He was covered with an extreme confusion.
He withdrew the finger that was still thrust between the pages of Gulliver, opened the book, and ran his eye down the list of chapters, as though he were about to select the one most suitable for reading aloud. As Katharine watched him, she was seized with preliminary symptoms of his own panic. At the same time she was convinced that, should he find the right page, take out his spectacles, clear his throat, and open his lips, a chance that would never come again in all their lives would be lost to them both.
‘We’re talking about things that interest us both very much,’ she said. ‘Shan’t we go on talking, and leave Swift for another time? I don’t feel in the mood for Swift, and it’s a pity to read any one when that’s the case—particularly Swift.’
The pretence of wise literary speculation, as she calculated, restored William’s confidence in his security, and he replaced the book in the bookcase, keeping his back turned to her as he did so, and taking advantage of this circumstance to summon his thoughts together.
But a second of introspection had the alarming result of showing him that his mind, when looked at from within, was no longer familiar ground. He felt, that is to say, what he had never consciously felt before; he was revealed to himself as other than he was wont to think him; he was afloat upon a sea of unknown and tumultuous possibilities. He paced once up and down the room, and then flung himself impetuously into the chair by Katharine’s side. He had never felt anything like this before; he put himself entirely into her hands; he cast off all responsibility. He very nearly exclaimed aloud:
‘You’ve stirred up all these odious and violent emotions, and now you must do the best you can with them.’
Her near presence, however, had a calming and reassuring effect upon his agitation, and he was conscious only of an implicit trust that, somehow, he was safe with her, that she would see him through, find out what it was that he wanted, and procure it for him.
‘I wish to do whatever you tell me to do,’ he said. ‘I put myself entirely in your hands, Katharine.’
‘You must try to tell me what you feel,’ she said.
‘My dear, I feel a thousand things every second. I don’t know, I’m sure, what I feel. That afternoon on the heath—it was then—then—’ He broke off; he did not tell her what had happened then. ‘Your ghastly good sense, as usual, has convinced me—for the moment but what the truth is, Heaven only knows!’ he exclaimed.
‘Isn’t it the truth that you are, or might be, in love with Cassandra?’ she said gently.
William bowed his head. After a moment’s silence he murmured:
‘I believe you’re right, Katharine.’
She sighed, involuntarily. She had been hoping all this time, with an intensity that increased second by second against the current of her words, that it would not in the end come to this. After a moment of surprising anguish, she summoned her courage to tell him how she wished only that she might help him, and had framed the first words of her speech when a knock, terrific and startling to people in their overwrought condition, sounded upon the door.
‘Katharine, I worship you,’ he urged, half in a whisper.
‘Yes,’ she replied, withdrawing with a little shiver, ‘but you must open the door.’
CHAPTER XXIII
WHEN RALPH DENHAM ENTERED the room and saw Katharine seated with her back to him, he was conscious of a change in the grade of the atmosphere such as a traveller meets with sometimes upon the roads, particularly after sunset, when, without warning, he runs from clammy chill to a hoard of unspent warmth in which the sweetness of hay and beanfield is cherished, as if the sun still shone although the moon is up. He hesitated; he shuddered; he walked elaborately to the window and laid aside his coat. He balanced his stick most carefully against the folds of the curtain. Thus occupied with his own sensations and preparations, he had little time to observe what either of the other two was feeling. Such symptoms of agitation as he might perceive (and they had left their tokens in brightness of eye and pallor of cheeks) seemed to him well befitting the actors in so great a drama as that of Katharine Hilbery’s daily life. Beauty and passion were the breath of her being, he thought.
She scarcely noticed his presence, or only as it forced her to adopt a manner of composure, which she was certainly far from feeling. William, however, was even more agitated than she was, and her first instalment of promised help took the form of some commonplace upon the age of the building or the architect’s name, which gave him an excuse to fumble in a drawer for certain designs, which he laid upon the table between the three of them.
Which of the three followed the designs most carefully it would be difficult to tell, but it is certain that not one of the three found for the moment anything to say. Years of training in a drawing-room came at length to Katharine’s help, and she said something suitable, at the same moment withdrawing her hand from the table because she perceived that it trembled. William agreed effusively; Denham corroborated him, speaking in rather high-pitched tones; they thrust aside the plans, and drew nearer to the fireplace.
‘I’d rather live here than anywhere in the whole of London,’ said Denham.
(And I’ve got nowhere to live’) Katharine thought, as she agreed aloud.
‘You could get rooms here, no doubt, if you wanted to,’ Rodney replied.
‘But I’m just leaving London for good-I’ve taken that cottage I was telling you about.’ The announcement seemed to convey very little to either of his hearers.
‘Indeed?-that’s sad ... You must give me your address. But you won’t cut yourself off altogether, surely-’
‘You’ll be moving too, I suppose,’ Denham remarked.
William showed such visible signs of floundering that Katharine collected herself and asked:
‘Where is the cottage you’ve taken?’
In answering her, Denham turned and looked at her. As their eyes met, she realized for the first time that she was talking to Ralph Denham, and she remembered, without recalling any details, that she had been speaking of him quite lately, and that she had reason to think ill of him. What Mary had said she could not remember, but she felt that there was a mass of knowledge in her mind which she had not had time to examine—knowledge now lying on the far side of a gulf. But her agitation flashed the queerest lights upon her past. She must get through the matter in hand, and then think it out in quiet. She bent her mind to follow what Ralph was saying. He was telling her that he had taken a cottage in Norfolk,cm and she was saying that she knew, or did not know, that particular neighbourhood. But after a moment’s attention her mind flew to Rodney, and she had an unusual, indeed unprecedented, sense that they were in touch and shared each other’s thoughts. If only Ralph were not there, she would at once give way to her desire to take William’s hand, then to bend his head upon her shoulder, for this was what she wanted to do more than anything at the moment, unless, indeed, she wished more than anything to be alone—yes, that was what she wanted. She was sick to death of these discussions; she shivered at the effort to reveal her feelings. She had forgotten to answer. William was speaking now.
‘But what will you find to do in the country?’ she asked at random, striking into a conversation which she had only half heard, in such a way as to make both Rodney and Denham look at her with a little surprise. But directly she took up the conversation, it was William’s turn to fall silent. He at once forgot to listen to what they were saying, although he interposed nervously at intervals, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ As the minutes passed, Ralph’s presence became more and more intolerable to him, since there was so much that he must say to Katharine; the moment he could not talk to her, terrible doubts, unanswerable questions accumulated, which he must lay before Katharine, for she alone could help him now. Unless he could see her alone, it would be impossible for him ever to sleep, or to know what he had said in a moment of madness, which was not altogether mad, or was it mad? He nodded his head, and said, nervously, ‘Yes, yes,’ and looked at Katharine and thought how beautiful she looked; there was no one in the world that he admired more. There was an emotion in her face which lent it an expression he had never seen there. Then, as he was turning over means by which he could speak to her alone, she rose, and he was taken by surprise, for he had counted on the fact that she would outstay Denham. His only chance, then, of saying something to her in private, was to take her downstairs and walk with her to the street. While he hesitated, however, overcome with the difficulty of putting one simple thought into words when all his thoughts were scattered about, and all were too strong for utterance, he was struck silent by something that was still more unexpected. Denham got up from his chair, looked at Katharine, and said: