything until his mind were made up.
Katharine, taking her chair beside him, noted his silence and looked at him with sudden apprehension. What she hoped or feared, she could not have said; a most irrational and indefensible desire for some assurance of his affection was, perhaps, uppermost in her mind. Peevishness, complaints, exacting cross-examination she was used to, but this attitude of composed quiet, which seemed to come from the consciousness of power within, puzzled her. She did not know what was going to happen next.
At last William spoke.
‘I think it’s a little odd, don’t you?’ he said, in a voice of detached reflection. ‘Most people, I mean, would be seriously upset if their marriage was put off for six months or so. But we aren’t; now how do you account for that?’
She looked at him and observed his judicial attitude as of one holding far aloof from emotion.
‘I attribute it,’ he went on, without waiting for her to answer, ‘to the fact that neither of us is in the least romantic about the other. That may be partly, no doubt, because we’ve known each other so long; but I’m inclined to think there’s more in it than that. There’s something temperamental. I think you’re a trifle cold, and I suspect I’m a trifle self-absorbed. If that were so it goes a long way to explaining our odd lack of illusion about each other. I’m not saying that the most satisfactory marriages aren’t founded upon this sort of understanding. But certainly it struck me as odd this morning, when Wilson told me, how little upset I felt. By the way, you’re sure we haven’t committed ourselves to that house?’
‘I’ve kept the letters, and I’ll go through them to-morrow; but I’m certain we’re on the safe side.’
‘Thanks. As to the psychological problem,’ he continued, as if the question interested him in a detached way, ‘there’s no doubt, I think, that either of us is capable of feeling what, for reasons of simplicity, I call romance for a third person—at least, I’ve little doubt in my own case.
It was, perhaps, the first time in all her knowledge of him that Katharine had known William enter thus deliberately and without sign of emotion upon a statement of his own feelings. He was wont to discourage such intimate discussions by a little laugh or turn of the conversation, as much as to say that men, or men of the world, find such topics a little silly, or in doubtful taste. His obvious wish to explain something puzzled her, interested her, and neutralized the wound to her vanity. For some reason, too, she felt more at ease with him than usual; or her ease was more the ease of equality-she could not stop to think of that at the moment though. His remarks interested her too much for the light that they threw upon certain problems of her own.
‘What is this romance?’ she mused.
‘Ah, that’s the question. I’ve never come across a definition that satisfied me, though there are some very good ones’-he glanced in the direction of his books.
‘It’s not altogether knowing the other person, perhaps—it’s ignorance,’ she hazarded.
‘Some authorities say it’s a question of distance—romance in literature, that is—’
‘Possibly, in the case of art. But in the case of people it may be—’ she hesitated.
‘Have you no personal experience of it?’ he asked, letting his eyes rest upon her swiftly for a moment.
‘I believe it’s influenced me enormously,’ she said, in the tone of one absorbed by the possibilities of some view just presented to them; ‘but in my life there’s so little scope for it,’ she added. She reviewed her daily task, the perpetual demands upon her for good sense, self-control, and accuracy in a house containing a romantic mother. Ah, but her romance wasn’t that romance. It was a desire, an echo, a sound; she could drape it in colour, see it in form, hear it in music, but not in words; no, never in words. She sighed, teased by desires so incoherent, so incommunicable.
‘But isn’t it curious,’ William resumed, ‘that you should neither feel it for me, nor I for you?’
Katharine agreed that it was curious—very; but even more curious to her was the fact that she was discussing the question with William. It revealed possibilities which opened a prospect of a new relationship altogether. Somehow it seemed to her that he was helping her to understand what she had never understood; and in her gratitude she was conscious of a most sisterly desire to help him, too—sisterly, save for one pang, not quite to be subdued, that for him she was without romance.
‘I think you might be very happy with some one you loved in that way,’ she said.
‘You assume that romance survives a closer knowledge of the person one loves?’
He asked the question formally, to protect himself from the sort of personality which he dreaded. The whole situation needed the most careful management lest it should degenerate into some degrading and disturbing exhibition such as the scene, which he could never think of without shame, upon the heath among the dead leaves. And yet each sentence brought him relief. He was coming to understand something or other about his own desires hitherto undefined by him, the source of his difficulty with Katharine. The wish to hurt her, which had urged him to begin, had completely left him, and he felt that it was only Katharine now who could help him to be sure. He must take his time. There were so many things that he could not say without the greatest difficulty-that name, for example, Cassandra. Nor could he move his eyes from a certain spot, a fiery glen surrounded by high mountains, in the heart of the coals. He waited in suspense for Katharine to continue. She had said that he might be very happy with some one he loved in that way.
‘I don’t see why it shouldn’t last with you,’ she resumed. ‘I can imagine a certain sort of person—’ she paused; she was aware that he was listening with the greatest intentness, and that his formality was merely the cover for an extreme anxiety of some sort. There was some person then—some woman—who could it be? Cassandra? Ah, possibly-A person,’ she added, speaking in the most matter-of-fact tone she could command, ‘like Cassandra Otway, for instance. Cassandra is the most interesting of the Otways—with the exception of Henry. Even so, I like Cassandra better. She has more than mere cleverness. She is a character—a person by herself.’
‘Those dreadful insects!’ burst from William, with a nervous laugh, and a little spasm went through him as Katharine noticed. It was Cassandra then. Automatically and dully she replied, ‘You could insist that she confined herself to—to—something else ... But she cares for music; I believe she writes poetry; and there can be no doubt that she has a peculiar charm—’
She ceased, as if defining to herself this peculiar charm. After a moment’s silence William jerked out,
‘I thought her affectionate?’
‘Extremely affectionate. She worships Henry. When you think what a house that is—Uncle Francis always in one mood or another—’
‘Dear, dear, dear,’ William muttered.
And you have so much in common.’
‘My dear Katharine!’ William exclaimed, flinging himself back in his chair, and uprooting his eyes from the spot in the fire. ‘I really don’t know what we’re talking about ... I assure you ... ’