Night and Day

At this moment, just as Mrs Hilbery was examining the weather from the window, 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 was certainly in order to discuss the case of Cyril and the woman who was not his wife, and owing to her procrastination Mrs Hilbery was quite unprepared. Who could be more unprepared? Here she was, suggesting that all three of them should go on a jaunt to Blackfriars^at to inspect the site of Shakespeare’s theatre, for the weather was hardly settled enough for the country.

To this proposal Mrs Milvain listened with a patient smile, which indicated that for many years she had accepted such eccentricities in her sister-in-law with bland philosophy. Katharine took up her position at some distance, standing with her foot on the fender, as though by doing so she could get a better view of the matter. But, in spite of her aunt’s presence, how unreal the whole question of Cyril and his morality appeared! The difficulty, it now seemed, was not to break the news gently to Mrs Hilbery, but to make her understand it. How was one to lasso her mind, and tether it to this minute, unimportant spot? A matter-of-fact statement seemed best.

‘I think Aunt Celia has come to talk about Cyril, mother,’ she said rather brutally. ‘Aunt Celia has discovered that Cyril is married. He has 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 on the 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!’^au Mrs Hilbery exclaimed. ‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ and she tossed her head with a smile on her lips at Mrs Milvain, as though she could quite understand her mistake, which was a very natural mistake, in the case of a childless woman, whose husband was something very dull in the Board of Trade.

‘I didn’t wish to believe it, Maggie,’ said Mrs Milvain. ‘For a long time I couldn’t believe it. But now I’ve seen, and I have to believe it.’

‘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’s son! I can’t believe my ears!’

Feeling that the burden of proof was laid upon her, Mrs Milvain now proceeded with her story. She was elderly and fragile, but her childlessness seemed always to impose these painful duties on her, and to revere the family, and to keep it in repair, had now become the chief object of her life. She told her story in a low, spasmodic, and somewhat broken voice.

‘I have suspected for some time that he was not happy. There were new lines on his face. So I went to his rooms, when I knew he was engaged at the poor men’s college. He lectures there—Roman law, you know, or it may be Greek. The landlady said Mr Alardyce only slept there about once a fortnight now. He looked so ill, she said. She had seen him with a young person. I suspected something directly. I went to his room, and there was an envelope on the mantelpiece, and a letter with an address in Seton Street, off the Kennington Road.’³

Mrs Hilbery fidgeted rather restlessly, and hummed fragments of her tune, as if to interrupt.

‘I went to Seton Street,’ Aunt Celia continued firmly. A very low place—lodging—houses, you know, with canaries in the window. Number seven just like all the others. I rang, I knocked; no one came. I went down 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 her with a glazed expression in her half-veiled blue eyes.

‘I stood in the street,’ she resumed, ‘in case I could catch a sight of one of them. It seemed a very long time. There were rough men singing in the public-house round the corner. At last the door opened and some one—it must have been the woman herself—came right past me. There was only 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’d come to us like a man,’ she went on, ‘and said, “I’ve been a fool,” one would have pitied him; one would have tried to help him. There’s nothing so disgraceful after all—But he’s been going about all these years, pretending, letting one take it for granted, that he was single. And the poor 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 she became thoroughly disgusted, although, perhaps, she was more hurt by the concealment of the sin than by the sin itself: She looked splendidly roused and indignant; and Katharine felt an immense relief and pride in her mother. It was plain that her indignation was very genuine, and that her mind was as perfectly focused upon the facts as any one could wish—more so, by a long way, than Aunt Celia’s mind, which seemed to be timidly circling, with a morbid pleasure, in these unpleasant shades. She and her mother together would take the situation in hand, visit Cyril, and see the whole thing through.

‘We must realize Cyril’s point of view first,’ she said, speaking directly to her mother, as if to a contemporary, but before the words were out of her mouth, there was more confusion outside, and Cousin Caroline, Mrs Hilbery’s maiden cousin, entered the room. Although she was by birth an Alardyce, and Aunt Celia a Hilbery, the complexities of the family relationship were such that each was at once first and second cousin to the other, and thus aunt and cousin to the culprit Cyril, so that his misbehaviour was almost as much Cousin Caroline’s affair as Aunt Celia’s. Cousin Caroline was a lady of very imposing height and circumference, but in spite of her size and her handsome trappings, there was something exposed and unsheltered in her expression, as if for many summers her thin red skin and hooked nose and reduplication of chins, so much resembling the profile of a cockatoo, had been bared to the weather; she was, indeed, a single lady; but she had, it was the habit to say, ‘made a life for herself,’ and was thus entitled to be heard with respect.