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
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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
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Night and Day
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.”
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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.
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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, unimpor
tant 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.”
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“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 childlessness seemed always to impose
these painful duties on her, and to revere the family,
and to keep it in repair, had now become the chief
object of her life. She told her story in a low, spasmodic,
and somewhat broken voice.
“I have suspected for some time that he was not happy.
There were new lines on his face. So I went to his rooms,
when I knew he was engaged at the poor men’s college.
He lectures there—Roman law, you know, or it may be
Greek. The landlady said Mr. Alardyce only slept there
about once a fortnight now. He looked so ill, she said.
She had seen him with a young person. I suspected something
directly. I went to his room, and there was an en
velope on the mantelpiece, and a letter with an address
in Seton Street, off the Kennington Road.”
Mrs. Hilbery fidgeted rather restlessly, and hummed fragments
of her tune, as if to interrupt.
“I went to Seton Street,” Aunt Celia continued firmly.
“A very low place—lodging-houses, you know, with canaries
in the window. Number seven just like all the others.
I rang, I knocked; no one came. I went down the
area. I am certain I saw some one inside—children—a
cradle. But no reply—no reply.” She sighed, and looked
straight in front of her with a glazed expression in her
half-veiled blue eyes.
“I stood in the street,” she resumed, “in case I could
catch a sight of one of them. It seemed a very long time.
There were rough men singing in the public-house round
the corner. At last the door opened, and some one—it
must have been the woman herself—came right past me.
There was only the pillar-box between us.”
“And what did she look like?” Mrs. Hilbery demanded.
“One could see how the poor boy had been deluded,” was
all that Mrs. Milvain vouchsafed by way of description.
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“Poor thing!” Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed.
“Poor Cyril!” Mrs. Milvain said, laying a slight emphasis
upon Cyril.
“But they’ve got nothing to live upon,” Mrs. Hilbery
continued. “If he’d come to us like a man,” she went on,
“and said, ‘I’ve been a fool,’ one would have pitied him;
one would have tried to help him. There’s nothing so
disgraceful after all— But he’s been going about all these
years, pretending, letting one take it for granted, that he
was single. And the poor deserted little wife—”
“She is not his wife,” Aunt Celia interrupted.
“I’ve never heard anything so detestable!” Mrs. Hilbery
wound up, striking her fist on the arm of her chair. As she
realized the facts she became thoroughly disgusted, although,
perhaps, she was more hurt by the concealment
