Night and Day | Page 8

"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