LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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