Night and Day

vely. 
"Not if the visitors like them." 
"Isn't it difficult to live up to your ancestors?" he proceeded. 
"I dare say I shouldn't try to write poetry," Katharine replied. 
"No. And that's what I should hate. I couldn't bear my grandfather to cut me out. 
And, after all," Denham went on, glancing round him satirically, as Katharine 
thought, "it's not your grandfather only. You're cut out all the way round. I suppose 
you come of one of the most distinguished families in England. There are the 
Warburtons and the Mannings--and you're related to the Otways, aren't you? I read 
it all in some magazine," he added. 
"The Otways are my cousins," Katharine replied. 
"Well," said Denham, in a final tone of voice, as if his argument were proved. 
"Well," said Katharine, "I don't see that you've proved anything." 
Denham smiled, in a peculiarly provoking way. He was amused and gratified to 
find that he had the power to annoy his oblivious, supercilious hostess, if he could 
not impress her; though he would have preferred to impress her. 
He sat silent, holding the precious little book of poems unopened in his hands, and 
Katharine watched him, the melancholy or contemplative expression deepening in 
her eyes as her annoyance faded. She appeared to be considering many things. She 
had forgotten her duties. 
"Well," said Denham again, suddenly opening the little book of poems, as though 
he had said all that he meant to say or could, with propriety, say. He turned over 
the pages with great decision, as if he were judging the book in its entirety, the 
printing and paper and binding, as well as the poetry, and then, having satisfied 
himself of its good or bad quality, he placed it on the writing-table, and examined 
the malacca cane with the gold knob which had belonged to the soldier. 
"But aren't you proud of your family?" Katharine demanded. 
"No," said Denham. "We've never done anything to be proud of--unless you count 
paying one's bills a matter for pride." 
"That sounds rather dull," Katharine remarked. 
"You would think us horribly dull," Denham agreed. 
"Yes, I might find you dull, but I don't think I should find you ridiculous," 
Katharine added, as if Denham had actually brought that charge against her family. 
"No--because we're not in the least ridiculous. We're a respectable middle-class 
family, living at Highgate." 
 "We don't live at Highgate, but we're middle class too, I suppose." 
Denham merely smiled, and replacing the malacca cane on the rack, he drew a 
sword from its ornamental sheath. 
"That belonged to Clive, so we say," said Katharine, taking up her duties as hostess 
again automatically. 
"Is it a lie?" Denham inquired. 
"It's a family tradition. I don't know that we can prove it." 
"You see, we don't have traditions in our family," said Denham. 
"You sound very dull," Katharine remarked, for the second time. 
"Merely middle class," Denham replied. 
"You pay your bills, and you speak the truth. I don't see why you should despise 
us." 
Mr. Denham carefully sheathed the sword which the Hilberys said belonged to 
Clive. 
"I shouldn't like to be you; that's all I said," he replied, as if he were saying what he 
thought as accurately as he could. 
"No, but one never would like to be any one else." 
"I should. I should like to be lots of other people." 
"Then why not us?" Katharine asked. 
Denham looked at her as she sat in her grandfather's arm-chair, drawing her great-
uncle's malacca cane smoothly through her fingers, while her background was 
made up equally of lustrous blue-and-white paint, and crimson books with gilt 
lines on them. The vitality and composure of her attitude, as of a bright-plumed 
bird poised easily before further flights, roused him to show her the limitations of 
her lot. So soon, so easily, would he be forgotten. 
 "You'll never know anything at first hand," he began, almost savagely. "It's all 
been done for you. You'll never know the pleasure of buying things after saving up 
for them, or reading books for the first time, or making discoveries." 
"Go on," Katharine observed, as he paused, suddenly doubtful, when he heard his 
voice proclaiming aloud these facts, whether there was any truth in them. 
"Of course, I don't know how you spend your time," he continued, a little stiffly, 
"but I suppose you have to show people round. You are writing a life of your 
grandfather, aren't you? And this kind of thing"--he nodded towards the other 
room, where they could hear bursts of cultivated laughter--"must take up a lot of 
time." 
She looked at him expectantly, as if between them they were decorating a small 
figure of herself, and she saw him hesitating in the disposition of some bow or 
sash. 
"You've got it very nearly right," she said, "but I only help my mother. I don't write 
myself." 
 "Do you do anything yourself?" he demanded. 
"What do you mean?" she asked. "I don't leave the house at ten and come back at 
six." 
"I don't mean that." 
Mr. Denham had recovered his self-control; he spoke with a quietness which made 
Katharine rather anxious that he should explain himself, but at the same time she 
wished to annoy him, to waft him away from her on some light current of ridicule 
or satire, as she was wont to do with these intermittent young men of her father's. 
"Nobody ever does do anything worth doing nowadays," she remarked. "You see"-
-she tapped the volume of her grandfather's poems--"we don't even print as well as 
they did, and as for poets or painters or novelists--there are none; so, at any rate, 
I'm not singular." 
"No, we haven't any great men," Denham replied. "I'm very glad that we haven't. I 
hate great men. The worship of greatness in the nineteenth century seems to me to 
explain the worthlessness of that generation." 
Katharine opened her lips and drew in her breath, as if to reply with equal vigor, 
when the shutting of a door in the next room withdrew her attention, and they both 
became conscious that the voices, which had been rising and falling round the tea-
table, had fallen silent; the light, even, seemed to have sunk lower. A moment later 
Mrs. Hilbery appeared in the doorway of the ante-room. She stood looking at them 
with a smile of expectancy on her face, as if a scene from the drama of the younger 
generation were being played for her benefit. She was a remarkable-looking 
woman, well advanced in the sixties, but owing to the lightness of her frame and 
the brightness of her eyes she seemed to have been wafted over the surface of the 
years without taking much harm in the passage. Her face was shrunken and 
aquiline, but any hint of sharpness was dispelled by the large blue eyes, at once 
sagacious and innocent, which seemed to regard the world with an enormous desire 
that it should behave itself nobly, and an entire confidence that it could do so, if it 
would only take the pains. 
Certain lines on the broad forehead and about the lips might be taken to suggest 
that she had known moments of some difficulty and perplexity in the course of her 
career, but these had not destroyed her trustfulness, and she was clearly still 
prepared to give every one any number of fresh chances and the whole system the 
benefit of the doubt. She wore a great resemblance to her father, and suggested, as 
he did, the fresh airs and open spaces of a younger world. 
"Well," she said, "how do you like our things, Mr. Denham?" 
Mr. Denham rose, put his book down, opened his mouth, but said nothing, as 
Katharine observed, with some amusement. 
Mrs. Hilbery handled the book he had laid down. 
"There are some books that live," she mused. "They are young with us, and they 
grow old with us. Are you fond of poetry, Mr. Denham? But what an absurd 
question to ask! The truth is, dear Mr. Fortescue has almost tired me out. He is so 
eloquent and so witty, so searching and so profound that, after half an hour or so, I 
feel inclined to turn out all the lights. But perhaps he'd be more wonderful than 
ever in the dark. What d'you think, Katharine? Shall we give a little party in 
complete darkness? There'd have to be bright rooms for the bores. . . ." 
Here Mr. Denham held out his hand. 
 "But we've any number of things to show you!" Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed, taking no 
notice of it. "Books, pictures, china, manuscripts, and the very chair that Mary 
Queen of Scots sat in when she heard of Darnley's murder. I must lie down for a 
little, and Katharine must change her dress (though she's wearing a very pretty 
one), but if you don't mind being left alone, supper will be at eight. I dare say you'll 
write a poem of your own while you're waiting. Ah, how I love the firelight! 
Doesn't our room look charming?" 
She stepped back and bade them contemplate the empty drawing-room, with its 
rich, irregular lights, as the flames leapt and wavered. 
"Dear things!" she exclaimed. "Dear chairs and tables! How like old friends they 
are--faithful, silent friends. Which reminds me, Katharine, little Mr. Anning is 
coming to-night, and Tite Street, and Cadogan Square. . . . Do remember to get that 
drawing of your great- uncle glazed. Aunt Millicent remarked it last time she was 
here, and I know how it would hurt me to see my father in a broken glass." 
It was like tearing through a maze of diamond-glittering spiders' webs to say good-
bye and escape, for at each movement Mrs. Hilbery remembered something further 
about the villainies of picture-framers or the delights of poetry, and at one time it 
seemed to the young man that he would be hypnotized into doing what she 
pretended to want him to do, for he could not suppose that she attached any value 
whatever to his presence. Katharine, however, made an opportunity for him to 
leave, and for that he was grateful to her, as one young person is grateful for the 
understanding of another.