derisively both at the notion of drawing-room tea and at
the necessity of carrying a tray up to his brother. But he
took himself off, being enjoined by his mother to mind
what he was doing, and shut the door after him.
“It’s much nicer like this,” said Katharine, applying herself
with determination to the dissection of her cake;
they had given her too large a slice. She knew that Mrs.
Denham suspected her of critical comparisons. She knew
that she was making poor progress with her cake. Mrs.
Denham had looked at her sufficiently often to make it
clear to Katharine that she was asking who this young
woman was, and why Ralph had brought her to tea with
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them. There was an obvious reason, which Mrs. Denham
had probably reached by this time. Outwardly, she was
behaving with rather rusty and laborious civility. She was
making conversation about the amenities of Highgate,
its development and situation.
“When I first married,” she said, “Highgate was quite
separate from London, Miss Hilbery, and this house,
though you wouldn’t believe it, had a view of apple orchards.
That was before the Middletons built their house
in front of us.”
“It must be a great advantage to live at the top of a
hill,” said Katharine. Mrs. Denham agreed effusively, as if
her opinion of Katharine’s sense had risen.
“Yes, indeed, we find it very healthy,” she said, and she
went on, as people who live in the suburbs so often do,
to prove that it was healthier, more convenient, and less
spoilt than any suburb round London. She spoke with
such emphasis that it was quite obvious that she expressed
unpopular views, and that her children disagreed
with her.
“The ceiling’s fallen down in the pantry again,” said
Hester, a girl of eighteen, abruptly.
“The whole house will be down one of these days,”
James muttered.
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Denham. “It’s only a little bit of
plaster—I don’t see how any house could be expected to
stand the wear and tear you give it.” Here some family
joke exploded, which Katharine could not follow. Even
Mrs. Denham laughed against her will.
“Miss Hilbery’s thinking us all so rude,” she added reprovingly.
Miss Hilbery smiled and shook her head, and
was conscious that a great many eyes rested upon her,
for a moment, as if they would find pleasure in discussing
her when she was gone. Owing, perhaps, to this critical
glance, Katharine decided that Ralph Denham’s family
was commonplace, unshapely, lacking in charm, and
fitly expressed by the hideous nature of their furniture
and decorations. She glanced along a mantelpiece ranged
with bronze chariots, silver vases, and china ornaments
that were either facetious or eccentric.
She did not apply her judgment consciously to Ralph,
but when she looked at him, a moment later, she rated
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him lower than at any other time of their acquaintanceship.
He had made no effort to tide over the discomforts of
her introduction, and now, engaged in argument with his
brother, apparently forgot her presence. She must have
counted upon his support more than she realized, for
this indifference, emphasized, as it was, by the insignificant
commonplace of his surroundings, awoke her, not
only to that ugliness, but to her own folly. She thought
of one scene after another in a few seconds, with that
shudder which is almost a blush. She had believed him
when he spoke of friendship. She had believed in a spiritual
light burning steadily and steadfastly behind the
erratic disorder and incoherence of life. The light was
now gone out, suddenly, as if a sponge had blotted it.
The litter of the table and the tedious but exacting conversation
of Mrs. Denham remained: they struck, indeed,
upon a mind bereft of all defences, and, keenly conscious
of the degradation which is the result of strife whether
victorious or not, she thought gloomily of her loneliness,
of life’s futility, of the barren prose of reality, of William
Rodney, of her mother, and the unfinished book.
Her answers to Mrs. Denham were perfunctory to the
verge of rudeness, and to Ralph, who watched her narrowly,
she seemed further away than was compatible with
her physical closeness. He glanced at her, and ground out
further steps in his argument, determined that no folly
should remain when this experience was over. Next moment,
a silence, sudden and complete, descended upon
them all. The silence of all these people round the untidy
table was enormous and hideous; something horrible
seemed about to burst from it, but they endured it obstinately.
A second later the door opened and there was a
stir of relief; cries of “Hullo, Joan! There’s nothing left
for you to eat,” broke up the oppressive concentration of
so many eyes upon the table-cloth, and set the waters of
family life dashing in brisk little waves again. It was
obvious that Joan had some mysterious and beneficent
power upon her family. She went up to Katharine as if
she had heard of her, and was very glad to see her at last.
She explained that she had been visiting an uncle who
was ill, and that had kept her. No, she hadn’t had any
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tea, but a slice of bread would do. Some one handed up a
hot cake, which had been keeping warm in the fender;
she sat down by her mother’s side, Mrs. Denham’s anxieties
seemed to relax, and every one began eating and
drinking, as if tea had begun over again. Hester voluntarily
explained to Katharine that she was reading to pass
some examination, because she wanted more than anything
in the whole world to go to Newnham.
“Now, just let me hear you decline ‘amo’—I love,”
Johnnie demanded.
“No, Johnnie, no Greek at meal-times,” said Joan, overhearing
him instantly. “She’s up at all hours of the night
over her books, Miss Hilbery, and I’m sure that’s not the
way to pass examinations,” she went on, smiling at
Katharine, with the worried humorous smile of the elder
sister whose younger brothers and sisters have become
almost like children of her own.
“Joan, you don’t really think that ‘amo’ is Greek?” Ralph
asked.
“Did I say Greek? Well, never mind. No dead languages at teatime.
My dear boy, don’t trouble to make me any toast—”
“Or if you do, surely there’s the toasting-fork somewhere?”
said Mrs. Denham, still cherishing the belief that the breadknife
could be spoilt. “Do one of you ring and ask for one,”
she said, without any conviction that she would be obeyed.
“But is Ann coming to be with Uncle Joseph?” she continued.
“If so, surely they had better send Amy to us—” and
in the mysterious delight of learning further details of these
arrangements, and suggesting more sensible plans of her
own, which, from the aggrieved way in which she spoke,
she did not seem to expect any one to adopt, Mrs. Denham
completely forgot the presence of a well-dressed visitor,
who had to be informed about the amenities of Highgate.
As soon as Joan had taken her seat, an argument had
sprung up on either side of Katharine, as to whether the
Salvation Army has any right to play hymns at street corners
on Sunday mornings, thereby making it impossible for
James to have his sleep out, and tampering with the rights
of individual liberty.
“You see, James likes to lie in bed and sleep like a
hog,” said Johnnie, explaining himself to Katharine,
whereupon James fired up and, making her his goal, also
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exclaimed:
“Because Sundays are my one chance in the week of
having my sleep out. Johnnie messes with stinking chemicals
in the pantry—”
They appealed to her, and she forgot her cake and began
to laugh and talk and argue with sudden animation.
The large family seemed to her so warm and various that
she forgot to censure them for their taste in pottery. But
the personal question between James and Johnnie merged
into some argument already, apparently, debated, so that
the parts had been distributed among the family, in which
Ralph took the lead; and Katharine found herself opposed
to him and the champion of Johnnie’s cause, who, it
appeared, always lost his head and got excited in argument
with Ralph.
“Yes, yes, that’s what I mean. She’s got it right,” he
exclaimed, after Katharine had restated his case, and made
it more precise. The debate was left almost solely to
Katharine and Ralph. They looked into each other’s eyes
fixedly, like wrestlers trying to see what movement is
coming next, and while Ralph spoke, Katharine bit her
lower lip, and was always ready with her next point as
soon as he had done. They were very well matched, and
held the opposite views.
But at the most exciting stage of the argument, for no
reason that Katharine could see, all chairs were pushed
back, and one after another the Denham family got up
and went out of the door, as if a bell had summoned
them. She was not used to the clockwork regulations of a
large family. She hesitated in what she was saying, and
rose. Mrs. Denham and Joan had drawn together and stood
by the fireplace, slightly raising their skirts above their
ankles, and discussing something which had an air of
being very serious and very private. They appeared to
have forgotten her presence among them. Ralph stood
holding the door open for her.
“Won’t you come up to my room?” he said. And Katharine,
glancing back at Joan, who smiled at her in a preoccupied
way, followed Ralph upstairs. She was thinking of
their argument, and when, after the long climb, he opened
his door, she began at once.
“The question is, then, at what point is it right for the
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individual to assert his will against the will of the State.”
For some time they continued the argument, and then
the intervals between one statement and the next became
longer and longer, and they spoke more speculatively
and less pugnaciously, and at last fell silent.
Katharine went over the argument in her mind, remembering
how, now and then, it had been set conspicuously
on the right course by some remark offered either by
James or by Johnnie.
“Your brothers are very clever,” she said. “I suppose
you’re in the habit of arguing?”
“James and Johnnie will go on like that for hours,”
Ralph replied. “So will Hester, if you start her upon Elizabethan
dramatists.”
“And the little girl with the pigtail?”
“Molly? She’s only ten. But they’re always arguing among
themselves.”
He was immensely pleased by Katharine’s praise of his
brothers and sisters. He would have liked to go on telling
her about them, but he checked himself.
“I see that it must be difficult to leave them,” Katharine
continued. His deep pride in his family was more evident
to him, at that moment, than ever before, and the idea of
living alone in a cottage was ridiculous. All that brotherhood
and sisterhood, and a common childhood in a common
past mean, all the stability, the unambitious comradeship,
and tacit understanding of family life at its
best, came to his mind, and he thought of them as a
company, of which he was the leader, bound on a difficult,
dreary, but glorious voyage. And it was Katharine
who had opened his eyes to this, he thought.
A little dry chirp from the corner of the room now roused
her attention.
“My tame rook,” he explained briefly. “A cat had bitten
one of its legs.” She looked at the rook, and her eyes
went from one object to another.
“You sit here and read?” she said, her eyes resting upon
his books. He said that he was in the habit of working
there at night.
“The great advantage of Highgate is the view over London.
At night the view from my window is splendid.” He
was extremely anxious that she should appreciate his view,
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and she rose to see what was to be seen. It was already dark
enough for the turbulent haze to be yellow with the light of
street lamps, and she tried to determine the quarters of the
city beneath her. The sight of her gazing from his window
gave him a peculiar satisfaction. When she turned, at length,
he was still sitting motionless in his chair.
“It must be late,” she said. “I must be going.” She
settled upon the arm of the chair irresolutely, thinking
that she had no wish to go home. William would be there,
and he would find some way of making things unpleasant
for her, and the memory of their quarrel came back to her.
She had noticed Ralph’s coldness, too. She looked at him,
and from his fixed stare she thought that he must be
working out some theory, some argument. He had thought,
perhaps, of some fresh point in his position, as to the
bounds of personal liberty. She waited, silently, thinking
about liberty.
“You’ve won again,” he said at last, without moving.
“I’ve won?” she repeated, thinking of the argument.
“I wish to God I hadn’t asked you here,” he burst out.
“What do you mean?”
“When you’re here, it’s different—I’m happy. You’ve only
to walk to the window—you’ve only to talk about liberty.
When I saw you down there among them all—” He stopped
short.
“You thought how ordinary I was.”
“I tried to think so. But I thought you more wonderful
than ever.”
An immense relief, and a reluctance to enjoy that relief,
conflicted in her heart.
She slid down into the chair.
“I thought you disliked me,” she said.
“God knows I tried,” he replied. “I’ve done my best to
see you as you are, without any of this damned romantic
nonsense. That was why I asked you here, and it’s increased
my folly. When you’re gone I shall look out of
that window and think of you. I shall waste the whole
evening thinking of you. I shall waste my whole life, I
believe.”
He spoke with such vehemence that her relief disappeared;
