“We have been seeing old masters at the Grafton Gallery,” said Katharine, apparently paying no attention to William, and accepting a cigarette which Mary offered her. She leant back in her chair, and the smoke which hung about her face seemed to withdraw her still further from the others.
“Would you believe it, Miss Datchet,” William continued, “Katharine doesn’t like Titian. She doesn’t like apricots, she doesn’t like peaches, she doesn’t like green peas. She likes the Elgin marbles, and gray days without any sun. She’s a typical example of the cold northern nature. I come from Devonshire—”
Had they been quarreling, Mary wondered, and had they, for that reason, sought refuge in her room, or were they engaged, or had Katharine just refused him? She was completely baffled.
Katharine now reappeared from her veil of smoke, knocked the ash from her cigarette into the fireplace, and looked, with an odd expression of solicitude, at the irritable man.
“Perhaps, Mary,” she said tentatively, “you wouldn’t mind giving us some tea? We did try to get some, but the shop was so crowded, and in the next one there was a band playing; and most of the pictures, at any rate, were very dull, whatever you may say, William.” She spoke with a kind of guarded gentleness.
Mary, accordingly, retired to make preparations in the pantry.
“What in the world are they after?” she asked of her own reflection in the little looking-glass which hung there. She was not left to doubt much longer, for, on coming back into the sitting-room with the tea-things, Katharine informed her, apparently having been instructed so to do by William, of their engagement.
“William,” she said, “thinks that perhaps you don’t know. We are going to be married.”
Mary found herself shaking William’s hand, and addressing her congratulations to him, as if Katharine were inaccessible; she had, indeed, taken hold of the tea-kettle.
“Let me see,” Katharine said, “one puts hot water into the cups first, doesn’t one? You have some dodge of your own, haven’t you, William, about making tea?”
Mary was half inclined to suspect that this was said in order to conceal nervousness, but if so, the concealment was unusually perfect. Talk of marriage was dismissed. Katharine might have been seated in her own drawing-room, controlling a situation which presented no sort of difficulty to her trained mind. Rather to her surprise, Mary found herself making conversation with William about old Italian pictures, while Katharine poured out tea, cut cake, kept William’s plate supplied, without joining more than was necessary in the conversation. She seemed to have taken possession of Mary’s room, and to handle the cups as if they belonged to her. But it was done so naturally that it bred no resentment in Mary; on the contrary, she found herself putting her hand on Katharine’s knee, affectionately, for an instant. Was there something maternal in this assumption of control? And thinking of Katharine as one who would soon be married, these maternal airs filled Mary’s mind with a new tenderness, and even with awe. Katharine seemed very much older and more experienced than she was.
Meanwhile Rodney talked. If his appearance was superficially against him, it had the advantage of making his solid merits something of a surprise. He had kept notebooks; he knew a great deal about pictures. He could compare different examples in different galleries, and his authoritative answers to intelligent questions gained not a little, Mary felt, from the smart taps which he dealt, as he delivered them, upon the lumps of coal. She was impressed.
“Your tea, William,” said Katharine gently.
He paused, gulped it down, obediently, and continued.
And then it struck Mary that Katharine, in the shade of her broad-brimmed hat, and in the midst of the smoke, and in the obscurity of her character, was, perhaps, smiling to herself, not altogether in the maternal spirit. What she said was very simple, but her words, even “Your tea, William,” were set down as gently and cautiously and exactly as the feet of a Persian cat stepping among China ornaments. For the second time that day Mary felt herself baffled by something inscrutable in the character of a person to whom she felt herself much attracted. She thought that if she were engaged to Katharine, she, too, would find herself very soon using those fretful questions with which William evidently teased his bride. And yet Katharine’s voice was humble.
“I wonder how you find the time to know all about pictures as well as books?” she asked.
“How do I find the time?” William answered, delighted, Mary guessed, at this little compliment. “Why, I always travel with a notebook. And I ask my way to the picture gallery the very first thing in the morning. And then I meet men, and talk to them. There’s a man in my office who knows all about the Flemish school. I was telling Miss Datchet about the Flemish school. I picked up a lot of it from him—it’s a way men have—Gibbons, his name is. You must meet him. We’ll ask him to lunch. And this not caring about art,” he explained, turning to Mary, “it’s one of Katharine’s poses, Miss Datchet. Did you know she posed? She pretends that she’s never read Shakespeare. And why should she read Shakespeare, since she is Shakespeare—Rosalind, you know,” and he gave his queer little chuckle. Somehow this compliment appeared very old-fashioned and almost in bad taste. Mary actually felt herself blush, as if he had said “the sex” or “the ladies.” Constrained, perhaps, by nervousness, Rodney continued in the same vein.
“She knows enough—enough for all decent purposes. What do you women want with learning, when you have so much else—everything, I should say—everything. Leave us something, eh, Katharine?”
“Leave you something?” said Katharine, apparently waking from a brown study. “I was thinking we must be going—”
“Is it to-night that Lady Ferrilby dines with us? No, we mustn’t be late,” said Rodney, rising. “D’you know the Ferrilbys, Miss Datchet? They own Trantem Abbey,” he added, for her information, as she looked doubtful. “And if Katharine makes herself very charming to-night, perhaps’ll lend it to us for the honeymoon.”
“I agree that may be a reason. Otherwise she’s a dull woman,” said Katharine. “At least,” she added, as if to qualify her abruptness, “I find it difficult to talk to her.”
“Because you expect every one else to take all the trouble. I’ve seen her sit silent a whole evening,” he said, turning to Mary, as he had frequently done already. “Don’t you find that, too? Sometimes when we’re alone, I’ve counted the time on my watch”—here he took out a large gold watch, and tapped the glass—“the time between one remark and the next. And once I counted ten minutes and twenty seconds, and then, if you’ll believe me, she only said ‘Um!’”
“I’m sure I’m sorry,” Katharine apologized. “I know it’s a bad habit, but then, you see, at home—”
The rest of her excuse was cut short, so far as Mary was concerned, by the closing of the door. She fancied she could hear William finding fresh fault on the stairs. A moment later, the door-bell rang again, and Katharine reappeared, having left her purse on a chair. She soon found it, and said, pausing for a moment at the door, and speaking differently as they were alone:
“I think being engaged is very bad for the character.” She shook her purse in her hand until the coins jingled, as if she alluded merely to this example of her forgetfulness. But the remark puzzled Mary; it seemed to refer to something else; and her manner had changed so strangely, now that William was out of hearing, that she could not help looking at her for an explanation. She looked almost stern, so that Mary, trying to smile at her, only succeeded in producing a silent stare of interrogation.
As the door shut for the second time, she sank on to the floor in front of the fire, trying, now that their bodies were not there to distract her, to piece together