Chapter 24 - Page 2

directly beneath one's feet, was so absorbing to her on this particular occasion that she greeted her daughter with the exclamation:

"D'you think he ever passed this house?"

The question, for the moment, seemed to Katharine to have reference to Ralph Denham.

"On his way to Blackfriars, I mean," Mrs. Hilbery continued, "for you know the latest discovery is that he owned a house there."

Katharine still looked about her in perplexity, and Mrs. Hilbery added:

"Which is a proof that he wasn't as poor as they've sometimes said. I should like to think that he had enough, though I don't in the least want him to be rich."

Then, perceiving her daughter's expression of perplexity, Mrs. Hilbery burst out laughing.

"My dear, I'm not talking about your William, though that's another reason for liking him. I'm talking, I'm thinking, I'm dreaming of my William--William Shakespeare, of course. Isn't it odd," she mused, standing at the window and tapping gently upon the pane, "that for all one can see, that dear old thing in the blue bonnet, crossing the road with her basket on her arm, has never heard that there was such a person? Yet it all goes on: lawyers hurrying to their work, cabmen squabbling for their fares, little boys rolling their hoops, little girls throwing bread to the gulls, as if there weren't a Shakespeare in the world. I should like to stand at that crossing all day long and say: 'People, read Shakespeare!'"

Katharine sat down at her table and opened a long dusty envelope. As Shelley was mentioned in the course of the letter as if he were alive, it had, of course, considerable value. Her immediate task was to decide whether the whole letter should be printed, or only the paragraph which mentioned Shelley's name, and she reached out for a pen and held it in readiness to do justice upon the sheet. Her pen, however, remained in the air. Almost surreptitiously she slipped a clean sheet in front of her, and her hand, descending, began drawing square boxes halved and quartered by straight lines, and then circles which underwent the same process of dissection.

"Katharine! I've hit upon a brilliant idea!" Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed--"to lay out, say, a hundred pounds or so on copies of Shakespeare, and give them to working men. Some of your clever friends who get up meetings might help us, Katharine. And that might lead to a playhouse, where we could all take parts. You'd be Rosalind--but you've a dash of the old nurse in you. Your father's Hamlet, come to years of discretion; and I'm--well, I'm a bit of them all; I'm quite a large bit of the fool, but the fools in Shakespeare say all the clever things. Now who shall William be? A hero? Hotspur? Henry the Fifth? No, William's got a touch of Hamlet in him, too. I can fancy that William talks to himself when he's alone. Ah, Katharine, you must say very beautiful things when you're together!" she added wistfully,