Night and Day

‘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?’

‘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 to be lightly 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