Night and Day | Page 6

"There!" Denham found himself looked down upon by the eyes of the
great poet, Richard Alardyce, and suffered a little shock which would
have led him, had he been wearing a hat, to remove it. The eyes looked
at him out of the mellow pinks and yellows of the paint with divine

friendliness, which embraced him, and passed on to contemplate the
entire world. The paint had so faded that very little but the beautiful
large eyes were left, dark in the surrounding dimness.
Katharine waited as though for him to receive a full impression, and
then she said:
"This is his writing-table. He used this pen," and she lifted a quill pen
and laid it down again. The writing-table was splashed with old ink,
and the pen disheveled in service. There lay the gigantic gold- rimmed
spectacles, ready to his hand, and beneath the table was a pair of large,
worn slippers, one of which Katharine picked up, remarking:
"I think my grandfather must have been at least twice as large as any
one is nowadays. This," she went on, as if she knew what she had to
say by heart, "is the original manuscript of the 'Ode to Winter.' The
early poems are far less corrected than the later. Would you like to look
at it?"
While Mr. Denham examined the manuscript, she glanced up at her
grandfather, and, for the thousandth time, fell into a pleasant dreamy
state in which she seemed to be the companion of those giant men, of
their own lineage, at any rate, and the insignificant present moment was
put to shame. That magnificent ghostly head on the canvas, surely,
never beheld all the trivialities of a Sunday afternoon, and it did not
seem to matter what she and this young man said to each other, for they
were only small people.
"This is a copy of the first edition of the poems," she continued,
without considering the fact that Mr. Denham was still occupied with
the manuscript, "which contains several poems that have not been
reprinted, as well as corrections." She paused for a minute, and then
went on, as if these spaces had all been calculated.
"That lady in blue is my great-grandmother, by Millington. Here is my
uncle's walking-stick--he was Sir Richard Warburton, you know, and
rode with Havelock to the Relief of Lucknow. And then, let me see--oh,
that's the original Alardyce, 1697, the founder of the family fortunes,

with his wife. Some one gave us this bowl the other day because it has
their crest and initials. We think it must have been given them to
celebrate their silver wedding-day."
Here she stopped for a moment, wondering why it was that Mr.
Denham said nothing. Her feeling that he was antagonistic to her,
which had lapsed while she thought of her family possessions, returned
so keenly that she stopped in the middle of her catalog and looked at
him. Her mother, wishing to connect him reputably with the great dead,
had compared him with Mr. Ruskin; and the comparison was in
Katharine's mind, and led her to be more critical of the young man than
was fair, for a young man paying a call in a tail-coat is in a different
element altogether from a head seized at its climax of expressiveness,
gazing immutably from behind a sheet of glass, which was all that
remained to her of Mr. Ruskin. He had a singular face--a face built for
swiftness and decision rather than for massive contemplation; the
forehead broad, the nose long and formidable, the lips clean-shaven and
at once dogged and sensitive, the cheeks lean, with a deeply running
tide of red blood in them. His eyes, expressive now of the usual
masculine impersonality and authority, might reveal more subtle
emotions under favorable circumstances, for they were large, and of a
clear, brown color; they seemed unexpectedly to hesitate and speculate;
but Katharine only looked at him to wonder whether his face would not
have come nearer the standard of her dead heroes if it had been adorned
with side-whiskers. In his spare build and thin, though healthy, cheeks,
she saw tokens of an angular and acrid soul. His voice, she noticed, had
a slight vibrating or creaking sound in it, as he laid down the
manuscript and said:
"You must be very proud of your family, Miss Hilbery."
"Yes, I am," Katharine answered, and she added, "Do you think there's
anything wrong in that?"
"Wrong? How should it be wrong? It must be a bore, though, showing
your things to visitors," he added reflectively.
"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.