Night and Day
yet, as she brooded upon them, she felt so closely attached to them
that it was useless to try to pass judgment upon them. She very nearly
lost consciousness that she was a separate being, with a future of her
own. On a morning of slight depression, such as this, she would try to
find some sort of clue to the muddle which their old letters presented;
some reason which seemed to make it worth while to them; some aim which
they kept steadily in view—but she was interrupted.
Mrs. Hilbery had risen from her table, and was standing looking out of
the window at a string of barges swimming up the river.
Katharine watched her. Suddenly Mrs. Hilbery turned abruptly, and
exclaimed:
“I really believe I’m bewitched! I only want three sentences, you see,
something quite straightforward and commonplace, and I can’t find ‘em.”
She began to pace up and down the room, snatching up her duster; but
she was too much annoyed to find any relief, as yet, in polishing the
backs of books.
“Besides,” she said, giving the sheet she had written to Katharine, “I
don’t believe this’ll do. Did your grandfather ever visit the Hebrides,
Katharine?” She looked in a strangely beseeching way at her daughter.
“My mind got running on the Hebrides, and I couldn’t help writing a
little description of them. Perhaps it would do at the beginning of a
chapter. Chapters often begin quite differently from the way they go
on, you know.” Katharine read what her mother had written. She might
have been a schoolmaster criticizing a child’s essay. Her face gave
Mrs. Hilbery, who watched it anxiously, no ground for hope.
“It’s very beautiful,” she stated, “but, you see, mother, we ought to
go from point to point—”
“Oh, I know,” Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed. “And that’s just what I can’t do.
Things keep coming into my head. It isn’t that I don’t know everything
and feel everything (who did know him, if I didn’t?), but I can’t put
it down, you see. There’s a kind of blind spot,” she said, touching her
forehead, “there. And when I can’t sleep o’ nights, I fancy I shall die
without having done it.”
From exultation she had passed to the depths of depression which the
imagination of her death aroused. The depression communicated itself to
Katharine. How impotent they were, fiddling about all day long with
papers! And the clock was striking eleven and nothing done! She watched
her mother, now rummaging in a great brass-bound box which stood by her
table, but she did not go to her help. Of course, Katharine reflected,
her mother had now lost some paper, and they would waste the rest of
the morning looking for it. She cast her eyes down in irritation, and
read again her mother’s musical sentences about the silver gulls, and
the roots of little pink flowers washed by pellucid streams, and the
blue mists of hyacinths, until she was struck by her mother’s silence.
She raised her eyes. Mrs. Hilbery had emptied a portfolio containing
old photographs over her table, and was looking from one to another.
“Surely, Katharine,” she said, “the men were far handsomer in those
days than they are now, in spite of their odious whiskers? Look at old
John Graham, in his white waistcoat—look at Uncle Harley. That’s Peter
the manservant, I suppose. Uncle John brought him back from India.”
Katharine looked at her mother, but did not stir or answer. She had
suddenly become very angry, with a rage which their relationship made
silent, and therefore doubly powerful and critical. She felt all the
unfairness of the claim which her mother tacitly made to her time and
sympathy, and what Mrs. Hilbery took, Katharine thought bitterly, she
wasted. Then, in a flash, she remembered that she had still to tell her
about Cyril’s misbehavior. Her anger immediately dissipated itself; it
broke like some wave that has gathered itself high above the rest; the
waters were resumed into the sea again, and Katharine felt once more
full of peace and solicitude, and anxious only that her mother should
be protected from pain. She crossed the room instinctively, and sat on
the arm of her mother’s chair. Mrs. Hilbery leant her head against her
daughter’s body.
“What is nobler,” she mused, turning over the photographs, “than to be
a woman to whom every one turns, in sorrow or difficulty? How have the
young women of your generation improved upon that, Katharine? I can see
them now, sweeping over the lawns at Melbury House, in their flounces
and furbelows, so calm and stately and imperial (and the monkey and the
little black dwarf following behind), as if nothing mattered in the
world but to be beautiful and kind. But they did more than we do, I
sometimes think. They WERE, and that’s better than doing. They seem to
me like ships, like majestic ships, holding on their way, not shoving
or pushing, not fretted by little things, as we are, but taking their
way, like ships with white sails.”
Katharine tried to interrupt this discourse, but the opportunity did
not come, and she could not forbear to turn over the pages of the album
in which the old photographs were stored. The faces of these men and
women shone forth wonderfully after the hubbub of living faces, and
seemed, as her mother had said, to wear a marvelous dignity and calm,
as if they had ruled their kingdoms justly and deserved great love.
Some were of almost incredible beauty, others were ugly enough in a
forcible way, but none were dull or bored or insignificant. The superb
stiff folds of the crinolines suited the women; the cloaks and hats of
the gentlemen seemed full of character. Once more Katharine felt the
serene air all round her, and seemed far off to hear the solemn beating
of the sea upon the shore. But she knew that she must join the present
on to this past.
Mrs. Hilbery was rambling on, from story to story.
“That’s Janie Mannering,” she said, pointing to a superb, white-haired
dame, whose satin robes seemed strung with pearls. “I must have told
you how she found her cook drunk under the kitchen table when the
Empress was coming to dinner, and tucked up her velvet sleeves (she
always dressed like an Empress herself), cooked the whole meal, and
appeared in the drawing-room as if she’d been sleeping on a bank of
roses all day. She could do anything with her hands—they all could—make
a cottage or embroider a petticoat.
“And that’s Queenie Colquhoun,” she went on, turning the pages, “who
took her coffin out with her to Jamaica, packed with lovely shawls and
bonnets, because you couldn’t get coffins in Jamaica, and she had a
horror of dying there (as she did), and being devoured by the white
ants. And there’s Sabine, the loveliest of them all; ah! it was like a
star rising when she came into the room. And that’s Miriam, in her
coachman’s cloak, with all the little capes on, and she wore great
top-boots underneath. You young people may say you’re unconventional,
but you’re nothing compared with her.”
Turning the page, she came upon the picture of a very masculine,
handsome lady, whose head the photographer had adorned with an imperial
crown.
“Ah, you wretch!” Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed, “what a wicked old despot you
were, in your day! How we all bowed down before you! ‘Maggie,’ she used
to say, ‘if it hadn’t been for me, where would you be now?’ And it was
true; she brought them together, you know. She said to my father,
‘Marry her,’ and he did; and she said to poor little Clara, ‘Fall down
and worship him,’ and she did; but she got up again, of course. What
else could one expect? She was a mere child—eighteen—and half dead with
fright, too. But that old tyrant never repented. She used to say that
she had given them three perfect months, and no one had a right to
more; and I sometimes think, Katharine, that’s true, you know. It’s
more than most of us have, only we have to pretend, which was a thing
neither of them could ever do. I fancy,” Mrs. Hilbery mused, “that
there was a kind of sincerity in those days between men and women
which, with all your outspokenness, you haven’t got.”
Katharine again tried to interrupt. But Mrs. Hilbery had been gathering
impetus from her recollections, and was now in high spirits.
“They must have been good friends at heart,” she resumed, “because she
used to sing his songs. Ah, how did it go?” and Mrs. Hilbery, who had a
very sweet voice, trolled out a famous lyric of her father’s which had
been set to an absurdly and charmingly sentimental air by some early
Victorian composer.
“It’s the vitality of them!” she concluded, striking her fist against
the table. “That’s what we haven’t got! We’re virtuous, we’re earnest,
we go to meetings, we pay the poor their wages, but we don’t live as
they lived. As often as not, my father wasn’t in bed three nights out
of the seven, but always fresh as paint in the morning. I hear him now,
come singing up the stairs to the nursery, and tossing the loaf for
breakfast on his sword-stick, and then off we went for a day’s
pleasuring—Richmond, Hampton Court, the Surrey Hills. Why shouldn’t we
go, Katharine? It’s going to be a fine day.”
At this moment, just as Mrs. Hilbery was examining the weather from the
window, there was a knock at the door. A slight, elderly lady came in,
and was saluted by Katharine, with very evident dismay, as “Aunt
Celia!” She was dismayed because she guessed why Aunt Celia had come.
It was certainly in order to discuss the case of Cyril and the woman
who was not his wife, and owing to her procrastination Mrs. Hilbery was
quite unprepared. Who could be more unprepared? Here she was,
suggesting that all three of them should go on a jaunt to Blackfriars
to inspect the site of Shakespeare’s theater, for the weather was
hardly settled enough for the country.
To this proposal Mrs. Milvain listened with a patient smile, which
indicated that for many years she had accepted such eccentricities in
her sister-in-law with bland philosophy. Katharine took up her position
at some distance, standing with her foot on the fender, as though by so
doing she could get a better view of the matter. But, in spite of her
aunt’s presence, how unreal the whole question of Cyril and his
morality appeared! The difficulty, it now seemed, was not to break the
news gently to Mrs. Hilbery, but to make her understand it. How was one
to lasso her mind, and tether it to this minute, unimportant spot? A
matter-of-fact statement seemed best.
“I think Aunt Celia has come to talk about Cyril, mother,” she said
rather brutally. “Aunt Celia has discovered that Cyril is married. He
has a wife and children.”
“No, he is _not_ married,” Mrs. Milvain interposed, in low tones,
addressing herself to Mrs. Hilbery. “He has two children, and another
on the way.”
Mrs. Hilbery looked from one to the other in bewilderment.
“We thought it better to wait until it was proved before we told you,”
Katharine added.
“But I met Cyril only a fortnight ago at the National Gallery!” Mrs.
Hilbery exclaimed. “I don’t believe a word of it,” and she tossed her
head with a smile on her lips at Mrs. Milvain, as though she could
quite understand her mistake, which was a very natural mistake, in the
case of a childless woman, whose husband was something very dull in the
Board of Trade.
“I didn’t _wish_ to believe it, Maggie,” said Mrs. Milvain. “For a long
time I _couldn’t_ believe it. But now I’ve seen, and I _have_ to
believe it.”
“Katharine,” Mrs. Hilbery demanded, “does your father know of this?”
Katharine nodded.
“Cyril married!” Mrs. Hilbery repeated. “And never telling us a word,
though we’ve had him in our house since he was a child—noble William’s
son! I can’t believe my ears!”
Feeling that the burden of proof was laid upon her, Mrs. Milvain now
proceeded with her story. She was elderly and fragile, but her