‘In a crowd? Why in a crowd?’ Mary asked, deepening the two lines between her eyes, and hoisting herself nearer to Katharine upon the window-sill.
‘Don’t you see how many different things these people care about? And I want to beat them down—I only mean,’ she corrected herself, ‘that I want to assert myself, and it’s difficult, if one hasn’t a profession.’
Mary smiled, thinking that to beat people down was a process that should present no difficulty to Miss Katharine Hilbery. They knew each other so slightly that the beginning of intimacy, which Katharine seemed to initiate by talking about herself, had something solemn in it, and they were silent, as if to decide whether to proceed or not. They tested the ground.
Ah, but I want to trample upon their prostrate bodies!’ Katharine announced, a moment later, with a laugh, as if at the train of thought which had led her to this conclusion.
‘One doesn’t necessarily trample upon people’s bodies because one runs an office,’ Mary remarked.
‘No. Perhaps not,’ Katharine replied. The conversation lapsed, and Mary saw Katharine looking out into the room rather moodily with closed lips, the desire to talk about herself or to initiate a friendship having, apparently, left her. Mary was struck by her capacity for being thus easily silent, and occupied with her own thoughts. It was a habit that spoke of loneliness and a mind thinking for itself. When Katharine remained silent Mary was slightly embarrassed.
‘Yes, they’re very like sheep,’ she repeated, foolishly.
And yet they are very clever—at least,’ Katharine added, ‘I suppose they have all read Webster.’
‘Surely you don’t think that a proof of cleverness? I’ve read Webster, I’ve read Ben Jonson,q but I don’t think myself clever—not exactly, at least.’
‘I think you must be very clever,’ Katharine observed.
‘Why? Because I run an office?’
‘I wasn’t thinking of that. I was thinking how you live alone in this room, and have parties.’
Mary reflected for a second.
‘It means, chiefly, a power of being disagreeable to one’s own family, I think. I have that, perhaps. I didn’t want to live at home, and I told my father. He didn’t like it ... But then I have a sister, and you haven’t, have you?’
‘No, I haven’t any sisters.’
‘You are writing a life of your grandfather?’ Mary pursued.
Katharine seemed instantly to be confronted by some familiar thought from which she wished to escape. She replied, ‘Yes, I am helping my mother,’ in such a way that Mary felt herself baffled, and put back again into the position in which she had been at the beginning of their talk. It seemed to her that Katharine possessed a curious power of drawing near and receding, which sent alternate emotions through her far more quickly than was usual, and kept her in a condition of curious alertness. Desiring to classify her, Mary bethought her of the convenient term ‘egoist’.
‘She’s an egoist,’ she said to herself, and stored that word up to give to Ralph one day when, as it would certainly fall out, they were discussing Miss Hilbery.
‘Heavens, what a mess there’ll be to-morrow morning!’ Katharine exclaimed. ‘I hope you don’t sleep in this room, Miss Datchet?’
Mary laughed.
‘What are you laughing at?’ Katharine demanded.
‘I won’t tell you.’
‘Let me guess. You were laughing because you thought I’d changed the conversation?’
‘No.’
‘Because you think—’ She paused.
‘If you want to know, I was laughing at the way you said Miss Datchet.’
‘Mary, then. Mary, Mary, Mary.’
So saying, Katharine drew back the curtain in order, perhaps, to conceal the momentary flush of pleasure which is caused by coming perceptibly nearer to another person.
‘Mary Datchet,’ said Mary. ‘It’s not such an imposing name as Katharine Hilbery, I’m afraid.’
They both looked out of the window, first up at the hard silver moon, stationary among a hurry of little grey- blue clouds, and then down upon the roofs of London, with all their upright chimneys, and then below them at the empty moonlit pavement of the street, upon which the joint of each paving-stone was clearly marked out. Mary then saw Katharine raise her eyes again to the moon, with a contemplative look in them, as though she were setting that moon against the moon of other nights, held in memory. Some one in the room behind them made a joke about star-gazing, which destroyed their pleasure in it, and they looked back into the room again.
Ralph had been watching for this moment, and he instantly produced his sentence.
‘I wonder, Miss Hilbery, whether you remembered to get that picture glazed?’ His voice showed that the question was one that had been prepared.
‘Oh, you idiot!’ Mary exclaimed, very nearly aloud, with a sense that Ralph had said something very stupid. So, after three lessons in Latin grammar, one might correct a fellow-student, whose knowledge did not embrace the ablative of
‘Portrait—what portrait?’ Katharine asked. ‘Oh, at home, you mean—that Sunday afternoon. Was it the day Mr Fortescue came? Yes, I think I remembered it.’
