‘I’m so glad William is coming. Did he tell you that he sent me his manuscript? I think it’s wonderful—I think he’s almost good enough for you, Katharine.’
‘You shall sit next to him and tell him what you think of him.’
‘I shan’t dare do that,’ Cassandra asserted.
‘Why? You’re not afraid of him, are you?’
A little—because he’s connected with you.’
Katharine smiled.
‘But then, with your well-known fidelity, considering that you’re staying here at least a fortnight, you won’t have any illusions left about me by the time you go. I give you a week, Cassandra. I shall see my power fading day by day. Now it’s at the climax; but tomorrow it’ll have begun to fade. What am I to wear I wonder? Find me a blue dress, Cassandra, over there in the long wardrobe.’
She spoke disconnectedly, handling brush and comb, and pulling out the little drawers in her dressing-table and leaving them open. Cassandra, sitting on the bed behind her, saw the reflection of her cousin’s face in the looking- glass. The face in the looking-glass was serious and intent, apparently occupied with other things besides the straightness of the parting which, however, was being driven as straight as a Roman road through the dark hair. Cassandra was impressed again by Katharine’s maturity; and, as she enveloped herself in the blue dress which filled almost the whole of the long looking-glass with blue light and made it the frame of a picture, holding not only the slightly moving effigy of the beautiful woman, but shapes and colours of objects reflected from the background, Cassandra thought that no sight had ever been quite so romantic. It was all in keeping with the room and the house, and the city round them; for her ears had not yet ceased to notice the hum of distant wheels.
They went downstairs rather late, in spite of Katharine’s extreme speed in getting ready. To Cassandra’s ears the buzz of voices inside the drawing-room was like the tuning up of the instruments of the orchestra. It seemed to her that there were numbers of people in the room, and that they were strangers, and that they were beautiful and dressed with the greatest distinction, although they proved to be mostly her relations, and the distinction of their clothing was confined, in the eyes of an impartial observer, to the white waistcoat which Rodney wore. But they all rose simultaneously, which was by itself impressive, and they all exclaimed, and shook hands, and she was introduced to Mr Peyton, and the door sprang open, and dinner was announced, and they filed off, William Rodney offering her his slightly bent black arm, as she had secretly hoped he would. In short, had the scene been looked at only through her eyes, it must have been described as one of magical brilliancy. The pattern of the soup-plates, the stiff folds of the napkins, which rose by the side of each plate in the shape of arum lilies,cv the long sticks of bread tied with pink ribbon, the silver dishes and the sea-coloured champagne glasses, with the flakes of gold congealed in their stems—all these details, together with a curiously pervasive smell of kid gloves, contributed to her exhilaration, which must be repressed however, because she was grown up, and the world held no more for her to marvel at.
The world held no more for her to marvel at, it is true; but it held other people, and each other person possessed in Cassandra’s mind some fragment of what privately she called ‘reality’. It was a gift that they would impart if you asked them for it, and thus no dinner-party could possibly be dull, and little Mr Peyton on her right and William Rodney on her left were in equal measure endowed with the quality which seemed to her so unmistakable and so precious that the way people neglected to demand it was a constant source of surprise to her. She scarcely knew, indeed, whether she was talking to Mr Peyton or to William Rodney. But to one who, by degrees, assumed the shape of an elderly man with a moustache, she described how she had arrived in London that very afternoon, and how she had taken a cab and driven through the streets. Mr Peyton, an editor of fifty years, bowed his bald head repeatedly, with apparent understanding. At least, he understood that she was very young and pretty, and saw that she was excited, though he could not gather at once from her words or remember from his own experience what there was to be excited about. ‘Were there any buds on the trees?’ he asked. ‘Which line did she travel by?’
He was cut short in these amiable inquiries by her desire to know whether he was one of those who read, or one of those who look out of the window? Mr Peyton was by no means sure which he did. He rather thought he did both. He was told that he had made a most dangerous confession. She could deduce his entire history from that one fact. He challenged her to proceed; and she proclaimed him a Liberal Member of Parliament.
William, nominally engaged in a desultory conversation with Aunt Eleanor, heard every word, and taking advantage of the fact that elderly ladies have little continuity of conversation, at least with those whom they esteem for their youth and their sex, he asserted his presence by a very nervous laugh.
Cassandra turned to him directly. She was enchanted to find that, instantly and with such ease, another of these fascinating beings was offering untold wealth for her extraction.
‘There’s no doubt
And what facts do you deduce from that?’ Mr Peyton asked.
‘Oh, that he’s a poet, of course,’ said Cassandra. ‘But I must confess that I knew that before, so it isn’t fair. I’ve got your manuscript with me,’ she went on, disregarding Mr Peyton in a shameless way. ‘I’ve got all sorts of things I want to ask you about it.’
William inclined his head and tried to conceal the pleasure that her remark gave him. But the pleasure was not unalloyed. However susceptible to flattery William might be, he would never tolerate it from people who showed a gross or emotional taste in literature, and if Cassandra erred even slightly from what he considered essential in this respect he would express his discomfort by flinging out his hands and wrinkling his forehead; he would find no pleasure in her flattery after that.
‘First of all,’ she proceeded, ‘I want to know why you chose to write a play?’
Ah! You mean it’s not dramatic?’
‘I mean that I don’t see what it would gain by being acted. But then does Shakespeare gain? Henry and I are always arguing about Shakespeare. I’m certain he’s wrong, but I can’t prove it because I’ve only seen Shakespeare acted once in Lincoln. But I’m quite positive,’ she insisted, ‘that Shakespeare wrote for the stage.’
‘You’re perfectly right,’ Rodney exclaimed. ‘I was hoping you were on that side. Henry’s wrong—entirely wrong. Of course, I’ve failed, as all the moderns fail. Dear, dear, I wish I’d consulted you before.’
From this point they proceeded to go over, as far as memory served them, the different aspects of Rodney’s drama. She said nothing that jarred upon him, and untrained daring had the power to stimulate experience to such an extent that Rodney was frequently seen to hold his fork suspended before him, while he debated the first
