level, so toneless, so devoid of joy or energy. At any rate
William made no answer. She waited stoically. A moment
later he stepped briskly from his dressing-room, and observed
that if she wanted to buy more oysters he thought
he knew where they could find a fishmonger’s shop still
open. She breathed deeply a sigh of relief.
Extract from a letter sent a few days later by Mrs. Hilbery
to her sister-in-law, Mrs. Milvain:
“ … How stupid of me to forget the name in my telegram.
Such a nice, rich, English name, too, and, in addition,
he has all the graces of intellect; he has read literally
everything. I tell Katharine, I shall always put him on
my right side at dinner, so as to have him by me when
people begin talking about characters in Shakespeare.
They won’t be rich, but they’ll be very, very happy. I was
sitting in my room late one night, feeling that nothing
nice would ever happen to me again, when I heard
Katharine outside in the passage, and I thought to my
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self, ‘Shall I call her in?’ and then I thought (in that
hopeless, dreary way one does think, with the fire going
out and one’s birthday just over), ‘Why should I lay my
troubles on her?’ But my little self-control had its reward,
for next moment she tapped at the door and came in, and
sat on the rug, and though we neither of us said anything,
I felt so happy all of a second that I couldn’t help
crying, ‘Oh, Katharine, when you come to my age, how I
hope you’ll have a daughter, too!’ You know how silent
Katharine is. She was so silent, for such a long time, that
in my foolish, nervous state I dreaded something, I don’t
quite know what. And then she told me how, after all,
she had made up her mind. She had written. She expected
him to-morrow. At first I wasn’t glad at all. I didn’t
want her to marry any one; but when she said, ‘It will
make no difference. I shall always care for you and father
most,’ then I saw how selfish I was, and I told her she
must give him everything, everything, everything! I told
her I should be thankful to come second. But why, when
everything’s turned out just as one always hoped it would
turn out, why then can one do nothing but cry, nothing
but feel a desolate old woman whose life’s been a failure,
and now is nearly over, and age is so cruel? But Katharine
said to me, ‘I am happy. I’m very happy.’ And then I
thought, though it all seemed so desperately dismal at
the time, Katharine had said she was happy, and I should
have a son, and it would all turn out so much more wonderfully
than I could possibly imagine, for though the
sermons don’t say so, I do believe the world is meant for
us to be happy in. She told me that they would live quite
near us, and see us every day; and she would go on with
the Life, and we should finish it as we had meant to.
And, after all, it would be far more horrid if she didn’t
marry—or suppose she married some one we couldn’t
endure? Suppose she had fallen in love with some one
who was married already?
“And though one never thinks any one good enough for
the people one’s fond of, he has the kindest, truest instincts,
I’m sure, and though he seems nervous and his
manner is not commanding, I only think these things
because it’s Katharine. And now I’ve written this, it comes
over me that, of course, all the time, Katharine has what
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he hasn’t. She does command, she isn’t nervous; it comes
naturally to her to rule and control. It’s time that she
should give all this to some one who will need her when
we aren’t there, save in our spirits, for whatever people
say, I’m sure I shall come back to this wonderful world
where one’s been so happy and so miserable, where, even
now, I seem to see myself stretching out my hands for
another present from the great Fairy Tree whose boughs
are still hung with enchanting toys, though they are rarer
now, perhaps, and between the branches one sees no
longer the blue sky, but the stars and the tops of the
mountains.
“One doesn’t know any more, does one? One hasn’t any
advice to give one’s children. One can only hope that
they will have the same vision and the same power to
believe, without which life would be so meaningless. That
is what I ask for Katharine and her husband.”
CHAPTER XII
Is Mr. Hilbery at home, or Mrs. Hilbery?” Denham asked,
of the parlor-maid in Chelsea, a week later.
“No, sir. But Miss Hilbery is at home,” the girl answered.
Ralph had anticipated many answers, but not this one,
and now it was unexpectedly made plain to him that it
was the chance of seeing Katharine that had brought him
all the way to Chelsea on pretence of seeing her father.
He made some show of considering the matter, and was
taken upstairs to the drawing-room. As upon that first
occasion, some weeks ago, the door closed as if it were a
thousand doors softly excluding the world; and once more
Ralph received an impression of a room full of deep shadows,
firelight, unwavering silver candle flames, and empty
spaces to be crossed before reaching the round table in
the middle of the room, with its frail burden of silver
trays and china teacups. But this time Katharine was there
by herself; the volume in her hand showed that she expected
no visitors.
Ralph said something about hoping to find her father.
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“My father is out,” she replied. “But if you can wait, I
expect him soon.”
It might have been due merely to politeness, but Ralph
felt that she received him almost with cordiality. Perhaps
she was bored by drinking tea and reading a book all
alone; at any rate, she tossed the book on to a sofa with
a gesture of relief.
“Is that one of the moderns whom you despise?” he
asked, smiling at the carelessness of her gesture.
“Yes,” she replied. “I think even you would despise him.”
“Even I?” he repeated. “Why even I?”
“You said you liked modern things; I said I hated them.”
This was not a very accurate report of their conversation
among the relics, perhaps, but Ralph was flattered
to think that she remembered anything about it.
“Or did I confess that I hated all books?” she went on,
seeing him look up with an air of inquiry. “I forget—”
“Do you hate all books?” he asked.
“It would be absurd to say that I hate all books when
I’ve only read ten, perhaps; but—’ Here she pulled herself
up short.
“Well?”
“Yes, I do hate books,” she continued. “Why do you
want to be for ever talking about your feelings? That’s
what I can’t make out. And poetry’s all about feelings—
novels are all about feelings.”
She cut a cake vigorously into slices, and providing a
tray with bread and butter for Mrs. Hilbery, who was in
her room with a cold, she rose to go upstairs.
Ralph held the door open for her, and then stood with
clasped hands in the middle of the room. His eyes were
bright, and, indeed, he scarcely knew whether they beheld
dreams or realities. All down the street and on the
doorstep, and while he mounted the stairs, his dream of
Katharine possessed him; on the threshold of the room
he had dismissed it, in order to prevent too painful a
collision between what he dreamt of her and what she
was. And in five minutes she had filled the shell of the
old dream with the flesh of life; looked with fire out of
phantom eyes. He glanced about him with bewilderment
at finding himself among her chairs and tables; they were
solid, for he grasped the back of the chair in which
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Katharine had sat; and yet they were unreal; the atmosphere
was that of a dream. He summoned all the faculties
of his spirit to seize what the minutes had to give
him; and from the depths of his mind there rose unchecked
a joyful recognition of the truth that human nature surpasses,
in its beauty, all that our wildest dreams bring us
hints of.
Katharine came into the room a moment later. He stood
watching her come towards him, and thought her more
beautiful and strange than his dream of her; for the real
Katharine could speak the words which seemed to crowd
behind the forehead and in the depths of the eyes, and
the commonest sentence would be flashed on by this
immortal light. And she overflowed the edges of the dream;
he remarked that her softness was like that of some vast
snowy owl; she wore a ruby on her finger.
“My mother wants me to tell you,” she said, “that she
hopes you have begun your poem. She says every one
ought to write poetry… . All my relations write poetry,”
she went on. “I can’t bear to think of it sometimes—
because, of course, it’s none of it any good. But then one
needn’t read it—”
“You don’t encourage me to write a poem,” said Ralph.
“But you’re not a poet, too, are you?” she inquired,
turning upon him with a laugh.
“Should I tell you if I were?”
“Yes. Because I think you speak the truth,” she said,
searching him for proof of this apparently, with eyes now
almost impersonally direct. It would be easy, Ralph
thought, to worship one so far removed, and yet of so
straight a nature; easy to submit recklessly to her, without
thought of future pain.
“Are you a poet?” she demanded. He felt that her question
had an unexplained weight of meaning behind it, as
if she sought an answer to a question that she did not
ask.
“No. I haven’t written any poetry for years,” he replied.
“But all the same, I don’t agree with you. I think it’s the
only thing worth doing.”
“Why do you say that?” she asked, almost with impatience,
tapping her spoon two or three times against the
side of her cup.
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“Why?” Ralph laid hands on the first words that came
to mind. “Because, I suppose, it keeps an ideal alive which
might die otherwise.”
A curious change came over her face, as if the flame of
her mind were subdued; and she looked at him ironically
and with the expression which he had called sad before,
for want of a better name for it.
“I don’t know that there’s much sense in having ideals,”
she said.
“But you have them,” he replied energetically. “Why do we
call them ideals? It’s a stupid word. Dreams, I mean—”
She followed his words with parted lips, as though to
answer eagerly when he had done; but as he said, “Dreams,
I mean,” the door of the drawing-room swung open, and
so remained for a perceptible instant. They both held
themselves silent, her lips still parted.
Far off, they heard the rustle of skirts. Then the owner
of the skirts appeared in the doorway, which she almost
filled, nearly concealing the figure of a very much smaller
lady who accompanied her.
“My aunts!” Katharine murmured, under her breath. Her
tone had a hint of tragedy in it, but no less, Ralph thought,
than the situation required. She addressed the larger lady
as Aunt Millicent; the smaller was Aunt Celia, Mrs. Milvain,
who had lately undertaken the task of marrying Cyril to
his wife. Both ladies, but Mrs. Cosham (Aunt Millicent) in
particular, had that look of heightened, smoothed,
incarnadined existence which is proper to elderly ladies
paying calls in London about five o’clock in the afternoon.
Portraits by Romney, seen through glass, have something
of their pink, mellow look, their blooming softness,
as of apricots hanging upon a red wall in the afternoon
sun. Mrs. Cosham was so appareled with hanging muffs,
chains, and swinging draperies that it was impossible to
detect the shape of a human being in the mass of brown
and black which filled the arm-chair. Mrs. Milvain was a
much slighter figure; but the same doubt as to the precise
lines of her contour filled Ralph, as he regarded them,
with dismal foreboding. What remark of his would ever
reach these fabulous and fantastic characters?—for there
was something fantastically unreal in the curious swayings
and noddings of Mrs. Cosham, as if her equipment in
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cluded a large wire spring. Her voice had a high-pitched,
cooing note, which prolonged words and cut them short
until the English language seemed no longer fit for common
purposes. In a moment of nervousness, so Ralph
thought, Katharine had turned on innumerable electric
lights. But Mrs. Cosham had gained impetus (perhaps her
swaying movements had that end in view) for sustained
speech; and she now addressed Ralph deliberately and
elaborately.
“I come from Woking, Mr. Popham. You may well ask
me, why Woking? and to that I answer, for perhaps the
hundredth time, because of the sunsets. We went there
for the sunsets, but that was five-and-twenty years ago.
Where are the sunsets now? Alas! There is no sunset now
nearer than the South Coast.” Her rich and romantic notes
were accompanied by a wave of a long white hand, which,
when waved, gave off a flash of diamonds, rubies, and
emeralds. Ralph wondered whether she more resembled
an elephant, with a jeweled head-dress, or a superb cockatoo,
balanced insecurely upon its perch, and pecking capriciously
at a lump of sugar.
“Where are the sunsets now?” she repeated. “Do you
find sunsets now, Mr. Popham?”
“I live at Highgate,” he replied.
“At Highgate? Yes, Highgate has its charms; your Uncle
John lived at Highgate,” she jerked in the direction of
Katharine. She sank her head upon her breast, as if for a
moment’s meditation, which past, she looked up and observed:
“I dare say there are very pretty lanes in Highgate.
I can recollect walking with your mother, Katharine,
through lanes blossoming with wild hawthorn. But where
is the hawthorn now? You remember that exquisite description
in De Quincey, Mr. Popham?—but I forget, you,
in your generation, with all your activity and enlightenment,
at which I can only marvel”—here she displayed
