“You couldn’t laugh at some one you cared for.”
This sentence, apparently addressed to no other human being, reached Denham’s ears. The wind seemed to muffle it and fly away with it directly. Had Rodney spoken those words?
“You love her.” Was that his own voice, which seemed to sound in the air several yards in front of him?
“I’ve suffered tortures, Denham, tortures!”
“Yes, yes, I know that.”
“She’s laughed at me.”
“Never — to me.”
The wind blew a space between the words — blew them so far away that they seemed unspoken.
“How I’ve loved her!”
This was certainly spoken by the man at Denham’s side. The voice had all the marks of Rodney’s character, and recalled, with; strange vividness, his personal appearance. Denham could see him against the blank buildings and towers of the horizon. He saw him dignified, exalted, and tragic, as he might have appeared thinking of Katharine alone in his rooms at night.
“I am in love with Katharine myself. That is why I am here to-night.”
Ralph spoke distinctly and deliberately, as if Rodney’s confession had made this statement necessary.
Rodney exclaimed something inarticulate.
“Ah, I’ve always known it,” he cried, “I’ve known it from the first. You’ll marry her!”
The cry had a note of despair in it. Again the wind intercepted their words. They said no more. At length they drew up beneath a lamp-post, simultaneously.
“My God, Denham, what fools we both are!” Rodney exclaimed. They looked at each other, queerly, in the light of the lamp. Fools! They seemed to confess to each other the extreme depths of their folly. For the moment, under the lamp-post, they seemed to be aware of some common knowledge which did away with the possibility of rivalry, and made them feel more sympathy for each other than for any one else in the world. Giving simultaneously a little nod, as if in confirmation of this understanding, they parted without speaking again.
CHAPTER XXIX
Between twelve and one that Sunday night Katharine lay in bed, not asleep, but in that twilight region where a detached and humorous view of our own lot is possible; or if we must be serious, our seriousness is tempered by the swift oncome of slumber and oblivion. She saw the forms of Ralph, William, Cassandra, and herself, as if they were all equally unsubstantial, and, in putting off reality, had gained a kind of dignity which rested upon each impartially. Thus rid of any uncomfortable warmth of partisanship or load of obligation, she was dropping off to sleep when a light tap sounded upon her door. A moment later Cassandra stood beside her, holding a candle and speaking in the low tones proper to the time of night.
“Are you awake, Katharine?”
“Yes, I’m awake. What is it?”
She roused herself, sat up, and asked what in Heaven’s name Cassandra was doing?
“I couldn’t sleep, and I thought I’d come and speak to you — only for a moment, though. I’m going home to-morrow.”
“Home? Why, what has happened?”
“Something happened to-day which makes it impossible for me to stay here.”
Cassandra spoke formally, almost solemnly; the announcement was clearly prepared and marked a crisis of the utmost gravity. She continued what seemed to be part of a set speech.
“I have decided to tell you the whole truth, Katharine. William allowed himself to behave in a way which made me extremely uncomfortable to-day.”
Katharine seemed to waken completely, and at once to be in control of herself.
“At the Zoo?” she asked.
“No, on the way home. When we had tea.”
As if foreseeing that the interview might be long, and the night chilly, Katharine advised Cassandra to wrap herself in a quilt. Cassandra did so with unbroken solemnity.
“There’s a train at eleven,” she said. “I shall tell Aunt Maggie that I have to go suddenly.... I shall make Violet’s visit an excuse. But, after thinking it over, I don’t see how I can go without telling you the truth.”
She was careful to abstain from looking in Katharine’s direction. There was a slight pause.
“But I don’t see the least reason why you should go,” said Katharine eventually. Her voice sounded so astonishingly equable that Cassandra glanced at her. It was impossible to suppose that she was either indignant or surprised; she seemed, on the contrary, sitting up in bed, with her arms clasped round her knees and a little frown on her brow, to be thinking closely upon a matter of indifference to her.
“Because I can’t allow any man to behave to me in that way,” Cassandra replied, and she added, “particularly when I know that he is engaged to some one else.”
“But you like him, don’t you?” Katharine inquired.
“That’s got nothing to do with it,” Cassandra exclaimed indignantly. “I consider his conduct, under the circumstances, most disgraceful.”
This was the last of the sentences of her premeditated speech; and having spoken it she was left unprovided with any more to say in that particular style. When Katharine remarked:
“I should say it had everything to do with it,” Cassandra’s self-possession deserted her.
“I don’t understand you in the least, Katharine. How can you behave as you behave? Ever since I came here I’ve been amazed by you!”
“You’ve enjoyed yourself, haven’t you?” Katharine asked.
“Yes, I have,” Cassandra admitted.
“Anyhow, my behavior hasn’t spoiled your visit.”
“No,” Cassandra allowed once more. She was completely at a loss. In her forecast of the interview she had taken it for granted that Katharine, after an outburst of incredulity, would agree that Cassandra must return home as soon as possible. But Katharine, on the contrary, accepted her statement at once, seemed neither shocked nor surprised, and merely looked rather more thoughtful than usual. From being a mature woman charged with an important mission, Cassandra shrunk to the stature of an inexperienced child.
“Do you think I’ve been very foolish about it?” she asked.
Katharine made no answer, but still sat deliberating silently, and a certain feeling of alarm took possession of Cassandra. Perhaps her words had struck far deeper than she had thought, into depths beyond her reach, as so much of Katharine was beyond her reach. She thought suddenly that she had been playing with very dangerous tools.
Looking at her at length, Katharine asked slowly, as if she found the question very difficult to ask.
“But do you care for William?”
She marked the agitation and bewilderment of the girl’s expression, and how she looked away from her.
“Do you mean, am I in love with him?” Cassandra asked, breathing quickly, and nervously moving her hands.
“Yes, in love with him,” Katharine repeated.
“How can I love the man you’re engaged to marry?” Cassandra burst out.
“He may be in love with you.”
“I don’t think you’ve any right to say such things, Katharine,” Cassandra exclaimed. “Why do you say them? Don’t you mind in the least how William behaves to other women? If I were engaged, I couldn’t bear it!”
“We’re not engaged,” said Katharine, after a pause.
“Katharine!” Cassandra cried.
“No, we’re not engaged,” Katharine repeated. “But no one knows it but ourselves.”
“But why — I don’t understand — you’re not engaged!” Cassandra said again. “Oh, that explains it! You’re not in love with him! You don’t want to marry him!”
“We aren’t in love with each other any longer,” said Katharine, as if disposing of something for ever and ever.
“How queer, how strange, how unlike other people you are, Katharine,” Cassandra said, her whole body and voice seeming to fall and collapse together, and no trace of anger or excitement remaining, but only a dreamy quietude.
“You’re not in love with him?”<
br />
“But I love him,” said Katharine.
Cassandra remained bowed, as if by the weight of the revelation, for some little while longer. Nor did Katharine speak. Her attitude was that of some one who wishes to be concealed as much as possible from observation. She sighed profoundly; she was absolutely silent, and apparently overcome by her thoughts.
“D’you know what time it is?” she said at length, and shook her pillow, as if making ready for sleep.
Cassandra rose obediently, and once more took up her candle. Perhaps the white dressing-gown, and the loosened hair, and something unseeing in the expression of the eyes gave her a likeness to a woman walking in her sleep. Katharine, at least, thought so.
“There’s no reason why I should go home, then?” Cassandra said, pausing. “Unless you want me to go, Katharine? What DO you want me to do?”
For the first time their eyes met.
“You wanted us to fall in love,” Cassandra exclaimed, as if she read the certainty there. But as she looked she saw a sight that surprised her. The tears rose slowly in Katharine’s eyes and stood there, brimming but contained — the tears of some profound emotion, happiness, grief, renunciation; an emotion so complex in its nature that to express it was impossible, and Cassandra, bending her head and receiving the tears upon her cheek, accepted them in silence as the consecration of her love.
“Please, miss,” said the maid, about eleven o’clock on the following morning, “Mrs. Milvain is in the kitchen.”
A long wicker basket of flowers and branches had arrived from the country, and Katharine, kneeling upon the floor of the drawing-room, was sorting them while Cassandra watched her from an arm-chair, and absent-mindedly made spasmodic offers of help which were not accepted. The maid’s message had a curious effect upon Katharine.
She rose, walked to the window, and, the maid being gone, said emphatically and even tragically:
“You know what that means.”
Cassandra had understood nothing.
“Aunt Celia is in the kitchen,” Katharine repeated.
“Why in the kitchen?” Cassandra asked, not unnaturally.
“Probably because she’s discovered something,” Katharine replied. Cassandra’s thoughts flew to the subject of her preoccupation.
“About us?” she inquired.
“Heaven knows,” Katharine replied. “I shan’t let her stay in the kitchen, though. I shall bring her up here.”
The sternness with which this was said suggested that to bring Aunt Celia upstairs was, for some reason, a disciplinary measure.
“For goodness’ sake, Katharine,” Cassandra exclaimed, jumping from her chair and showing signs of agitation, “don’t be rash. Don’t let her suspect. Remember, nothing’s certain—”
Katharine assured her by nodding her head several times, but the manner in which she left the room was not calculated to inspire complete confidence in her diplomacy.
Mrs. Milvain was sitting, or rather perching, upon the edge of a chair in the servants’ room. Whether there was any sound reason for her choice of a subterranean chamber, or whether it corresponded with the spirit of her quest, Mrs. Milvain invariably came in by the back door and sat in the servants’ room when she was engaged in confidential family transactions. The ostensible reason she gave was that neither Mr. nor Mrs. Hilbery should be disturbed. But, in truth, Mrs. Milvain depended even more than most elderly women of her generation upon the delicious emotions of intimacy, agony, and secrecy, and the additional thrill provided by the basement was one not lightly to be forfeited. She protested almost plaintively when Katharine proposed to go upstairs.
“I’ve something that I want to say to you in PRIVATE,” she said, hesitating reluctantly upon the threshold of her ambush.
“The drawing-room is empty—”
“But we might meet your mother upon the stairs. We might disturb your father,” Mrs. Milvain objected, taking the precaution to speak in a whisper already.
But as Katharine’s presence was absolutely necessary to the success of the interview, and as Katharine obstinately receded up the kitchen stairs, Mrs. Milvain had no course but to follow her. She glanced furtively about her as she proceeded upstairs, drew her skirts together, and stepped with circumspection past all doors, whether they were open or shut.
“Nobody will overhear us?” she murmured, when the comparative sanctuary of the drawing-room had been reached. “I see that I have interrupted you,” she added, glancing at the flowers strewn upon the floor. A moment later she inquired, “Was some one sitting with you?” noticing a handkerchief that Cassandra had dropped in her flight.
“Cassandra was helping me to put the flowers in water,” said Katharine, and she spoke so firmly and clearly that Mrs. Milvain glanced nervously at the main door and then at the curtain which divided the little room with the relics from the drawing-room.
“Ah, Cassandra is still with you,” she remarked. “And did William send you those lovely flowers?”
Katharine sat down opposite her aunt and said neither yes nor no. She looked past her, and it might have been thought that she was considering very critically the pattern of the curtains. Another advantage of the basement, from Mrs. Milvain’s point of view, was that it made it necessary to sit very close together, and the light was dim compared with that which now poured through three windows upon Katharine and the basket of flowers, and gave even the slight angular figure of Mrs. Milvain herself a halo of gold.
“They’re from Stogdon House,” said Katharine abruptly, with a little jerk of her head.
Mrs. Milvain felt that it would be easier to tell her niece what she wished to say if they were actually in physical contact, for the spiritual distance between them was formidable. Katharine, however, made no overtures, and Mrs. Milvain, who was possessed of rash but heroic courage, plunged without preface:
“People are talking about you, Katharine. That is why I have come this morning. You forgive me for saying what I’d much rather not say? What I say is only for your own sake, my child.”
“There’s nothing to forgive yet, Aunt Celia,” said Katharine, with apparent good humor.
“People are saying that William goes everywhere with you and Cassandra, and that he is always paying her attentions. At the Markhams’ dance he sat out five dances with her. At the Zoo they were seen alone together. They left together. They never came back here till seven in the evening. But that is not all. They say his manner is very marked — he is quite different when she is there.”
Mrs. Milvain, whose words had run themselves together, and whose voice had raised its tone almost to one of protest, here ceased, and looked intently at Katharine, as if to judge the effect of her communication. A slight rigidity had passed over Katharine’s face. Her lips were pressed together; her eyes were contracted, and they were still fixed upon the curtain. These superficial changes covered an extreme inner loathing such as might follow the display of some hideous or indecent spectacle. The indecent spectacle was her own action beheld for the first time from the outside; her aunt’s words made her realize how infinitely repulsive the body of life is without its soul.
“Well?” she said at length.
Mrs. Milvain made a gesture as if to bring her closer, but it was not returned.
“We all know how good you are — how unselfish — how you sacrifice yourself to others. But you’ve been too unselfish, Katharine. You have made Cassandra happy, and she has taken advantage of your goodness.”
“I don’t understand, Aunt Celia,” said Katharine. “What has Cassandra done?”
“Cassandra has behaved in a way that I could not have thought possible,” said Mrs. Milvain warmly. “She has been utterly selfish — utterly heartless. I must speak to her before I go.”
“I don’t understand,” Katharine persisted.
Mrs. Milvain looked at her. Was it possible that Katharine really doubted? That there was something that Mrs. Milvain herself did not understand? She braced herself, and pronounced t
he tremendous words:
“Cassandra has stolen William’s love.”
Still the words seemed to have curiously little effect.
“Do you mean,” said Katharine, “that he has fallen in love with her?”
“There are ways of MAKING men fall in love with one, Katharine.”
Katharine remained silent. The silence alarmed Mrs. Milvain, and she began hurriedly:
“Nothing would have made me say these things but your own good. I have not wished to interfere; I have not wished to give you pain. I am a useless old woman. I have no children of my own. I only want to see you happy, Katharine.”
Again she stretched forth her arms, but they remained empty.
“You are not going to say these things to Cassandra,” said Katharine suddenly. “You’ve said them to me; that’s enough.”
Katharine spoke so low and with such restraint that Mrs. Milvain had to strain to catch her words, and when she heard them she was dazed by them.
“I’ve made you angry! I knew I should!” she exclaimed. She quivered, and a kind of sob shook her; but even to have made Katharine angry was some relief, and allowed her to feel some of the agreeable sensations of martyrdom.
“Yes,” said Katharine, standing up, “I’m so angry that I don’t want to say anything more. I think you’d better go, Aunt Celia. We don’t understand each other.”
At these words Mrs. Milvain looked for a moment terribly apprehensive; she glanced at her niece’s face, but read no pity there, whereupon she folded her hands upon a black velvet bag which she carried in an attitude that was almost one of prayer. Whatever divinity she prayed to, if pray she did, at any rate she recovered her dignity in a singular way and faced her niece.
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 82
