Night and Day
Katharine opened her lips and drew in her breath, as if to reply with
equal vigor, when the shutting of a door in the next room withdrew her
attention, and they both became conscious that the voices, which had
been rising and falling round the tea-table, had fallen silent; the
light, even, seemed to have sunk lower. A moment later Mrs. Hilbery
appeared in the doorway of the ante-room. She stood looking at them
with a smile of expectancy on her face, as if a scene from the drama of
the younger generation were being played for her benefit. She was a
remarkable-looking woman, well advanced in the sixties, but owing to
the lightness of her frame and the brightness of her eyes she seemed to
have been wafted over the surface of the years without taking much harm
in the passage. Her face was shrunken and aquiline, but any hint of
sharpness was dispelled by the large blue eyes, at once sagacious and
innocent, which seemed to regard the world with an enormous desire that
it should behave itself nobly, and an entire confidence that it could
do so, if it would only take the pains.
Certain lines on the broad forehead and about the lips might be taken
to suggest that she had known moments of some difficulty and perplexity
in the course of her career, but these had not destroyed her
trustfulness, and she was clearly still prepared to give every one any
number of fresh chances and the whole system the benefit of the doubt.
She wore a great resemblance to her father, and suggested, as he did,
the fresh airs and open spaces of a younger world.
“Well,” she said, “how do you like our things, Mr. Denham?”
Mr. Denham rose, put his book down, opened his mouth, but said nothing,
as Katharine observed, with some amusement.
Mrs. Hilbery handled the book he had laid down.
“There are some books that _live_,” she mused. “They are young with us,
and they grow old with us. Are you fond of poetry, Mr. Denham? But what
an absurd question to ask! The truth is, dear Mr. Fortescue has almost
tired me out. He is so eloquent and so witty, so searching and so
profound that, after half an hour or so, I feel inclined to turn out
all the lights. But perhaps he’d be more wonderful than ever in the
dark. What d’you think, Katharine? Shall we give a little party in
complete darkness? There’d have to be bright rooms for the bores....”
Here Mr. Denham held out his hand.
“But we’ve any number of things to show you!” Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed,
taking no notice of it. “Books, pictures, china, manuscripts, and the
very chair that Mary Queen of Scots sat in when she heard of Darnley’s
murder. I must lie down for a little, and Katharine must change her
dress (though she’s wearing a very pretty one), but if you don’t mind
being left alone, supper will be at eight. I dare say you’ll write a
poem of your own while you’re waiting. Ah, how I love the firelight!
Doesn’t our room look charming?”
She stepped back and bade them contemplate the empty drawing-room, with
its rich, irregular lights, as the flames leapt and wavered.
“Dear things!” she exclaimed. “Dear chairs and tables! How like old
friends they are—faithful, silent friends. Which reminds me, Katharine,
little Mr. Anning is coming to-night, and Tite Street, and Cadogan
Square.... Do remember to get that drawing of your great-uncle glazed.
Aunt Millicent remarked it last time she was here, and I know how it
would hurt me to see _my_ father in a broken glass.”
It was like tearing through a maze of diamond-glittering spiders’ webs
to say good-bye and escape, for at each movement Mrs. Hilbery
remembered something further about the villainies of picture-framers or
the delights of poetry, and at one time it seemed to the young man that
he would be hypnotized into doing what she pretended to want him to do,
for he could not suppose that she attached any value whatever to his
presence. Katharine, however, made an opportunity for him to leave, and
for that he was grateful to her, as one young person is grateful for
the understanding of another.
CHAPTER II
The young man shut the door with a sharper slam than any visitor had
used that afternoon, and walked up the street at a great pace, cutting
the air with his walking-stick. He was glad to find himself outside
that drawing-room, breathing raw fog, and in contact with unpolished
people who only wanted their share of the pavement allowed them. He
thought that if he had had Mr. or Mrs. or Miss Hilbery out here he
would have made them, somehow, feel his superiority, for he was chafed
by the memory of halting awkward sentences which had failed to give
even the young woman with the sad, but inwardly ironical eyes a hint of
his force. He tried to recall the actual words of his little outburst,
and unconsciously supplemented them by so many words of greater
expressiveness that the irritation of his failure was somewhat
assuaged. Sudden stabs of the unmitigated truth assailed him now and
then, for he was not inclined by nature to take a rosy view of his
conduct, but what with the beat of his foot upon the pavement, and the
glimpse which half-drawn curtains offered him of kitchens,
dining-rooms, and drawing-rooms, illustrating with mute power different
scenes from different lives, his own experience lost its sharpness.
His own experience underwent a curious change. His speed slackened, his
head sank a little towards his breast, and the lamplight shone now and
again upon a face grown strangely tranquil. His thought was so
absorbing that when it became necessary to verify the name of a street,
he looked at it for a time before he read it; when he came to a
crossing, he seemed to have to reassure himself by two or three taps,
such as a blind man gives, upon the curb; and, reaching the Underground
station, he blinked in the bright circle of light, glanced at his
watch, decided that he might still indulge himself in darkness, and
walked straight on.
And yet the thought was the thought with which he had started. He was
still thinking about the people in the house which he had left; but
instead of remembering, with whatever accuracy he could, their looks
and sayings, he had consciously taken leave of the literal truth. A
turn of the street, a firelit room, something monumental in the
procession of the lamp-posts, who shall say what accident of light or
shape had suddenly changed the prospect within his mind, and led him to
murmur aloud:
“She’ll do.... Yes, Katharine Hilbery’ll do.... I’ll take Katharine
Hilbery.”
As soon as he had said this, his pace slackened, his head fell, his
eyes became fixed. The desire to justify himself, which had been so
urgent, ceased to torment him, and, as if released from constraint, so
that they worked without friction or bidding, his faculties leapt
forward and fixed, as a matter of course, upon the form of Katharine
Hilbery. It was marvellous how much they found to feed upon,
considering the destructive nature of Denham’s criticism in her
presence. The charm, which he had tried to disown, when under the
effect of it, the beauty, the character, the aloofness, which he had
been determined not to feel, now possessed him wholly; and when, as
happened by the nature of things, he had exhausted his memory, he went
on with his imagination. He was conscious of what he was about, for in
thus dwelling upon Miss Hilbery’s qualities, he showed a kind of
method, as if he required this vision of her for a particular purpose.
He increased her height, he darkened her hair; but physically there was
not much to change in her. His most daring liberty was taken with her
mind, which, for reasons of his own, he desired to be exalted and
infallible, and of such independence that it was only in the case of
Ralph Denham that it swerved from its high, swift flight, but where he
was concerned, though fastidious at first, she finally swooped from her
eminence to crown him with her approval. These delicious details,
however, were to be worked out in all their ramifications at his
leisure; the main point was that Katharine Hilbery would do; she would
do for weeks, perhaps for months. In taking her he had provided himself
with something the lack of which had left a bare place in his mind for
a considerable time. He gave a sigh of satisfaction; his consciousness
of his actual position somewhere in the neighborhood of Knightsbridge
returned to him, and he was soon speeding in the train towards
Highgate.
Although thus supported by the knowledge of his new possession of
considerable value, he was not proof against the familiar thoughts
which the suburban streets and the damp shrubs growing in front gardens
and the absurd names painted in white upon the gates of those gardens
suggested to him. His walk was uphill, and his mind dwelt gloomily upon
the house which he approached, where he would find six or seven
brothers and sisters, a widowed mother, and, probably, some aunt or
uncle sitting down to an unpleasant meal under a very bright light.
Should he put in force the threat which, two weeks ago, some such
gathering had wrung from him—the terrible threat that if visitors came
on Sunday he should dine alone in his room? A glance in the direction
of Miss Hilbery determined him to make his stand this very night, and
accordingly, having let himself in, having verified the presence of
Uncle Joseph by means of a bowler hat and a very large umbrella, he
gave his orders to the maid, and went upstairs to his room.
He went up a great many flights of stairs, and he noticed, as he had
very seldom noticed, how the carpet became steadily shabbier, until it
ceased altogether, how the walls were discolored, sometimes by cascades
of damp, and sometimes by the outlines of picture-frames since removed,
how the paper flapped loose at the corners, and a great flake of
plaster had fallen from the ceiling. The room itself was a cheerless
one to return to at this inauspicious hour. A flattened sofa would,
later in the evening, become a bed; one of the tables concealed a
washing apparatus; his clothes and boots were disagreeably mixed with
books which bore the gilt of college arms; and, for decoration, there
hung upon the wall photographs of bridges and cathedrals and large,
unprepossessing groups of insufficiently clothed young men, sitting in
rows one above another upon stone steps. There was a look of meanness
and shabbiness in the furniture and curtains, and nowhere any sign of
luxury or even of a cultivated taste, unless the cheap classics in the
book-case were a sign of an effort in that direction. The only object
that threw any light upon the character of the room’s owner was a large
perch, placed in the window to catch the air and sun, upon which a tame
and, apparently, decrepit rook hopped dryly from side to side. The
bird, encouraged by a scratch behind the ear, settled upon Denham’s
shoulder. He lit his gas-fire and settled down in gloomy patience to
await his dinner. After sitting thus for some minutes a small girl
popped her head in to say,
“Mother says, aren’t you coming down, Ralph? Uncle Joseph—”
“They’re to bring my dinner up here,” said Ralph, peremptorily;
whereupon she vanished, leaving the door ajar in her haste to be gone.
After Denham had waited some minutes, in the course of which neither he
nor the rook took their eyes off the fire, he muttered a curse, ran
downstairs, intercepted the parlor-maid, and cut himself a slice of
bread and cold meat. As he did so, the dining-room door sprang open, a
voice exclaimed “Ralph!” but Ralph paid no attention to the voice, and
made off upstairs with his plate. He set it down in a chair opposite
him, and ate with a ferocity that was due partly to anger and partly to
hunger. His mother, then, was determined not to respect his wishes; he