‘Which is the way to the Reptile House?’ Cassandra asked him, not from a genuine desire to visit the reptiles, but in obedience to her new-born feminine susceptibility, which urged her to charm and conciliate the other sex. Denham began to give her directions, and Katharine and William moved on together.
‘I hope you’ve had a pleasant afternoon,’ William remarked.
‘I like Ralph Denham,’ she replied.
‘Ca se voit,’dd William returned, with superficial urbanity.
Many retorts were obvious, but wishing, on the whole, for peace, Katharine merely inquired:
‘Are you coming back to tea?’
‘Cassandra and I thought of having tea at a little shop in Portland Place,’de he replied. ‘I don’t know whether you and Denham would care to join us.’
‘I’ll ask him,’ she replied, turning her head to look for him. But he and Cassandra were absorbed in the aye-aye once more.
William and Katharine watched them for a moment, and each looked curiously at the object of the other’s preference. But resting his eye upon Cassandra, to whose elegance the dressmakers had now done justice, William said sharply:
‘If you come, I hope you won’t do your best to make me ridiculous.’
‘If that’s what you’re afraid of I certainly shan’t come,’ Katharine replied.
They were professedly looking into the enormous central cage of monkeys, and being thoroughly annoyed by William, she compared him to a wretched misanthropical ape, huddled in a scrap of old shawl at the end of a pole, darting peevish glances of suspicion and distrust at his companions. Her tolerance was deserting her. The events of the past week had worn it thin. She was in one of those moods, perhaps not uncommon with either sex, when the other becomes very clearly distinguished, and of contemptible baseness, so that the necessity of association is degrading, and the tie, which at such moments is always extremely close, drags like a halter round the neck. William’s exacting demands and his jealousy had pulled her down into some horrible swamp of her nature where the primeval struggle between man and woman still rages.
‘You seem to delight in hurting me,’ William persisted. ‘Why did you say that just now about my behaviour to animals?’ As he spoke he rattled his stick against the bars of the cage, which gave his words an accompaniment peculiarly exasperating to Katharine’s nerves.
‘Because it’s true. You never see what any one feels,’ she said. ‘You think of no one but yourself.’
‘That is not true,’ said William. By his determined rattling he had now collected the animated attention of some half-dozen apes. Either to propitiate them, or to show his consideration for their feelings, he proceeded to offer them the apple which he held.
The sight, unfortunately, was so comically apt in its illustration of the picture in her mind, the ruse was so transparent, that Katharine was seized with laughter. She laughed uncontrollably. William flushed red. No display of anger could have hurt his feelings more profoundly. It was not only that she was laughing at him; the detachment of the sound was horrible.
‘I don’t know what you’re laughing at,’ he muttered, and, turning, found that the other couple had rejoined them. As if the matter had been privately agreed upon, the couples separated once more, Katharine and Denham passing out of the house without more than a perfunctory glance round them. Denham obeyed what seemed to be Katharine’s wish in thus making haste. Some change had come over her. He connected it with her laughter, and her few words in private with Rodney; he felt that she had become unfriendly to him. She talked, but her remarks were indifferent, and when he spoke her attention seemed to wander. This change of mood was at first extremely disagreeable to him; but soon he found it salutary. The pale drizzling atmosphere of the day affected him, also. The charm, the insidious magic in which he had luxuriated, were suddenly gone; his feeling had become one of friendly respect, and to his great pleasure he found himself thinking spontaneously of the relief of finding himself alone in his room that night. In his surprise at the suddenness of the change, and at the extent of his freedom, he bethought him of a daring plan, by which the ghost of Katharine could be more effectually exorcised than by mere abstinence. He would ask her to come home with him to tea. He would force her through the mill of family life; he would place her in a light unsparing and revealing. His family would find nothing to admire in her, and she, he felt certain, would despise them all, and this, too, would help him. He felt himself becoming more and more merciless towards her. By such courageous measures any one, he thought, could end the absurd passions which were the cause of so much pain and waste. He could foresee a time when his experiences, his discovery, and his triumph were made available for younger brothers who found themselves in the same predicament. He looked at his watch, and remarked that the gardens would soon be closed.
‘Anyhow,’ he added, ‘I think we’ve seen enough for one afternoon. Where have the others got to?’ He looked over his shoulder, and, seeing no trace of them, remarked at once:
‘We’d better be independent of them. The best plan will be for you to come back to tea with me.’
‘Why shouldn’t you come with me?’ she asked.
‘Because we’re next door to Highgate here,’ he replied promptly.
She assented, having very little notion whether Highgate was next door to Regent’s Park or not. She was only glad to put off her return to the family tea-table in Chelsea for an hour or two. They proceeded with dogged determination through the winding roads of Regent’s Park, and the Sunday-stricken streets of the neighbourhood, in the direction of the Tube station. Ignorant of the way, she resigned herself entirely to him, and found his silence a convenient cover beneath which to continue her anger with Rodney.
When they stepped out of the train into the still greyer gloom of Highgate, she wondered, for the first time, where he was taking her. Had he a family, or did he live alone in rooms? On the whole she was inclined to believe that he was the only son of an aged, and possibly invalid, mother. She sketched lightly, upon the blank vista down which they walked, the little white house and the tremulous old lady rising from behind her tea-table to greet her with faltering words about ‘my son’s friends’, and was on the point of asking Ralph to tell her what she might expect, when he jerked open one of the infinite number of identical wooden doors, and led her up a tiled path to a porch in the Alpine style of architecture. As they listened to the shaking of the bell in the basement, she could summon no vision to replace the one so rudely destroyed.
‘I must warn you to expect a family party,’ said Ralph. ‘They’re mostly in on Sundays. We can go to my room afterwards.’
‘Have you many brothers and sisters?’ she asked, without concealing her dismay.
