CHAPTER V
Denham had no conscious intention of following Katharine, but, seeingher depart, he took his hat and ran rather more quickly down the stairsthan he would have done if Katharine had not been in front of him. Heovertook a friend of his, by name Harry Sandys, who was going the sameway, and they walked together a few paces behind Katharine and Rodney.
The night was very still, and on such nights, when the traffic thinsaway, the walker becomes conscious of the moon in the street, as if thecurtains of the sky had been drawn apart, and the heaven lay bare, asit does in the country. The air was softly cool, so that people whohad been sitting talking in a crowd found it pleasant to walk a littlebefore deciding to stop an omnibus or encounter light again in anunderground railway. Sandys, who was a barrister with a philosophictendency, took out his pipe, lit it, murmured "hum" and "ha," and wassilent. The couple in front of them kept their distance accurately, andappeared, so far as Denham could judge by the way they turned towardseach other, to be talking very constantly. He observed that when apedestrian going the opposite way forced them to part they came togetheragain directly afterwards. Without intending to watch them he neverquite lost sight of the yellow scarf twisted round Katharine's head, orthe light overcoat which made Rodney look fashionable among the crowd.At the Strand he supposed that they would separate, but instead theycrossed the road, and took their way down one of the narrow passageswhich lead through ancient courts to the river. Among the crowd ofpeople in the big thoroughfares Rodney seemed merely to be lendingKatharine his escort, but now, when passengers were rare and thefootsteps of the couple were distinctly heard in the silence, Denhamcould not help picturing to himself some change in their conversation.The effect of the light and shadow, which seemed to increase theirheight, was to make them mysterious and significant, so that Denhamhad no feeling of irritation with Katharine, but rather a half-dreamyacquiescence in the course of the world. Yes, she did very well to dreamabout--but Sandys had suddenly begun to talk. He was a solitary man whohad made his friends at college and always addressed them as if theywere still undergraduates arguing in his room, though many months oreven years had passed in some cases between the last sentence and thepresent one. The method was a little singular, but very restful, forit seemed to ignore completely all accidents of human life, and to spanvery deep abysses with a few simple words.
On this occasion he began, while they waited for a minute on the edge ofthe Strand:
"I hear that Bennett has given up his theory of truth."
Denham returned a suitable answer, and he proceeded to explain howthis decision had been arrived at, and what changes it involved in thephilosophy which they both accepted. Meanwhile Katharine and Rodney drewfurther ahead, and Denham kept, if that is the right expression for aninvoluntary action, one filament of his mind upon them, while with therest of his intelligence he sought to understand what Sandys was saying.
As they passed through the courts thus talking, Sandys laid the tip ofhis stick upon one of the stones forming a time-worn arch, and struckit meditatively two or three times in order to illustrate something veryobscure about the complex nature of one's apprehension of facts. Duringthe pause which this necessitated, Katharine and Rodney turned thecorner and disappeared. For a moment Denham stopped involuntarily in hissentence, and continued it with a sense of having lost something.
Unconscious that they were observed, Katharine and Rodney had come outon the Embankment. When they had crossed the road, Rodney slapped hishand upon the stone parapet above the river and exclaimed:
"I promise I won't say another word about it, Katharine! But do stop aminute and look at the moon upon the water."
Katharine paused, looked up and down the river, and snuffed the air.
"I'm sure one can smell the sea, with the wind blowing this way," shesaid.
They stood silent for a few moments while the river shifted in its bed,and the silver and red lights which were laid upon it were torn by thecurrent and joined together again. Very far off up the river a steamerhooted with its hollow voice of unspeakable melancholy, as if from theheart of lonely mist-shrouded voyagings.
"Ah!" Rodney cried, striking his hand once more upon the balustrade,"why can't one say how beautiful it all is? Why am I condemned forever, Katharine, to feel what I can't express? And the things I can givethere's no use in my giving. Trust me, Katharine," he added hastily,"I won't speak of it again. But in the presence of beauty--look atthe iridescence round the moon!--one feels--one feels--Perhaps if youmarried me--I'm half a poet, you see, and I can't pretend not to feelwhat I do feel. If I could write--ah, that would be another matter. Ishouldn't bother you to marry me then, Katharine."
He spoke these disconnected sentences rather abruptly, with his eyesalternately upon the moon and upon the stream.
"But for me I suppose you would recommend marriage?" said Katharine,with her eyes fixed on the moon.
"Certainly I should. Not for you only, but for all women. Why, you'renothing at all without it; you're only half alive; using only halfyour faculties; you must feel that for yourself. That is why--" Here hestopped himself, and they began to walk slowly along the Embankment, themoon fronting them.
"With how sad steps she climbs the sky, How silently and with how wan a face,"
Rodney quoted.
"I've been told a great many unpleasant things about myself to-night,"Katharine stated, without attending to him. "Mr. Denham seems to thinkit his mission to lecture me, though I hardly know him. By the way,William, you know him; tell me, what is he like?"
William drew a deep sigh.
"We may lecture you till we're blue in the face--"
"Yes--but what's he like?"
"And we write sonnets to your eyebrows, you cruel practical creature.Denham?" he added, as Katharine remained silent. "A good fellow, Ishould think. He cares, naturally, for the right sort of things, Iexpect. But you mustn't marry him, though. He scolded you, did he--whatdid he say?"
"What happens with Mr. Denham is this: He comes to tea. I do all I canto put him at his ease. He merely sits and scowls at me. Then I show himour manuscripts. At this he becomes really angry, and tells me I've nobusiness to call myself a middle-class woman. So we part in a huff; andnext time we meet, which was to-night, he walks straight up to me, andsays, 'Go to the Devil!' That's the sort of behavior my mother complainsof. I want to know, what does it mean?"
She paused and, slackening her steps, looked at the lighted traindrawing itself smoothly over Hungerford Bridge.
"It means, I should say, that he finds you chilly and unsympathetic."
Katharine laughed with round, separate notes of genuine amusement.
"It's time I jumped into a cab and hid myself in my own house," sheexclaimed.
"Would your mother object to my being seen with you? No one couldpossibly recognize us, could they?" Rodney inquired, with somesolicitude.
Katharine looked at him, and perceiving that his solicitude was genuine,she laughed again, but with an ironical note in her laughter.
"You may laugh, Katharine, but I can tell you that if any of yourfriends saw us together at this time of night they would talk about it,and I should find that very disagreeable. But why do you laugh?"
"I don't know. Because you're such a queer mixture, I think. You're halfpoet and half old maid."
"I know I always seem to you highly ridiculous. But I can't help havinginherited certain traditions and trying to put them into practice."
"Nonsense, William. You may come of the oldest family in Devonshire,but that's no reason why you should mind being seen alone with me on theEmbankment."
"I'm ten years older than you are, Katharine, and I know more of theworld than you do."
"Very well. Leave me and go home."
Rodney looked back over his shoulder and perceived that they were beingfollowed at a short distance by a taxicab, which evidently awaited hissummons. Katharine saw it, too, and exclaimed:
"Don't call that cab for me, Wi
lliam. I shall walk."
"Nonsense, Katharine; you'll do nothing of the kind. It's nearly twelveo'clock, and we've walked too far as it is."
Katharine laughed and walked on so quickly that both Rodney and thetaxicab had to increase their pace to keep up with her.
"Now, William," she said, "if people see me racing along the Embankmentlike this they WILL talk. You had far better say good-night, if youdon't want people to talk."
At this William beckoned, with a despotic gesture, to the cab with onehand, and with the other he brought Katharine to a standstill.
"Don't let the man see us struggling, for God's sake!" he murmured.Katharine stood for a moment quite still.
"There's more of the old maid in you than the poet," she observedbriefly.
William shut the door sharply, gave the address to the driver, andturned away, lifting his hat punctiliously high in farewell to theinvisible lady.
He looked back after the cab twice, suspiciously, half expecting thatshe would stop it and dismount; but it bore her swiftly on, and wassoon out of sight. William felt in the mood for a short soliloquy ofindignation, for Katharine had contrived to exasperate him in more waysthan one.
"Of all the unreasonable, inconsiderate creatures I've ever known, she'sthe worst!" he exclaimed to himself, striding back along the Embankment."Heaven forbid that I should ever make a fool of myself with heragain. Why, I'd sooner marry the daughter of my landlady than KatharineHilbery! She'd leave me not a moment's peace--and she'd never understandme--never, never, never!"
Uttered aloud and with vehemence so that the stars of Heaven mighthear, for there was no human being at hand, these sentiments soundedsatisfactorily irrefutable. Rodney quieted down, and walked on insilence, until he perceived some one approaching him, who had something,either in his walk or his dress, which proclaimed that he was one ofWilliam's acquaintances before it was possible to tell which of them hewas. It was Denham who, having parted from Sandys at the bottom of hisstaircase, was now walking to the Tube at Charing Cross, deep in thethoughts which his talk with Sandys had suggested. He had forgotten themeeting at Mary Datchet's rooms, he had forgotten Rodney, and metaphorsand Elizabethan drama, and could have sworn that he had forgottenKatharine Hilbery, too, although that was more disputable. His mindwas scaling the highest pinnacles of its alps, where there was onlystarlight and the untrodden snow. He cast strange eyes upon Rodney, asthey encountered each other beneath a lamp-post.
"Ha!" Rodney exclaimed.
If he had been in full possession of his mind, Denham would probablyhave passed on with a salutation. But the shock of the interruption madehim stand still, and before he knew what he was doing, he had turned andwas walking with Rodney in obedience to Rodney's invitation to come tohis rooms and have something to drink. Denham had no wish to drink withRodney, but he followed him passively enough. Rodney was gratified bythis obedience. He felt inclined to be communicative with this silentman, who possessed so obviously all the good masculine qualities inwhich Katharine now seemed lamentably deficient.
"You do well, Denham," he began impulsively, "to have nothing to dowith young women. I offer you my experience--if one trusts them oneinvariably has cause to repent. Not that I have any reason at thismoment," he added hastily, "to complain of them. It's a subject thatcrops up now and again for no particular reason. Miss Datchet, I daresay, is one of the exceptions. Do you like Miss Datchet?"
These remarks indicated clearly enough that Rodney's nerves were in astate of irritation, and Denham speedily woke to the situation of theworld as it had been one hour ago. He had last seen Rodney walking withKatharine. He could not help regretting the eagerness with which hismind returned to these interests, and fretted him with the old trivialanxieties. He sank in his own esteem. Reason bade him break from Rodney,who clearly tended to become confidential, before he had utterly losttouch with the problems of high philosophy. He looked along the road,and marked a lamp-post at a distance of some hundred yards, and decidedthat he would part from Rodney when they reached this point.
"Yes, I like Mary; I don't see how one could help liking her," heremarked cautiously, with his eye on the lamp-post.
"Ah, Denham, you're so different from me. You never give yourself away.I watched you this evening with Katharine Hilbery. My instinct is totrust the person I'm talking to. That's why I'm always being taken in, Isuppose."
Denham seemed to be pondering this statement of Rodney's, but, as amatter of fact, he was hardly conscious of Rodney and his revelations,and was only concerned to make him mention Katharine again before theyreached the lamp-post.
"Who's taken you in now?" he asked. "Katharine Hilbery?"
Rodney stopped and once more began beating a kind of rhythm, as if hewere marking a phrase in a symphony, upon the smooth stone balustrade ofthe Embankment.
"Katharine Hilbery," he repeated, with a curious little chuckle. "No,Denham, I have no illusions about that young woman. I think I made thatplain to her to-night. But don't run away with a false impression,"he continued eagerly, turning and linking his arm through Denham's, asthough to prevent him from escaping; and, thus compelled, Denham passedthe monitory lamp-post, to which, in passing, he breathed an excuse, forhow could he break away when Rodney's arm was actually linked in his?"You must not think that I have any bitterness against her--far from it.It's not altogether her fault, poor girl. She lives, you know, one ofthose odious, self-centered lives--at least, I think them odious for awoman--feeding her wits upon everything, having control of everything,getting far too much her own way at home--spoilt, in a sense, feelingthat every one is at her feet, and so not realizing how she hurts--thatis, how rudely she behaves to people who haven't all her advantages.Still, to do her justice, she's no fool," he added, as if to warnDenham not to take any liberties. "She has taste. She has sense. She canunderstand you when you talk to her. But she's a woman, and there's anend of it," he added, with another little chuckle, and dropped Denham'sarm.
"And did you tell her all this to-night?" Denham asked.
"Oh dear me, no. I should never think of telling Katharine the truthabout herself. That wouldn't do at all. One has to be in an attitude ofadoration in order to get on with Katharine.
"Now I've learnt that she's refused to marry him why don't I go home?"Denham thought to himself. But he went on walking beside Rodney, and fora time they did not speak, though Rodney hummed snatches of a tune outof an opera by Mozart. A feeling of contempt and liking combinevery naturally in the mind of one to whom another has just spokenunpremeditatedly, revealing rather more of his private feelings than heintended to reveal. Denham began to wonder what sort of person Rodneywas, and at the same time Rodney began to think about Denham.
"You're a slave like me, I suppose?" he asked.
"A solicitor, yes."
"I sometimes wonder why we don't chuck it. Why don't you emigrate,Denham? I should have thought that would suit you."
"I've a family."
"I'm often on the point of going myself. And then I know I couldn't livewithout this"--and he waved his hand towards the City of London, whichwore, at this moment, the appearance of a town cut out of gray-bluecardboard, and pasted flat against the sky, which was of a deeper blue.
"There are one or two people I'm fond of, and there's a little goodmusic, and a few pictures, now and then--just enough to keep onedangling about here. Ah, but I couldn't live with savages! Are you fondof books? Music? Pictures? D'you care at all for first editions? I'vegot a few nice things up here, things I pick up cheap, for I can'tafford to give what they ask."
They had reached a small court of high eighteenth-century houses, inone of which Rodney had his rooms. They climbed a very steep staircase,through whose uncurtained windows the moonlight fell, illuminating thebanisters with their twisted pillars, and the piles of plates set on thewindow-sills, and jars half-full of milk. Rodney's rooms were small, butthe sitting-room window looked out into a courtyard, with its flaggedpavement, and its single tree, and across to the flat re
d-brick frontsof the opposite houses, which would not have surprised Dr. Johnson, ifhe had come out of his grave for a turn in the moonlight. Rodney lithis lamp, pulled his curtains, offered Denham a chair, and, flingingthe manuscript of his paper on the Elizabethan use of Metaphor on to thetable, exclaimed:
"Oh dear me, what a waste of time! But it's over now, and so we maythink no more about it."
He then busied himself very dexterously in lighting a fire, producingglasses, whisky, a cake, and cups and saucers. He put on a faded crimsondressing-gown, and a pair of red slippers, and advanced to Denham with atumbler in one hand and a well-burnished book in the other.
"The Baskerville Congreve," said Rodney, offering it to his guest. "Icouldn't read him in a cheap edition."
When he was seen thus among his books and his valuables, amiably anxiousto make his visitor comfortable, and moving about with something ofthe dexterity and grace of a Persian cat, Denham relaxed his criticalattitude, and felt more at home with Rodney than he would have done withmany men better known to him. Rodney's room was the room of a personwho cherishes a great many personal tastes, guarding them from the roughblasts of the public with scrupulous attention. His papers and his booksrose in jagged mounds on table and floor, round which he skirted withnervous care lest his dressing-gown might disarrange them ever soslightly. On a chair stood a stack of photographs of statues andpictures, which it was his habit to exhibit, one by one, for the spaceof a day or two. The books on his shelves were as orderly asregiments of soldiers, and the backs of them shone like so many bronzebeetle-wings; though, if you took one from its place you saw a shabbiervolume behind it, since space was limited. An oval Venetian mirror stoodabove the fireplace, and reflected duskily in its spotted depths thefaint yellow and crimson of a jarful of tulips which stood among theletters and pipes and cigarettes upon the mantelpiece. A small pianooccupied a corner of the room, with the score of "Don Giovanni" openupon the bracket.
"Well, Rodney," said Denham, as he filled his pipe and looked about him,"this is all very nice and comfortable."
Rodney turned his head half round and smiled, with the pride of aproprietor, and then prevented himself from smiling.
"Tolerable," he muttered.
"But I dare say it's just as well that you have to earn your ownliving."
"If you mean that I shouldn't do anything good with leisure if I hadit, I dare say you're right. But I should be ten times as happy with mywhole day to spend as I liked."
"I doubt that," Denham replied.
They sat silent, and the smoke from their pipes joined amicably in ablue vapor above their heads.
"I could spend three hours every day reading Shakespeare," Rodneyremarked. "And there's music and pictures, let alone the society of thepeople one likes."
"You'd be bored to death in a year's time."
"Oh, I grant you I should be bored if I did nothing. But I should writeplays."
"H'm!"
"I should write plays," he repeated. "I've written three-quarters of onealready, and I'm only waiting for a holiday to finish it. And it's notbad--no, some of it's really rather nice."
The question arose in Denham's mind whether he should ask to see thisplay, as, no doubt, he was expected to do. He looked rather stealthilyat Rodney, who was tapping the coal nervously with a poker, andquivering almost physically, so Denham thought, with desire to talkabout this play of his, and vanity unrequited and urgent. He seemed verymuch at Denham's mercy, and Denham could not help liking him, partly onthat account.
"Well,... will you let me see the play?" Denham asked, and Rodney lookedimmediately appeased, but, nevertheless, he sat silent for a moment,holding the poker perfectly upright in the air, regarding it with hisrather prominent eyes, and opening his lips and shutting them again.
"Do you really care for this kind of thing?" he asked at length, in adifferent tone of voice from that in which he had been speaking. And,without waiting for an answer, he went on, rather querulously: "Very fewpeople care for poetry. I dare say it bores you."
"Perhaps," Denham remarked.
"Well, I'll lend it you," Rodney announced, putting down the poker.
As he moved to fetch the play, Denham stretched a hand to the bookcasebeside him, and took down the first volume which his fingers touched.It happened to be a small and very lovely edition of Sir Thomas Browne,containing the "Urn Burial," the "Hydriotaphia," and the "Garden ofCyrus," and, opening it at a passage which he knew very nearly by heart,Denham began to read and, for some time, continued to read.
Rodney resumed his seat, with his manuscript on his knee, and fromtime to time he glanced at Denham, and then joined his finger-tips andcrossed his thin legs over the fender, as if he experienced a good dealof pleasure. At length Denham shut the book, and stood, with his back tothe fireplace, occasionally making an inarticulate humming sound whichseemed to refer to Sir Thomas Browne. He put his hat on his head, andstood over Rodney, who still lay stretched back in his chair, with histoes within the fender.
"I shall look in again some time," Denham remarked, upon which Rodneyheld up his hand, containing his manuscript, without saying anythingexcept--"If you like."
Denham took the manuscript and went. Two days later he was muchsurprised to find a thin parcel on his breakfast-plate, which, on beingopened, revealed the very copy of Sir Thomas Browne which he had studiedso intently in Rodney's rooms. From sheer laziness he returned nothanks, but he thought of Rodney from time to time with interest,disconnecting him from Katharine, and meant to go round one evening andsmoke a pipe with him. It pleased Rodney thus to give away whatever hisfriends genuinely admired. His library was constantly being diminished.
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