第82章

Only yesterday my husband was telling me he thought you one of the cleverest young men he knew. Certainly, you've been the messenger of Providence to me, for unless I'd seen you I'm sure I should never have found the ruins at all."They had reached the Roman arch when Mrs. Hilbery caught sight of her own party, standing like sentinels facing up and down the road so as to intercept her if, as they expected, she had got lodged in some shop.

"I've found something much better than ruins!" she exclaimed. "I've found two friends who told me how to find you, which I could never have done without them. They must come and have tea with us. What a pity that we've just had luncheon." Could they not somehow revoke that meal?

Katharine, who had gone a few steps by herself down the road, and was investigating the window of an ironmonger, as if her mother might have got herself concealed among mowing-machines and garden-shears, turned sharply on hearing her voice, and came towards them. She was a great deal surprised to see Denham and Mary Datchet. Whether the cordiality with which she greeted them was merely that which is natural to a surprise meeting in the country, or whether she was really glad to see them both, at any rate she exclaimed with unusual pleasure as she shook hands:

"I never knew you lived here. Why didn't you say so, and we could have met? And are you staying with Mary?" she continued, turning to Ralph.

"What a pity we didn't meet before."

Thus confronted at a distance of only a few feet by the real body of the woman about whom he had dreamt so many million dreams, Ralph stammered; he made a clutch at his self-control; the color either came to his cheeks or left them, he knew not which; but he was determined to face her and track down in the cold light of day whatever vestige of truth there might be in his persistent imaginations. He did not succeed in saying anything. It was Mary who spoke for both of them. He was struck dumb by finding that Katharine was quite different, in some strange way, from his memory, so that he had to dismiss his old view in order to accept the new one. The wind was blowing her crimson scarf across her face; the wind had already loosened her hair, which looped across the corner of one of the large, dark eyes which, so he used to think, looked sad; now they looked bright with the brightness of the sea struck by an unclouded ray; everything about her seemed rapid, fragmentary, and full of a kind of racing speed. He realized suddenly that he had never seen her in the daylight before.

Meanwhile, it was decided that it was too late to go in search of ruins as they had intended; and the whole party began to walk towards the stables where the carriage had been put up.

"Do you know," said Katharine, keeping slightly in advance of the rest with Ralph, "I thought I saw you this morning, standing at a window.

But I decided that it couldn't be you. And it must have been you all the same.""Yes, I thought I saw you--but it wasn't you," he replied.

This remark, and the rough strain in his voice, recalled to her memory so many difficult speeches and abortive meetings that she was jerked directly back to the London drawing-room, the family relics, and the tea-table; and at the same time recalled some half-finished or interrupted remark which she had wanted to make herself or to hear from him--she could not remember what it was.

"I expect it was me," she said. "I was looking for my mother. It happens every time we come to Lincoln. In fact, there never was a family so unable to take care of itself as ours is. Not that it very much matters, because some one always turns up in the nick of time to help us out of our scrapes. Once I was left in a field with a bull when I was a baby--but where did we leave the carriage? Down that street or the next? The next, I think." She glanced back and saw that the others were following obediently, listening to certain memories of Lincoln upon which Mrs. Hilbery had started. "But what are you doing here?" she asked.

"I'm buying a cottage. I'm going to live here--as soon as I can find a cottage, and Mary tells me there'll be no difficulty about that.""But," she exclaimed, almost standing still in her surprise, "you will give up the Bar, then?" It flashed across her mind that he must already be engaged to Mary.

"The solicitor's office? Yes. I'm giving that up.""But why?" she asked. She answered herself at once, with a curious change from rapid speech to an almost melancholy tone. "I think you're very wise to give it up. You will be much happier."At this very moment, when her words seemed to be striking a path into the future for him, they stepped into the yard of an inn, and there beheld the family coach of the Otways, to which one sleek horse was already attached, while the second was being led out of the stable door by the hostler.

"I don't know what one means by happiness," he said briefly, having to step aside in order to avoid a groom with a bucket. "Why do you think I shall be happy? I don't expect to be anything of the kind. I expect to be rather less unhappy. I shall write a book and curse my charwoman --if happiness consists in that. What do you think?"She could not answer because they were immediately surrounded by other members of the party--by Mrs. Hilbery, and Mary, Henry Otway, and William.

Rodney went up to Katharine immediately and said to her:

"Henry is going to drive home with your mother, and I suggest that they should put us down half-way and let us walk back."Katharine nodded her head. She glanced at him with an oddly furtive expression.

"Unfortunately we go in opposite directions, or we might have given you a lift," he continued to Denham. His manner was unusually peremptory; he seemed anxious to hasten the departure, and Katharine looked at him from time to time, as Denham noticed, with an expression half of inquiry, half of annoyance. She at once helped her mother into her cloak, and said to Mary: