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she wished to annoy him, to waft him away from

her on some light current of ridicule or satire, as she was wont to do

with these intermittent young men of her father’s.

 

“Nobody ever does do anything worth doing nowadays,” she remarked.

“You see”—she tapped the volume of her grandfather’s poems—“we don’t

even print as well as they did, and as for poets or painters or

novelists—there are none; so, at any rate, I’m not singular.”

 

“No, we haven’t any great men,” Denham replied. “I’m very glad that we

haven’t. I hate great men. The worship of greatness in the nineteenth

century seems to me to explain the worthlessness of that generation.”

 

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 bookcase were a sign of an effort in that direction.

The only object that threw any light upon

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