of her life was being rapidly consumed by her father. To
her he dictated the memoirs which were to avenge his
memory, and she had to assure him constantly that his
treatment had been a disgrace. Already, at the age of
thirty-five, her cheeks were whitening as her mother’s
had whitened, but for her there would be no memories of
Indian suns and Indian rivers, and clamor of children in a
nursery; she would have very little of substance to think
about when she sat, as Lady Otway now sat, knitting
white wool, with her eyes fixed almost perpetually upon
the same embroidered bird upon the same fire-screen.
But then Lady Otway was one of the people for whom the
great make-believe game of English social life has been
invented; she spent most of her time in pretending to
herself and her neighbors that she was a dignified, important,
much-occupied person, of considerable social
standing and sufficient wealth. In view of the actual state
of things this game needed a great deal of skill; and,
perhaps, at the age she had reached—she was over sixty—
she played far more to deceive herself than to deceive
any one else. Moreover, the armor was wearing thin; she
forgot to keep up appearances more and more.
The worn patches in the carpets, and the pallor of the
drawing-room, where no chair or cover had been renewed
for some years, were due not only to the miserable pension,
but to the wear and tear of twelve children, eight of
whom were sons. As often happens in these large families,
a distinct dividing-line could be traced, about halfway
in the succession, where the money for educational
purposes had run short, and the six younger children had
grown up far more economically than the elder. If the
boys were clever, they won scholarships, and went to
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school; if they were not clever, they took what the family
connection had to offer them. The girls accepted situations
occasionally, but there were always one or two at
home, nursing sick animals, tending silkworms, or playing
the flute in their bedrooms. The distinction between
the elder children and the younger corresponded almost
to the distinction between a higher class and a lower
one, for with only a haphazard education and insufficient
allowances, the younger children had picked up accomplishments,
friends, and points of view which were not to
be found within the walls of a public school or of a Government
office. Between the two divisions there was considerable
hostility, the elder trying to patronize the
younger, the younger refusing to respect the elder; but
one feeling united them and instantly closed any risk of
a breach—their common belief in the superiority of their
own family to all others. Henry was the eldest of the
younger group, and their leader; he bought strange books
and joined odd societies; he went without a tie for a
whole year, and had six shirts made of black flannel. He
had long refused to take a seat either in a shipping office
or in a tea-merchant’s warehouse; and persisted, in spite
of the disapproval of uncles and aunts, in practicing both
violin and piano, with the result that he could not perform
professionally upon either. Indeed, for thirty-two
years of life he had nothing more substantial to show
than a manuscript book containing the score of half an
opera. In this protest of his, Katharine had always given
him her support, and as she was generally held to be an
extremely sensible person, who dressed too well to be
eccentric, he had found her support of some use. Indeed,
when she came down at Christmas she usually spent a
great part of her time in private conferences with Henry
and with Cassandra, the youngest girl, to whom the silkworms
belonged. With the younger section she had a great
reputation for common sense, and for something that
they despised but inwardly respected and called knowledge
of the world—that is to say, of the way in which
respectable elderly people, going to their clubs and dining
out with ministers, think and behave. She had more
than once played the part of ambassador between Lady
Otway and her children. That poor lady, for instance, con
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sulted her for advice when, one day, she opened
Cassandra’s bedroom door on a mission of discovery, and
found the ceiling hung with mulberry-leaves, the windows
blocked with cages, and the tables stacked with
home-made machines for the manufacture of silk dresses.
“I wish you could help her to take an interest in something
that other people are interested in, Katharine,” she
observed, rather plaintively, detailing her grievances. “It’s
all Henry’s doing, you know, giving up her parties and
taking to these nasty insects. It doesn’t follow that if a
man can do a thing a woman may too.”
The morning was sufficiently bright to make the chairs
and sofas in Lady Otway’s private sitting-room appear
more than usually shabby, and the gallant gentlemen,
her brothers and cousins, who had defended the Empire
and left their bones on many frontiers, looked at the
world through a film of yellow which the morning light
seemed to have drawn across their photographs. Lady
Otway sighed, it may be at the faded relics, and turned,
with resignation, to her balls of wool, which, curiously
and characteristically, were not an ivory-white, but rather
a tarnished yellow-white. She had called her niece in for
a little chat. She had always trusted her, and now more
than ever, since her engagement to Rodney, which seemed
to Lady Otway extremely suitable, and just what one would
wish for one’s own daughter. Katharine unwittingly increased
her reputation for wisdom by asking to be given
knitting-needles too.
“It’s so very pleasant,” said Lady Otway, “to knit while
one’s talking. And now, my dear Katharine, tell me about
your plans.”
The emotions of the night before, which she had suppressed
in such a way as to keep her awake till dawn, had
left Katharine a little jaded, and thus more matter-of-fact
than usual. She was quite ready to discuss her plans—
houses and rents, servants and economy—without feeling
that they concerned her very much. As she spoke, knitting
methodically meanwhile, Lady Otway noted, with approval,
the upright, responsible bearing of her niece, to whom the
prospect of marriage had brought some gravity most becoming
in a bride, and yet, in these days, most rare. Yes,
Katharine’s engagement had changed her a little.
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“What a perfect daughter, or daughter-in-law!” she
thought to herself, and could not help contrasting her
with Cassandra, surrounded by innumerable silkworms in
her bedroom.
“Yes,” she continued, glancing at Katharine, with the
round, greenish eyes which were as inexpressive as moist
marbles, “Katharine is like the girls of my youth. We took
the serious things of life seriously.” But just as she was
deriving satisfaction from this thought, and was producing
some of the hoarded wisdom which none of her own
daughters, alas! seemed now to need, the door opened,
and Mrs. Hilbery came in, or rather, did not come in, but
stood in the doorway and smiled, having evidently mistaken
the room.
“I never shall know my way about this house!” she exclaimed.
“I’m on my way to the library, and I don’t want
to interrupt. You and Katharine were having a little chat?”
The presence of her sister-in-law made Lady Otway slightly
uneasy. How could she go on with what she was saying in
Maggie’s presence? for she was saying something that she
had never said, all these years, to Maggie herself.
“I was telling Katharine a few little commonplaces about
marriage,” she said, with a little laugh. “Are none of my
children looking after you, Maggie?”
“Marriage,” said Mrs. Hilbery, coming into the room,
and nodding her head once or twice, “I always say marriage
is a school. And you don’t get the prizes unless you
go to school. Charlotte has won all the prizes,” she added,
giving her sister-in-law a little pat, which made Lady
Otway more uncomfortable still. She half laughed, muttered
something, and ended on a sigh.
“Aunt Charlotte was saying that it’s no good being married
unless you submit to your husband,” said Katharine,
framing her aunt’s words into a far more definite shape
than they had really worn; and when she spoke thus she
did not appear at all old-fashioned. Lady Otway looked at
her and paused for a moment.
“Well, I really don’t advise a woman who wants to have
things her own way to get married,” she said, beginning
a fresh row rather elaborately.
Mrs. Hilbery knew something of the circumstances which,
as she thought, had inspired this remark. In a moment
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her face was clouded with sympathy which she did not
quite know how to express.
“What a shame it was!” she exclaimed, forgetting that
her train of thought might not be obvious to her listeners.
“But, Charlotte, it would have been much worse if Frank
had disgraced himself in any way. And it isn’t what our
husbands get, but what they are. I used to dream of white
horses and palanquins, too; but still, I like the ink-pots
best. And who knows?” she concluded, looking at Katharine,
“your father may be made a baronet to-morrow.”
Lady Otway, who was Mr. Hilbery’s sister, knew quite
well that, in private, the Hilberys called Sir Francis “that
old Turk,” and though she did not follow the drift of Mrs.
Hilbery’s remarks, she knew what prompted them.
“But if you can give way to your husband,” she said,
speaking to Katharine, as if there were a separate understanding
between them, “a happy marriage is the happiest
thing in the world.”
“Yes,” said Katharine, “but—” She did not mean to finish
her sentence, she merely wished to induce her mother
and her aunt to go on talking about marriage, for she was
in the mood to feel that other people could help her if
they would. She went on knitting, but her fingers worked
with a decision that was oddly unlike the smooth and
contemplative sweep of Lady Otway’s plump hand. Now
and then she looked swiftly at her mother, then at her
aunt. Mrs. Hilbery held a book in her hand, and was on
her way, as Katharine guessed, to the library, where another
paragraph was to be added to that varied assortment
of paragraphs, the Life of Richard Alardyce. Normally,
Katharine would have hurried her mother downstairs,
and seen that no excuse for distraction came her
way. Her attitude towards the poet’s life, however, had
changed with other changes; and she was content to forget
all about her scheme of hours. Mrs. Hilbery was secretly
delighted. Her relief at finding herself excused
manifested itself in a series of sidelong glances of sly
humor in her daughter’s direction, and the indulgence
put her in the best of spirits. Was she to be allowed merely
to sit and talk? It was so much pleasanter to sit in a nice
room filled with all sorts of interesting odds and ends
which she hadn’t looked at for a year, at least, than to
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seek out one date which contradicted another in a dictionary.
“We’ve all had perfect husbands,” she concluded, generously
forgiving Sir Francis all his faults in a lump. “Not
that I think a bad temper is really a fault in a man. I
don’t mean a bad temper,” she corrected herself, with a
glance obviously in the direction of Sir Francis. “I should
say a quick, impatient temper. Most, in fact ALL great
men have had bad tempers—except your grandfather,
Katharine,” and here she sighed, and suggested that,
perhaps, she ought to go down to the library.
“But in the ordinary marriage, is it necessary to give
way to one’s husband?” said Katharine, taking no notice
of her mother’s suggestion, blind even to the depression
which had now taken possession of her at the thought of
her own inevitable death.
“I should say yes, certainly,” said Lady Otway, with a
decision most unusual for her.
“Then one ought to make up one’s mind to that before
one is married,” Katharine mused, seeming to address
herself.
Mrs. Hilbery was not much interested in these remarks,
which seemed to have a melancholy tendency, and to
revive her spirits she had recourse to an infallible rem-
edy—she looked out of the window.
“Do look at that lovely little blue bird!” she exclaimed,
and her eye looked with extreme pleasure at the soft sky.
at the trees, at the green fields visible behind those trees,
and at the leafless branches which surrounded the body
of the small blue tit. Her sympathy with nature was exquisite.
“Most women know by instinct whether they can give it
or not,” Lady Otway slipped in quickly, in rather a low
voice, as if she wanted to get this said while her sisterin-
law’s attention was diverted. “And if not—well then,
my advice would be—don’t marry.”
“Oh, but marriage is the happiest life for a woman,”
said Mrs. Hilbery, catching the word marriage, as she
brought her eyes back to the room again. Then she turned
her mind to what she had said.
“It’s the most interesting life,” she corrected herself.
She looked at her daughter with a look of vague alarm. It
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was the kind of maternal scrutiny which suggests that, in
looking at her daughter a mother is really looking at herself.
She was not altogether satisfied; but she purposely
made no attempt to break down the reserve which, as a
matter of fact, was a quality she particularly admired and
depended upon in her daughter. But when her mother
said that marriage was the most interesting life, Katharine
felt, as she was apt to do suddenly, for no definite reason,
that they understood each other, in spite of differing
in every possible way. Yet the wisdom of the old seems
