CHAPTER IX
Katharine disliked telling her mother about Cyril's misbehavior quite asmuch as her father did, and for much the same reasons. They both shrank,nervously, as people fear the report of a gun on the stage, from allthat would have to be said on this occasion. Katharine, moreover, wasunable to decide what she thought of Cyril's misbehavior. As usual, shesaw something which her father and mother did not see, and the effect ofthat something was to suspend Cyril's behavior in her mind without anyqualification at all. They would think whether it was good or bad; toher it was merely a thing that had happened.
When Katharine reached the study, Mrs. Hilbery had already dipped herpen in the ink.
"Katharine," she said, lifting it in the air, "I've just made out sucha queer, strange thing about your grandfather. I'm three years and sixmonths older than he was when he died. I couldn't very well have beenhis mother, but I might have been his elder sister, and that seems to mesuch a pleasant fancy. I'm going to start quite fresh this morning, andget a lot done."
She began her sentence, at any rate, and Katharine sat down at her owntable, untied the bundle of old letters upon which she was working,smoothed them out absent-mindedly, and began to decipher the fadedscript. In a minute she looked across at her mother, to judge her mood.Peace and happiness had relaxed every muscle in her face; her lipswere parted very slightly, and her breath came in smooth, controlledinspirations like those of a child who is surrounding itself with abuilding of bricks, and increasing in ecstasy as each brick is placed inposition. So Mrs. Hilbery was raising round her the skies and trees ofthe past with every stroke of her pen, and recalling the voices ofthe dead. Quiet as the room was, and undisturbed by the sounds of thepresent moment, Katharine could fancy that here was a deep pool of pasttime, and that she and her mother were bathed in the light of sixtyyears ago. What could the present give, she wondered, to compare withthe rich crowd of gifts bestowed by the past? Here was a Thursdaymorning in process of manufacture; each second was minted fresh by theclock upon the mantelpiece. She strained her ears and could just hear,far off, the hoot of a motor-car and the rush of wheels coming nearerand dying away again, and the voices of men crying old iron andvegetables in one of the poorer streets at the back of the house. Rooms,of course, accumulate their suggestions, and any room in which one hasbeen used to carry on any particular occupation gives off memoriesof moods, of ideas, of postures that have been seen in it; so that toattempt any different kind of work there is almost impossible.
Katharine was unconsciously affected, each time she entered her mother'sroom, by all these influences, which had had their birth years ago,when she was a child, and had something sweet and solemn about them,and connected themselves with early memories of the cavernous glooms andsonorous echoes of the Abbey where her grandfather lay buried. All thebooks and pictures, even the chairs and tables, had belonged to him,or had reference to him; even the china dogs on the mantelpiece and thelittle shepherdesses with their sheep had been bought by him for a pennya piece from a man who used to stand with a tray of toys in KensingtonHigh Street, as Katharine had often heard her mother tell. Often shehad sat in this room, with her mind fixed so firmly on those vanishedfigures that she could almost see the muscles round their eyes and lips,and had given to each his own voice, with its tricks of accent, and hiscoat and his cravat. Often she had seemed to herself to be moving amongthem, an invisible ghost among the living, better acquainted with themthan with her own friends, because she knew their secrets and possesseda divine foreknowledge of their destiny. They had been so unhappy, suchmuddlers, so wrong-headed, it seemed to her. She could have told themwhat to do, and what not to do. It was a melancholy fact that theywould pay no heed to her, and were bound to come to grief in their ownantiquated way. Their behavior was often grotesquely irrational; theirconventions monstrously absurd; and yet, as she brooded upon them, shefelt so closely attached to them that it was useless to try to passjudgment upon them. She very nearly lost consciousness that she wasa separate being, with a future of her own. On a morning of slightdepression, such as this, she would try to find some sort of clue to themuddle which their old letters presented; some reason which seemedto make it worth while to them; some aim which they kept steadily inview--but she was interrupted.
Mrs. Hilbery had risen from her table, and was standing looking out ofthe window at a string of barges swimming up the river.
Katharine watched her. Suddenly Mrs. Hilbery turned abruptly, andexclaimed:
"I really believe I'm bewitched! I only want three sentences, you see,something quite straightforward and commonplace, and I can't find 'em."
She began to pace up and down the room, snatching up her duster; but shewas too much annoyed to find any relief, as yet, in polishing the backsof books.
"Besides," she said, giving the sheet she had written to Katharine, "Idon't believe this'll do. Did your grandfather ever visit the Hebrides,Katharine?" She looked in a strangely beseeching way at her daughter."My mind got running on the Hebrides, and I couldn't help writing alittle description of them. Perhaps it would do at the beginning of achapter. Chapters often begin quite differently from the way they go on,you know." Katharine read what her mother had written. She might havebeen a schoolmaster criticizing a child's essay. Her face gave Mrs.Hilbery, who watched it anxiously, no ground for hope.
"It's very beautiful," she stated, "but, you see, mother, we ought to gofrom point to point--"
"Oh, I know," Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed. "And that's just what I can't do.Things keep coming into my head. It isn't that I don't know everythingand feel everything (who did know him, if I didn't?), but I can't putit down, you see. There's a kind of blind spot," she said, touching herforehead, "there. And when I can't sleep o' nights, I fancy I shall diewithout having done it."
From exultation she had passed to the depths of depression which theimagination of her death aroused. The depression communicated itselfto Katharine. How impotent they were, fiddling about all day long withpapers! And the clock was striking eleven and nothing done! She watchedher mother, now rummaging in a great brass-bound box which stood by hertable, but she did not go to her help. Of course, Katharine reflected,her mother had now lost some paper, and they would waste the rest of themorning looking for it. She cast her eyes down in irritation, and readagain her mother's musical sentences about the silver gulls, and theroots of little pink flowers washed by pellucid streams, and the bluemists of hyacinths, until she was struck by her mother's silence. Sheraised her eyes. Mrs. Hilbery had emptied a portfolio containing oldphotographs over her table, and was looking from one to another.
"Surely, Katharine," she said, "the men were far handsomer in those daysthan they are now, in spite of their odious whiskers? Look at old JohnGraham, in his white waistcoat--look at Uncle Harley. That's Peter themanservant, I suppose. Uncle John brought him back from India."
Katharine looked at her mother, but did not stir or answer. She hadsuddenly become very angry, with a rage which their relationship madesilent, and therefore doubly powerful and critical. She felt all theunfairness of the claim which her mother tacitly made to her time andsympathy, and what Mrs. Hilbery took, Katharine thought bitterly, shewasted. Then, in a flash, she remembered that she had still to tell herabout Cyril's misbehavior. Her anger immediately dissipated itself; itbroke like some wave that has gathered itself high above the rest; thewaters were resumed into the sea again, and Katharine felt once morefull of peace and solicitude, and anxious only that her mother should beprotected from pain. She crossed the room instinctively, and sat onthe arm of her mother's chair. Mrs. Hilbery leant her head against herdaughter's body.
"What is nobler," she mused, turning over the photographs, "than to bea woman to whom every one turns, in sorrow or difficulty? How have theyoung women of your generation improved upon that, Katharine? I can seethem now, sweeping over the lawns at Melbury House, in their flouncesand furbelows, so calm and stately and imperial (and the monkey andthe little black dwarf following behind), as
if nothing mattered inthe world but to be beautiful and kind. But they did more than we do, Isometimes think. They WERE, and that's better than doing. They seem tome like ships, like majestic ships, holding on their way, not shoving orpushing, not fretted by little things, as we are, but taking their way,like ships with white sails."
Katharine tried to interrupt this discourse, but the opportunity did notcome, and she could not forbear to turn over the pages of the album inwhich the old photographs were stored. The faces of these men and womenshone forth wonderfully after the hubbub of living faces, and seemed,as her mother had said, to wear a marvelous dignity and calm, as if theyhad ruled their kingdoms justly and deserved great love. Some were ofalmost incredible beauty, others were ugly enough in a forcible way, butnone were dull or bored or insignificant. The superb stiff folds of thecrinolines suited the women; the cloaks and hats of the gentlemen seemedfull of character. Once more Katharine felt the serene air all roundher, and seemed far off to hear the solemn beating of the sea upon theshore. But she knew that she must join the present on to this past.
Mrs. Hilbery was rambling on, from story to story.
"That's Janie Mannering," she said, pointing to a superb, white-haireddame, whose satin robes seemed strung with pearls. "I must have told youhow she found her cook drunk under the kitchen table when the Empresswas coming to dinner, and tucked up her velvet sleeves (she alwaysdressed like an Empress herself), cooked the whole meal, and appeared inthe drawing-room as if she'd been sleeping on a bank of roses all day.She could do anything with her hands--they all could--make a cottage orembroider a petticoat.
"And that's Queenie Colquhoun," she went on, turning the pages, "whotook her coffin out with her to Jamaica, packed with lovely shawls andbonnets, because you couldn't get coffins in Jamaica, and she had ahorror of dying there (as she did), and being devoured by the whiteants. And there's Sabine, the loveliest of them all; ah! it was likea star rising when she came into the room. And that's Miriam, in hercoachman's cloak, with all the little capes on, and she wore greattop-boots underneath. You young people may say you're unconventional,but you're nothing compared with her."
Turning the page, she came upon the picture of a very masculine,handsome lady, whose head the photographer had adorned with an imperialcrown.
"Ah, you wretch!" Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed, "what a wicked old despot youwere, in your day! How we all bowed down before you! 'Maggie,' she usedto say, 'if it hadn't been for me, where would you be now?' And it wastrue; she brought them together, you know. She said to my father, 'Marryher,' and he did; and she said to poor little Clara, 'Fall down andworship him,' and she did; but she got up again, of course. What elsecould one expect? She was a mere child--eighteen--and half dead withfright, too. But that old tyrant never repented. She used to say thatshe had given them three perfect months, and no one had a right to more;and I sometimes think, Katharine, that's true, you know. It's more thanmost of us have, only we have to pretend, which was a thing neither ofthem could ever do. I fancy," Mrs. Hilbery mused, "that there was a kindof sincerity in those days between men and women which, with all youroutspokenness, you haven't got."
Katharine again tried to interrupt. But Mrs. Hilbery had been gatheringimpetus from her recollections, and was now in high spirits.
"They must have been good friends at heart," she resumed, "because sheused to sing his songs. Ah, how did it go?" and Mrs. Hilbery, who had avery sweet voice, trolled out a famous lyric of her father's which hadbeen set to an absurdly and charmingly sentimental air by some earlyVictorian composer.
"It's the vitality of them!" she concluded, striking her fist againstthe table. "That's what we haven't got! We're virtuous, we're earnest,we go to meetings, we pay the poor their wages, but we don't live asthey lived. As often as not, my father wasn't in bed three nights outof the seven, but always fresh as paint in the morning. I hear him now,come singing up the stairs to the nursery, and tossing the loaffor breakfast on his sword-stick, and then off we went for a day'spleasuring--Richmond, Hampton Court, the Surrey Hills. Why shouldn't wego, Katharine? It's going to be a fine day."
At this moment, just as Mrs. Hilbery was examining the weather from thewindow, there was a knock at the door. A slight, elderly lady came in,and was saluted by Katharine, with very evident dismay, as "Aunt Celia!"She was dismayed because she guessed why Aunt Celia had come. It wascertainly in order to discuss the case of Cyril and the woman who wasnot his wife, and owing to her procrastination Mrs. Hilbery was quiteunprepared. Who could be more unprepared? Here she was, suggesting thatall three of them should go on a jaunt to Blackfriars to inspect thesite of Shakespeare's theater, for the weather was hardly settled enoughfor the country.
To this proposal Mrs. Milvain listened with a patient smile, whichindicated that for many years she had accepted such eccentricities inher sister-in-law with bland philosophy. Katharine took up her positionat some distance, standing with her foot on the fender, as though by sodoing she could get a better view of the matter. But, in spite of heraunt's presence, how unreal the whole question of Cyril and his moralityappeared! The difficulty, it now seemed, was not to break the newsgently to Mrs. Hilbery, but to make her understand it. How was oneto lasso her mind, and tether it to this minute, unimportant spot? Amatter-of-fact statement seemed best.
"I think Aunt Celia has come to talk about Cyril, mother," she saidrather brutally. "Aunt Celia has discovered that Cyril is married. Hehas a wife and children."
"No, he is NOT married," Mrs. Milvain interposed, in low tones,addressing herself to Mrs. Hilbery. "He has two children, and another onthe way."
Mrs. Hilbery looked from one to the other in bewilderment.
"We thought it better to wait until it was proved before we told you,"Katharine added.
"But I met Cyril only a fortnight ago at the National Gallery!" Mrs.Hilbery exclaimed. "I don't believe a word of it," and she tossed herhead with a smile on her lips at Mrs. Milvain, as though she could quiteunderstand her mistake, which was a very natural mistake, in the case ofa childless woman, whose husband was something very dull in the Board ofTrade.
"I didn't WISH to believe it, Maggie," said Mrs. Milvain. "For a longtime I COULDN'T believe it. But now I've seen, and I HAVE to believeit."
"Katharine," Mrs. Hilbery demanded, "does your father know of this?"
Katharine nodded.
"Cyril married!" Mrs. Hilbery repeated. "And never telling us a word,though we've had him in our house since he was a child--noble William'sson! I can't believe my ears!"
Feeling that the burden of proof was laid upon her, Mrs. Milvainnow proceeded with her story. She was elderly and fragile, but herchildlessness seemed always to impose these painful duties on her, andto revere the family, and to keep it in repair, had now become the chiefobject of her life. She told her story in a low, spasmodic, and somewhatbroken voice.
"I have suspected for some time that he was not happy. There were newlines on his face. So I went to his rooms, when I knew he was engagedat the poor men's college. He lectures there--Roman law, you know, or itmay be Greek. The landlady said Mr. Alardyce only slept there about oncea fortnight now. He looked so ill, she said. She had seen him with ayoung person. I suspected something directly. I went to his room, andthere was an envelope on the mantelpiece, and a letter with an addressin Seton Street, off the Kennington Road."
Mrs. Hilbery fidgeted rather restlessly, and hummed fragments of hertune, as if to interrupt.
"I went to Seton Street," Aunt Celia continued firmly. "A very lowplace--lodging-houses, you know, with canaries in the window. Numberseven just like all the others. I rang, I knocked; no one came. I wentdown the area. I am certain I saw some one inside--children--a cradle.But no reply--no reply." She sighed, and looked straight in front of herwith a glazed expression in her half-veiled blue eyes.
"I stood in the street," she resumed, "in case I could catch a sight ofone of them. It seemed a very long time. There were rough men singingin the public-house round the corner. At last the
door opened, and someone--it must have been the woman herself--came right past me. There wasonly the pillar-box between us."
"And what did she look like?" Mrs. Hilbery demanded.
"One could see how the poor boy had been deluded," was all that Mrs.Milvain vouchsafed by way of description.
"Poor thing!" Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed.
"Poor Cyril!" Mrs. Milvain said, laying a slight emphasis upon Cyril.
"But they've got nothing to live upon," Mrs. Hilbery continued. "If he'dcome to us like a man," she went on, "and said, 'I've been a fool,' onewould have pitied him; one would have tried to help him. There's nothingso disgraceful after all--But he's been going about all these years,pretending, letting one take it for granted, that he was single. And thepoor deserted little wife--"
"She is NOT his wife," Aunt Celia interrupted.
"I've never heard anything so detestable!" Mrs. Hilbery wound up,striking her fist on the arm of her chair. As she realized the facts shebecame thoroughly disgusted, although, perhaps, she was more hurt bythe concealment of the sin than by the sin itself. She looked splendidlyroused and indignant; and Katharine felt an immense relief and pride inher mother. It was plain that her indignation was very genuine, andthat her mind was as perfectly focused upon the facts as any one couldwish--more so, by a long way, than Aunt Celia's mind, which seemed tobe timidly circling, with a morbid pleasure, in these unpleasant shades.She and her mother together would take the situation in hand, visitCyril, and see the whole thing through.
"We must realize Cyril's point of view first," she said, speakingdirectly to her mother, as if to a contemporary, but before the wordswere out of her mouth, there was more confusion outside, and CousinCaroline, Mrs. Hilbery's maiden cousin, entered the room. Although shewas by birth an Alardyce, and Aunt Celia a Hilbery, the complexities ofthe family relationship were such that each was at once first and secondcousin to the other, and thus aunt and cousin to the culprit Cyril, sothat his misbehavior was almost as much Cousin Caroline's affair asAunt Celia's. Cousin Caroline was a lady of very imposing height andcircumference, but in spite of her size and her handsome trappings,there was something exposed and unsheltered in her expression, as iffor many summers her thin red skin and hooked nose and reduplication ofchins, so much resembling the profile of a cockatoo, had been bared tothe weather; she was, indeed, a single lady; but she had, it was thehabit to say, "made a life for herself," and was thus entitled to beheard with respect.
"This unhappy business," she began, out of breath as she was. "If thetrain had not gone out of the station just as I arrived, I should havebeen with you before. Celia has doubtless told you. You will agree withme, Maggie. He must be made to marry her at once for the sake of thechildren--"
"But does he refuse to marry her?" Mrs. Hilbery inquired, with a returnof her bewilderment.
"He has written an absurd perverted letter, all quotations," CousinCaroline puffed. "He thinks he's doing a very fine thing, where we onlysee the folly of it.... The girl's every bit as infatuated as he is--forwhich I blame him."
"She entangled him," Aunt Celia intervened, with a very curioussmoothness of intonation, which seemed to convey a vision of threadsweaving and interweaving a close, white mesh round their victim.
"It's no use going into the rights and wrongs of the affair now, Celia,"said Cousin Caroline with some acerbity, for she believed herself theonly practical one of the family, and regretted that, owing to theslowness of the kitchen clock, Mrs. Milvain had already confusedpoor dear Maggie with her own incomplete version of the facts. "Themischief's done, and very ugly mischief too. Are we to allow the thirdchild to be born out of wedlock? (I am sorry to have to say these thingsbefore you, Katharine.) He will bear your name, Maggie--your father'sname, remember."
"But let us hope it will be a girl," said Mrs. Hilbery.
Katharine, who had been looking at her mother constantly, while thechatter of tongues held sway, perceived that the look of straightforwardindignation had already vanished; her mother was evidently castingabout in her mind for some method of escape, or bright spot, or suddenillumination which should show to the satisfaction of everybody that allhad happened, miraculously but incontestably, for the best.
"It's detestable--quite detestable!" she repeated, but in tones of nogreat assurance; and then her face lit up with a smile which, tentativeat first, soon became almost assured. "Nowadays, people don't thinkso badly of these things as they used to do," she began. "It will behorribly uncomfortable for them sometimes, but if they are brave, cleverchildren, as they will be, I dare say it'll make remarkable people ofthem in the end. Robert Browning used to say that every great man hasJewish blood in him, and we must try to look at it in that light. And,after all, Cyril has acted on principle. One may disagree withhis principle, but, at least, one can respect it--like the FrenchRevolution, or Cromwell cutting the King's head off. Some of the mostterrible things in history have been done on principle," she concluded.
"I'm afraid I take a very different view of principle," Cousin Carolineremarked tartly.
"Principle!" Aunt Celia repeated, with an air of deprecating such a wordin such a connection. "I will go to-morrow and see him," she added.
"But why should you take these disagreeable things upon yourself,Celia?" Mrs. Hilbery interposed, and Cousin Caroline thereupon protestedwith some further plan involving sacrifice of herself.
Growing weary of it all, Katharine turned to the window, and stood amongthe folds of the curtain, pressing close to the window-pane, and gazingdisconsolately at the river much in the attitude of a child depressedby the meaningless talk of its elders. She was much disappointed in hermother--and in herself too. The little tug which she gave to the blind,letting it fly up to the top with a snap, signified her annoyance. Shewas very angry, and yet impotent to give expression to her anger, orknow with whom she was angry. How they talked and moralized and made upstories to suit their own version of the becoming, and secretly praisedtheir own devotion and tact! No; they had their dwelling in a mist, shedecided; hundreds of miles away--away from what? "Perhaps it would bebetter if I married William," she thought suddenly, and the thoughtappeared to loom through the mist like solid ground. She stood there,thinking of her own destiny, and the elder ladies talked on, untilthey had talked themselves into a decision to ask the young woman toluncheon, and tell her, very friendlily, how such behavior appeared towomen like themselves, who knew the world. And then Mrs. Hilbery wasstruck by a better idea.