Night and Day
tucking his napkin into his collar, so that almost the whole of his
body was concealed by a large white diamond. “They treat us very well,
on the whole. Considering the increase of traffic, they treat us very
well indeed. I have the curiosity sometimes to count the trucks on the
goods’ trains, and they’re well over fifty—well over fifty, at this
season of the year.”
The old gentleman had been roused agreeably by the presence of this
attentive and well-informed young man, as was evident by the care with
which he finished the last words in his sentences, and his slight
exaggeration in the number of trucks on the trains. Indeed, the chief
burden of the talk fell upon him, and he sustained it to-night in a
manner which caused his sons to look at him admiringly now and then;
for they felt shy of Denham, and were glad not to have to talk
themselves. The store of information about the present and past of this
particular corner of Lincolnshire which old Mr. Datchet produced really
surprised his children, for though they knew of its existence, they had
forgotten its extent, as they might have forgotten the amount of family
plate stored in the plate-chest, until some rare celebration brought it
forth.
After dinner, parish business took the Rector to his study, and Mary
proposed that they should sit in the kitchen.
“It’s not the kitchen really,” Elizabeth hastened to explain to her
guest, “but we call it so—”
“It’s the nicest room in the house,” said Edward.
“It’s got the old rests by the side of the fireplace, where the men
hung their guns,” said Elizabeth, leading the way, with a tall brass
candlestick in her hand, down a passage. “Show Mr. Denham the steps,
Christopher.... When the Ecclesiastical Commissioners were here two
years ago they said this was the most interesting part of the house.
These narrow bricks prove that it is five hundred years old—five
hundred years, I think—they may have said six.” She, too, felt an
impulse to exaggerate the age of the bricks, as her father had
exaggerated the number of trucks. A big lamp hung down from the center
of the ceiling and, together with a fine log fire, illuminated a large
and lofty room, with rafters running from wall to wall, a floor of red
tiles, and a substantial fireplace built up of those narrow red bricks
which were said to be five hundred years old. A few rugs and a
sprinkling of arm-chairs had made this ancient kitchen into a
sitting-room. Elizabeth, after pointing out the gun-racks, and the
hooks for smoking hams, and other evidence of incontestable age, and
explaining that Mary had had the idea of turning the room into a
sitting-room—otherwise it was used for hanging out the wash and for the
men to change in after shooting—considered that she had done her duty
as hostess, and sat down in an upright chair directly beneath the lamp,
beside a very long and narrow oak table. She placed a pair of horn
spectacles upon her nose, and drew towards her a basketful of threads
and wools. In a few minutes a smile came to her face, and remained
there for the rest of the evening.
“Will you come out shooting with us to-morrow?” said Christopher, who
had, on the whole, formed a favorable impression of his sister’s
friend.
“I won’t shoot, but I’ll come with you,” said Ralph.
“Don’t you care about shooting?” asked Edward, whose suspicions were
not yet laid to rest.
“I’ve never shot in my life,” said Ralph, turning and looking him in
the face, because he was not sure how this confession would be
received.
“You wouldn’t have much chance in London, I suppose,” said Christopher.
“But won’t you find it rather dull—just watching us?”
“I shall watch birds,” Ralph replied, with a smile.
“I can show you the place for watching birds,” said Edward, “if that’s
what you like doing. I know a fellow who comes down from London about
this time every year to watch them. It’s a great place for the wild
geese and the ducks. I’ve heard this man say that it’s one of the best
places for birds in the country.”
“It’s about the best place in England,” Ralph replied. They were all
gratified by this praise of their native county; and Mary now had the
pleasure of hearing these short questions and answers lose their
undertone of suspicious inspection, so far as her brothers were
concerned, and develop into a genuine conversation about the habits of
birds which afterwards turned to a discussion as to the habits of
solicitors, in which it was scarcely necessary for her to take part.
She was pleased to see that her brothers liked Ralph, to the extent,
that is, of wishing to secure his good opinion. Whether or not he liked
them it was impossible to tell from his kind but experienced manner.
Now and then she fed the fire with a fresh log, and as the room filled
with the fine, dry heat of burning wood, they all, with the exception
of Elizabeth, who was outside the range of the fire, felt less and less
anxious about the effect they were making, and more and more inclined
for sleep. At this moment a vehement scratching was heard on the door.
“Piper!—oh, damn!—I shall have to get up,” murmured Christopher.
“It’s not Piper, it’s Pitch,” Edward grunted.
“All the same, I shall have to get up,” Christopher grumbled. He let in
the dog, and stood for a moment by the door, which opened into the
garden, to revive himself with a draught of the black, starlit air.
“Do come in and shut the door!” Mary cried, half turning in her chair.
“We shall have a fine day to-morrow,” said Christopher with
complacency, and he sat himself on the floor at her feet, and leant his
back against her knees, and stretched out his long stockinged legs to
the fire—all signs that he felt no longer any restraint at the presence
of the stranger. He was the youngest of the family, and Mary’s
favorite, partly because his character resembled hers, as Edward’s
character resembled Elizabeth’s. She made her knees a comfortable rest
for his head, and ran her fingers through his hair.
“I should like Mary to stroke my head like that,” Ralph thought to
himself suddenly, and he looked at Christopher, almost affectionately,
for calling forth his sister’s caresses. Instantly he thought of
Katharine, the thought of her being surrounded by the spaces of night
and the open air; and Mary, watching him, saw the lines upon his
forehead suddenly deepen. He stretched out an arm and placed a log upon
the fire, constraining himself to fit it carefully into the frail red
scaffolding, and also to limit his thoughts to this one room.
Mary had ceased to stroke her brother’s head; he moved it impatiently
between her knees, and, much as though he were a child, she began once
more to part the thick, reddish-colored locks this way and that. But a
far stronger passion had taken possession of her soul than any her
brother could inspire in her, and, seeing Ralph’s change of expression,
her hand almost automatically continued its movements, while her mind
plunged desperately for some hold upon slippery banks.
CHAPTER XVI
Into that same black night, almost, indeed, into the very same layer of
starlit air, Katharine Hilbery was now gazing, although not with a view
to the prospects of a fine day for duck shooting on the morrow. She was
walking up and down a gravel path in the garden of Stogdon House, her
sight of the heavens being partially intercepted by the light leafless
hoops of a pergola. Thus a spray of clematis would completely obscure
Cassiopeia, or blot out with its black pattern myriads of miles of the
Milky Way. At the end of the pergola, however, there was a stone seat,
from which the sky could be seen completely swept clear of any earthly
interruption, save to the right, indeed, where a line of elm-trees was
beautifully sprinkled with stars, and a low stable building had a full
drop of quivering silver just issuing from the mouth of the chimney. It
was a moonless night, but the light of the stars was sufficient to show
the outline of the young woman’s form, and the shape of her face gazing
gravely, indeed almost sternly, into the sky. She had come out into the
winter’s night, which was mild enough, not so much to look with
scientific eyes upon the stars, as to shake herself free from certain
purely terrestrial discontents. Much as a literary person in like
circumstances would begin, absent-mindedly, pulling out volume after
volume, so she stepped into the garden in order to have the stars at
hand, even though she did not look at them. Not to be happy, when she
was supposed to be happier than she would ever be again—that, as far as
she could see, was the origin of a discontent which had begun almost as
soon as she arrived, two days before, and seemed now so intolerable
that she had left the family party, and come out here to consider it by
herself. It was not she who thought herself unhappy, but her cousins,
who thought it for her. The house was full of cousins, much of her age,
or even younger, and among them they had some terribly bright eyes.
They seemed always on the search for something between her and Rodney,
which they expected to find, and yet did not find; and when they
searched, Katharine became aware of wanting what she had not been
conscious of wanting in London, alone with William and her parents. Or,
if she did not want it, she missed it. And this state of mind depressed
her, because she had been accustomed always to give complete
satisfaction, and her self-love was now a little ruffled. She would
have liked to break through the reserve habitual to her in order to
justify her engagement to some one whose opinion she valued. No one had
spoken a word of criticism, but they left her alone with William; not
that that would have mattered, if they had not left her alone so
politely; and, perhaps, that would not have mattered if they had not
seemed so queerly silent, almost respectful, in her presence, which
gave way to criticism, she felt, out of it.
Looking now and then at the sky, she went through the list of her
cousins’ names: Eleanor, Humphrey, Marmaduke, Silvia, Henry, Cassandra,
Gilbert, and Mostyn—Henry, the cousin who taught the young ladies of
Bungay to play upon the violin, was the only one in whom she could
confide, and as she walked up and down beneath the hoops of the
pergola, she did begin a little speech to him, which ran something like
this:
“To begin with, I’m very fond of William. You can’t deny that. I know
him better than any one, almost. But why I’m marrying him is, partly, I
admit—I’m being quite honest with you, and you mustn’t tell any
one—partly because I want to get married. I want to have a house of my
own. It isn’t possible at home. It’s all very well for you, Henry; you
can go your own way. I have to be there always. Besides, you know what
our house is. You wouldn’t be happy either, if you didn’t do something.
It isn’t that I haven’t the time at home—it’s the atmosphere.” Here,
presumably, she imagined that her cousin, who had listened with his
usual intelligent sympathy, raised his eyebrows a little, and
interposed:
“Well, but what do you want to do?”
Even in this purely imaginary dialogue, Katharine found it difficult to
confide her ambition to an imaginary companion.
“I should like,” she began, and hesitated quite a long time before she
forced herself to add, with a change of voice, “to study mathematics—to
know about the stars.”
Henry was clearly amazed, but too kind to express all his doubts; he
only said something about the difficulties of mathematics, and remarked
that very little was known about the stars.
Katharine thereupon went on with the statement of her case.
“I don’t care much whether I ever get to know anything—but I want to
work out something in figures—something that hasn’t got to do with