nice to read,” she added, pointing to the book upon
the table. “Byron—ah, Byron. I’ve known people who
knew Lord Byron,” she said.
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Katharine, who had risen in some confusion, could not
help smiling at the thought that her mother found it
perfectly natural and desirable that her daughter should
be reading Byron in the dining-room late at night alone
with a strange young man. She blessed a disposition that
was so convenient, and felt tenderly towards her mother
and her mother’s eccentricities. But Ralph observed that
although Mrs. Hilbery held the book so close to her eyes
she was not reading a word.
“My dear mother, why aren’t you in bed?” Katharine
exclaimed, changing astonishingly in the space of a minute
to her usual condition of authoritative good sense. “Why
are you wandering about?”
“I’m sure I should like your poetry better than I like
Lord Byron’s,” said Mrs. Hilbery, addressing Ralph Denham.
“Mr. Denham doesn’t write poetry; he has written articles
for father, for the Review,” Katharine said, as if
prompting her memory.
“Oh dear! How dull!” Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed, with a
sudden laugh that rather puzzled her daughter.
Ralph found that she had turned upon him a gaze that
was at once very vague and very penetrating.
“But I’m sure you read poetry at night. I always judge
by the expression of the eyes,” Mrs. Hilbery continued.
(“The windows of the soul,” she added parenthetically.)
“I don’t know much about the law,” she went on, “though
many of my relations were lawyers. Some of them looked
very handsome, too, in their wigs. But I think I do know
a little about poetry,” she added. “And all the things that
aren’t written down, but—but—” She waved her hand,
as if to indicate the wealth of unwritten poetry all about
them. “The night and the stars, the dawn coming up, the
barges swimming past, the sun setting… . Ah dear,” she
sighed, “well, the sunset is very lovely too. I sometimes
think that poetry isn’t so much what we write as what we
feel, Mr. Denham.”
During this speech of her mother’s Katharine had turned
away, and Ralph felt that Mrs. Hilbery was talking to him
apart, with a desire to ascertain something about him
which she veiled purposely by the vagueness of her words.
He felt curiously encouraged and heartened by the beam
in her eye rather than by her actual words. From the dis
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tance of her age and sex she seemed to be waving to
him, hailing him as a ship sinking beneath the horizon
might wave its flag of greeting to another setting out
upon the same voyage. He bent his head, saying nothing,
but with a curious certainty that she had read an
answer to her inquiry that satisfied her. At any rate, she
rambled off into a description of the Law Courts which
turned to a denunciation of English justice, which, according
to her, imprisoned poor men who couldn’t pay
their debts. “Tell me, shall we ever do without it all?” she
asked, but at this point Katharine gently insisted that
her mother should go to bed. Looking back from half-way
up the staircase, Katharine seemed to see Denham’s eyes
watching her steadily and intently with an expression
that she had guessed in them when he stood looking at
the windows across the road.
CHAPTER XXXI
The tray which brought Katharine’s cup of tea the next
morning brought, also, a note from her mother, announcing
that it was her intention to catch an early train to
Stratford-on-Avon that very day.
“Please find out the best way of getting there,” the
note ran, “and wire to dear Sir John Burdett to expect
me, with my love. I’ve been dreaming all night of you and
Shakespeare, dearest Katharine.”
This was no momentary impulse. Mrs. Hilbery had been
dreaming of Shakespeare any time these six months, toying
with the idea of an excursion to what she considered
the heart of the civilized world. To stand six feet above
Shakespeare’s bones, to see the very stones worn by his
feet, to reflect that the oldest man’s oldest mother had
very likely seen Shakespeare’s daughter—such thoughts
roused an emotion in her, which she expressed at unsuitable
moments, and with a passion that would not have
been unseemly in a pilgrim to a sacred shrine. The only
strange thing was that she wished to go by herself. But,
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naturally enough, she was well provided with friends who
lived in the neighborhood of Shakespeare’s tomb, and
were delighted to welcome her; and she left later to catch
her train in the best of spirits. There was a man selling
violets in the street. It was a fine day. She would remember
to send Mr. Hilbery the first daffodil she saw. And, as
she ran back into the hall to tell Katharine, she felt, she
had always felt, that Shakespeare’s command to leave
his bones undisturbed applied only to odious curiositymongers—
not to dear Sir John and herself. Leaving her
daughter to cogitate the theory of Anne Hathaway’s sonnets,
and the buried manuscripts here referred to, with
the implied menace to the safety of the heart of civilization
itself, she briskly shut the door of her taxi-cab, and
was whirled off upon the first stage of her pilgrimage.
The house was oddly different without her. Katharine
found the maids already in possession of her room, which
they meant to clean thoroughly during her absence. To
Katharine it seemed as if they had brushed away sixty
years or so with the first flick of their damp dusters. It
seemed to her that the work she had tried to do in that
room was being swept into a very insignificant heap of
dust. The china shepherdesses were already shining from
a bath of hot water. The writing-table might have belonged
to a professional man of methodical habits.
Gathering together a few papers upon which she was at
work, Katharine proceeded to her own room with the intention
of looking through them, perhaps, in the course
of the morning. But she was met on the stairs by
Cassandra, who followed her up, but with such intervals
between each step that Katharine began to feel her purpose
dwindling before they had reached the door.
Cassandra leant over the banisters, and looked down upon
the Persian rug that lay on the floor of the hall.
“Doesn’t everything look odd this morning?” she inquired.
“Are you really going to spend the morning with
those dull old letters, because if so—”
The dull old letters, which would have turned the heads
of the most sober of collectors, were laid upon a table,
and, after a moment’s pause, Cassandra, looking grave all
of a sudden, asked Katharine where she should find the
“History of England” by Lord Macaulay. It was downstairs
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in Mr. Hilbery’s study. The cousins descended together in
search of it. They diverged into the drawing-room for the
good reason that the door was open. The portrait of Richard
Alardyce attracted their attention.
“I wonder what he was like?” It was a question that
Katharine had often asked herself lately.
“Oh, a fraud like the rest of them—at least Henry says
so,” Cassandra replied. “Though I don’t believe everything
Henry says,” she added a little defensively.
Down they went into Mr. Hilbery’s study, where they
began to look among his books. So desultory was this
examination that some fifteen minutes failed to discover
the work they were in search of.
“Must you read Macaulay’s History, Cassandra?” Katharine
asked, with a stretch of her arms.
“I must,” Cassandra replied briefly.
“Well, I’m going to leave you to look for it by yourself.”
“Oh, no, Katharine. Please stay and help me. You see—
you see—I told William I’d read a little every day. And I
want to tell him that I’ve begun when he comes.”
“When does William come?” Katharine asked, turning
to the shelves again.
“To tea, if that suits you?”
“If it suits me to be out, I suppose you mean.”
“Oh, you’re horrid… . Why shouldn’t you—?”
“Yes ?”
“Why shouldn’t you be happy too?”
“I am quite happy,” Katharine replied.
“I mean as I am. Katharine,” she said impulsively, “do
let’s be married on the same day.”
“To the same man?”
“Oh, no, no. But why shouldn’t you marry—some one
else?”
“Here’s your Macaulay,” said Katharine, turning round with
the book in her hand. “I should say you’d better begin to
read at once if you mean to be educated by tea-time.”
“Damn Lord Macaulay!” cried Cassandra, slapping the
book upon the table. “Would you rather not talk?”
“We’ve talked enough already,” Katharine replied evasively.
“I know I shan’t be able to settle to Macaulay,” said
Cassandra, looking ruefully at the dull red cover of the
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prescribed volume, which, however, possessed a talismanic
property, since William admired it. He had advised a little
serious reading for the morning hours.
“Have you read Macaulay?” she asked.
“No. William never tried to educate me.” As she spoke
she saw the light fade from Cassandra’s face, as if she
had implied some other, more mysterious, relationship.
She was stung with compunction. She marveled at her
own rashness in having influenced the life of another, as
she had influenced Cassandra’s life.
“We weren’t serious,” she said quickly.
“But I’m fearfully serious,” said Cassandra, with a little
shudder, and her look showed that she spoke the truth.
She turned and glanced at Katharine as she had never
glanced at her before. There was fear in her glance, which
darted on her and then dropped guiltily. Oh, Katharine
had everything—beauty, mind, character. She could never
compete with Katharine; she could never be safe so long
as Katharine brooded over her, dominating her, disposing
of her. She called her cold, unseeing, unscrupulous, but
the only sign she gave outwardly was a curious one—she
reached out her hand and grasped the volume of history.
At that moment the bell of the telephone rang and
Katharine went to answer it. Cassandra, released from
observation, dropped her book and clenched her hands.
She suffered more fiery torture in those few minutes than
she had suffered in the whole of her life; she learnt more
of her capacities for feeling. But when Katharine reappeared
she was calm, and had gained a look of dignity
that was new to her.
“Was that him?” she asked.
“It was Ralph Denham,” Katharine replied.
“I meant Ralph Denham.”
“Why did you mean Ralph Denham? What has William
told you about Ralph Denham?” The accusation that
Katharine was calm, callous, and indifferent was not possible
in face of her present air of animation. She gave
Cassandra no time to frame an answer. “Now, when are
you and William going to be married?” she asked.
Cassandra made no reply for some moments. It was,
indeed, a very difficult question to answer. In conversation
the night before, William had indicated to Cassandra
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that, in his belief, Katharine was becoming engaged to
Ralph Denham in the dining-room. Cassandra, in the rosy
light of her own circumstances, had been disposed to
think that the matter must be settled already. But a letter
which she had received that morning from William,
while ardent in its expression of affection, had conveyed
to her obliquely that he would prefer the announcement
of their engagement to coincide with that of Katharine’s.
This document Cassandra now produced, and read aloud,
with considerable excisions and much hesitation.
“… a thousand pities—ahem—I fear we shall cause a
great deal of natural annoyance. If, on the other hand,
what I have reason to think will happen, should happen—
within reasonable time, and the present position is
not in any way offensive to you, delay would, in my opinion,
serve all our interests better than a premature explanation,
which is bound to cause more surprise than is
desirable—”
“Very like William,” Katharine exclaimed, having gathered
the drift of these remarks with a speed that, by
itself, disconcerted Cassandra.
“I quite understand his feelings,” Cassandra replied. “I
quite agree with them. I think it would be much better, if
you intend to marry Mr. Denham, that we should wait as
William says.”
“But, then, if I don’t marry him for months—or, perhaps,
not at all?”
Cassandra was silent. The prospect appalled her.
Katharine had been telephoning to Ralph Denham; she
looked queer, too; she must be, or about to become, engaged
to him. But if Cassandra could have overheard the
conversation upon the telephone, she would not have
felt so certain that it tended in that direction. It was to
this effect:
“I’m Ralph Denham speaking. I’m in my right senses
now.”
“How long did you wait outside the house?”
“I went home and wrote you a letter. I tore it up.”
“I shall tear up everything too.”
“I shall come.”
“Yes. Come to-day.”
“I must explain to you—”
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“Yes. We must explain—”
A long pause followed. Ralph began a sentence, which
he canceled with the word, “Nothing.” Suddenly, together,
at the same moment, they said good-bye. And yet, if the
telephone had been miraculously connected with some
higher atmosphere pungent with the scent of thyme and
the savor of salt, Katharine could hardly have breathed
in a keener sense of exhilaration. She ran downstairs on
the crest of it. She was amazed to find herself already
committed by William and Cassandra to marry the owner
of the halting voice she had just heard on the telephone.
The tendency of her spirit seemed to be in an altogether
different direction; and of a different nature. She had
only to look at Cassandra to see what the love that results
in an engagement and marriage means. She considered
