Night and Day | Page 5

composure stamped her, a
combination of qualities that produced a very marked character, and
one that was not calculated to put a young man, who scarcely knew her,
at his ease. For the rest, she was tall; her dress was of some quiet color,
with old yellow-tinted lace for ornament, to which the spark of an
ancient jewel gave its one red gleam. Denham noticed that, although
silent, she kept sufficient control of the situation to answer immediately
her mother appealed to her for help, and yet it was obvious to him that

she attended only with the surface skin of her mind. It struck him that
her position at the tea-table, among all these elderly people, was not
without its difficulties, and he checked his inclination to find her, or her
attitude, generally antipathetic to him. The talk had passed over
Manchester, after dealing with it very generously.
"Would it be the Battle of Trafalgar or the Spanish Armada,
Katharine?" her mother demanded.
"Trafalgar, mother."
"Trafalgar, of course! How stupid of me! Another cup of tea, with a
thin slice of lemon in it, and then, dear Mr. Fortescue, please explain
my absurd little puzzle. One can't help believing gentlemen with
Roman noses, even if one meets them in omnibuses."
Mr. Hilbery here interposed so far as Denham was concerned, and
talked a great deal of sense about the solicitors' profession, and the
changes which he had seen in his lifetime. Indeed, Denham properly
fell to his lot, owing to the fact that an article by Denham upon some
legal matter, published by Mr. Hilbery in his Review, had brought them
acquainted. But when a moment later Mrs. Sutton Bailey was
announced, he turned to her, and Mr. Denham found himself sitting
silent, rejecting possible things to say, beside Katharine, who was silent
too. Being much about the same age and both under thirty, they were
prohibited from the use of a great many convenient phrases which
launch conversation into smooth waters. They were further silenced by
Katharine's rather malicious determination not to help this young man,
in whose upright and resolute bearing she detected something hostile to
her surroundings, by any of the usual feminine amenities. They
therefore sat silent, Denham controlling his desire to say something
abrupt and explosive, which should shock her into life. But Mrs.
Hilbery was immediately sensitive to any silence in the drawing-room,
as of a dumb note in a sonorous scale, and leaning across the table she
observed, in the curiously tentative detached manner which always
gave her phrases the likeness of butterflies flaunting from one sunny
spot to another, "D'you know, Mr. Denham, you remind me so much of
dear Mr. Ruskin. . . . Is it his tie, Katharine, or his hair, or the way he

sits in his chair? Do tell me, Mr. Denham, are you an admirer of Ruskin?
Some one, the other day, said to me, 'Oh, no, we don't read Ruskin, Mrs.
Hilbery.' What DO you read, I wonder?--for you can't spend all your
time going up in aeroplanes and burrowing into the bowels of the
earth."
She looked benevolently at Denham, who said nothing articulate, and
then at Katharine, who smiled but said nothing either, upon which Mrs.
Hilbery seemed possessed by a brilliant idea, and exclaimed:
"I'm sure Mr. Denham would like to see our things, Katharine. I'm sure
he's not like that dreadful young man, Mr. Ponting, who told me that he
considered it our duty to live exclusively in the present. After all, what
IS the present? Half of it's the past, and the better half, too, I should
say," she added, turning to Mr. Fortescue.
Denham rose, half meaning to go, and thinking that he had seen all that
there was to see, but Katharine rose at the same moment, and saying,
"Perhaps you would like to see the pictures," led the way across the
drawing-room to a smaller room opening out of it.
The smaller room was something like a chapel in a cathedral, or a
grotto in a cave, for the booming sound of the traffic in the distance
suggested the soft surge of waters, and the oval mirrors, with their
silver surface, were like deep pools trembling beneath starlight. But the
comparison to a religious temple of some kind was the more apt of the
two, for the little room was crowded with relics.
As Katharine touched different spots, lights sprang here and there, and
revealed a square mass of red-and-gold books, and then a long skirt in
blue-and-white paint lustrous behind glass, and then a mahogany
writing-table, with its orderly equipment, and, finally, a picture above
the table, to which special illumination was accorded. When Katharine
had touched these last lights, she stood back, as much as to say,