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>She took the cluster of green stones and turned it round and round,

but she did not know what to say next.

 

“That poor old ring was a sad disappointment to me when I first had

it,” Lady Otway mused. “I’d set my heart on a diamond ring, but I

never liked to tell Frank, naturally. He bought it at Simla.”

 

Katharine turned the ring round once more, and gave it back to her

aunt without speaking. And while she turned it round her lips set

themselves firmly together, and it seemed to her that she could

satisfy William as these women had satisfied their husbands; she could

pretend to like emeralds when she preferred diamonds. Having replaced

her ring, Lady Otway remarked that it was chilly, though not more so

than one must expect at this time of year. Indeed, one ought to be

thankful to see the sun at all, and she advised them both to dress

warmly for their drive. Her aunt’s stock of commonplaces, Katharine

sometimes suspected, had been laid in on purpose to fill silences

with, and had little to do with her private thoughts. But at this

moment they seemed terribly in keeping with her own conclusions, so

that she took up her knitting again and listened, chiefly with a view

to confirming herself in the belief that to be engaged to marry some

one with whom you are not in love is an inevitable step in a world

where the existence of passion is only a traveller’s story brought

from the heart of deep forests and told so rarely that wise people

doubt whether the story can be true. She did her best to listen to her

mother asking for news of John, and to her aunt replying with the

authentic history of Hilda’s engagement to an officer in the Indian

Army, but she cast her mind alternately towards forest paths and

starry blossoms, and towards pages of neatly written mathematical

signs. When her mind took this turn her marriage seemed no more than

an archway through which it was necessary to pass in order to have her

desire. At such times the current of her nature ran in its deep narrow

channel with great force and with an alarming lack of consideration

for the feelings of others. Just as the two elder ladies had finished

their survey of the family prospects, and Lady Otway was nervously

anticipating some general statement as to life and death from her

sister-in-law, Cassandra burst into the room with the news that the

carriage was at the door.

 

“Why didn’t Andrews tell me himself?” said Lady Otway, peevishly,

blaming her servants for not living up to her ideals.

 

When Mrs. Hilbery and Katharine arrived in the hall, ready dressed for

their drive, they found that the usual discussion was going forward as

to the plans of the rest of the family. In token of this, a great many

doors were opening and shutting, two or three people stood

irresolutely on the stairs, now going a few steps up, and now a few

steps down, and Sir Francis himself had come out from his study, with

the “Times” under his arm, and a complaint about noise and draughts

from the open door which, at least, had the effect of bundling the

people who did not want to go into the carriage, and sending those who

did not want to stay back to their rooms. It was decided that Mrs.

Hilbery, Katharine, Rodney, and Henry should drive to Lincoln, and any

one else who wished to go should follow on bicycles or in the pony-cart. Every one who stayed at Stogdon House had to make this

expedition to Lincoln in obedience to Lady Otway’s conception of the

right way to entertain her guests, which she had imbibed from reading

in fashionable papers of the behavior of Christmas parties in ducal

houses. The carriage horses were both fat and aged, still they

matched; the carriage was shaky and uncomfortable, but the Otway arms

were visible on the panels. Lady Otway stood on the topmost step,

wrapped in a white shawl, and waved her hand almost mechanically until

they had turned the corner under the laurel-bushes, when she retired

indoors with a sense that she had played her part, and a sigh at the

thought that none of her children felt it necessary to play theirs.

 

The carriage bowled along smoothly over the gently curving road. Mrs.

Hilbery dropped into a pleasant, inattentive state of mind, in which

she was conscious of the running green lines of the hedges, of the

swelling ploughland, and of the mild blue sky, which served her, after

the first five minutes, for a pastoral background to the drama of

human life; and then she thought of a cottage garden, with the flash

of yellow daffodils against blue water; and what with the arrangement

of these different prospects, and the shaping of two or three lovely

phrases, she did not notice that the young people in the carriage were

almost silent. Henry, indeed, had been included against his wish, and

revenged himself by observing Katharine and Rodney with disillusioned

eyes; while Katharine was in a state of gloomy self-suppression which

resulted in complete apathy. When Rodney spoke to her she either said

“Hum!” or assented so listlessly that he addressed his next remark to

her mother. His deference was agreeable to her, his manners were

exemplary; and when the church towers and factory chimneys of the town

came into sight, she roused herself, and recalled memories of the fair

summer of 1853, which fitted in harmoniously with what she was

dreaming of the future.

CHAPTER XVIII

But other passengers were approaching Lincoln meanwhile by other roads

on foot. A county town draws the inhabitants of all vicarages, farms,

country houses, and wayside cottages, within a radius of ten miles at

least, once or twice a week to its streets; and among them, on this

occasion, were Ralph Denham and Mary Datchet. They despised the roads,

and took their way across the fields; and yet, from their appearance,

it did not seem as if they cared much where they walked so long as the

way did not actually trip them up. When they left the Vicarage, they

had begun an argument which swung their feet along so rhythmically in

time with it that they covered the ground at over four miles an hour,

and saw nothing of the hedgerows, the swelling plowland, or the mild

blue sky. What they saw were the Houses of Parliament and the

Government Offices in Whitehall. They both belonged to the class which

is conscious of having lost its birthright in these great structures

and is seeking to build another kind of lodging for its own notion of

law and government. Purposely, perhaps, Mary did not agree with Ralph;

she loved to feel her mind in conflict with his, and to be certain

that he spared her female judgment no ounce of his male muscularity.

He seemed to argue as fiercely with her as if she were his brother.

They were alike, however, in believing that it behooved them to take

in hand the repair and reconstruction of the fabric of England. They

agreed in thinking that nature has not been generous in the endowment

of our councilors. They agreed, unconsciously, in a mute love for the

muddy field through which they tramped, with eyes narrowed close by

the concentration of their minds. At length they drew breath, let the

argument fly away into the limbo of other good arguments, and, leaning

over a gate, opened their eyes for the first time and looked about

them. Their feet tingled with warm blood and their breath rose in

steam around them. The bodily exercise made them both feel more direct

and less self-conscious than usual, and Mary, indeed, was overcome by

a sort of light-headedness which made it seem to her that it mattered

very little what happened next. It mattered so little, indeed, that

she felt herself on the point of saying to Ralph:

 

“I love you; I shall never love anybody else. Marry me or leave me;

think what you like of me—I don’t care a straw.” At the moment,

however, speech or silence seemed immaterial, and she merely clapped

her hands together, and looked at the distant woods with the rust-like

bloom on their brown, and the green and blue landscape through the

steam of her own breath. It seemed a mere toss-up whether she said, “I

love you,” or whether she said, “I love the beech-trees,” or only “I

love—I love.”

 

“Do you know, Mary,” Ralph suddenly interrupted her, “I’ve made up my

mind.”

 

Her indifference must have been superficial, for it disappeared at

once. Indeed, she lost sight of the trees, and saw her own hand upon

the topmost bar of the gate with extreme distinctness, while he went

on:

 

“I’ve made up my mind to chuck my work and live down here. I want you

to tell me about that cottage you spoke of. However, I suppose

there’ll be no difficulty about getting a cottage, will there?” He

spoke with an assumption of carelessness as if expecting her to

dissuade him.

 

She still waited, as if for him to continue; she was convinced that in

some roundabout way he approached the subject of their marriage.

 

“I can’t stand the office any longer,” he proceeded. “I don’t know

what my family will say; but I’m sure I’m right. Don’t you think so?”

 

“Live down here by yourself?” she asked.

 

“Some old woman would do for me, I suppose,” he replied. “I’m sick of

the whole thing,” he went on, and opened the gate with a jerk. They

began to cross the next field walking side by side.

 

“I tell you, Mary, it’s utter destruction, working away, day after

day, at stuff that doesn’t matter a damn to any one. I’ve stood eight

years of it, and I’m not going to stand it any longer. I suppose this

all seems to you mad, though?”

 

By this time Mary had recovered her self-control.

 

“No. I thought you weren’t happy,” she said.

 

“Why did you think that?” he asked, with some surprise.

 

“Don’t you remember that morning in Lincoln’s Inn Fields?” she asked.

 

“Yes,” said Ralph, slackening his pace and remembering Katharine and

her engagement, the purple leaves stamped into the path, the white

paper radiant under the electric light, and the hopelessness which

seemed to surround all these things.

 

“You’re right, Mary,” he said, with something of an effort, “though I

don’t know how you guessed it.”

 

She was silent, hoping that he might tell her the reason of his

unhappiness, for his excuses had not deceived her.

 

“I was unhappy—very unhappy,” he repeated. Some six weeks separated

him from that afternoon when he had sat upon the Embankment watching

his visions dissolve in mist as the waters swam past and the sense of

his desolation still made him shiver. He had not recovered in the

least from that depression. Here was an opportunity for making himself

face it, as he felt that he ought to; for, by this time, no doubt, it

was only a sentimental ghost, better exorcised by ruthless exposure to

such an eye as Mary’s, than allowed to underlie all his actions and

thoughts as had been the case ever since he first saw Katharine

Hilbery pouring out tea. He must begin, however, by mentioning her

name, and this he found it impossible to do. He persuaded himself that

he could make an honest statement without speaking her name; he

persuaded himself that his feeling had very little to do with her.

 

“Unhappiness is a state of mind,” he said, “by which I mean that it is

not necessarily the

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