“Most women know by instinct whether they can give it or not,” Lady Otway slipped in quickly, in rather a low voice, as if she wanted to get this said while her sister-in-law’s attention was diverted. “And if not—well then, my advice would be—don’t marry.”
“Oh, but marriage is the happiest life for a woman,” said Mrs. Hilbery, catching the word marriage, as she brought her eyes back to the room again. Then she turned her mind to what she had said.
“It’s the most interesting life,” she corrected herself. She looked at her daughter with a look of vague alarm. It was the kind of maternal scrutiny which suggests that, in looking at her daughter a mother is really looking at herself. She was not altogether satisfied; but she purposely made no attempt to break down the reserve which, as a matter of fact, was a quality she particularly admired and depended upon in her daughter. But when her mother said that marriage was the most interesting life, Katharine felt, as she was apt to do suddenly, for no definite reason, that they understood each other, in spite of differing in every possible way. Yet the wisdom of the old seems to apply more to feelings which we have in common with the rest of the human race than to our feelings as individuals, and Katharine knew that only some one of her own age could follow her meaning. Both these elderly women seemed to her to have been content with so little happiness, and at the moment she had not sufficient force to feel certain that their version of marriage was the wrong one. In London, certainly, this temperate attitude toward her own marriage had seemed to her just. Why had she now changed? Why did it now depress her? It never occurred to her that her own conduct could be anything of a puzzle to her mother, or that elder people are as much affected by the young as the young are by them. And yet it was true that love—passion—whatever one chose to call it, had played far less part in Mrs. Hilbery’s life than might have seemed likely, judging from her enthusiastic and imaginative temperament. She had always been more interested by other things. Lady Otway, strange though it seemed, guessed more accurately at Katharine’s state of mind than her mother did.
“Why don’t we all live in the country?” exclaimed Mrs. Hilbery, once more looking out of the window. “I’m sure one would think such beautiful things if one lived in the country. No horrid slum houses to depress one, no trams or motor-cars; and the people all looking so plump and cheerful. Isn’t there some little cottage near you, Charlotte, which would do for us, with a spare room, perhaps, in case we asked a friend down? And we should save so much money that we should be able to travel—”
“Yes. You would find it very nice for a week or two, no doubt,” said Lady Otway. “But what hour would you like the carriage this morning?” she continued, touching the bell.
“Katharine shall decide,” said Mrs. Hilbery, feeling herself unable to prefer one hour to another. “And I was just going to tell you, Katharine, how, when I woke this morning, everything seemed so clear in my head that if I’d had a pencil I believe I could have written quite a long chapter. When we’re out on our drive I shall find us a house. A few trees round it, and a little garden, a pond with a Chinese duck, a study for your father, a study for me, and a sitting room for Katharine, because then she’ll be a married lady.”
At this Katharine shivered a little, drew up to the fire, and warmed her hands by spreading them over the topmost peak of the coal. She wished to bring the talk back to marriage again, in order to hear Aunt Charlotte’s views, but she did not know how to do this.
“Let me look at your engagement-ring, Aunt Charlotte,” she said, noticing her own.
She took the cluster of green stones and turned it round and round, but she did not know what to say next.
“That poor old ring was a sad disappointment to me when I first had it,” Lady Otway mused. “I’d set my heart on a diamond ring, but I never liked to tell Frank, naturally. He bought it at Simla.”