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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0c99202 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #60327 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60327) diff --git a/old/60327-0.txt b/old/60327-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index bf5e68a..0000000 --- a/old/60327-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,14927 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Green Mirror, by Hugh Walpole - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Green Mirror - A Quiet Story - -Author: Hugh Walpole - -Release Date: September 19, 2019 [EBook #60327] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREEN MIRROR *** - - - - -Produced by David Jones, Al Haines, Mary Meehan & the -online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at -http://www.pgdpcanada.net - - - - - - - - - - - - -[Illustration] - - - - - _The_ Green Mirror - - A QUIET STORY - - BY - - HUGH WALPOLE - - _NEW YORK_ - GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY - - COPYRIGHT, 1917, - BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY - - - - - THE GREEN MIRROR - - PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - - - - - TO - - DOROTHY - - WHO FIRST INTRODUCED ME - - TO - - KATHERINE - - - - - “_There’s the feather bed element here brother, ach! and not - only that! There’s an attraction here—here you have the end of - the world, an anchorage, a quiet haven, the navel of the earth, - the three fishes that are the foundation of the world, the - essence of pancakes, of savoury fish-pies, of the evening - samovar, of soft sighs and warm shawls, and hot stoves to sleep - on—as snug as though you were dead, and yet you’re alive—the - advantages of both at once._” - - DOSTOEFFSKY. - - - - -MY DEAR DOROTHY, - -As I think you know, this book was finished in the month of August, -1914. I did not look at it again until I revised it during my -convalescence after an illness in the autumn of 1915. - -We are now in a world very different from that with which this story -deals, and it must, I am afraid, appear slow in development and -uneventful in movement, belonging, in style and method and subject, to a -day that seems to us already old-fashioned. - -But I will frankly confess that I have too warm a personal affection for -Katherine, Philip, Henry and Millicent to be able to destroy utterly the -signs and traditions of their existence, nor can I feel my book to be -quite old-fashioned when the love of England, which I have tried to make -the text of it, has in many of us survived so triumphantly changes and -catastrophes and victories that have shaken into ruin almost every other -faith we held. - -Let this be my excuse for giving you, with my constant affection, this -uneventful story. - - Yours always, - HUGH WALPOLE. - PETROGRAD, - May 11th, 1917. - - - - - CONTENTS - - BOOK I: THE RAID - CHAPTER I: THE CEREMONY - CHAPTER II: THE WINTER AFTERNOON - CHAPTER III: KATHERINE - CHAPTER IV: THE FOREST - CHAPTER V: THE FINEST THING - CHAPTER VI: THE SHOCK - BOOK II: THE FEATHER BED - CHAPTER I: KATHERINE IN LOVE - CHAPTER II: MRS. TRENCHARD - CHAPTER III: LIFE AND HENRY - CHAPTER IV: GARTH IN ROSELANDS - CHAPTER V: THE FEAST - CHAPTER VI: SUNDAY - CHAPTER VII: ROCHE ST. MARY MOOR - BOOK III: KATHERINE AND ANNA - CHAPTER I: KATHERINE ALONE - CHAPTER II: THE MIRROR - CHAPTER III: ANNA AND MRS. TRENCHARD - CHAPTER IV: THE WILD NIGHT - CHAPTER V: THE TRENCHARDS - CHAPTER VI: THE CEREMONY - - - - - BOOK I - THE RAID - - - - - CHAPTER I - THE CEREMONY - - I - -The fog had swallowed up the house, and the house had submitted. So -thick was this fog that the towers of Westminster Abbey, the river, and -the fat complacency of the church in the middle of the Square, even the -three Plane Trees in front of the old gate and the heavy old-fashioned -porch had all vanished together, leaving in their place, the rattle of a -cab, the barking of a dog, isolated sounds that ascended, plaintively, -from a lost, a submerged world. - -The House had, indeed, in its time seen many fogs for it had known its -first one in the days of Queen Anne and even then it had yielded, -without surprise and without curiosity, to its tyranny. On the brightest -of days this was a solemn, unenterprising, unimaginative building, -standing four-square to all the winds, its windows planted stolidly, -securely, its vigorous propriety well suited to its safe, unagitated -surroundings. Its faded red brick had weathered many London storms and -would weather many more: that old, quiet Square, with its uneven stones, -its church, and its plane-trees, had the Abbey, the Houses of -Parliament, the river for its guardians ... the skies might fall, the -Thames burst into a flaming fire, Rundle Square would not stir from its -tranquillity. - -The old house—No. 5, Rundle Square—had for its most charming feature -its entrance. First came an old iron gate guarded, on either side, by -weather-beaten stone pillars. Then a cobbled path, with little green -lawns to right and left of it, ran to the door whose stolidity was -crowned with an old porch of dim red brick. This was unusual enough for -London, but there the gate, the little garden, the Porch had stood for -some hundreds of years, and that Progress that had already its -throttling fingers about London’s neck, had, as yet, left Rundle Square -to its staid propriety. - -Westminster abides, like a little Cathedral town, at the heart of -London. One is led to it, through Whitehall, through Victoria Street, -through Belgravia, over Westminster Bridge with preparatory caution. The -thunder of London sinks, as the traveller approaches, dying gradually as -though the spirit of the town warned you, with his finger at his lip. To -the roar of the traffic there succeeds the solemn striking of Big Ben, -the chiming of the Abbey Bells; so narrow and winding are many of the -little streets that such traffic as penetrates them proceeds slowly, -cautiously, almost sleepily; there are old buildings and grass squares, -many clergymen, schoolboys in black gowns and battered top hats, and at -the corners one may see policemen, motionless, somnolent, stationed one -supposes, to threaten disturbance or agitation. - -There is, it seems, no impulse here to pile many more events upon the -lap of the day than the poor thing can decently hold. Behind the windows -of Westminster life is passing, surely, with easy tranquillity; the very -door-bells are, many of them, old and comfortable, unsuited to any -frantic ringing; there does not sound, through every hour, the whirring -clang of workmen flinging, with eager haste, into the reluctant air, -hideous and contemptuous buildings; dust does not rise in blinding -clouds from the tortured corpses of old and happy houses.... Those who -live here live long. - -No. 5, Rundle Square then, had its destiny in pleasant places. Upon a -fine summer evening the old red brick with its windows staring -complacently upon a comfortable world showed a fine colour. Its very -chimneys were square and solid, its eaves and water pipes regular and -mathematical. Whatever horrid catastrophe might convulse the rest of -London, No. 5 would suffer no hurt; the god of propriety—the strongest -of all the gods—had it beneath His care. - -Now behind the Fog it waited, as it had waited so often before, with -certain assurance, for its release. - - II - -Inside the house at about half-past four, upon this afternoon November -8th, in the year 1902, young Henry Trenchard was sitting alone; he was -straining his eyes over a book that interested him so deeply that he -could not leave it in order to switch on the electric light; his long -nose stuck into the book’s very heart and his eyelashes almost brushed -the paper. The drawing-room where he was had caught some of the fog and -kept it, and Henry Trenchard’s only light was the fading glow of a red -cavernous fire. Henry Trenchard, now nineteen years of age, had known, -in all those nineteen years, no change in that old drawing-room. As an -ugly and tiresome baby he had wailed before the sombre indifference of -that same old stiff green wall-paper—a little brighter then -perhaps,—had sprawled upon the same old green carpet, had begged to be -allowed to play with the same collection of little scent bottles and -stones and rings and miniatures that lay now, in the same decent -symmetry, in the same narrow glass-topped table over by the window. It -was by shape and design a heavy room, slipping into its true spirit with -the London dusk, the London fog, the London lamp-lit winter afternoon, -seeming awkward, stiff, almost affronted before the sunshine and summer -weather. One or two Trenchards—two soldiers and a Bishop—were there in -heavy old gold frames, two ponderous glass-fronted book-cases guarded -from any frivolous touch high stiff-backed volumes of Gibbons and -Richardson and Hooker. - -There were some old water-colours of faded green lawns, dim rocks and -seas with neglected boats upon the sand—all these painted in the stiff -precision of the ’thirties and the ’forties, smoked and fogged a little -in their thin black frames. - -Upon one round-table indeed there was a concession to the modern spirit -in the latest numbers of the “Cornhill” and “Blackwood” magazines, the -“Quarterly Review” and the “Hibbert Journal.” - -The chairs in the room were for the most part stiff with gilt backs and -wore a “Don’t you dare to sit down upon me” eye, but two arm-chairs, -near the fire, of old green leather were comfortable enough and upon one -of these Henry was now sitting. Above the wide stone fireplace was a -large old gold mirror, a mirror that took into its expanse the whole of -the room, so that, standing before it, with your back to the door, you -could see everything that happened behind you. The Mirror was old and -gave to the view that it embraced some old comfortable touch so that -everything within it was soft and still and at rest. Now, in the gloom -and shadow, the reflection was green and dark with the only point of -colour the fading fire. Before it a massive gold clock with the figures -of the Three Graces stiff and angular at its summit ticked away as -though it were the voice of a very old gentleman telling an interminable -story. It served indeed for the voice of the mirror itself.... - -Henry was reading a novel that showed upon its back Mudie’s bright -yellow label. He was reading, as the clock struck half-past four, these -words:— - -“I sat on the stump of a tree at his feet, and below us stretched the -land, the great expanse of the forests, sombre under the sunshine, -rolling like a sea, with glints of winding rivers, the grey spots of -villages, and here and there a clearing, like an islet of light amongst -the dark waves of continuous tree-tops. A brooding gloom lay over this -vast and monotonous landscape; the light fell on it as if into an abyss. -The land devoured the sunshine; only far off, along the coast, the empty -ocean, smooth and polished within the faint bays, seemed to rise up to -the sky in a wall of steel. - -“And there I was with him, high on the sunshine on the top of that -historic hill....” - -The striking of the clock brought him away from the book with a jerk, so -deep had he been sunk in it that he looked now about the dusky room with -a startled uncertain gaze. The familiar place settled once more about -him and, with a little sigh, he sank back into the chair. His thin bony -legs stuck out in front of him; one trouser-leg was hitched up and his -sock, falling down over his boot, left bare part of his calf; his boots -had not been laced tightly and the tongues had slipped aside, showing -his sock. He was a long thin youth, his hair untidy, his black tie up at -the back of his collar; one white and rather ragged cuff had slipped -down over his wrist, the other was invisible. His eyes were grey and -weak, he had a long pointed nose with two freckles on the very end of -it, but his mouth was kindly although too large and indeterminate. His -cheeks were thin and showed high cheek-bones; his chin was pronounced -enough to be strong but nevertheless helped him very little. - -He was untidy and ungainly but not entirely unattractive; his growth was -at the stage when nature has not made up its mind as to the next, the -final move. That may, after all, be something very pleasant.... - -His eyes now were dreamy and soft because he was thinking of the book. -No book, perhaps, in all his life before had moved him so deeply and he -was very often moved—but, as a rule, by cheap and sentimental emotions. - -He knew that he was cheap; he knew that he was sentimental; he, very -often, hated and despised himself. - -He could see the Forests “rolling like a sea”. It was as though he, -himself, had been perched upon that high, bright hill, and he was -exalted, he felt, with that same exultation; the space, the freedom, the -liberty, the picture of a world wherein anything might happen, where -heroes, fugitives, scoundrels, cowards, conquerors all alike might win -their salvation. “Room for everyone ... no one to pull one up—No one to -make one ashamed of what one says and does. No crowd watching one’s -every movement. Adventures for the wishing and courage to meet them.” - -He looked about the room and hated it,—the old, shabby, hemmed-in -thing! He hated this life to which he was condemned; he hated himself, -his world, his uninspiring future. - -“My God, I must do something!... I _will_ do something!... But suppose I -can’t!” His head fell again—suppose he were out in that other world, -there in the heart of those dark forests, suppose that he found that he -did no better there than here!... That would be, indeed, the most -terrible thing of all! - -He gazed up into the Mirror, saw in it the reflection of the room, the -green walls, the green carpet, the old faded green place like moss -covering dead ground. Soft, damp, dark,—and beyond outside the Mirror, -the world of the Forests—“the great expanse of Forests” and “beyond, -the Ocean—smooth and polished ... rising up to the sky in a wall of -steel.” - -His people, his family, his many, many relations, his world, he thought, -were all inside the Mirror—all embedded in that green, soft, silent -enclosure. He saw, stretching from one end of England to the other, in -all Provincial towns, in neat little houses with neat little gardens, in -Cathedral Cities with their sequestered Closes, in villages with the -deep green lanes leading up to the rectory gardens, in old Country -houses hemmed in by wide stretching fields, in little lost places by the -sea, all these persons happily, peacefully sunk up to their very necks -in the green moss. Within the Mirror this ... Outside the Mirror the -rolling forests guarded by the shining wall of sea. His own family -passed before him. His grandfather, his great-aunt Sarah, his mother and -his father, Aunt Aggie and Aunt Betty, Uncle Tim, Millicent, -Katherine.... He paused then. The book slipped away and fell on to the -floor. - -Katherine ... dear Katherine! He did not care what she was! And then, -swept by a fresh wave of feeling springing up, stretching his arms, -facing the room, he did not care what _any_ of them were! _He_ was the -Idiot, the discontented, ungrateful Idiot! He loved them all—he -wouldn’t change one of them, he wouldn’t be in any other family in all -the world! - -The door opened; in came old Rocket, the staff and prop of the family, -to turn up the lights, to poke up the fire. In a minute tea would come -in.... - -“Why, Mr. Henry, no fire nor lights!” He shuffled to the windows, -pulling the great heavy curtains across them, his knees cracking, very -slowly he bent down, picked up the book, and laid it carefully on the -table next to the “Hibbert Journal.” - -“I hope you’ve not been reading, Mr. Henry, in this bad light,” he said. - - III - -Later, between nine and half-past, Henry was sitting with his father and -his uncle, smoking and drinking after dinner. To-night was an evening of -Ceremony—_the_ Family Ceremony of the year—therefore, although the -meal had been an extremely festive one with many flowers, a perfect -mountain of fruit in the huge silver bowl in the centre of the table, -and the Most Sacred Of All Ports (produced on this occasion and -Christmas Day) nevertheless only the Family had been present. No distant -relations even, certainly no friends.... This was Grandfather -Trenchard’s birthday. - -The ladies vanished, there remained only Henry, his father and Uncle -Tim. Henry was sitting there, very self-conscious over his glass of -Port. He was always self-conscious when Uncle Tim was present. - -Uncle Tim was a Faunder and was large-limbed and absent-minded like -Henry’s father. Uncle Tim had a wild head of grey hair, a badly-kept -grey beard and clothed his long, loose figure in long, loose garments. -He was here to-day and gone to-morrow, preferred the country to the town -and had a little house down in Glebeshire, where he led an untidy -bachelor existence whose motive impulses were birds and flowers. - -Henry was very fond of Uncle Tim; he liked his untidiness, his careless -geniality, his freedom and his happiness. - -Henry’s father—George Trenchard—was “splendid”—that, thought Henry, -was the only possible word—and the boy, surveying other persons’ -fathers, wondered why Katherine, Millicent, and himself should have been -chosen out of all the world to be so favoured. - -George Trenchard, at this time about sixty years of age, was over six -feet in height and broad in proportion. He was growing too stout; his -hair was grey and the top of his head bald; his eyes were brown and -absent-minded, his mouth large with a lurking humour in its curves; his -cheeks were fat and round and there was the beginning of a double chin. -He walked, always, in a rambling, rolling kind of way, like a -sea-captain on shore, still balancing himself to the swing of his -vessel, his hands deep sunk in his trouser-pockets. Henry had been -privileged, sometimes, to see him, when, absorbed in the evolution of an -essay or the Chapter of some book (he is, of course, one of our foremost -authorities on the early Nineteenth Century period of English -Literature, especially Hazlitt and De Quincey) he rolled up and down his -study, with his head back, his hand sunk in his pockets, whistling a -little tune ... very wonderful he seemed to Henry then. - -He was the most completely careless of optimists, refused to be brought -down to any stern fact whatever, hated any strong emotion or stringent -relations with anyone, treated his wife and children as the most -delightful accidents against whom he had, most happily tumbled; his -kindness of heart was equalled only by the lightning speed with which he -forgot the benefits that he had conferred and the persons upon whom he -had conferred them ... like a happy bird, he went carolling through -life. Alone, of all living beings, his daughter Katherine had bound him -to her with cords; for the rest, he loved and forgot them all. - -Now, on this family occasion of his father’s birthday—his father was -eighty-seven to-day—he was absolutely happy. He was proud of his family -when any definite occasion, such as this, compelled him to think of it; -he considered that it had all been a very jolly, pleasant dinner, that -there would certainly follow a very jolly, pleasant evening. He liked, -especially, to have his brother, Timothy, with him—he loved them all, -bless their hearts—he felt, as he assured them, “Not a day more than -twenty.” - -“How do you really think Father is, George?” asked Timothy. - -“Sound as a bell,” said Henry’s father, “getting deaf of course—must -expect that—but it’s my belief that the harder his hearing the brighter -his eyes—never knew anyone so sharp. Nothing escapes him, ’pon my -soul.” - -“Well,” said George Trenchard, “I think it a most satisfactory thing -that here we should all be again—healthy, happy, sound as so many -bells—lively as crickets—not a happier family in England.” - -“Don’t say that, George,” said Uncle Tim, “most unlucky.” - -“Nonsense,” said George Trenchard, brushing Uncle Tim aside like a fly, -“Nonsense. We’re a happy family, a healthy family and a united family.” - -“I drink my gratitude to the God of Family Life, who-ever He is....” He -finished his glass of Port. “Here, Timothy, have another glass. It’s a -Port in a million, so it is.” - -But Uncle Tim shook his head. “It’s all very well, George, but you’ll -have to break up soon. The girls will be marrying—Katherine and -Millicent—” - -“Rot,” said George, “Millie’s still at school.” - -“She’s coming home very soon—very shortly I believe. And besides you -can’t keep a family together as you used to. You can’t. No one cares -about the home at all now-a-days. These youngsters will find that out -soon enough. You’ll be deserting the nest immediately, Henry, my friend, -won’t you?” - -This sudden appeal, of course, confused Henry terribly. He choked over -his wine, coloured crimson, stammered out: - -“No, Uncle Tim—Of course—Of course—not.” - -George Trenchard looked at his son with approval. - -“That’s right. Stick to your old father while you can. The matter with -you, Tim, is that you live outside the world and don’t know what’s going -on.” - -“The matter with you, George, is,” his brother, speaking slowly and -carefully, replied, “That you haven’t the ghost of an idea of what the -modern world’s like—not the ghost. Up in the clouds you are, and so’s -your whole family, my sister and all—But the young ones won’t be up in -the clouds always, not a bit of it. They’ll come down one day and then -you’ll see what you _will_ see.” - -“And what’ll that be?” said George Trenchard, laughing a little -scornfully. - -“Why you and Harriet doing Darby and Joan over the dying fire and no one -else within a hundred miles of you—except a servant who’s waiting for -your clothes and sleeve-links.” - -“There, Henry—Listen to that!” said his father, still laughing—“See -what an ungrateful fellow you’re going to be in a year or two!” - -Henry blushed, swallowed in his throat, smiled idiotically. They were -all, he thought, laughing at him, but the effect was very pleasant and -genial.... - -Moreover he was interested. He was, of course, one of the young ones and -it was his future that was under discussion. His mind hovered over the -book that he had been reading that afternoon. Uncle Tim’s words had very -much the same effect upon Henry’s mind that that book’s words had had, -although from a different angle so to speak.... Henry’s eyes lingered -about a little silver dish that contained sugared cherries.... He liked -immensely sugared cherries. Encouraged by the genial atmosphere he -stretched out his hand, took two cherries, and swallowed them, but, in -his agitation, so swiftly that he did not taste them at all. - -Then he drank two glasses of Port—he had never before drunk so much -wine. He was conscious now that he must not, under any circumstances, -drink any more. He was aware that he must control, very closely, his -tongue; he told himself that the room was not in reality so golden and -glowing a place as it now seemed to him, that it was only the same old -dining-room with which he had all his life, been familiar. He convinced -himself by a steady gaze that the great silver dish with the red and -purple and golden fruit piled upon it _was_ only a silver dish, was not -a deep bowl whose sides, like silver walls stretched up right into the -dim electric clusters of electric light hanging from the ceiling. He -might convince himself of these facts, he might with a great effort -steady the room that very, very slightly swayed about him ... what he -could not deny was that Life was gorgeous, that this was an Evening of -all the Evenings, that he adored his father, his uncle and all the -family to such a height and depth of devotion that, were he not -exceedingly careful, he would burst into tears—burst into tears he must -not because then would the stud in his shirt most assuredly abandon its -restraints and shame him, for ever, before Uncle Tim. - -At this moment his father gave the command to move. Henry rose, very -carefully, from his seat, steadied himself at the table for an instant, -then, very, very gravely, with his eye upon his shirt-stud, followed his -uncle from the room. - - IV - -He retained, throughout the rest of that eventful evening, the slightly -exaggerated vision of the world. It was not that, as he followed his -father and uncle into the drawing-room, he did not know what he would -see. He would find them sitting there—Grandfather in his chair, his -feet on a stool, his bony hands pressed upon his thin knees with that -fierce, protesting pressure that represented so much in his grandfather. -There would be, also, his Great-Aunt Sarah with her high pyramid of -white hair, her long black ear-trumpet and her hard sharp little eyes -like faded blue pebbles, there would be his mother, square and broad and -placid with her hands folded on her lap, there would be Aunt Aggie, with -her pouting, fat little face, her cheeks quivering a little as she moved -her head, her eyes searching about the room, nervously, uneasily, and -there would be Aunt Betty, neat and tiny, with her little trembling -smile and her quiet air of having something very important to do of -which no one else in the family had the ghost of an idea! Oh! he knew -them all so well that they appeared to him, now, to be part of himself -and to exist only as his ideas of the world and life and his own -destiny. They could not now do anything that would ever surprise or -disconcert him, he knew their ideas, their schemes, their partialities, -their disgusts, and he would not—so he thought now with the fire of -life burning so brightly within him—have them changed, no, not in any -tiniest atom of an alteration. - -He knew that they would sit there, all of them, and talk quietly about -nothing, and then when the gold clock was approaching half-past nine -they would slip away,—save only grandfather and Aunt Sarah—and would -slip up to their rooms and then they would slip down again with their -parcels in their hands and at half-past nine the Ceremony would take -place. So it had been for years and years and so it would continue to be -until Grandfather’s death, and, after that, Henry’s father would take -his place, and then, one day, perhaps, it would be the turn of Henry -himself. - -He paused for a moment and looked at the room—Katherine was not there. -She was always until the very last moment, doing something to -Grandfather’s present, tying it up in some especial ribbon, writing -something on the paper wrapping, making it, in some way, more perfect. -He knew that, as he came in, his mother would look up and smile and say -“Well, Henry,” and then would resume her placidity, that Uncle Tim would -sit down beside Aunt Betty and begin, very gently, to chaff her, which -would please her immensely, and that Aunt Sarah would cry “What did you -say, Timothy?” and that then he would shout down her ear-trumpet, with a -good-humoured smile peeping down from his beard as though he were -thinking “One must humour the old lady you know.” - -All these things occurred. Henry himself sat in a low chair by the fire -and looked at his father, who was walking up and down the other end of -the room, his hands deep in his pockets, his head back. Then he looked -at his two aunts and wondered, as he had wondered so many times before, -that they were not the sisters of his mother instead of his father. They -were so small and fragile to be the sisters of such large-limbed, -rough-and-tumble men as his father and Uncle Timothy. They would have, -so naturally, taken their position in the world as the sisters of his -mother. - -Aunt Aggie, who thought that no one was paying her very much attention, -said: - -“I can’t think why Katherine wouldn’t let me get that silk for her at -Liberty’s this afternoon. I could have gone up Regent Street so -easily—it wouldn’t have been very much trouble—not very much, but -Katherine always must do everything for herself.” - -Mrs. Trenchard said: “It was very kind of you, Aggie dear, to think of -it—I’m sure it was very kind,” and Aunt Betty said: “Katherine would -appreciate your thinking of her.” - -“I wonder, with the fog, that any of you went out at all,” said Uncle -Tim, “I’m sure I was as nearly killed as nothing just coming back from -the Strand.” - -Aunt Aggie moved her hands on her lap, looked at them, suspiciously, to -see whether they meant what they said, and then sighed—and, to Henry, -this all seemed to-night wonderful, magical, possessed of some -thrilling, passionate quality; his heart was beating with furious, -leaping bounds, his eyes were misty with sentimental happiness. He -thought that this was life that he was realising now for the first -time.... It was not—it was two glasses of Port. - -He looked at his grandfather and thought of the wonderful old man that -he was. His grandfather was very small and very thin and so delicate was -the colour of his white hair, his face, and his hands that the light -seemed to shine through him, as though he had been made of glass. He was -a silent old man and everything about him was of a fine precious -quality—his black shoes with the silver buckles, the gold signet ring -on his finger, the black cord with the gold eye-glasses that lay across -his shirt-front; when he spoke it was with a thin, silvery voice like a -bell. - -He did not seem, as he sat there, to be thinking about any of them or to -be caring for anything that they might do. - -His thoughts, perhaps, were shining and silver and precious like the -rest of him, but no one knew because he said so little. Aunt Betty, with -a glance at the clock, rose and slipped from the room. The moment had -arrived.... - - V - -Very soon, and, indeed, just as the clock, as though it were summoning -them all back, struck the half-hour, there they all were again. They -stood, in a group by the door and each one had, in his or her hand, his -or her present. Grandfather, as silent as an ivory figure, sat in his -chair, with Aunt Sarah in her chair beside him, and in front of him was -a table, cleared of anything that was upon it, its mahogany shining in -the firelight. All the Trenchard soldiers and the Trenchard Bishop -looked down, with solemn approval, upon the scene. - -“Come on, Henry, my boy, time to begin,” said his father. - -Henry, because he was the youngest, stepped forward, his present in his -hand. His parcel was very ill-tied and the paper was creased and badly -folded. He was greatly ashamed as he laid it upon the table. Blushing, -he made his little speech, his lips together, speaking like an awkward -schoolboy. “We’re all very glad, Grandfather, that we’re all—most of -us—here to—to congratulate you on your birthday. We hope that you’re -enjoying your birthday and that—that there’ll be lots more for you to -enjoy.” - -“Bravo, Henry,” came from the back of the room. Henry stepped back still -blushing. Then Grandfather Trenchard, with trembling hands, slowly undid -the parcel and revealed a purple leather blotting-book with silver -edges. - -“Thank you, my boy—very good of you. Thank you.” - -Then came Katherine. Katherine was neither very tall nor very short, -neither fat nor thin. She had some of the grave placidity of her mother -and, in her eyes and mouth, some of the humour of her father. She moved -quietly and easily, very self-possessed; she bore herself as though she -had many more important things to think about than anything that -concerned herself. Her hair and her eyes were dark brown, and now as she -went with her present, her smile was as quiet and unself-conscious as -everything else about her. - -“Dear Grandfather,” she said, “I wish you many, many happy returns—” -and then _she_ stepped back. Her present was an old gold snuff-box. - -“Thank you, my dear,” he said. “Very charming. Thank you, my dear.” - -Then came Aunt Aggie, her eyes nervous and a little resentful as though -she had been treated rather hardly but was making the best of difficult -circumstances. “I’m afraid you won’t like this, Father,” she said. “I -felt that you wouldn’t when I got it. But I did my best. It’s a silly -thing to give you, I’m afraid.” - -She watched as the old man, very slowly, undid the parcel. She had given -him a china ink-stand. It had been as though she had said: “Anything -more foolish than to give an old man who ought to be thinking about the -grave a china ink-stand I can’t imagine.” - -Perhaps her father had felt something of this in her voice—he answered -her a little sharply—— - -“Thank ’ye—my dear Aggie—Thank ’ye.” - -Very different Aunt Betty. She came forward like a cheerful and happy -sparrow, her head just on one side as though she wished to perceive the -complete effect of everything that was going on. - -“My present is handkerchiefs, Father. I worked the initials myself. I -hope you will like them,” and then she bent forward and took his hand in -hers and held it for a moment. As he looked across at her, a little wave -of colour crept up behind the white mask of his cheek. “Dear Betty—my -dear. Thank ’ye—Thank ’ye.” - -Then followed Mrs. Trenchard, moving like some fragment of the old house -that contained her, a fragment anxious to testify its allegiance to the -head of the family—but anxious—as one must always remember with Mrs. -Trenchard—with no very agitated anxiety. Her slow smile, her solid -square figure that should have been fat but was only broad, her calm -soft eyes—cow’s eyes—from these characteristics many years of -child-bearing and the company of a dreamy husband had not torn her. - -Would something ever tear her?... Yes, there was something. - -In her slow soft voice she said: “Father dear, many happy returns of the -day—_many_ happy returns. This is a silk muffler. I hope you’ll like -it, Father dear. It’s a muffler.” - -They surveyed one another calmly across the shining table. Mrs. -Trenchard was a Faunder, but the Faunders were kin by breeding and -tradition to the Trenchards—the same green pastures, the same rich, -packed counties, the same mild skies and flowering Springs had seen the -development of their convictions about the world and their place in it. - -The Faunders.... The Trenchards ... it is as though you said Tweedledum -and Tweedledee. Mrs. Trenchard looked at her father-in-law and smiled, -then moved away. - -Then came the men. Uncle Tim had a case of silver brushes to present and -he mumbled something in his beard about them. George Trenchard had some -old glass, he flung back his head and laughed, gripped his father by the -hand, shouted something down Aunt Sarah’s trumpet. Aunt Sarah herself -had given, at an earlier hour, her offering because she was so deaf and -her brother’s voice so feeble that on earlier occasions, her -presentation, protracted and embarrassing, had affected the whole -evening. She sat there now, like an ancient Boadicea, looking down -grimly upon the presents, as though they were so many spoils won by a -raid. - -It was time for the old man to make a Speech: It was—“Thank ’ye, Thank -’ye—very good of you all—very. It’s pleasant, all of us together—very -pleasant. I never felt better in my life and I hope you’re all the -same.... Thank ’ye, my dears. Thank ’ye.” - -The Ceremony was thus concluded; instantly they were all standing about, -laughing, talking, soon they would be all in the hall and then they -would separate, George and Timothy and Bob to talk, perhaps, until early -hours in the morning.... Here is old Rocket to wheel grandfather’s chair -along to his bedroom. - -“Well, Father, here’s Rocket come for you.” - -“All right, my dear, I’m ready....” - -But Rocket had not come for his master. Rocket, perplexity, dismay, upon -his countenance, was plainly at a loss, and for Rocket to be at a loss! - -“Hullo, Rocket, what is it?” - -“There’s a gentleman, sir—apologises profoundly for the lateness of the -hour—wouldn’t disturb you but the fog—his card....” - - VI - -Until he passes away to join the glorious company of Trenchards who -await him, will young Henry Trenchard remember everything that then -occurred—exactly he will remember it and to its tiniest detail. It was -past ten o’clock and never in the memory of anyone present had the -Ceremony before been invaded.... Astonishing impertinence on the part of -someone! Astonishing bravery also did he only realise it! - -“It’s the fog, you know,” said Henry’s mother. - -“What’s the matter!” screamed Aunt Sarah. - -“Somebody lost in the fog.” - -“Somebody what?” - -“Lost in the Fog.” - -“In the what?” - -“IN THE FOG!” - -“Oh!... _How_ did you say?” - -“FOG!” - -George Trenchard then returned, bringing with him a man. The man stood -in the doorway, confused (as, indeed, it was only right for him to be), -blushing, holding his bowler hat nervously in his hand, smiling that -smile with which one seeks to propitiate strangers. - -“I say, of all things,” cried George Trenchard. “What _do_ you think, -all of you? Of all the coincidences! This is Mr. Mark. You know, mother -dear (this to Mrs. Trenchard, who was waiting calmly for orders), son of -Rodney Mark I’ve so often told you of.... Here’s his son, arrived in -London yesterday after years’ abroad, out to-night, lost his way in the -fog, stopped at first here to enquire, found it of all remarkable things -ours where he was coming to call to-morrow!... Did you ever!” - -“I really must apologise—” began Mr. Mark, smiling at everyone. - -“Oh no! you mustn’t,” broke in George Trenchard—“Must he, mother? He’s -got to stop the night. Of course he has. We’ve got as much room as you -like. Here, let me introduce you.” - -Mr. Mark was led round. He was, most certainly, (as Aunt Betty remarked -afterwards upstairs) very quiet and pleasant and easy about it all. He -apologised again to Mrs. Trenchard, hadn’t meant to stop more than a -moment, so struck by the coincidence, his father had always said first -thing he must do in London.... - -Rocket was summoned—“Mr. Mark will stop here to-night.” “Certainly—of -course—anything in the world—” - -Grandfather was wheeled away, the ladies in the hall hoped that they -would see Mr. Mark in the morning and Mr. Mark hoped that _he_ would see -_them_. Good-night—good-night.... - -“Come along now,” cried George Trenchard, taking his guest’s arm. “Come -along and have a smoke and a drink and tell us what you’ve been doing -all these years!... Why the last time I saw you!...” - -Mrs. Trenchard, unmoved by this ripple upon the Trenchard waters, -stopped for a moment before leaving the drawing-room and called Henry— - -“Henry dear. Is this your book?” She held up the volume with the yellow -Mudie’s label. - -“Yes, Mother.” - -“I hope it’s a nice book for you, dear.” - -“A very nice book, Mother.” - -“Well I’m sure you’re old enough to know for yourself now.” - -“Good-night, Mother.” - -“Good-night, dear.” - -Henry, with the book under his arm, went up to bed. - - - - - CHAPTER II - THE WINTER AFTERNOON - -Extracts from a letter written by Philip Mark to Mr. Paul Alexis in -Moscow:— - -“... because, beyond question, it was the oddest chance that I should -come—straight out of the fog, into the very house that I wanted. That, -mind you, was a week ago, and I’m still here. You’ve never seen a London -fog. I defy you to imagine either the choking, stifling nastiness of it -or the comfortable happy indifference of English people under it. I -couldn’t have struck, if I’d tried for a year, anything more eloquent of -the whole position—my position, I mean, and theirs and the probable -result of our being up against one another.... - -“This will be a long letter because, here I am quite unaccountably -excited, unaccountably, I say, because it’s all as quiet as the -grave—after midnight, an old clock ticking out there on the stairs. -Landseer’s ‘Dignity and Impudence’ on the wall over my bed and that old -faded wall-paper that you only see in the bedrooms of the upper middles -in England, who have lived for centuries and centuries in the same old -house. Much too excited to sleep, simply I suppose because all kinds of -things are beginning to reassert themselves on me—things that haven’t -stirred since I was eighteen, things that Anna and Moscow had so -effectually laid to rest. All those years as a boy I had just this -wall-paper, just this ticking-clock, just these faded volumes of -‘Ivanhoe,’ ‘Kenilworth’, ‘The Scarlet Letter’ and Lytton’s ‘Night and -Morning’ that I see huddled together in the window. Ah, Paul, you’ve -never known what all that means—the comfort, the safety, the muffled -cosiness, the gradual decline of old familiar things from shabbiness to -shabbiness, the candles, and pony-traps and apple-lofts and going to -country dances in old, jolting cabs with the buttons hopping off your -new white gloves as you go ... it’s all back on me to-night, it’s been -crowding in upon me all the week—The Trenchards are bathed, soaked, -saturated with it all—they ARE IT!... Now, I’ll tell you about them, as -I’ve seen them so far. - -“Trenchard, himself, is fat, jolly, self-centred, writes about the Lake -Poets and lives all the morning with Lamb, Hazlitt and De Quincey, all -the afternoon with the world as seen by himself, and all the evening -with himself as seen by the world. He’s selfish and happy, absent-minded -and as far from all reality as any man could possibly be. He likes me, I -think, because I understand his sense of humour, the surest key to the -heart of a selfish man. About Mrs. Trenchard I’m not nearly so sure. -I’ve been too long out of England to understand her all in a minute. -You’d say right off that she’s stupider than any one you’d ever met, and -then afterwards you’d be less and less certain.... Tremendously full of -family (she was a Faunder), muddled, with no power over words at all so -that she can never say what she means, outwardly of an extremely amiable -simplicity, inwardly, I am sure, as obstinate as a limpet ... not a -shadow of humour. Heaven only knows what she’s thinking about really. -She never lets you see. I don’t think she likes me. - -“There are only two children at home, Henry and Katherine. Henry’s at -‘the awkward age’. Gauche, shy, sentimental, rude, frightfully excitable -from the public school conviction that he must never show excitement -about anything, full of theories, enthusiasms, judgments which he casts -aside, one after the other, as fast as he can get rid of them—at the -very crisis of his development—might be splendid or no good at all, -according as things happen to him. He’s interested in me but isn’t sure -of me. - -“Then there’s Katherine. Katherine is the clue to the house—know -Katherine and you know the family. But then Katherine is not easy to -know. She is more friendly than any of them—and she is farther away. -Very quiet with all the calm security of someone who knows that there -are many important things to be done and that you will never be allowed, -however insistent you may be, to interfere with those things. The family -depends entirely upon her and she lives for the family. Nor is she so -limited as that might seem to make her. She keeps, I am sure, a great -many things down lest they should interfere, but they are all -there—those things. Meanwhile she is cheerful, friendly, busy, very, -very quiet—and distant—miles. Does she like me? I don’t know. She -listens to all that I have to say. She has imagination and humour. And -sometimes when I think that I have impressed her by what I have said I -look up and catch a glimpse of her smiling eyes, as though she thought -me, in spite of all my wisdom, the most awful fool. The family do more -than depend upon her—they adore her. There is no kind of doubt—they -adore her. She alone in all the world awakes her father’s selfish heart, -stirs her mother’s sluggish imagination, reassures her brother’s -terrified soul. They love her for the things that she does for them. -They are all—save perhaps Henry—selfish in their affection. But then -so are the rest of us, are we not? You, Paul, and I, at any rate.... - -“And, all this time, I have said nothing to you about the guardians of -the House’s honour. Already, they view me with intense suspicion. There -are two of them, both very old. An aged, aged man, bitter and sharp and -shining like a glass figure, and his sister, as aged as he. They are, -both of them, deaf and the only things truly alive about them are their -eyes. But with these they watch everything, and above all, they watch -me. They distrust me, profoundly, their eyes never leave me. They allow -me to make no advances to them. They cannot imagine why I have been -admitted—they will, I am sure, take steps to turn me out very soon. It -is as though I were a spy in a hostile country. And yet they all press -me to stay—all of them. They seem to like to have me. What I have to -tell them interests them and they are pleased, too, to be hospitable in -a large and comfortable manner. Trenchard was deeply attached to my -father and speaks of him to me with an emotion surprising in so selfish -a man. They like me to stay and yet, Paul, with it all I tell you that I -am strangely frightened. Of what? Of whom?... I have no idea. Isn’t it -simply that the change from Russia and, perhaps, also Anna is so abrupt -that it is startling? Anna and Miss Trenchard—there’s a contrast for -you! And I’m at the mercy—you know, of anyone—you have always said it -and it _is_ so—most unhappily. Tell Anna from me that I am writing. - -“Because I couldn’t, of course, explain to her as I do to you the way -that these old, dead, long-forgotten things are springing up again in -me. She would never understand. But we were both agreed—she as strongly -as I—that this was the right thing, the only thing.... You know that I -would not hurt a fly if I could help it. No, tell her that I won’t -write. I’ll keep to my word. Not a line from either of us until Time has -made it safe, easy. And Stepan will be good to her. He’s the best fellow -in the world, although so often I hated him. For his sake, as well as -for all the other reasons, I will not write.... Meanwhile it is really -true enough that I’m frightened for, perhaps, the first time in my -life....” - - * * * * * - -Suspicion was the key-note of young Henry Trenchard at this time. He was -so unsure of himself that he must needs be unsure of everyone else. He -was, of course, suspicious of Philip Mark. He was suspicious and he also -admired him. On the day after Mark had sat up writing his letter ‘half -the night because he was excited’, on the afternoon of that day they -were sitting in the green dim drawing-room waiting for tea. Mark was -opposite Henry, and Henry, back in the shadow, as he liked to sit, -huddled up but with his long legs shooting out in front of him as though -they belonged to another body, watched him attentively, critically, -inquisitively. Mark sat with a little pool of electric light about him -and talked politely to Mrs. Trenchard, who, knitting a long red woollen -affair that trailed like a serpent on to the green carpet, said now and -then such things as: - -“It must be very different from England” or “I must say I should find -that very unpleasant,” breaking in also to say: “Forgive me a moment. -Henry, that bell did ring, didn’t it?” or “Just a little more on the -fire, Henry, please. That big lump, please.” Then, turning patiently to -Mark and saying: “I beg your pardon, Mr. Mark—you said?” - -Henry, having at this time a passion for neatness and orderly -arrangements, admired Mark’s appearance. Mark was short, thick-set and -very dark. A closely-clipped black moustache and black hair cut short -made him look like an officer, Henry thought. His thick muscular legs -proved him a rider, his mouth and ears were small, and over him from -head to foot was the air of one who might have to be ‘off’ on a -dangerous expedition at any moment and would moreover know exactly what -to do, having been on many other dangerous expeditions before. Only his -eyes disproved the man of action. They were dreamy, introspective, -wavering eyes—eyes that were much younger than the rest of him and eyes -too that might be emotional, sentimental, impetuous, foolish and -careless. - -Henry, being very young, did not notice his eyes. Mark was thirty and -looked it. His eyes were the eyes of a boy of twenty.... From Henry his -dark neat clothes, his compact and resourceful air compelled envy and -admiration—yes, and alarm. For Henry was, now, entirely and utterly -concerned with himself, and every fresh incident, every new arrival was -instantly set up before him so that he might see how he himself looked -in the light of it. Never before, within Henry’s memory, had anyone not -a relation, not even the friend of a relation, been admitted so -intimately into the heart of the house, and it seemed to Henry that now -already a new standard was being set up and that, perhaps, the family by -the light of this dashing figure, who knew Russia like an open book and -could be relied upon at the most dangerous crisis, might regard himself, -Henry, as something more crudely shabby and incompetent than ever. -Moreover he was not sure that Mark himself did not laugh at him.... - -Beyond all this there was the sense that Mark had, in a way, invaded the -place. It was true that the family had, after that first eventful -evening, pressed him to stay, but it had pressed him as though it had, -upon itself, felt pressure—as though its breath had been caught by the -impact of some new force and, before it could recover from its surprise, -behold the force was there, inside the room with the doors closed behind -it. - -“It’s hardly decent for him to stay on like this,” thought Henry, “and -yet after all we asked him. And ... he _is_ jolly!” - -Jolly was something that only Henry’s father and Uncle Tim of the -Trenchard family could be said to be, and its quality was therefore both -enlivening and alarming. - -“Mother won’t like it, if he’s too jolly,” thought Henry, “I’m not sure -if she likes it now.” - -Henry had, upon this afternoon, an extra cause for anxiety; a friend of -his, a friend of whom he was especially proud, was coming to tea. This -friend’s name was Seymour and he was a cheerful young man who had -written several novels and was considered ‘promising’— - -The Trenchards had a very slight knowledge of that world known as ‘the -Arts’ and they had (with the exception of Henry) a very healthy distrust -of artists as a race. - -But young Seymour was another affair. He was a gentleman, with many -relations who knew Trenchards and Faunders; his novels were proper in -sentiment and based always upon certain agreeable moral axioms, as for -instance “It is better to be good than to be bad” and “Courage is the -Great Thing” and “Let us not despise others. They may have more to say -for themselves than we know.” - -It was wonderful, Mrs. Trenchard thought, that anyone so young should -have discovered these things. Moreover he was cheerful, would talk at -any length about anything, and was full of self-assurance. He was fat, -and would soon be fatter; he was nice to everyone on principle because -“one doesn’t know how much a careless word may harm others.” Above all, -he was ‘jolly’. He proclaimed life splendid, wished he could live to a -thousand, thought that to be a novelist was the luckiest thing in the -world. Some people said that what he really meant was “To be Seymour was -the luckiest thing in the world” ... but everyone has their enemies. - -Henry was nervous about this afternoon because he felt—and he could not -have given his reasons—that Mark and Seymour would not get on. He knew -that if Mark disliked Seymour he, Henry, would dislike Mark. Mark would -be criticising the Trenchard taste—a dangerous thing to do. And, -perhaps, after all—he was not sure—he looked across the dark -intervening shadow into the light where Mark was sitting—the fellow -_did_ look conceited, supercilious. No one in the world had the right to -be so definitely at his ease. - -There came in then Rocket and a maid with the tea, Katherine, and -finally Aunt Aggie with Harvey Seymour. - -“I found Mr. Seymour in the Hall,” she said, looking discontentedly -about her and shivering a little. “Standing in the Hall.” - -Seymour was greeted and soon his cheerful laugh filled the room. He was -introduced to Mark. He was busy over tea. “Sugar? Milk?” - -“Nice sharp twang in the air, there _is_. Jolly weather. I walked all -the way from Knightsbridge. Delightful. Cake? Bread and butter? Hello, -Henry! You ought to have walked with me—never enjoyed anything so much -in my life.” - -Mrs. Trenchard’s broad, impassive face was lighted with approval as a -lantern is lit. She liked afternoon-tea and her drawing-room and young -cheerful Seymour and the books behind the book-case and the ticking of -the clock. A cosy winter’s afternoon in London! What could be -pleasanter? She sighed a comfortable, contented sigh.... - -Mark was seized, as he sat there, with a drowsy torpor. The fire seemed -to draw from the room all scents that, like memories, waited there for -some compelling friendly warmth. The room was close with more than the -Trenchard protection against the winter’s day—it was packed with a -conscious pressure of all the things that the Trenchards had ever done -in that room, and Mrs. Trenchard sat motionless, placid, receiving these -old things, encouraging them and distributing them. Mark was aware that -if he encouraged his drowsiness he would very shortly acquiesce in and -submit to—he knew not what—and the necessity for battling against this -acquiescence irritated him so that it was almost as though everyone in -the room were subtly taking him captive and he would be lost before he -was aware. Katherine, alone, quiet, full of repose, saying very little, -did not disturb him. It was exactly as though all the other persons -present were wishing him to break into argument and contradiction -because then they could spring upon him. - -His attention was, of course, directed to Seymour’s opinions, and he -knew, before he heard them, that he would disagree violently with them -all. - -They came, like the distant firing of guns, across the muffled -drowziness of the room. - -“I assure you, Mrs. Trenchard.... I assure you ... assure you. You -wouldn’t believe.... Well, of course, I’ve heard people say so but I -can’t help disagreeing with them. One may know very little about writing -oneself—I don’t pretend I’ve got far—and yet have very distinct ideas -as to how the thing should be done. There’s good work and bad, you -know—there’s no getting over it.... - -“But, my dear Henry ... dear old chap ... I assure you. But it’s a -question of Form. You take my word a man’s nothing without a sense of -Form ... Form ... Form.... Yes, of course, the French are the people. -Now the Russians.... Tolstoi, Dostoevsky ... Dostoevsky, Mrs. Trenchard. -Well, people spell him different ways. You should read ‘War and Peace’. -Never read ‘War and Peace’? Ah, you should and ‘Crime and Punishment’. -But compare ‘Crime and Punishment’ with ‘La maison Tellier’ ... -Maupassant—The Russians aren’t in it. But what can you expect from a -country like that? I assure you....” - -Quite irresistibly, as though everyone in the room had said: “There now. -You’ve simply got to come in now”, Mark was drawn forward. He heard -through the sleepy, clogged and scented air his own voice. - -“But there are all sorts of novels, aren’t there, just as there are all -sorts of people? I don’t see why everything should be after the same -pattern.” - -He was violently conscious then of Seymour’s chin that turned, slowly, -irresistibly as the prow of a ship is turned, towards him—a very -remarkable chin for its size and strength, jutting up and out, -surprising, too, after the chubby amiability of the rest of his face. At -the same moment it seemed to Mark that all the other chins in the room -turned towards him with stern emphasis. - -A sharp little dialogue followed then: Seymour was eager, cheerful and -good-humoured—patronising, too, perhaps, if one is sensitive to such -things. - -“Quite so. Of course—of course. But you will admit, won’t you, that -style matters, that the way a thing’s done, the way things are arranged, -you know, count?” - -“I don’t know anything about writing novels—I only know about reading -them. The literary, polished novel is one sort of thing, I suppose. But -there is also the novel with plenty of real people and real things in -it. If a novel’s too literary a plain man like myself doesn’t find it -real at all. I prefer something careless and casual like life itself, -with plenty of people whom you get to know....” Seymour bent towards -him, his chubby face like a very full bud ready to burst with the -eagerness of his amiable superiority. - -“But you can’t say that your Russians are real people—come now. Take -Dostoevsky—take him for a minute. Look at them. Look at ‘Les Frères -Karamazoff’. All as mad as hatters—all of ’em—and no method at -all—just chucked on anyhow. After all, Literature is something.” - -“Yes, that’s just what I complain of,” said Mark, feeling as though he -were inside a ring of eager onlookers who were all cheering his -opponent. “You fellows all think literature’s the only thing. It’s -entirely unimportant beside real life. If your book is like real life, -why then it’s interesting. If it’s like literature it’s no good at all -except to a critic or two.” - -“And I suppose,” cried Seymour, scornfully, his chin rising higher and -higher, “that you’d say Dostoevsky’s like real life?” - -“It is,” said Mark, quietly, “if you know Russia.” - -“Well, I’ve never been there,” Seymour admitted. “But I’ve got a friend -who has. He says that Russian fiction’s nothing like the real thing at -all. That Russia’s just like anywhere else.” - -“Nonsense”—and Mark’s voice was shaking—“Your friend ... rot—” He -recovered himself. “That’s utterly untrue,” he said. - -“I assure you—” Seymour began. - -Then Mark forgot himself, his surroundings, his audience. - -“Oh—go to Blazes!” he cried. “What do you know about it? You say -yourself you’ve never been there. I’ve lived in Moscow for years!” - -There was then a tremendous silence, Mrs. Trenchard, Aunt Aggie, Henry, -all looked at Seymour as though they said, “Please, please, don’t mind. -It shall _never_ happen again.” - -Katherine looked at Mark. During that moment’s silence the winter -afternoon with its frost and clear skies, its fresh colour and happy -intimacies, seemed to beat about the house. In Mark, the irritation that -he had felt ever since Seymour’s sentence, seemed now to explode within -him, like the bursting of some thunder cloud. He was for a moment -deluged, almost drowned by his impotent desire to make some scene, in -short, to fight, anything that would break the hot stuffy closeness of -the air and let in the sharp crispness of the outer world. - -But the episode was at an end. Katherine closed it with: - -“Tell Mr. Seymour some of those things that you were telling us last -night—about Moscow and Russian life.” - -Mrs. Trenchard’s eyes, having concluded their work of consoling Seymour, -fastened themselves upon Mark,—watching like eyes behind closed -windows; strangely in addition to their conviction that some outrage had -been committed there was also a suspicion of fear—but they were the -mild, glazed eyes of a stupid although kindly woman.... - - * * * * * - -Mark that evening, going up to dress for dinner, thought to himself, “I -really can’t stay here any longer. It isn’t decent, besides, they don’t -like me.” He found, half in the dusk, half in the moonlight of the -landing-window Katherine, looking for an instant before she went to her -room, at the dark Abbey-towers, the sky with the stars frosted over, it -seemed, by the coldness of the night, at the moon, faintly orange and -crisp against the night blue. - -He stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said abruptly, looking into her eyes, very -soft and mild but always with that lingering humour behind their -mildness. “I’m afraid I was rude to that fellow this afternoon.” - -“Yes,” she said, turning to him but with her eyes still on the black -towers. “You were—but it would have no effect on Mr. Seymour.” - -He felt, as he stood there, that he wished to explain that he was not -naturally so unpolished a barbarian. - -“Russia,” he began, hesitating and looking at her almost appealingly, -“is a sore point with me. You can’t tell—unless you’ve lived there how -it grows upon you, holds you, and, at last, begs you to stand up for it -whenever it may be attacked. And he didn’t know—really he didn’t—” - -“You’re taking it much too seriously,” she said, laughing at him, he -felt. “No one thought that he _did_ know. But Mother likes him and he’s -Henry’s friend. And we all stick together as a family.” - -“I’m afraid your mother thought me abominable,” he said, looking up at -her and looking away again. - -“Mother’s old-fashioned,” Katherine answered. “So am I—so are we all. -We’re an old-fashioned family. We’ve never had anyone like you to stay -with us before.” - -“It’s abominable that I should stay on like this. I’ll go to-morrow.” - -“No, don’t do that. Father loves having you. We all like you—only we’re -a little afraid of your ways”—she moved down the passage. “We’re very -good for you, I expect, and I’m sure you’re very good for us.” She -suddenly turned back towards him, and dropping her voice, quite solemnly -said to him, “The great thing about us is that we’re fond of one -another. That makes it all the harder for anyone from outside....” - -“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said, carrying on her note of confidence, -“I like people to like me. I’m very foolish about it. It’s the chief -thing I want.” - -“I like people to like me, too,” Katherine answered, raising her voice -and moving now definitely away from him. “Why shouldn’t one?” she ended. -“Don’t you be afraid, Mr. Mark. It’s all right.” - - * * * * * - -He dressed hurriedly and came down to the drawing-room, with some -thought in the back of his mind that he would, throughout the evening, -be the most charming person possible. He found, however, at once a -check.... - -Under a full blaze of light Grandfather Trenchard and Great Aunt Sarah -were sitting, waiting for the others. The old man, his silver buckles -and white hair gleaming, sat, perched high in his chair, one hand raised -before the fire, behind it the firelight shining as behind a faint -screen. - -Aunt Sarah, very stiff, upright and slim, was the priestess before the -Trenchard temple. They, both of them, gazed into the fire. They did not -turn their heads as Mark entered; they had watched his entry in the -Mirror. - -He shouted Good-evening, but they did not hear him. He sat down, began a -sentence. - -“Really a sharp touch in the air—” then abandoned it, seizing -‘Blackwood’ as a weapon of defence. Behind his paper, he knew that their -eyes were upon him. He felt them peering into ‘Blackwood’s’ cover; they -pierced the pages, they struck him in the face. - -There was complete silence in the room. The place was thick with burning -eyes. They were reflected, he felt, in the Mirror, again and again. - -“How they hate me!” he thought. - - - - - CHAPTER III - KATHERINE - -Katherine Trenchard’s very earliest sense of morality had been that -there were God, the Trenchard’s and the Devil—that the Devil wished -very much to win the Trenchards over to His side, but that God assured -the Trenchards that if only they behaved well He would not let them -go—and, for this, Troy had burnt, Carthage been razed to the ground, -proud kings driven from their thrones and humbled to the dust, plague, -pestilence, and famine had wrought their worst.... - -The Trenchards were, indeed, a tremendous family, and it was little -wonder that the Heavenly Powers should fight for their alliance. In the -county of Glebeshire, where Katherine had spent all her early years, -Trenchards ran like spiders’ webs, up and down the lanes and villages. - -In Polchester, the Cathedral city, there were Canon Trenchard and his -family, old Colonel Trenchard, late of the Indian army, the Trenchards -of Polhaze and the Trenchards of Rothin Place—all these in one small -town. There were Trenchards at Rasselas and Trenchards (poor and rather -unworthy Trenchards) at Clinton St. Mary. There was one Trenchard (a -truculent and gout-ridden bachelor) at Polwint—all of these in the -immediate neighbourhood of Katherine’s home. Of course they were -important to God.... - -In that old house in the village of Garth in Roselands, where Katherine -had been born, an old house up to its very chin in deep green fields, an -old house wedded, hundreds of years ago to the Trenchard Spirit, nor -likely now ever to be divorced from it, Katherine had learnt to adore -with her body, her soul and her spirit Glebeshire and everything that -belonged to that fair county, but to adore it, also, because it was so -completely, so devoutly, the Trenchard heritage. So full were her early -prayers of petitions for successive Trenchards, “God bless Father, -Mother, Henry, Millie, Vincent, Uncle Tim, Uncle Wobert, Auntie Agnes, -Auntie Betty, Cousin Woger, Cousin Wilfrid, Cousin Alice, etc., etc.,” -that, did it ever come to a petition for someone unhappily not a -Trenchard the prayer was offered with a little hesitating apology. For a -long while Katherine thought that when Missionaries were sent to gather -in the heathen they were going out on the divine mission of driving all -strangers into the Trenchard fold. - -Not to be a Trenchard was to be a nigger or a Chinaman. - -And here I would remark with all possible emphasis that Katherine was -never taught that it was a fine and a mighty thing to be a Trenchard. No -Trenchard had ever, since time began, considered his position any more -than the stars, the moon and the sun consider theirs. If you were a -Trenchard you did not think about it at all. The whole Trenchard world -with all its ramifications, its great men and its small men, its -dignitaries, its houses, its Castles, its pleasure-resorts, its Foreign -Baths, its Theatres, its Shooting, its Churches, its Politics, its Foods -and Drinks, its Patriotisms and Charities, its Seas, its lakes and -rivers, its Morality, its angers, its pleasures, its regrets, its God -and its Devil, the whole Trenchard world was a thing intact, preserved, -ancient, immovable. It took its stand on its History, its family -affection, its country Places, its loyal Conservatism, its obstinacy and -its stupidity. Utterly unlike such a family as the Beaminsters with -their preposterous old Duchess (now so happily dead) it had no need -whatever for any self-assertion, any struggle with anything, any fear of -invasion. From Without nothing could attack its impregnability. From -Within? Well, perhaps, presently ... but no Trenchard was aware of that. - -A young Beaminster learnt from the instant of its breaking the Egg that -it must at once set about showing the world that it was a Beaminster. - -A young Trenchard never considered for a single second that he was -supposed to show anyone anything. HE WAS ... that was enough. - -The Trenchards had never been conceited people—conceit implied too -definite a recognition of other people’s position and abilities. To be -conceited you must think yourself abler, more interesting, richer, -handsomer than someone else—and no Trenchard ever realised anyone else. - -From the security of their Mirror they looked out upon the world. Only -from inside the House could the Mirror be broken—surely then they were -secure.... - -Katherine was always a very modest little girl, but her modesty had -never led to any awkward shyness or embarrassment; she simply did not -consider herself at all. She had been, in the early days, a funny little -figure, ‘dumpy’, with serious brown eyes and a quiet voice. She was -never in the way, better at home than at parties, she never ‘struck’ -strangers, as did her younger sister Millicent, ‘who would be brilliant -when she grew up’; Katherine would never be brilliant. - -She had, from the first, a capacity for doing things for the family -without attracting attention—and what more can selfish people desire? -She was soon busy and occupied—necessary to the whole house. She very -seldom laughed, but her eyes twinkled and she was excellent company did -anyone care for her opinion. Only Uncle Tim of them all realised her -intelligence—for the rest of the family she was slow ‘but a dear.’ - -It was in her capacity of ‘a dear’ that she finally stood to all of -them. They adored because they knew that they never disappointed her. -Although they had, none of them (save Henry) any concern as to their -especial failings or weaknesses, it was nevertheless comforting to know -that they might put anything upon Katherine, behave to her always in the -way that was easiest to them, and that she would always think them -splendid. They would not in public places put Katherine forward as a -Fine Trenchard. Millicent would be a Fine Trenchard one day—but at -home, in their cosy fortified security, there was no one like Katherine. - -Katherine was perfect to them all.... Not that she did not sometimes -have her tempers, her impatiences, her ‘moods’. They were puzzled when -she was short with them, when she would not respond to their invitations -for compliments, when she seemed to have some horrible doubt as to -whether the Trenchard world was, after all, the only one—but they -waited for the ‘mood’ to pass, and it passed very swiftly ... it is -noteworthy however that never, in spite of their devotion to her, did -they during these crises, attempt to help or console her. She stood -alone, and at the back of their love there was always some shadow of -fear. - -Very happy had her early years been. The house at Garth, rambling, -untidy, intimate, with the croquet-lawn in front of it, the little wild -wood at the right of it, the high sheltering green fields at the left of -it, the old church Tower above the little wood, the primroses and -cuckoos, the owls and moonlight nights, the hot summer days with the hum -of the reaping machine, the taste of crushed strawberries, the -dim-sleepy voices from the village street. _This_ was a world! The Old -House had never changed—as she had grown it had dwindled perhaps, but -ever, as the years passed, had enclosed more securely the passion of her -heart. She saw herself standing in the dim passage that led to her -bedroom, a tiny, stumpy figure. She could hear the voice of Miss Mayer, -the governess, “Now, Katherine—come along, please—Millie’s in bed.” - -She could smell the tallow of the candle, could hear the owls’ hoot from -the dark window, could smell apples and roses somewhere, could remember -how intensely she had caught that moment and held it, and carried it, -for ever and ever, away with her. Yes, that _was_ a World! - -And, beyond the House, there was the Country. Every lane and wood and -hill did she know. Those thick, deep, scented lanes that only Glebeshire -in all the world can provide—the road to Rafiel, running, at first, -with only a moment’s peep now and again of the sea, then plunging with -dramatic fling, suddenly down into the heart of the Valley. There was -Rafiel—Rafiel, the only Cove in all the world! How as the dog-cart -bumped down that precipice had her heart been in her mouth, how magical -the square harbour, the black Peak, the little wall of white-washed -cottages, after that defeated danger! - -There were all the other places—St. Lowe and Polwint, Polchester with -the Cathedral and the Orchards and the cobbled streets, Grane Woods and -Grane Castle, Rothin Woods, Roche St. Mary, Moore with the seadunes and -the mists and rabbits, the Loroe river and the fishing-boats at -Pelynt—world of perfect beauty and simplicity, days stained with the -high glory of romance. And this was Trenchard Country! - -London, coming to her afterwards, had, at first, been hated, only -gradually accepted. She grew slowly fond of the old Westminster house, -but the crowds about her confused and perplexed her. She was aware now -that, perhaps, there were those in the world who cared nothing for the -Trenchards. She flew from such confusion the more intensely into her -devotion to her own people. It was as though, at the very first peep of -the world, she had said to herself—“No. That is not my place. They have -no need of me nor I of them. They would change me. I do not wish to be -changed.” - -She was aware of her own duty the more strongly because her younger -sister, Millicent, had taken always the opposite outlook. Millicent, -pretty, slender, witty, attractive, had always found home (even Garth -and its glories) ‘a little slow’. - -The family had always understood that it was natural for Millicent to -find them slow—no pains had been spared over Millicent’s development. -She had just finished her education in Paris and was coming back to -London. Always future plans now were discussed with a view to finding -amusement for Millicent. “Millie will be here then”. “I wonder whether -Millie will like him.” “You’d better accept it. Millie will like to go.” - -Beyond all the family Katherine loved Millicent. It had begun when -Millie had been very small and Katherine had mothered her,—it had -continued when Millie, growing older, had plunged into scrapes and -demanded succour out of them again—it had continued when Katherine and -Millie had developed under a cloud of governesses, Millie brilliant and -idle, Katherine plodding and unenterprising, it had continued when -Millie, two years ago, had gone to Paris, had written amusing, -affectionate letters, had told “Darling Katie that there was _no one_, -no one, no ONE, anywhere in all the world, to touch her—Mme. Roget was -a pig, Mlle. Lefresne, who taught music, an angel, etc. etc.” - -Now Millicent was coming home.... Katherine was aware that from none of -the family did she receive more genuine affection than from Henry, and -yet, strangely, she was often irritated with Henry. She wished that he -were more tidy, less rude to strangers, less impulsive, more of a -comfort and less of an anxiety to his father and mother. She was severe -sometimes to Henry and then was sorry afterwards. She could ‘do anything -with him,’ and wished therefore that he had more backbone. Of them all -she understood her mother the best. She was very like her mother in many -ways; she understood that inability to put things into words, that mild -conviction that ‘everything was all right’, a conviction to be obtained -only by shutting your eyes very tight. She understood, too, as no other -member of the family understood, that Mrs. Trenchard’s devotion to her -children was a passion as fierce, as unresting, as profound, and, -possibly, as devastating as any religion, any superstition, any -obsession. It _was_ an obsession. It had in it all the glories, the -dangers, the relentless ruthlessness of an overwhelming ‘idée -fixe’—that ‘idée fixe’ which is at every human being’s heart, and that, -often undiscovered, unsuspected, transforms the world.... Katherine knew -this. - -For her father she had the comradeship of a play-fellow. She could not -take her father very seriously—he did not wish that she should. She -loved him always and he loved her in his ‘off’ moments, when he was not -thinking of himself and his early Nineteenth Century—if he had any time -that he could spare from himself it was given to her. She thought it -quite natural that his spare time should be slender. - -And, of them all, no one enquired as to her own heart, her thoughts, her -wonders, her alarms and suspicions, her happiness, her desires. She -would not if she could help it, enquire herself about these things—but -sometimes she was aware that life would not for ever, leave her alone. -She had one friend who was not a Trenchard, and only one. This was Lady -Seddon, who had been before her marriage a Beaminster and grand-daughter -of the old Duchess of Wrexe. Rachel Beaminster had married Roddy Seddon. -Shortly after their marriage he had been flung from his horse, and from -that time had been always upon his back—it would always be so with him. -They had one child—a boy of two—and they lived in a little house in -Regent’s Park. - -That friendship had been of Rachel Seddon’s making. She had driven -herself in upon Katherine and, offering her baby as a reward, had lured -Katherine into her company—but even to her, Katherine had not -surrendered herself. Rachel Seddon was a Beaminster, and although the -Beaminster power was now broken, about that family there lingered -traditions of greatness and autocratic splendour. Neither Rachel nor -Roddy Seddon was autocratic, but Katherine would not trust herself -entirely to them. It was as though she was afraid that by doing so she -would be disloyal to her own people. - -This, then, was Katherine’s world. - -Upon the morning of the November day when Millicent was to make, upon -London, her triumphal descent from Paris, Katherine found herself, -suddenly, in the middle of Wigmore Street, uneasy—Wigmore Street was -mild, pleasantly lit with a low and dim November sun, humming with a -little stir and scatter of voices and traffic, opening and shutting its -doors, watching a drove of clouds, like shredded paper, sail through the -faint blue sky above it. Katherine stopped for an instant to consider -this strange uneasiness. She looked about her, thought, and decided that -she would go and see Rachel Seddon. - -Crossing a little finger of the Park, she stopped again. The shredded -clouds were dancing now amongst the bare stiff branches of the trees and -a grey mist, climbing over the expanse of green, spread like thin gauze -from end to end of the rising ground. A little soughing wind seemed to -creep about her feet. She stopped again and stood there, a solitary -figure. For, perhaps, the first time in her life she considered herself. -She knew, as she stood there, that she had for several days been aware -of this uneasiness. It was as though someone had been knocking at a door -for admittance. She had heard the knocking, but had refused to move, -saying to herself that soon the sound would cease. But it had not -ceased, it was more clamorous than before. She was frightened—why? Was -it Millie’s return? She knew that it was not that.... - -Standing there, in the still Park, she seemed to hear something say to -her “You are to be caught up.... Life is coming to you.... You cannot -avoid it.... You are caught.” - -She might have cried to the sky, the trees, the little pools of dead and -sodden leaves “What is it? What is it? Do you hear anything?” A scent of -rotting leaves and damp mist, brought by the little wind, invaded her. -The pale sun struck through the moist air and smiled down, a globe of -gold, upon her. There came to her that moment of revelation that tells -human beings that, fine as they may think themselves, full of courage -and independent of all men, Life, if it exert but the softest pressure, -may be too strong for them—the armies of God, with their certain -purpose, are revealed for a brief instant entrenched amongst the clouds. -“If we crush you what matters it to Us?” - -She hurried on her way, longing for the sound of friendly voices, and, -when she found Rachel Seddon with her son in the nursery, the fire, the -warm colours, the absurd rocking-horse, armies of glittering soldiers -encamped upon the red carpet, the buzz of a sewing-machine in the next -room, above all, Michael Seddon’s golden head and Rachel’s dark one, she -could have cried aloud her relief. - -Rachel, tall and slender, dark eyes and hair from a Russian mother, -restless, impetuous, flinging her hands out in some gesture, catching -her boy, suddenly, and kissing him, breaking off in the heart of one -sentence to begin another, was a strange contrast to Katherine’s repose. -Soon Katherine was on the floor and Michael, who loved her, had his arms -about her neck. - -“That’s how she ought always to be,” thought Rachel, looking down at -her. “How could anyone ever say that she was plain! Roddy thinks her -so.... He should see her now.” - -Katherine looked up. “Rachel,” she said, “I was frightened just now in -the Park. I don’t know why—I almost ran here. I’m desperately ashamed -of myself.” - -“You—frightened?” - -“Yes, I thought someone was coming out from behind a tree to slip a bag -over my head, I—Oh! I don’t know what I thought....” - -Then she would say no more. She played with Michael and tried to tell -him a story. Here she was, as she had often been before, unsuccessful. -She was too serious over the business, would not risk improbabilities -and wanted to emphasise the moral. She was not sufficiently absurd ... -gravely her eyes sought for a decent ending. She looked up and found -that Michael had left her and was moving his soldiers. - -The sun, slanting in, struck lines of silver and gold from their armour -across the floor. - -As she got up and stood there, patting herself to see whether she were -tidy, her laughing eyes caught Rachel. - -“There! You see! I’m no good at _that_!—no imagination—father’s always -said so.” - -“Katie,” Rachel said, catching her soft, warm, almost chubby hand, -“there’s nothing the matter, is there?” - -“The matter! No! what should there be?” - -“It’s so odd for you to say what you did just now. And I think—I don’t -know—you’re different to-day.” - -“No, I’m not.” Katherine looked at her. “It was the damp Park, all the -bare trees and nobody about.” - -“But it’s so unlike you to think of damp Parks and bare trees.” - -“Well—perhaps it’s because Millie’s coming back from Paris this -afternoon. I shall be terrified of her—so smart she’ll be!” - -“Give her my love and bring her here as soon as she’ll come. She’ll -amuse Roddy.” She paused, searching in Katherine’s brown -eyes—“Katie—if there’s ever—anything—_any_thing—I can help you in -or advise you—or do for you. You know, don’t you?... You always _will_ -be so independent. You don’t _tell_ me things. Remember I’ve had my -times—worse times than you guess.” - -Katherine kissed her. “It’s all right, Rachel, there’s nothing the -matter—except that ... no, nothing at all. Good-bye, dear. Don’t come -down. I’ll bring Millie over.” - -She was gone—Rachel watched her demure, careful progress until she was -caught and hidden by the trees. - - * * * * * - -There had been a little truth in her words when she told Rachel that she -dreaded Millie’s arrival. If she had ever, in the regular routine of her -happy and busy life, looked forward to any event as dramatic or a -crisis, that moment had always been Millie’s return from Paris. Millie -had been happy and affectionate at home, but nevertheless a critic. She -had never quite seen Life from inside the Trenchard Mirror nor had she -quite seen it from the vision of family affection. She loved them -all—but she found them slow, unadventurous, behind the times. That was -the awful thing—‘behind the times’—a terrible accusation. If Millie -had felt that (two years ago) how vehemently would she feel it now!... -and Katherine knew that as she considered this criticism of Millie’s she -was angry and indignant and warm with an urgent, passionate desire to -protect her mother from any criticism whatever. “Behind the times”, -indeed—Millie had better not.... And then she remembered the depth of -her love for Millie ... nothing should interfere with that. - -She was in her bedroom, after luncheon, considering these things when -there was a tap on the door and Aunt Betty entered. In her peep round -the door to see whether she might come in, in the friendly, hopeful, -reassuring butterfly of a smile that hovered about her lips, in the -little stir of her clothes as she moved as though every article of -attire was assuring her that it was still there, and was very happy to -be there too, there was the whole of her history written. - -It might be said that she had no history, but to such an assertion, did -she hear it, she would offer an indignant denial, could she be indignant -about anything. She had been perfectly, admirably happy for fifty-six -years, and that, after all, is to have a history to some purpose. She -had nothing whatever to be happy about. She had no money at all, and had -never had any. She had, for a great number of years, been compelled to -live upon her brother’s charity, and she was the most independent soul -alive. In strict truth she had, of her own, thirty pounds a year, and -the things that she did with those thirty pounds are outside and beyond -any calculation. “There’s always _my_ money, George,” she would say when -her brother had gloomy forebodings about investments. She lived, in -fact, a minute, engrossing, adventurous, flaming life of her own, and -the flame, the colour, the fire were drawn from her own unconquerable -soul. In her bedroom—faded wall-paper, faded carpet, faded chairs -because no one ever thought of her needs—she had certain possessions, a -cedar-wood box, a row of books, a water-colour sketch, photographs of -the family (Katherine 3½, Vincent 8 years old, Millicent 10 years, etc., -etc.), a model of the Albert Memorial done in pink wax, a brass tray -from India, some mother-of-pearl shells, two china cats given to her, -one Christmas day, by a very young Katherine—those possessions were her -world. She felt that within that bedroom everything was her own. She -would allow no other pictures on the wall, no books not hers in the -book-case. One day when she had some of the thirty pounds ‘to play with’ -she would cover the chairs with beautiful cretonne and she would buy a -rug—so she had said for the last twenty years. She withdrew, when life -was tiresome, when her sister Aggie was difficult, when there were -quarrels in the family (she hated quarrels) into this world of her own, -and would suddenly break out in the midst of a conversation with “I -might have the bed _there_” or “There isn’t really room for another -chair if I had one,” and then would make a little noise like a top, -‘hum, hum, hum’. In defiance of her serenity she could assume a terrible -rage and indignation were any member of the family attacked. Her brother -George and Katherine she loved best—she did not, although she would -never acknowledge it, care greatly for Henry—Millie she admired and -feared. She had only to think of Katherine and her eyes would fill with -tears ... she was a very fount of sentiment. She had suffered much from -her sister Agnes, but she had learnt now the art of withdrawal so -perfectly that she could escape at any time without her sister being -aware of it. “You aren’t listening, Elizabeth,” Agnes would cry -suspiciously. - -“Yes, dear Aggie, I am. I don’t think things as bad as you say. For -instance,” and a wonderful recovery would reassure suspicion. The real -core of her life was Katherine and Katherine’s future. There was to be, -one day, for Katherine a most splendid suitor—a Lord, perhaps, a great -politician, a great Churchman, she did not know—but someone who would -realise first Katherine’s perfection, secondly the honour of being made -a Trenchard, thirdly the necessity of spending all his life in the noble -work of making Katherine happy. “I shall miss her—we shall all miss -her—but we mustn’t be selfish—hum, hum—she’ll have one to stay, -perhaps.” - -Very often she came peeping into Katherine’s room as she came to-day. -She would take Katherine into her confidence; she would offer her -opinion about the events of the hour. She took her stand in the middle -of the room, giving little excited pecks at one of her fingers, the one -that suffered most from her needle when she sewed, a finger scarred now -by a million little stabs. So she stood now, and Katherine, sitting on -the edge of her bed, looked up at her. - -“I came in, my dear, because you hardly ate any luncheon. I watched -you—hardly any at all.” - -“Oh, that’s all right, Aunt Betty. I wasn’t hungry.” - -“I don’t like your not eating—hum, hum. No, I don’t. Mother always used -to say ‘Don’t Eat, can’t Beat’—of military forces, you know, dear, or -anything that had a hard task to perform.” - -She looked about her with an aimless and rather nervous smile, which -meant that she had something to say but was afraid of it. - -“Katie, dear, do you know?” (This with an air of intense importance.) “I -don’t think I’ll show Millie my room—not just at first at any rate.” - -“Oh, but you must. She’ll be longing to see it.” - -“Well, but—will she, do you think? Oh, no, she won’t, not after -Paris.... Paris is so grand. Perhaps, later I will—show it her. I mean -when she’s more accustomed to the old life.” - -But even now it was plain that she had not delivered her purpose. It was -imprisoned, like a mouse in a very woolly moth-eaten trap. Soon there -will be a click and out it will come! - -Her wandering, soft, kindly eyes looked gravely upon Katherine. - -“My dear, I wish you’d eaten something. Only a little mince and two of -those cheese biscuits.... Katie dear, did you hear what Mr. Mark said at -luncheon about leaving us?” - -“Yes, Aunt Betty.” - -“He said he’d got somewhere from next Monday. Poor young man—not _so_ -young now either—but he seems lonely. I’m glad we were able to be kind -to him at first. Katie, I have an ‘Idea’.” Impossible to give any -picture of the eagerness with which now her eyes were lit and her small -body strung on a tiptoe of excitement, “I have an idea.... I think he -and Millie—I think he might be just the man for Millie—adventurous, -exciting, knowing so much about Russia—and, after Paris, she’ll want -someone like that.” - -Katherine turned slowly away from her aunt, gazing vaguely, -absent-mindedly, as though she had not been thinking of the old lady’s -words. - -“Oh, no, Aunt Betty. I don’t think so—What an old matchmaker you are!” - -“I love to see people happy. And I like him. I think it’s a pity he’s -going on Monday. He’s been here a fortnight now. I like him. He’s polite -to me, and when a young man is polite to an old woman like me that says -a lot—hum, hum—yes, it does. But your mother doesn’t like him—I -wonder why not—but she doesn’t. I always know when your mother doesn’t -like anybody. Millie will.... I know she will. But I don’t think I’ll -show her my things—not at first, not right after Paris.” - -“Perhaps it would be better to wait a little.” Katherine went and sat in -front of her mirror. She touched the things on her dressing-table. - -“I’ll go now, dear—I can’t bear to think of you only having had that -mince. My eye will be on you at dinner, mind.” - -She peeped out of the door, looked about her with her bright little -eyes, then whisked away. - -Katherine sat before her glass, gazing. But not at herself. She did not -know whose face it was that stared back at her. - - * * * * * - -Millie’s entrance that afternoon was very fine. There were there to -receive her, her grandfather, her great-aunt (in white boa), her father, -her mother, Henry, Katherine, Aunt Betty and Aggie, Philip Mark, Esq. -She stood in the doorway of the drawing-room radiant with health, good -spirits and happiness at being home again—all Trenchards always are. -Like Katherine in the humour of her eyes, otherwise not at all—tall, -dark, slim in black and white, a little black hat with a blue feather, a -hat that was over one ear. She had her grandfather’s air of clear, -finely cut distinction, but so alive, so vibrating with health was she -that her entrance extinguished the family awaiting her as you blow out a -candle. Her cheeks were flushed, her black eyes sparkled, her arms were -outstretched to all of them. - -“Here I am!” she seemed to say, “I’m sure you’ve forgotten in all this -time how delightful I am!—and indeed I’m ever so much more delightful -than I was before I went away. In any case here I am, ready to love you -all. And there’s no family in the world I’d be gladder to be a member of -than this!” - -Her sharp, merry, inquisitive eyes sought them all out—sought out the -old room with all the things in it exactly as she had always known them, -and then the people—one after the other—all of them exactly as she had -always known them.... - -She was introduced to Philip Mark. Her eyes lingered up him, for an -instant, mischievously, almost interrogatively. To him she seemed to -say: “What on earth are you doing inside here? How did you ever get in? -And what are you here for?” She seemed to say to him: “You and I—we -know more than these others here—but just because of that we’re not -half so nice.” - -“Well, Henry,” she said, and he felt that she was laughing at him and -blushed. He knew that his socks were hanging loosely. He had lost one of -his suspenders. - -“Well, Millie,” he answered, and thought how beautiful she was. - -It was one of the Trenchard axioms that anyone who crossed the English -Channel conferred a favour—it was nice of them to go, as though one -visited a hospital or asked a poor relation to stay. Paris must have -been glad to have had Millie—it must have been very gay for Paris—and -that not because Millie was very wonderful, but simply because Paris -wasn’t English. - -“It must be nice to be home again, Millie dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard -comfortably. - -Millie laughed and for a moment her eyes flashed across at Philip Mark, -but he was looking at Katherine. She looked round upon them all, then, -as though she were wondering how, after all, things were going to be now -that she had come home ‘for good’—now that it would be always and -always—well, perhaps not always. She looked again at Philip Mark and -liked him. She surrendered herself then to the dip and splash and -sparkle of the family waters of affection. They deluged and overwhelmed -her. Her old grandfather and the great-aunt sat silently there, -watching, with their bird-like eyes, everything, but even upon their -grim features there were furrowed smiles. - -“And the crossing was really all right?” “The trees in the Park were -blowing rather ...” “And so, Milly dear, I said you’d go. I promised for -you. But you can get out of it as easily as anything....” - -“You must have been sorry, as it was the last time, but you’ll be able -to go back later on and see them....” - -And her father. “Well, _they’ve_ had her long enough, and now it’s our -turn for a bit. She’s been spoiled there.... She won’t get any spoiling -here....” - -He roared with laughter, flinging his head back, coming over and -catching Millie’s head between his hands, laughing above her own -laughing eyes. Henry watched them, his father cynically, his sister -devotedly. He was always embarrassed by the family demonstrations, and -he felt it the more embarrassing now because there was a stranger in -their midst. Philip was just the man to think this all odd.... But Henry -was anxious about the family behaviour simply because he was devoted to -the family, not at all because he thought himself superior to it. - -Then Milly tore herself away from them all. She looked at Katherine. - -“I’m going up to my room. Katy, come up and help me—” - -“I’d better come and help you, dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard. “There’s sure -to be a mess....” - -But Milly shook her head with a slight gesture of impatience. “No, no, -Mother ... Katy and I will manage.” - -“Hilda will do everything if—” - -“No, I want to show Katy things....” - -They went. - -When the two girls were alone in the bedroom and the door was closed -Milly flung her arms round Katherine and kissed her again and again. -They stood there, in the silence, wrapped in one another’s arms. - -“Katy—darling—if you only knew, all this time, how I’ve longed for -you. Sometimes I thought ‘I _must_—I _must_—see her’—that’s you. I’d -run away—I’d do anything. I don’t think anything matters now that I’ve -got you again—_and_ I’ve so much to tell you!” - -They sat down on the bed, Millie vibrating with the excitement of her -wonderful experiences, Katherine quiet, but with one hand pressing -Millie’s and her eyes staring into distance. - -Suddenly Millie stopped. - -“Katie, dear, who’s this man?” - -“What man?” - -“The nice-looking man I saw downstairs.” - -“Oh, he’s a Mr. Mark. Son of a great friend of father’s. He’s lived in -Russia—Moscow—for years. He came in by mistake one night in a fog and -found that ours was the house he was coming to next day—then Father -asked him to stay—” - -“Do you like him?” - -“Yes. He’s very nice.” - -“He looks nice.” - -Milly went on again with her reminiscences. Katherine, saying only a -word now and then, listened. - -Then, exactly as though she had caught some unexpected sound, Milly -broke off again. - -“Katy—Katy.” - -“Yes.” - -“You’re different, something’s happened to you.” - -“My dear!—nothing, of course.” - -“Yes, something has.—Something ... Katy!” And here Milly flung her arms -again about her sister and stared into her eyes. “You’re in love with -someone.” - -But Katherine laughed. “That’s Paris, Milly dear—Paris—Paris.” - -“It isn’t. It isn’t. It’s _you_. There is someone. Katy, darling, tell -me—you’ve always told me everything: who is he? tell me.” - -Katherine drew herself away from Milly’s embrace, then turned round, -looking at her sister. Then she caught her and kissed her with a sudden -urgent passion. “There’s no one, of course there’s no one. I’m the old -maid of the family. You know we, long ago, decided that. I’m not ...” -she broke off, laughed, got up from the bed. She looked at Milly as -though she were setting, subduing some thoughts in her mind. “I’m just -the same, Milly. _You’re_ different, of course.” - -At a sudden sound both the girls looked up. Their mother stood in the -doorway, with her placidity, her mild affection; she looked about the -room. - -“I had to come, my dears, to see how you were getting on.” She moved -forward slowly towards them. - - - - - CHAPTER IV - THE FOREST - -Part of a letter that Philip Mark wrote to his friend:— - -“... I couldn’t stay any longer. They’d had me there a fortnight and -then one of the daughters came home from being ‘finished’ in Paris, so -that they’ve really no room for strangers. I’ve moved here—not very far -away—three furnished rooms in an upper part in a small street off -Victoria Street. It’s quiet with an amazing quietness considering its -closeness to all the rattle. The Roman Catholic Cathedral is just round -the corner—hideous to look at, but it’s nice inside. There’s a low -little pub. opposite that reminds me comfortably of one of our beloved -‘Trakteer’—you see I’m sentimental about Moscow already—more so every -day. - -“I’ve so much to tell you, and yet it comes down to one very simple -thing. I’ve found, I believe, already the very soul I set out to find, -set out with yours and Anna’s blessing, remember. You mayn’t tell her -yet. It’s too soon and it may so easily come to nothing, but I do -believe that if I’d searched England through and through for many years -I could never have found anyone so—so—exactly what I need. You must -have guessed in that very first letter that it had, even then, begun. It -began from the instant that I saw her—it seems to me now to be as -deeply seated in me as my own soul itself. But you know that at the root -of everything is my own distrust in myself. Perhaps if I had never gone -to Russia I should have had more confidence, but that country, as I see -it now, stirs always through the hearts of its lovers, questions about -everything in heaven or earth and then tells one at the end that nothing -matters. And the Englishman that is in me has always fought that -distrust, has called it sentimental, feeble, and then again I’ve caught -back the superstition and the wonder. In Russia one’s so close to God -and the Devil—in England there is business and common-sense. Between -the two I’m pretty useless. If you had once seen Katherine you’d know -why she seems to me a refuge from all that I’ve been fighting with Anna -for so long. She’s clear and true as steel—so quiet, so sure, so much -better and finer than myself that I feel that I’m the most selfish hound -in the world to dream of attaching her to me. Mind you, I don’t know at -present that she’s interested; she’s so young and ignorant in so many -ways, with all her calm common-sense, that I’m terrified of alarming -her, and if she doesn’t care for me I’ll never disturb her—never. But -if she should—well, then, I believe that I can make her happy—I know -myself by now. I’ve left my Moscow self behind me just as Anna said that -I must. There’s nothing stranger than the way that Anna foretold it all. -That night when she shewed me that I must go she drew a picture of the -kind of woman whom I must find. She had never been to England, she had -only, in all her life, seen one or two Englishwomen, but she knew, she -knew absolutely. It’s as though she had seen Katherine in her dreams.... - -“But I’m talking with absurd assurance. Putting Katherine entirely aside -there is all the family to deal with. Trenchard himself likes me—Mrs. -Trenchard hates me. That’s not a bit too strong, and the strange thing -is that there’s no reason at all for it that I can see, nor have we -been, either of us, from the beginning anything but most friendly to one -another. If she suspected that I was in love with Katherine I might -understand it, but that is impossible. There has been nothing, I swear, -to give anyone the slightest suspicion. She detects, I think, something -foreign and strange in me. Russia of course she views with the deepest -suspicion, and it would amuse you to hear her ideas of that country. -Nothing, although she has never been near it nor read anything but silly -romances about it, could shake her convictions. Because I don’t support -them she knows me for a liar. She is always calm and friendly to me, but -her intense dislike comes through it all. And yet I really like her. She -is so firm and placid and determined. She adores her family—she will -fight for them to the last feather and claw. She is so sure and so -certain about everything, and yet I believe that in her heart she is -always afraid of something—it’s out of that fear, I am sure, that her -hatred of me comes. For the others, the only one who troubled about me -was the boy, and he is the strangest creature. He’d like me to give him -all my experiences: he hasn’t the slightest notion of them, but he’s -morbidly impatient of his own inexperience and the way his family are -shutting him out of everything, and yet he’s Trenchard enough to -disapprove violently of that wider experience if it came to him. He’d -like me, for instance, to take him out and show him purple restaurants, -ladies in big hats, and so on. If he did so he’d feel terribly out of it -and then hate me. He’s a jumble of the crudest, most impossible and yet -rather touching ideas, enthusiasms, indignations, virtues, would-be -vices. He adores his sister. About that at least he is firm—and if I -were to harm her or make her unhappy!... - -“I suppose it’s foolish of me to go on like this. I’m indulging myself, -I can talk to no one. So you ... just as I used to in those first days -such years ago when I didn’t know a word of Russian, came and sat by the -hour in your flat, talked bad French to your wife, and found all the -sympathy I wanted in your kind fat face, even though we could only -exchange a word or two in the worst German. How good you were to me -then! How I must have bored you!... There’s no one here willing to be -bored like that. To an Englishman time is money—none of that blissful -ignoring of the rising and setting of sun, moon, and stars that for so -many years I have enjoyed. ‘The morning and the evening were the first -day....’ It was no Russian God who said that. I’ve found some old -friends—Millet, Thackeray, you’ll remember—they were in Moscow two -years ago. But with them it is ‘Dinner eight o’clock sharp, old man—got -an engagement nine-thirty.’ So I’m lonely. I’d give the world to see -your fat body in the doorway and hear your voice rise into that shrill -Russian scream of pleasure at seeing me. You should sit down—You should -have some tea although I’ve no Samovar to boil the water in, and I’d -talk about Katherine, Katherine, Katherine—until all was blue. And -you’d say ‘Harosho’ ‘Harosho’—and it would be six in the morning before -we knew.... God help us all, I mustn’t talk about it. It all comes to -this, in the end, as to whether a man can, by determination and resolve, -of his own will, wipe out utterly the old life and become a new man. All -those Russian years—Anna, Paul, Paul’s death, all the thought, the -view, the vision of life, the philosophy that Russia gave me—those -things have got to disappear.... They never existed. I’ve got again -what, all those years, you all said that I wanted—the right to be once -again an English citizen with everything, morals and all, cut and dried. -I can say, like old Vladimir after his year in Canada, ‘I’d never seen -so many clean people in my life.’ I’ve got what I wanted, and I -mustn’t—I musn’t—look back. - -“I believe I can carry it all through if I can get Katherine—get her -and keep her and separate her from the family. She’s got to belong to me -and not to the Trenchards. Moscow—The Trenchards! Oh, Paul, there’s a -Comedy there—and a tragedy too perhaps. I’m an ass, but I’m frightened. -I think I’m doing the finest things and, when they’re done, they turn -out the rottenest. Supposing I become a Trenchard myself? Think of that -night when Paul died. Afterwards we went up to the Kremlin, you -remember. How quiet it was and how entirely I seemed to have died with -Paul, and then how quickly life was the same again. But at any rate -Moscow cared for me and told me that it cared—London cares nothing ... -not even for the Trenchards.... - -“Think of me, Paul, as often as you can. Think of that afternoon in the -restaurant when you first showed me how to drink Vodka and I told you in -appalling German that Byron and Wilde weren’t as good as you thought -them.... Think of me, old man. I believe I’m in for a terrible business. -If Katherine loves me the family will fight me. If she doesn’t love me -nothing else now seems to matter ... and, with it all, I’m as lonely as -though I were a foreigner who didn’t know a word of English and hadn’t a -friend.... I’ve got my Ikon up on the right corner—Near it is a print -of ‘Queen Victoria receiving news of her accession to the throne of -England’ ...” - - * * * * * - -Philip Mark sat, day after day, in his ugly sitting-room and thought of -Katherine Trenchard. It was nearly a fortnight now since he had come to -these rooms—he had not, during that time, seen Katherine; he had called -once at the Trenchard’s house; he had spent then half an hour alone with -Mrs. Trenchard and Aunt Aggie. - -In these fourteen days she had grown from an attractive thought into a -compelling, driving impulse. Because his rooms were unattractive and -because he was sick for Moscow (although he would not admit that) -therefore he had turned to the thought of her to comfort him; now he was -a slave to the combination of it.... He must see her, he must speak to -her, he must have something to remember.... He must not speak to her, he -must not see her lest he should be foolish and ruin all his friendship -with her by frightening her; and, meanwhile, in these long, long -evenings the lamp from the street below trembled and trembled on his -wall as though London, like some hostile policeman, were keeping its eye -upon him, and warned him not to go too far. - -The history of Philip Mark, its past, its present, and its future, is to -be found clearly written in the character of his mother. His mother had -been a woman of great force, resolve and determination. She had in -complete subjection those who composed her world. She was kind as the -skilful executioner is kind who severs a head with one neat blow; her -good-humoured husband, her friendly, sentimental, idealistic son -submitted, utterly, without question, to her kindness. She had died when -Philip was twenty-one, and instantly Philip and his father had -discovered, to their immense surprise, their immense relief. Philip’s -father had married at once a young clergyman’s daughter of no character -at all, and was compelled to divorce her four years later. Philip, to -show his new and splendid independence, had discovered an opening in a -cloth business in Moscow. He went there and so remained until, in his -thirtieth year, the death of his father had presented him with fifteen -hundred pounds a year. - -Always, through all the Russian time, it had been his dream that he -would one day be an English land-owner with a house and a wood, fields -and children, white gates and a curving drive. He had come home now to -realise this ambition. - -The central motive of Philip’s existence was that he always desired, -very seriously, sometimes desperately, to be all these things that the -elements in his character would always prevent him from being. For -instance, awaking, at his mother’s death, from her relentless -domination, he resolved that he would never be influenced by anyone -again; five minutes after this determination he was influenced by the -doctor who had attended his mother, the lawyer who read her will, and -the clergyman who buried her. - -It had seemed to him, as he grew up in England, that the finest thing in -the world was to be (when he was sixteen) like St. Francis of Assisi, -(when he was nineteen) like Shelley, (when he was twenty-one) like -Tolstoi, and the worst thing in the world was to be a commonplace -English Squire. He went to Russia and, at once, concluded that there was -nothing like the solid, sensible beef-eating English Squire for helping -on the World, and that, as I have said, as soon as he was rich enough, -he would settle down in England, with, his estate, his hunters and his -weekly ‘Spectator’. - -Meanwhile he was influenced more and more by Russia and the Russians. He -did not really desire to be strong, sober, moral, industrious, -strong-minded, but only kindly, affectionate, tolerant, with every one -man for his friend.... He found in Russia that the only thing demanded -of him was that he should love his brother. He made an immense number of -friends, lived with a Russian girl, Anna Petrovna Semyonov, (she danced -in the Moscow Imperial Ballet) for three years, and had, by her, a son -who died. At the end of that time his father’s death gave him the -opportunity of doing what he had always declared to every Russian was -the ambition of his life—to settle in England as an English land-owner. -Anna was fond of him now, but not at all in love with him—they were the -best friends in the world. She believed, very seriously, that the -greatest thing for him would be to find a nice English girl whom he -could love, marry, and make the mother of his children. - -Philip had, during these Russian years, grown stronger in character, and -still was determined that the worst thing in the world was to be under -anyone’s domination. He was however under the power of anyone who showed -him affection; his outlook was now vehemently idealistic, romantic and -sentimental, although, in the cloth business, he was hard-headed, -cynical, and methodical. Did a human being care for him, and he would do -anything for him; under the influence of anyone’s affection the world -became so rosy to him that he lost all count of time, common-sense and -digestion. - -Anna was really fond of him, although often enough she was desperately -bored with him. She had always mothered him, but thought now that an -English girl would mother him better. She sent him home. He was very -young for his thirty years, but then from the age of anyone who has -lived in Russia for long, you may take away, always, twenty years. - -He was resolved now to be the most English of all English—to be strong, -hard-headed, a little cynical, unsentimental.... He had, of course, -fallen in love with the first English girl whom he met. Meanwhile he did -not entirely assist his cynical hardheadedness by writing long, -introspective letters to his Russian friend. However, to support his -resolute independence, he had always in front of him on his -writing-table a photograph of his mother. - -“It shall never be like that again”, he would say to himself, looking -fixedly at the rather faded picture of a lady of iron-grey hair and a -strong bosom clad in shining black silk. “Won’t it, my son?” said his -mother, looking back at him with a steely twinkle somewhere in her eye. -“Won’t it?” - -Meanwhile there was no place in London where, at three in the morning, -he might drink with his friends and discover that all the world loved -him. He was very lonely in London, and wanted Katherine more desperately -with every tick of the Ormolu clock on the marble mantelpiece; but he -would not go to see her.... One glance at his mother’s photograph was -enough to settle that. _No, he would not_.... - -Then he met her. Upon a lonely November afternoon he walked along the -Embankment, past Lambeth Bridge, into the melancholy, deserted silences -of Pimlico. He turned back, out of the little grey streets on to the -river again, and stood, for a while, looking back over the broad still -sheet of the river, almost white in colour but streaked with black lines -of shadow that trembled and wavered as though they were rods about to -whip the water into storm. The sky was grey, and all the buildings -clustered against it were grey, but slowly, as though some unseen hand -were tearing the sky like tissue paper, a faint red background was -stealing into the picture and even a little faint gold that came from -God knows where flitted, in and out, upon the face of the river. - -Heavy black barges lay, like ancient prehistoric beasts, in the slime -left now by the retreating tide. One little tug pushed desperately up -stream as though it would force some energy into this dreaming, dying -world—a revolutionary striving to stir the dim silences that watched, -from either bank, into protest. - -The air was sharply cold and there was a smell of smoke somewhere—also -of tar and cabbage and mud.... The red light pushed and pushed its way -upwards. - -The silence emphasised, with rather a pleasing melancholy, Philip’s -loneliness. It seemed, down here, as though London were a dead city and -he, only, alive in it. Katherine, too, was alive somewhere.... He looked -and, as in one’s dreams absurdity tumbles upon the heels of absurdity, -he saw her walking alone, coming, as yet without any recognition in her -eyes, towards him. - -The world was dead and he was dead and Katherine—let it stay so -then.... No, the world was alive. She had recognised him; she had -smiled—the air was suddenly warm and pulsating with stir and sound. As -she came up to him he could think of nothing but the strange difference -that his fortnight’s absorption in her had made for him. His being with -her now was as though he had arrived at some long-desired Mecca after a -desperate journey of dust and strain and peril. As he greeted her he -felt “A fortnight ago we had only just met, but now we have known each -other for years and years and years—but perhaps she does not know that -yet.” - -But he knew, as she gave him her hand, that she felt a little -awkwardness simply because she was so glad to see him—and she had never -been awkward with him before. - -“You’ve been hiding from us,” she said. Her cheeks were flaming because -she had walked fast, because the air was frosty—because she was glad to -see him. Her coat and muff were a little old-fashioned and not very -becoming to her—all the more did he praise the beautiful kindliness of -her eyes. “I’m in love with you,” he wanted to say to her. “Do you care -that I am?” ... He turned at her side and they faced together the -reddening sky. The whole city lay in absolute silence about them as -though they were caught together into a ball of grey evening cloud. - -“I haven’t hidden,” he said, smiling, “I came and called, but you were -not there.” - -“I heard,” she answered, “Aunt Aggie said you were very agreeable and -amusing—I hope you’re happy in your rooms.” - -“They’re all right.” - -“We miss you. Father’s always beginning to tell you something and then -finding that you’re gone. Henry—” - -“Your Mother?” - -“Ah, you were quite wrong about Mother. You thought that she disliked -you. You care much too much, by the way, whether people like you or no. -But Mother’s hard, perhaps, to get to know. You shocked and disturbed -her a little, but she didn’t dislike you.” - -Although he had asserted so definitely that Mrs. Trenchard hated him, he -had reassured himself, in his own heart, that she rather liked him—now -when he saw in spite of Katherine’s words that she really had disliked -him, he felt a little shock of dismay. - -“You may say what you like,” he said, “I know—” - -“No, you don’t understand. Mother is so absorbed by all of us. There are -a great many of us, you know—that it takes a long time for her to -realise anyone from outside. You were so much from outside. She was just -beginning to realise you when you went away. We are all so much to her. -In a family as big as ours there are always so many things....” - -“Of course,” he said, “I know. As to myself, it’s natural enough. At -present I miss Moscow—but that will be all right soon.” - -She came a little closer to him, and her eyes were so kindly that he -looked down upon the ground lest his own eyes should betray him. - -“Look here—come to us whenever you like. Why, all this time, have you -kept away? Wasn’t it what you were always telling us about your friends -in Moscow that their houses were open to everyone always? You must miss -that. Don’t be lonely whatever you do. There are ever so many of us, and -some of us are sure to be in.” - -“I will,” he said, stammering, “I will.” - -“Henry’s always asking questions about Russia now. You’ve had a great -effect upon him, and he wants you to tell him ever so much more. Then -there’s Millie. She hasn’t seen you at all yet. You’ll like her so much. -There’s Vincent coming back from Eton. Don’t be lonely or homesick. I -know how miserable it is.” - -They were in the Square by the Church outside her house; above the grey -solid building the sky had been torn into streaming clouds of red and -gold. - -He took her hand and held it, and suddenly as she felt his pressure the -colour flooded her face; she strove to beat it down—she could not. She -tried to draw her hand away—but her own body, as though it knew better -than she, defied her. She tried to speak—no words would come. - -She tried to tell him with her eyes that she was indifferent, but her -glance at him showed such triumph in his gaze that she began to tremble. - -Then he released her hand. She said nothing—only with quick steps -hurried into the house. He stood there until she had disappeared, then -he turned round towards his rooms. - -He strode down Victoria Street in such a flame of exultation as can -flare this World into splendour only once or twice in a lifetime. It was -the hour when the lights come out, and it seemed to him that he himself -flung fire here, there, for all the world to catch, now high into a -lamp-post, now low beneath some basement window, now like a cracker upon -some distant trees, now, high, high into the very evening blue itself. -The pavement, the broad street, the high, mysterious buildings caught -and passed the flame from one to another. - -An ancient newspaper man, ragged in a faded tail coat, was shouting -“Finals! Finals! All the Finals!” but to Philip’s ear he was -saying—“She cares for you! she cares for you! Praise God! What a world -it is.” - -He stumbled up the dark stairs of his house past the door from whose -crevices there stole always the scent of patchouli, past the door, -higher up, whence came, creeping up his stairs the suggestion of beef -and cabbage, into his own dark lodging. His sitting-room had its windows -still open and its blinds still up. The lamp in the street below flung -its squares of white light upon his walls; papers on his table were -blowing in the evening breeze, and the noise of the town climbed up, -looked in through the open windows, fell away again, climbed up again in -an eternal indifferent urgency. He was aware that a man stood by the -window, a wavering shadow was spread against the lighted wall. - -Philip stopped in the doorway. - -“Hullo!” he said, “who’s there?” - -A figure came forward. Philip, to whom all the world was, to-night, a -fantasy, stared, for a moment, at the large bearded form without -recognising it—wild and unreal as it seemed in the dim room. The man -chuckled. - -“Well, young man. I’ve come to call, I got here two minutes before you.” - -It was Uncle Tim, Mrs. Trenchard’s brother, Timothy Faunder, Esq. - -“I beg your pardon,” said Philip, “the room was dark and—and—as a -matter of fact I was thinking of something rather hard as I came in. -Wait a minute. You shall have some light, tea and a cigarette in a -moment.” - -“No, thanks.” Uncle Tim went back to the window again. “No tea—no -cigarette. I hate the first. The second’s poisonous. I’ve got a pipe -here—and don’t light up—the room’s rather pleasant like this. I expect -it’s hideous when one can see it.” - -Philip was astonished. He had liked Tim Faunder, but had decided that -Tim Faunder was indifferent to _him_—quite indifferent. For what had he -come here? Sent by the family?... Yes, he liked Uncle Tim, but he did -not want him or anyone else in the world there just then. He desired to -sit by the open window, alone, to think about Katherine, to worship -Katherine! - -They both sat down; Faunder on the window-seat, Philip near by. The -noise of the town was distant enough to make a pleasant rumbling -accompaniment to their voices. The little dark public-house opposite -with its beery eye, a dim hanging lamp in the doorway, watched them. - -“Well, how are you?” said Faunder, “lonely?” - -“It was at first,” said Philip, who found it immensely difficult to tie -his thoughts to his visitor. “And I hadn’t been lonely for so long—not -since my first days in Moscow.” - -“_They_ were lonely then?” - -“Oh, horribly. My first two months there were the worst hours in all my -life. I wanted to learn Russian, so I kept away from English people—and -Russian’s difficult to pick up at first.” - -Faunder made one of the rumbling noises in his throat that always -testified to his interest. - -“I like what you said—over there, at my sister’s,” he waved his hand, -“about Russia—and about everything. I listened, although perhaps you -didn’t think it. I hope you’re going to stick to it, young man.” - -“Stick to what?” - -“Your ideas about things—everything being for the best. There’s a great -time coming—and the Trenchards are damned fools.” - -“But I never—” - -“Oh, yes, you did. You implied it. Nobody minded, of course, because the -Trenchards know so well that they’re not. _They_ don’t bother what -people think, bless them. Besides, you don’t understand them in the -least—nor won’t ever, I expect.” - -“But,” said Philip, “I really never thought for a moment.” - -“Don’t be so afraid of hurting people’s feelings. I liked your -confidence. I liked your optimism. I just came this afternoon to see -whether a fortnight alone had damped it a little.” - -Philip hesitated. It would be very pleasant to say that no amount of -personal trouble could alter his point of view; it would be very -pleasant to say that the drearier his personal life was the surer he was -of his Creed. He hesitated—then spoke the truth. - -“As a matter of fact, I’m afraid it _was_ dimmed for a bit. Russia -seemed so far away and so did England, and I was hanging in mid-air, -between. But now—everything’s all right again.” - -“Why now?... Because I’ve paid you a call?” - -Uncle Timothy laughed. - -Philip looked down at the little public-house. “I’m very glad you have. -But this afternoon—it’s been the kind of day I’ve expected London to -give me, it seemed to settle me suddenly with a jerk, as though it were -pushing me into my place and saying, ‘There! now I’ve found a seat for -you’.” - -He was talking, he knew, at random, but he was very conscious of Uncle -Timothy, the more conscious, perhaps, because he could not see his face. - -Then he bent forward in his chair. “It was very jolly of you,” he said, -“to come and see me—but tell me, frankly, why you did. We scarcely -spoke to one another whilst I was at your sister’s house.” - -“I listened to you, though. Years ago I must have been rather like you. -How old are you?” - -“Thirty.” - -“Well, when I was thirty I was an idealist. I was impatient of my family -although I loved them. I thought the world was going to do great things -in a year or two. I believed most devoutly in the Millennium. I grew -older—I was hurt badly. I believed no longer, or thought I didn’t. I -determined that the only thing in life was to hold oneself absolutely -aloof. I have done that ever since.... I had forgotten all these years -that I had ever been like you. And then when I heard once again the same -things, the same beliefs ...” He broke off, lit his pipe, puffed -furiously at it and watched the white clouds sail into the night air. - -“Whatever I have felt,” said Philip, slowly, “however I have changed, -to-night I know that I am right. To-night I know that all I believed in -my most confident hour is true.” - -The older man bent forward and put his hand on Philip’s arm. - -“Stick to that. Remember at least that you said it to me. If before I -died.... There have been times.... After the Boer War here in England it -seemed that things were moving. There was new life, new blood, new -curiosity. But then I don’t know—it takes so long to wake people up. -_You_ woke me up a little with your talk. You woke them all up—a -little. And if people like my sister and my brother-in-law—whom I love, -mind you—wake up, why then it will be painful for them but glorious for -everyone else.” - -Philip was more alarmed than ever. He had not, at all, wished to wake -the Trenchards up—he had only wanted them to like him. He was a little -irritated and a little bored with Uncle Timothy. If only Mr. and Mrs. -Trenchard allowed him to love Katherine, he did not care if they never -woke up in all their lives. He felt too that he did not really fill the -picture of the young ardent enthusiast. He was bound, he knew, to -disappoint Uncle Timothy. He would have liked to have taken him by the -hand and said to him: “Now if only you will help me to marry Katherine I -will be as optimistic as you like for ever and ever.” - -But Uncle Tim was cleverer than Philip supposed. “You’re thinking—how -tiresome! Here’s this old man forcing me into a stained-glass window. -Don’t think that. I know you’re an ordinary nice young fellow just like -anyone else. It’s your age that’s pleasant. I’ve lived very much alone -all these years at a little house I’ve got down in Glebeshire. You must -come and see it. You’re sure to stay with my sister there; she’s only -five minutes away. But I’ve been so much alone there that I’ve got into -the habit of talking to myself.” - -Philip at once loved Uncle Tim. - -“I’m delighted that you came. If you’ll let me be a friend of yours I -shall be most awfully proud. It was only that I didn’t want you to -expect too much of me. One gets into the way in Russia of saying that -things are going to be splendid because they’re so bad—and really there -they do _want_ things to be better. And often I do think that there’s -going to be, one day, a new world. And many people now think about it -and hope for it—perhaps they always did.” - -Uncle Timothy got up. “That’s all right, my son. We’ll be friends. Come -and see me. London’s a bit of a forest—one can’t make out always quite -what’s going on. You’ll get to know all of us and like us, I hope. Come -and see me. Yes?” - -“Of course I will.” - -“I’ve got a dirty little room in Westminster, 14 Barton Street. I go -down to Glebeshire for Christmas, thank God. Good-night.” - -He clumped away down the stairs. He had stayed a very short time, and -Philip felt vaguely that, in some way or another, Uncle Tim had been -disappointed in him. For what had he come? What had he wanted? Had the -family sent him? Was the family watching him? - -That sense that Philip had had during the early days in London suddenly -returned. He felt, in the dark room, in the dark street, that the -Trenchards were watching him. From the old man down to Henry they were -watching him, waiting to see what he would do. - -Did Uncle Tim think that he loved Katherine? Had he come to discover -that? - -Although it was early, the room was very cold and very dark. Philip knew -that for an instant he was so afraid that he dared not look behind him. - -“London’s a forest....” - -And Katherine! At the thought of her he rose, defied all the Trenchards -in the world, lit his lamp and pulled down the blinds. The smell of -Uncle Tim’s tobacco was very strong in the room. - - - - - CHAPTER V - THE FINEST THING - -When a stranger surveys the life of a family it is very certain that the -really determining factor in the development of that group of persons -will escape his notice. For instance, in surveying the Trenchards, -Philip had disregarded Aunt Aggie. - -As this is a record of the history of a family and not only of -individuals, Aunt Aggie must be seriously considered; it was the first -ominous mistake that Philip made that he did not seriously consider her. -Agnes Trenchard, when quite a young girl, had been pretty in a soft and -rounded manner. Two offers of marriage had been made to her, but she had -refused these because she had a great sense of her destiny. From her -first thinking moment she had considered herself very seriously. She had -very high ideals; the finest thing in this world was a life of utter -unselfishness, a life of noble devotion and martyred self-interest. She -looked about her and could see no signs of such lives; all the more then -was it clear that she was set apart to give the world such an example. -Unfortunately, allied to this appreciation of a fine self-sacrificing -character was a nature self-indulgent, indolent and suspicious. Could -she be unselfish without trouble or loss then how unselfish she would -be! She liked the idea of it immensely.... - -For some years she was pretty, sang a little and obviously ‘thought -more’ than either of her sisters. People listened then to her creed and -believed in her intentions. She talked often of unselfishness, was -always ready to do anything for anybody, and was always prevented or -forestalled by less altruistic people. When, after her two offers of -marriage, she stepped very quickly into the shapes and colours of an old -maid, went to live with her sister-in-law and brother, and formed -‘habits’, people listened to her less readily. She herself however, -quite unaware that at thirty-five, life for a woman is, sexually, either -over or only just commencing, hoped to continue the illusions of her -girlhood. The nobility of unselfishness appealed to her more than ever, -but she found that the people around her were always standing in her -way. She became, therefore, quite naturally, rather bitter. Her round -figure expressed, in defiance of its rotundity, peevishness. - -She had to account for her failures in self-sacrificing altruism, and -found it not in her own love of ease and dislike of effort, but, -completely, in other people’s selfishness. Had she been permitted she -would have been the finest Trenchard alive, and how fine that was only a -Trenchard could know! But the world was in a conspiracy against her—the -world, and especially her sister Elizabeth, whom she despised and -bullied, but, somewhere in her strange suspicious crust of a heart, -loved. That was, perhaps, the strangest thing about her—that, in spite -of her ill-humour, discontents and irritations, she really loved the -family, and would like to have told it so were she not continually -prevented by its extraordinary habit of being irritating just when she -felt most affectionate! She really did love them, and she would go down -sometimes in the morning with every intention of saying so, but in five -minutes they had destroyed that picture of herself which, during her -absence from them, she had painted—for that, of course, she could not -forgive them. - -In the mansion of the human soul there are many chambers; Aunt Aggie’s -contradictions were numberless; but, on broad lines it may be said that -her assurance of the injustice of her own fate was balanced only by her -conviction of the good luck of everyone else. She hoped, perpetually, -that they would all recognise this—namely, that their Life had treated -them with the most wonderful good fortune. Her brother George Trenchard, -for instance, with his careless habits, his indifference to the facts of -life, his obvious selfishness. What disasters he would, had he not been -incredibly favoured, most surely have encountered! Aunt Aggie was afraid -that he did not sufficiently realise this, and so, in order that he -might offer up thanks to God, she reminded him, as often as was -possible, of his failings. Thus, too, with the others. Even Katherine, -for whom she cared deeply, betrayed, at times, a haughty and uplifted -spirit, and, frequently forestalled her aunt’s intended unselfishness, -thus, in a way, rebuking her aunt, a thing that a niece should never do. -With this consciousness of her relations’ failings went an insatiable -curiosity. Aunt Aggie, because she was the finest character in the -family, should be rewarded by the trust and confidence of the family; -she must, at any rate, maintain the illusion that she received it. Did -they keep her quiet with little facts and stories that were of no -importance, she must make them important in order to support her -dignity. She made them very important indeed.... - -A great factor was her religion. She was, like her sister, a most -sincere and devout member of the Church of England. She believed in God -as revealed to her by relations and clergymen in the day of her baptism; -time and a changing world had done nothing to shake her confidence. But, -unlike her sisters, she believed that this God existed chiefly as a -friend and supporter of Miss Agnes Trenchard. He had other duties and -purposes, of course, but did not hide from her His especial interest in -herself. The knowledge of this gave her great confidence. She was now -fifty years of age, and believed that she was still twenty-five; that is -not to say that she dressed as a young woman or encouraged, any longer, -the possibility of romantic affairs. It was simply that the interest and -attraction that she offered to the world as a fine and noble character -were the same as they had ever been—and if the world did not recognize -this that was because fine and noble characters were few and difficult -to discover. One knew this because the Trenchard family offered so -seldom an example of one, and the Trenchards were, of course, the finest -people in England. - -She had great power with her relations because she knew, so intimately, -their weaknesses. People, on the whole, may be said to triumph over -those who believe in them and submit to those who don’t. The Trenchards, -because life was full and time was short, submitted to Aunt Aggie and -granted anything in order that they might not be made uncomfortable. -They could not, however, allow her to abuse them, one to another, and -would submit to much personal criticism before they permitted treachery. -Their mutual affection was a very real factor in their lives. Aunt Aggie -herself had her share in it. She possessed, nevertheless, a genius for -creating discomfort or for promoting an already unsteady atmosphere. She -was at her best when the family was at its worst, because then she could -perceive, quite clearly, her own fine nobility. - -Philip Mark had made a grave mistake when he disregarded her. - - * * * * * - -She had disliked Philip from the first. She had disapproved of the way -that he had burst in upon the family just when she had been at her best -in the presentation to her father. He had not known that she had been at -her best, but then that was his fault. She had been ready to forgive -this, however, if, in the days that followed, he had shown that he -appreciated her. He had not shown this, at all—he had, in fact, quite -obviously preferred her sister Elizabeth. He had not listened to her -with close attention when she had talked to him about the nobility of -unselfishness, and he had displayed both irritation and immorality in -his views of life. She had been shocked by the abruptness with which he -had rebuked Mr. Seymour, and she thought his influence on Henry was, -already, as bad as it could be. It was of course only too characteristic -of George that he should encourage the young man. She could see what her -father and Aunt Sarah thought of him, and she could only say that she -entirely shared their opinion. - -Philip’s visit had upset her, and Millie’s return from Paris upset her -still more. She had never cared greatly about Millie, who had never -showed her any deference or attention, but Millie had until now always -been a Trenchard. She had come back from Paris only half a Trenchard. -Aunt Aggie was grievously afraid that troublesome times were in store -for them all. - -It was just at this point that her attention was directed towards -Katherine. She always considered that Katherine knew her better than any -other member of the family did, which simply meant that Katherine -considered her feelings. Lately, however, Katherine had not considered -her feelings. She had, on at least two occasions, been deliberately -uncivil! Once Aunt Aggie had suffered from neuralgia, and Katherine had -promised to come and read her to sleep and had forgotten to do so. Next -morning, her neuralgia being better, Aunt Aggie said—“I can’t, dear -Katherine, imagine myself, under similar conditions, acting as you have -done.... I had a sleepless night.... But of course you had more -important duties”—and Katherine had scarcely apologised. On the second -occasion Aunt Aggie at breakfast, (she was always bitter at breakfast, -mildly unhappy over her porridge and violently sarcastic by marmalade -time) had remarked with regret that Millie, who was late, had “picked up -these sad habits abroad. She had never known anyone the finer, whether -in character or manners, for living abroad;” here was a little dust -flung at the inoffensive person of Philip, now soundly asleep in Jermyn -Street. At once Katherine was “in a flurry.” “What right had Aunt Aggie -to say so? How could she tell? It might be better if one went abroad -more, lost some of one’s prejudices ...” quite a little scene! Very -unlike Katherine! - -Aunt Aggie did not forget. Like some scientist or mathematician, happily -let loose into some new theory or problem, so now did she consider -Katherine. Katherine was different, Katherine was restless and out of -temper. She had been so ever since Philip Mark’s visit.... With her -sewing or her book Aunt Aggie sat in a corner by the drawing-room fire -and watched and waited. - -Upon that afternoon that had seen Katherine’s meeting with Philip by the -river Aunt Aggie had been compelled to have tea alone. That had been -annoying, because it looked as though the gay world was inviting -everyone except Aunt Aggie to share in its excitements and pleasures. At -last there arrived Mrs. Trenchard and Millie, and finally Katherine. -Aunt Aggie had sat in her warm corner, pursuing with her needle the -green tail of an unnatural parrot which she was working into a -slowly-developing cushion cover and had considered her grievances. It -had been a horrible day, cold and gloomy. Aunt Aggie had a chilblain -that, like the Waits, always appeared about Christmas and, unlike them, -stayed on well into the spring. It had made its appearance, for the -first time this season, during the past night. Millie talked a great -deal about very little, and Mrs. Trenchard received her remarks with the -nonchalant indifference of a croupier raking in the money at Monte -Carlo. Katherine sat staring into the fire and saying nothing. - -Aunt Aggie, watching her, felt quite suddenly as though the firelight -had leapt from some crashing coal into a flaring splendour, that -something strange and unusual was with them in the room. She was not at -all, like her sister Elizabeth, given to romantic and sentimental -impressions. She seldom read novels, and cared nothing for the theatre. -What she felt now was really unpleasant and uncomfortable, as though she -had soap in her eyes or dropped her collection under the seat during the -Litany. The room positively glowed, the dim shadows were richly -coloured, and in Aunt Aggie’s heart was alarm and agitation. - -She stared about her; she looked about the room and pierced the shadows; -she sewed a wrong stitch into the parrots’ tail, and then decided that -it was Katherine’s eyes.... She looked at the girl—she looked again and -again—saw her bending forward a little, her hands pressed together on -her lap, her breast rising and falling with the softest suspicion of -some agitation, and, in her eyes, such a light as could come from no -fire, no flame from without, but only from the very soul itself. -Katherine’s good-tempered, humorous eyes, so charged with common-sense, -affectionate but always mild, unagitated, calm, like her mother’s—now -what was one to say? - -Aunt Aggie said nothing. Her own heart felt for an instant some -response. She would have liked to have taken the girl into her arms and -kissed her and petted her. In a moment the impulse passed. What was the -matter with Katherine? _Who_ was the matter with Katherine? It was -almost improper that anyone should look like that in a drawing-room that -had witnessed so much good manners. Moreover it was selfish, this -terrible absorption. If Katherine began to think of herself, whatever -would happen to them all! And there were Millie and her mother, poor -things, chattering blindly together. Aunt Aggie felt that the business -of watching over this helpless family did indeed devolve upon her. From -that moment Katherine and the things that were possibly happening to -Katherine never left her thoughts. She was happier than she had been for -many months. - -But Katherine, in the days that followed, gave her curiosity no -satisfaction. Aunt Aggie dated, in future years, all the agitation that -was so shortly to sweep down upon the Trenchard waters from that -afternoon when ‘Katherine’s eyes had seemed so strange’, but her -insistence on that date did not at all mean that it was then that -Katherine invited her aunt’s confidence, Aunt Aggie was compelled to -drive on her mysterious way alone. She was now assured that ‘something -was the matter’, but the time had not yet arrived when all the family -was concerned in it. - -In any case, to begin with, what was her sister-in-law Harriet Trenchard -thinking? No one ever knew what Harriet Trenchard thought; and foolish -and hasty observers said that that was because Harriet Trenchard never -thought at all. Aggie Trenchard was neither foolish nor hasty; she was -afraid of Harriet because, after all these years, she knew nothing about -her. She had never penetrated that indifferent stolidity. Harriet had -never spoken to her intimately about anything, nor had Harriet once -displayed any emotions, whether of surprise or anger, happiness or -grief, but Aggie was penetrating enough to fear that brooding quiet. - -At least Aggie knew her sister-in-law well enough to realise that her -children were an ever-present, ever-passionate element in her life. On -certain occasions, concerning Millie, Katherine, Henry or Vincent, Aggie -had seen that silence, for a moment, quiver as a still lake trembles -with a sudden shake or roll when the storm is raging across the -hills—especially was Katherine linked to her mother’s most intimate -hold upon life, even though the words that they exchanged were of the -most commonplace; Aunt Aggie knew that, and strangely, obscurely, she -was moved, at times, to sudden impulses of bitter jealousy. Why was it -that no one cared for her as Katherine cared for her mother? What was -there in Harriet to care for?... and yet—nevertheless, Aggie Trenchard -loved her sister-in-law. With regard to this present business Aggie -knew, with sufficient assurance, that Harriet disliked Philip Mark, had -disliked him from the first. Had Harriet noticed this change in her -daughter, and had she drawn her conclusions? What would Harriet say -if...? Aunt Aggie added stitches to the green parrot’s tail with every -comfortable assurance that ‘in a time or two’, there would be plenty of -trouble. - -Ultimately, through it all, it was her jealousy that moved her and her -jealousy that provoked the first outburst ... instantly, without -warning, new impulses, new relationships, new motives were working -amongst them all, and their world was changed. - -Upon an afternoon, Aunt Aggie hearing that Henry wished to change a -novel at Mudie’s Library (that very novel that he had been reading on -the day of Philip’s arrival) offered to take it for him. This was at -luncheon, and she felt, because she liked her food and barley-water, a -sudden impulse towards the Ideal Unselfishness. She made her offer, and -then reflected that it would be very troublesome to go so far as Oxford -Street; she therefore allowed Katherine to accept the mission, retaining -at the same time her own nobility. She became quite angry: “Of course,” -she said, “you consider me too old to do anything—to sit in a corner -and sew is all I’m good for—well, well—you’ll be old yourself one day, -Katherine, my dear. I should have liked to have helped Henry.... However -...” - -She was conscious, during the afternoon, of some injustice; she had been -treated badly. At dinner that night Rocket forgot the footstool that was -essential to her comfort; she was compelled at last to ask him for it. -He had never forgotten it before; they all thought her an old woman who -didn’t matter; no one troubled now about her—well, they should see.... - -Great Aunt Sarah was, as often happened to her, rheumatic but Spartan in -bed. The ladies, when they left the dining-room and closed around the -drawing-room fire, were Mrs. Trenchard, Aunt Aggie, Aunt Betty, -Katherine and Millie. Happy and comfortable enough they looked, with the -shadowed dusky room behind them and the blaze in front of them. In the -world outside it was a night of intense frost: here they were reflected -in the Mirror, Mrs. Trenchard’s large gold locket (Henry as a baby -inside it), Aggie’s plump neck and black silk dress, Aunt Betty’s -darting, sparkling eyes, Millie’s lovely shoulders, Katherine’s rather -dumpy ones—there they all were, right inside the Mirror, with a -reflected fire to make them cosy and the walls ever so thick and old. -The freezing night could not touch them. - -“Rocket’s getting very old and careless,” said Aggie. - -Everyone had known that Aunt Aggie was out of temper this evening, and -everyone, therefore, was prepared for a tiresome hour or two. Rocket was -a great favourite; Mrs. Trenchard, her arms folded across her bosom, her -face the picture of placid content, said: - -“Oh, Aggie, do you think so?... I don’t.” - -“No, of course, you don’t, Harriet,” answered her sister sharply. “He -takes care with you. Of course he does. But if you considered your -sister sometimes—” - -“My dear Aggie!” Mrs. Trenchard, as she spoke, bent forward and very -quietly picked up a bright green silk thread from the carpet. - -“Oh, I’m not complaining! That’s a thing I don’t believe in! After all, -if you think Rocket’s perfection I’ve no more to say. I want others to -be comfortable—for myself I care nothing. It is for the rest of the -family.” - -“We’re _quite_ comfortable, Aunt Aggie, thank you,” said Millie -laughing. - -“I hope you don’t think, Harriet,” said Aggie, disregarding her niece, -“that I’m complaining—I—” - -Mrs. Trenchard leant towards her, holding out the thread of green silk! - -“That must be from your silks, Aggie dear,” she said. “It’s just the -colour of your parrot’s tail. I couldn’t think what it was, lying there -on the carpet.” - -It was then that Katherine, who had paid no attention to this little -conversation but had followed her own thoughts, said: - -“Oh! how careless of me! I never took Henry’s book, after all—and I -went right up Oxford Street too!” - -This was unfortunate, because it reminded Aunt Aggie of something that -she had very nearly forgotten. Of course Katherine had never intended to -take the book—she had simply offered to do so because she thought her -Aunt old, feeble, and incapable. - -“Really, Katherine,” said Aunt Aggie, “you might have let me take it -after all. I may be useless in most ways and not worth anyone’s -consideration, but at least I’m still able to walk up Oxford Street in -safety!” - -Her aunt’s tones were so bitter that Katherine looked across at her in -some dismay. - -Aunt Betty did not assist the affair by saying: - -“Why, Aggie dear, who ever supposed you couldn’t; I’m sure you can do -anything you want to!” - -“Well, perhaps, next time,” Aunt Aggie said sharply. “When I offer some -help someone will listen to me. _I_ should not have forgotten the book.” - -“I _can’t_ think why _I_ did,” said Katherine, “I remembered it just -before I started, and then something happened—” - -Aunt Aggie looked about her, and thought that this would be a very good -opportunity for discovering the real state of Katherine’s mind. - -“You must take care, Katherine dear,” she said, “you don’t seem to me to -have been quite yourself lately. I’ve noticed a number of little things. -You’re tired, I think.” - -Katherine laughed. “Why should I be? I’ve had nothing to make me.” - -It was then that Aunt Aggie caught a look of strange, almost furtive -anxiety in Harriet’s eyes. Following this, for the swiftest moment, -Katherine and her mother exchanged a gleam of affection, of reassurance, -of confidence. - -“Ah!” thought Aunt Aggie, “they’re laughing at me. _Everyone’s_ laughing -at me.” - -“My dear Katherine,” she snapped, “I’m sure _I_ don’t know what’s tired -you, but I think you must realise what I mean. You are not your normal -self; and, if your old aunt may say so, that’s a pity.” - -Millie, looking across at her sister, was astonished to see the colour -rising in her cheeks. Katherine was annoyed! Katherine minded Aunt -Aggie! Katherine, who was never out of temper—never perturbed! and at -Aunt Aggie! - -“Really, Aunt Aggie,” Katherine said, “it’s very tiresome if all the -family are going to watch one day and night as though one were something -from the Zoo. Tiresome is not nearly strong enough.” - -Her aunt smiled bitterly. - -“It’s only my affection for you,” she said. “But of course you don’t -want that. Why should you? One day, however, you may remember that -someone once cared whether you were tired or not.” - -Aunt Aggie’s hands trembled on her lap. - -Katherine shook her head impatiently. - -“I’m very grateful for your kindness—but I’d much rather be left alone. -I’m not tired, nor odd, nor anything—so, please, don’t tell me that I -am.” - -Aggie rose from her chair, and very slowly with trembling fingers drew -her work together. “I think,” she said, her voice quivering a little, -“that I’ll go to bed. Next time you wish to insult me, Katherine, I’d -rather you did it when we were alone.” - -A very slow and stately figure, she walked down the drawing-room and -disappeared. - -There was a moment’s silence. - -“Oh, dear!” cried Katherine, “I’m so sorry!” She looked round upon them -all, and saw quite clearly that they were surprised at her. Again behind -Mrs. Trenchard’s eyes there hovered that suspicion of anxiety. - -“What did I do? What did I say? Aunt Aggie’s so funny.” Then, as still -they did not answer, she turned round upon them: “_Have_ I been cross -and tiresome lately? _Have_ you all noticed it? Tell me.” - -Aunt Betty said, “No, dear, of course not.” - -Millie said, “What _does_ it matter what Aunt Aggie says?” - -Mrs. Trenchard said, “There’s another of Aggie’s green threads. Under -your chair, Millie dear. I’d better go up and see whether she wants -anything.” - -But Katherine rose and, standing for an instant with a little -half-smile, half-frown, surveying them, moved then slowly away from them -down the room. - -“No. I’ll go, Mother, and apologise. I suppose I was horrid.” She left -them. - -She went up through the dark passages slowly, meditatively. She waited -for a moment outside her aunt’s door and then knocked, heard then her -aunt’s voice, “Come in!”—in tones that showed that she had been -expecting some ambassador. - -Katherine stood by the door, then moved forward, put her arms about Aunt -Aggie and kissed her. - -“I’m so sorry. I’m afraid that I hurt you. You know that I didn’t mean -to.” - -Upon Aunt Aggie’s dried cheeks there hovered a tiny cold and glassy -tear. She drew back from Katherine’s embrace, then with a strange, -almost feverish movement caught Katherine’s hand. - -“It wasn’t, my dear, that you hurt me. I expect I’m too sensitive—that -has always been my misfortune. But I felt” (another glassy tear now upon -the other cheek) “that you and Millie are finding me tiresome now.” - -“Aunt Aggie! Of _course_ not!” - -“I wish to be of some use—it is my continual prayer—some use to -someone—and you make me feel—but of course you are young and -impatient—that I’d be better perhaps out of the way.” - -Katherine answered her very gravely: “If I’ve ever made you feel that -for a moment, Aunt Aggie, there’s nothing too bad for me. But how can -you say such a thing? Aren’t you a little unjust?” - -The two tears had disappeared. - -“I daresay I am, my dear, I daresay I am—or seem so to you. Old people -often do to young ones. But I’m not unjust, I think, in fancying that -you yourself have changed lately. I made you angry when I said that just -now, but I felt it my duty—” - -Katherine was silent. Aunt Aggie watched her with bright, inquisitive -eyes, from which tears were now very far away. - -“Well, we won’t say any more, dear. My fault is, perhaps, that I am too -anxious to do things for others, and so may seem to you young ones -interfering. I don’t know, I’m sure. It has always been my way. I’m glad -indeed when you tell me that nothing is the matter. To my old eyes it -seems that ever since Mr. Mark stayed here the house has not been the -same. You have not been the same.” - -“Mr. Mark?” Katherine’s voice was sharp, then suddenly dropped and, -after an instant’s silence, was soft, “You’ve got Mr. Mark on the brain, -Aunt Aggie.” - -“Well, my dear, I didn’t like him. I’m sure he was very bad for Henry. -But then I’m old-fashioned, I suppose. Mr. Mark shocked me, I confess. -Russia must be a very wild country.” - -Then, for a space, they looked at one another. Katherine said nothing, -only, her cheeks flushed, her breath coming sharply, stared into the -mirror on the dressing-table. Aunt Aggie faced in this silence something -alarming and uneasy; it was as though they were, both of them, listening -for some sound, but the house was very still. - -“I think I’ll go to bed, my dear. Kiss me, Katherine. Don’t forget that -I’m older than you, dear. I know something of the world—yes ... -good-night, my dear.” - -They embraced; Katherine left the room. Her cheeks were flaming; her -body seemed wrapt in dry, scorching heat. She hurried, her heart beating -so loudly that it seemed to her to fill the passage with sound, into her -own room. - -She did not switch on the electric-light, but stood there in the -darkness, the room very cool and half-shadowed; some reflected outside -light made a pool of grey twilight upon the floor, and just above this -pool Katherine stood, quite motionless, her head raised, her hands -tightly clasped together. She knew. That moment in her aunt’s room had -told her! - -She was lifted, by one instant of glorious revelation, out of herself, -her body, her life, and caught up into her divine heaven, could look -down upon that other arid, mordant world with eyes of incredulous -happiness. - -She loved Philip Mark. She had always loved him. She had never loved -anyone before. She had thought that life was enough with its duties, its -friendships, its little pleasures and little sorrows. She had never -lived; she was born now here in the still security of her room.... The -clocks were striking ten, the light on the carpet quivered, dimly she -could see her books, her bed, her furniture. Some voice, very far away, -called her name, waited and then called again—called the old Katherine, -who was dead now ... dead and gone ... buried in Aunt Aggie’s room. The -new Katherine had powers, demands, values, insistences, of which the old -Katherine had never dreamed. - -Katherine, at this instant, asked herself no questions—whether he loved -her, what the family would say, how she herself would face a new world, -why it was that, through all these weeks, she had not known that she -loved him? She asked herself nothing.... Only waited, motionless, -staring in front of her. - -Then suddenly her heart was so weighed down with happiness that she was -utterly weary; her knees trembled, her hands wavered as though seeking -some support. She turned, fell down on her knees beside the bed, her -face sank deep in her hands and so remained, thinking of nothing, -conscious of nothing, her spirit bathed in an intensity of overwhelming -joy. - -She recovered, instantly in the days that followed, her natural -sweetness; she was, as all the household, with relief, discovered, the -real Katherine again. She did not to herself seem to have any existence -at all. The days in this early December were days of frost, red skies, -smoking leaves, and hovering silver mists that clouded the chimneys, -made the sun a remotely yellow ball, shot sunset and sunrise with all -rainbow colours. - -Beautiful days—she passed through them with no consciousness of -herself, her friends, not even of Philip. No thought of anything was -possible, only that breathless, burning, heart-beat, the thickness of -the throat, the strange heat and then sudden cold about her face, the -vision of everyone near her as ghosts who moved many, many worlds away. -Her daily duties were performed by someone else—some kindly, -considerate, sensible person, who saw that she was disturbed and -preoccupied. She watched this kind person, and wondered how it was that -the people about her did not notice this. At night for many hours she -lay there, thinking of nothing, feeling the beating of her heart, -wrapped in a glorious ecstasy of content, then suddenly soothed as -though by some anaesthetic she would sleep, dumbly, dreamlessly, -heavily. - -For a week this continued—then Philip came to dinner, scarcely a -dinner-party, although it had solemnity. The only invited guests were -Philip, Rachel Seddon, her fat uncle, Lord John Beaminster, and an -ancient Trenchard cousin. Lord John was fat, shining, and happy. Having -survived with much complacency the death of his mother, the Duchess of -Wrexe, and the end of the Beaminster grandeur, he led a happy bachelor -existence in a little house behind Shepherds Market. He was the perfect -symbol of good temper, good food, and a good conscience. Deeply attached -to his niece, Rachel, he had, otherwise, many friends, many interests, -many happinesses, all of a small bird-like amiable character. He bubbled -with relief because he was not compelled, any longer, to sustain the -Beaminster character. He had beautiful white hair, rosy cheeks, and -perfect clothes. He often dined at the Trenchard’s house with Rachel—he -called himself ‘Roddy’s Apology.’ The Trenchards liked him because he -thought very highly of the Trenchards. - -He sat beside Katherine at dinner and chattered to her. Philip sat on -her side of the table, and she could not see him, but when he had -entered the drawing-room earlier in the evening the sudden sight of him -had torn aside, as though with a fierce, almost revengeful gesture, all -the mists, the unrealities, the glories that had, during the last weeks, -surrounded her. She saw him and instantly, as though with a fall into -icy water, was plunged into her old world again. He looked at her, she -thought, as he would look at a stranger. He did not care for her—he had -not even thought about her. Why had she been so confident during all -these strange days? Her one longing now was to avoid him. With a great -effort she drove her common-sense to her service, talked to him for a -moment or two with her customary quiet, half-humorous placidity, and -went into dinner. She heard his voice now and then. He was getting on -well with Rachel. They would become great friends. Katherine was glad. -Dinner was interminable; Lord John babbled and babbled and babbled. -Dinner was over. The ladies went into the drawing-room. - -“I like your friend, Katie,” said Rachel. “He’s interesting.” - -“I’m glad you do,” said Katherine. - -The men joined them. Philip was conveyed by Mrs. Trenchard to the -ancient Trenchard cousin, who had a bony face and an eager, unsatisfied -eye. Philip devoted himself to these. - -Katherine sat and talked to anyone. She was so miserable that she felt -that she had never known before what to be miserable was. Then, when she -was wondering whether the evening would ever end, she looked up, across -the room. Philip, from his corner, also looked up. Their eyes met and, -at that moment, the fire, hitherto decorously confined behind its decent -bounds, ran golden, brilliant about the room, up to the ceiling, -crackling, flaming. The people in the room faded, disappeared; there was -no furniture there, the book-cases, the chairs, the tables were gone, -the mirror, blazing with light, burning with some strange heat, shone -down upon chaos. Only, through it all, Katherine and Philip were -standing, their eyes shining, for all to see, and Heaven, let loose upon -a dead, dusty world, poured recklessly its glories upon them. - -“I was saying,” said Lord John, “that it’s these young fellows who think -they can shoot and can’t who are doin’ all the harm.” - -Slowly, very slowly Katherine’s soul retreated within its fortresses -again. Slowly the fires faded, Heaven was withdrawn. For a moment she -closed her eyes, then, once more, she regarded Lord John. “Oh, God! I’m -so happy!” something within her was saying, “I shall be absurd and -impossible in a moment if I can’t do something with my happiness!” - -She was saved by the ancient cousin’s deciding that it was late. She -always ended an evening party by declaring that it was later than she -could ever have supposed. She was followed by Rachel, Lord John and -Philip. - -When Philip and Katherine said good-bye their hands scarcely touched, -but they were burning. - -“I will come to-morrow afternoon,” he whispered. - -“Yes,” she whispered back to him. - - * * * * * - -Through the history of that old Westminster house there ran the thread -of many of such moments, now it could not be surprised nor even so -greatly stirred, whispering through its passages and corridors. “Here it -is again.... Pleasant enough for the time. I wish them luck, poor dears, -but I’ve never known it answer. This new breath, out through my rafters, -up through my floors, down my chimneys, in at my windows—just the same -as it used to be. Very pleasant while it lasts—poor young things.” - -It was only natural that the House, long practised in the affairs of -men, should perceive these movements in advance of the Trenchard family. -As to warning the Trenchards, that was not the House’s business. It was -certainly owing to no especial virtue of perception that Aunt Aggie -decided that she would spend the afternoon of the day following the -dinner-party in the drawing-room. - -This decision was owing to the physical fact that she fancied that she -had a slight cold, and the spiritual one that her sister Harriet had -said: would she mind being most unselfish: would she stay in and receive -callers as she, Harriet, was compelled to attend an unfortunate -Committee? There was nothing that Aunt Aggie could have preferred to -sitting close to the drawing-room fire, eating muffin if alone, and -being gracious were there company. However, Harriet had said that it -would be unselfish—therefore unselfish it was. - -Katherine, it appeared, also intended to stay at home. - -“You needn’t, my dear,” said Aunt Aggie, “I promised your mother. I had -rather looked forward to going to the Misset-Faunders’, but never -mind—I promised your mother.” - -“I’m sure it’s better for your cold that you shouldn’t go out,” said -Katherine. “_I_ think you ought to be upstairs—in bed with a hot -bottle.” - -“My cold’s nothing”—Aunt Aggie’s voice was sharp, “Certainly the -Misset-Faunders wouldn’t have hurt it. I could have gone in a cab. But I -promised your mother.... It’s a pity. They always have music on their -second Fridays. Alice plays the violin very well ... and I dare say, -after all, no one will come this afternoon. You really needn’t bother to -stay in, Katherine.” - -“I think I will to-day,” said Katherine quietly. - -So aunt and niece sat, one on each side of the fire, waiting. Katherine -was very quiet, and Aunt Aggie, who, like all self-centred people, was -alarmed by silence, spun a little web of chatter round and round the -room. - -“It was all quite pleasant last night I thought; I must say Lord John -can make himself very agreeable if he pleases. How did you think Rachel -was looking? I wanted to ask her about Michael, who had a nasty little -cold last week, but Mr. Mark quite absorbed her—talking about his -Russia, I suppose. I don’t suppose anyone will come this afternoon. The -very last thing Clare Faunder said on Sunday was ‘Mind you come on -Friday. We’ve some special music on Friday, and I know how you love it.’ -But of course one must help your mother when one can. Your Aunt Betty -would take one of her walks. Walking in London seems to me such an odd -thing to do. If everyone walked what would the poor cabmen and busses -do? One must think of others, especially with the cold weather coming -on.” - -Her voice paused and then dropped; she looked sharply across at -Katherine, and realized that the girl had not been listening. She was -staring up into the Mirror; in her eyes was the look of burning, -dreaming expectation that had on that other afternoon been so alarming. - -At that moment Rocket opened the door and announced Philip Mark. - -Katherine’s eyes met Philip’s for an instant, then they travelled to -Aunt Aggie. That lady rose with the little tremor of half-nervous, -half-gratified greeting that she always bestowed on a guest. She -disliked Mr. Mark cordially, but that was no reason why the memory of an -hour or two filled with close attention from a young man should not -brighten to-morrow’s reminiscences. She was conscious also that she was -keeping guard over Katherine. Not for an instant would she leave that -room until Mr. Mark had also left it. She looked at the two young -people, Katherine flushed with the fire, Philip flushed with the frosty -day, and regarded with satisfaction their distance one from the other. -Tea was brought; life was very civilised; the doors were all tightly -closed. - -Philip had come with the determined resolve of asking Katherine to marry -him. Last night he had not slept. With a glorious Katherine at his side -he had paced his room, his soul in the stars, his body somewhere -underground. All day he had waited for a decent hour to arrive. He had -almost run to the house. Now he was faced by Aunt Aggie. As he smiled at -her he could have taken her little body, her bundle of clothes, her -dried little soul, crunched it to nothing in his hands and flung it into -the fire. - -Although he gave no sign of outward dismay, he was raging with -impatience. He would not look at Katherine lest, borne upon some wave of -passion stronger than he, he should have rushed across the room, caught -her to his side, and so defied all the Trenchard decencies; he knew that -it was wiser, at present, to preserve them. - -They talked about Rachel Seddon, Dinner-parties, Cold Weather, Dancing, -Exercise, growing Stout, Biscuits, the best Church in London, Choirs, -Committees, Aunt Aggie’s duties, growing Thin, Sleeplessness, Aunt -Aggie’s trials, Chilblains, Cold Weather.... At this renewed appearance -of the weather Philip noticed an old calf-bound book lying upon a little -table at his side. Behind his eyes there flashed the discovery of an -idea. - -“Pride and Prejudice,” he said. - -“Oh!” cried Katherine. “That’s one of Father’s precious Jane Austen’s—a -first edition. He keeps them all locked up in his study. Henry must have -borrowed that one. They’re never allowed to lie about.” - -Philip picked it up. From between the old leaves, brown a little now, -with the black print sunk deep into their very heart, there stole a -scent of old age, old leather, old tobacco, old fun and wisdom. - -Philip had opened it where Mr. Collins, proposing to Elizabeth Bennet, -declines to accept her refusal. - -“I am not now to learn,” replied Mr. Collins, with a formal wave of the -hand, “that it is usual with young ladies to reject the addresses of the -man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their -favour; and that sometimes the refusal is repeated a second, or even a -third time. I am, therefore, by no means discouraged by what you have -just said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long.” - -“Upon my word, sir,” cried Elizabeth, “your hope is rather an -extraordinary one after my declaration. I do assure you that I am not -one of those young ladies (if such young ladies there are) who are so -daring as to risk their happiness on the chance of being asked a second -time. I am perfectly serious in my refusal. You could not make me happy, -and I am convinced that I am the last woman in the world who would make -you so. Nay, were your friend Lady Catherine to know me, I am persuaded -she would find me in every respect ill-qualified for the situation.” - -“Were it certain that Lady Catherine would think so,” said Mr. Collins -very gravely—“but I cannot imagine that her ladyship would at all -disapprove of you. And you may be certain that when I have the honour of -seeing her again, I shall speak in the highest terms of your modesty, -economy, and other amiable qualifications.” - -“‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I always thought,” said Aunt Aggie with amiable -approval, “a very pretty little tale. It’s many years since I read it. -Father read it aloud to us, I remember, when we were girls.” - -Philip turned a little from her, as though he would have the light more -directly over his shoulder. He had taken a piece of paper from his -pocket, and in an instant he had written in pencil: - -“I love you. Will you marry me? Philip.” - -This he slipped between the pages. - -He knew that Katherine had watched him; very gravely he passed the book -across to her, then he turned to Aunt Aggie, and with a composure that -surprised himself, paid her a little of the deference that she needed. - -Katherine, with hands that trembled, had opened the book. She found the -piece of paper, saw the words, and then, in a sort of dreaming -bewilderment, read to the bottom of the old printed page. - -“Mr. Collins thus addressed her: - -“When I do myself the honour of speaking to you next on this subject, I -shall hope to receive a more favourable answer than you have now given -me; though I am far from accusing you of cruelty at present, because I -know it to be the established custom of your sex to reject a man on the -first—” - -She did not turn the page; for a moment she waited, her mind quite empty -of any concentrated thought, her eyes seeing nothing but the shining, -glittering expanse of the Mirror. - -Very quickly, using a gold pencil that hung on to her watch chain, she -wrote below his name: “Yes. Katherine.” - -“Let me see the book, my dear,” said Aunt Aggie. “You must know, Mr. -Mark, that I care very little for novels. There is so much to do in this -world, so many people that need care, so many things that want -attention, that I think one is scarcely justified in spending the -precious time over stories. But I own Miss Austen is a memory—a really -precious memory to me. Those little simple stories have their charm -still, Mr. Mark.... Yes.... Thank you, my dear.” - -She took the book from Katherine, and began very slowly to turn over the -pages, bending upon Miss Austen’s labours exactly the look of kindly -patronage that she would have bent upon that lady herself had she been -present. - -Katherine glanced at Philip, half rose in her chair, and then sat down -again. She felt, as she waited for the dreadful moment to pass, a sudden -perception of the family—until this moment they had not occurred to -her. She saw her mother, her father, her grandfather, her aunts, Henry, -Millie. Let this affair be suddenly flung upon them as a result of Aunt -Aggie’s horrified discovery and the tumult would be, indeed, terrible. -The silence in the room, during those moments, almost forced her to cry -out. - -Had Philip not been there she would have rushed to her aunt, torn the -book from her hands, and surrendered to the avalanche. - -Aunt Aggie paused—she peered forward over the page. With a little cry -Katherine stood up, her knees trembling, her eyes dimmed, as though the -room were filled with fog. - -“I doubt very much,” said Aunt Aggie, “whether I could read it now. It -would seem strangely old-fashioned, I daresay, I’m sure to a modern -young man like yourself, Mr. Mark.” - -Philip took the book from her; he opened it, read Katherine’s answer, -laid the volume very carefully upon the table. - -“I can assure, Miss Trenchard,” he said, “a glance is enough to assure -me that ‘Pride and Prejudice’ is and always will be my favourite novel.” - -Katherine moved to the table, picked up the book, and slipped the paper -from the leaves into her belt. For an instant her hand touched Philip’s. - -Aunt Aggie looked at them, and satisfied with hot tea, a fire, a perfect -conscience and a sense of her real importance in the business of the -world, thought to herself—“Well, this afternoon at any rate those two -have had no chance.” - -She was drowsy and anxious for a little rest before dinner, but her -guard, she assured herself with a pleasant little bit of conscious -self-sacrifice, should not be relaxed.... - - * * * * * - -Eleven had boomed that night, from the Abbey clock, when Philip Mark -took his stand opposite the old house, looking up, as all the lovers in -fiction and most of the lovers in real life have done, at his mistress’ -window. A little red glow of light was there. The frosty night had -showered its sky with stars, frozen into the blue itself in this clear -air, a frozen sea; an orange moon scooped into a dazzling curve, lay -like a sail that had floated from its vessel, idly above the town; the -plane trees rustled softly once and again, as though, now that the noise -of men had died away, they might whisper in comfort together. Sometimes -a horn blew from the river, or a bell rang. - -Philip waited there, and worshipped with all the humility and reverence -of a human soul at the threshold of Love. - -The lights in the house went out. Now all the Trenchards were lying upon -their backs, their noses towards the ceilings, the ceilings that shut -off that starry sky. They were very secure, fenced round by Westminster. -No danger could threaten their strong fortress.... Their very dreams -were winged about with security, their happy safety was penetrated by no -consciousness of that watching, motionless figure. - - - - - CHAPTER VI - THE SHOCK - -George Trenchard’s study expressed, very pleasantly, his personality. -The room’s walls were of a deep warm red, and covering three sides ran -high book-cases with glass fronts; within these book-cases were -beautiful new editions, ugly old ones, books, for the greater part, -relating to his favourite period, all ranged and ordered with the most -delicate care. The windows of the room were tall and bright even on dull -and foggy days, the carpet soft and thick, the leather chairs large and -yielding, the fireplace wide and shining. Most significant of all was -his writing-table; upon this lay everything that any writer could -possibly desire, from the handsomest of gold inkstands to the minutest -of elastic bands. There was also here a little bust of Sir Walter Scott. -Within this room George Trenchard knew, always, perfect happiness—a -very exceptional man, indeed, that he could know it so easily. He knew -it by the simple expedient of shutting off entirely from his -consciousness the rest of mankind; his study door once closed, he forgot -his family absolutely. No one was allowed to disturb or interrupt him; -it was understood that he was at work upon a volume that would -ultimately make another of that series that contained already such -well-known books as “William Wordsworth and his Circle,” “Hazlitt—The -Man in his Letters” and “The Life of Thomas de Quincey.” These had -appeared a number of years ago; he had been indeed a young man when he -had written them. It was supposed that a work entitled “The Lake Poets, -a Critical Survey” would appear ‘Next Autumn’. - -For some time now the literary schemes of the weekly journals had -announced this. George Trenchard only laughed at enquiries: “It takes a -damned long time, you know,” he said, “’tisn’t any use rushing the -thing.” He enjoyed, however, immensely, making notes. From half-past -nine in the morning until half-past one, behind his closed doors, he -considered the early Nineteenth Century, found it admirable (Scott -seemed to him the perfect type) took first one book, then another from -his book-shelves, wrote a few lines, and before his fire imagined the -Trenchards of that period, considered their food and their drink, their -morals, their humour and their literature. Hazlitt’s essays seemed to -him the perfection, not of English prose, but of a temporal and -spiritual attitude. “Hang it all,” he would conclude, “we’re a rotten -lot now-a-days.” He did not worry over this conclusion, but it gave him -the opportunity of a superior attitude during the rest of the day when -he joined the world. “If you knew as much about the early Nineteenth -Century as I do,” he seemed to say, “you wouldn’t be so pleased with -yourselves.” He did not, however, express his superiority in any -unpleasant manner. There was never anyone more amiable. All that he -wanted was that everyone should be happy, and to be that, he had long -ago discovered, one must not go too deep. “Keep out of close -relationships and you’re safe” might be considered his advice to young -people. He had certainly avoided them all his life, and avoided them by -laughing at them. He couldn’t abide “gloomy fellows” and on no account -would he allow a ‘scene’. He had never lost his temper. - -During the months that he spent at his place in Glebeshire he pursued a -plan identically similar. He possessed an invaluable ‘factotum’, a -certain James Ritchie, who took everything in a way of management off -his hands. Ritchie in Glebeshire, Mrs. Trenchard and Rocket in London. -Life was made very simple for him. - -As has been said elsewhere, Katherine, alone of his family, had in some -degree penetrated his indifferent jollity; that was because she really -did seem to him to have some of the Early Nineteenth Century -characteristics. She seemed to him (he did not know her very well) -tranquil, humorous, unadventurous, but determined. She reminded him of -Elizabeth Bennet, and he always fancied (he regarded her, of course, -from a distance,) that she would make a very jolly companion. She seemed -to him wiser than the others, with a little strain of satirical humour -in her comment on things that pleased him greatly. “She should have been -the boy, and Henry the girl,” he would say. He thought Henry a terrible -ass. He was really anxious that Katherine should be happy. She deserved -it, he thought, because she was a little wiser than the others. He -considered sometimes her future, and thought that it would be agreeable -to have her always about the place, but she must not be an old maid. She -was too good for that. “She’d breed a good stock,” he would say. “She -must marry a decent fellow—one day.” He delighted in the gentle -postponement of possibly charming climaxes. His size, geniality and good -appetite may be attributed very largely to his happy gifts of -procrastination. “Always leave until to-morrow what ought to be done -to-day” had made him the best-tempered of men. - - * * * * * - -After luncheon on the day that followed Philip’s tea with Aunt Aggie, -George Trenchard retired to his study “to finish a chapter”. He intended -to finish it in his head rather than upon paper, and it was even -possible that a nap would postpone the conclusion; he lit his pipe and -preferred to be comfortable—it was then that Rocket informed him that -Mr. Mark had called, wished to see him alone, would not keep him long, -apologised, but it was important. - -“Why the devil couldn’t he come to lunch? What a time to appear!” But -Trenchard liked Philip, Philip amused him—he was so alive and talked -such ridiculous nonsense. “Of course he would see him!” - -Then when Trenchard saw Philip Mark standing inside the room, waiting, -with a smile half-nervous, half-friendly, the sight of that square, -sturdy young man gave him to his own uneasy surprise a moment of vague -and unreasonable alarm. George Trenchard was not accustomed to feelings -of alarm; it was his principle in life that he should deny himself such -things. - -He connected now, however, this very momentary sensation with other -little sensations that he had felt before in Philip’s company. The young -man was so damnably full of his experiences, so eager to compare one -thing with another, so insistent upon foreign places and changes in -England and what we’d all got to do about it. Trenchard did not -altogether dislike this activity. That was the devil of it. It would -never do to change his life at this time of day.... - -He stood, large, genial, and rosy, in front of his fire. “Well, young -man, what are you descending upon us at this hour for? Why couldn’t you -come to lunch?” - -“I wanted to speak to you seriously about something. I wanted to see you -alone.” - -“Well, here I am. Sit down. Have a cigar.” Trenchard saw that Philip was -nervous, and he liked him the better for that. “He’s a nice young -fellow, nice and clean and healthy—not too cocksure either, although -he’s clever.” - -Philip, on his part, felt, at this moment, a desperate determination to -make all the Trenchard family love him. They _must_.... They MUST. - -His heart was bursting with charity, with fine illusions, with -self-deprecation, with Trenchard exultation. He carried the flaming -banner of one who loves and knows that he is loved in return. - -He looked round upon George Trenchard’s book-cases and thought that -there could, surely, be nothing finer than writing critical books about -early Nineteenth Century Literature. - -“I love Katherine,” he said, sitting on the very edge of his arm-chair. -“And she loves me. We want to be married.” - -George Trenchard stared at him. - -“Well, I’m damned!” he said at last, “you’ve got some cheek!” His first -impression was one of a strange illumination around and about Katherine, -as though his daughter had been standing before him in the dark and then -had suddenly been surrounded with blazing candles. Although he had, as -has been said, already considered the possibility of Katherine’s -marriage, he had never considered the possibility of her caring for -someone outside the family. That struck him, really, as amazing. That -made him regard his daughter, for a moment, as someone quite new and -strange. - -He burst into laughter. - -“It’s ridiculous!” he said. “Why! you two have scarcely seen one -another!” - -Philip blushed, but looked up into Trenchard’s face with eyes that were -strangely pleading for a man who could, at other times, be so firmly -authoritative. - -“I know that it must seem so to you,” he said. “But really we _have_ met -a good deal. I knew from the very beginning.... I’ll make her happy,” he -ended, almost defiantly, as though he were challenging some unseen -enemy. - -“Well, state your case,” said Trenchard. - -“I love her,” he stammered a little, then his voice cleared and he -stared straight before him at Trenchard’s velvet waistcoat. “Of course -there’ve been people in my life before, but I’ve never felt anything -like this. I should like to tell you that my life is absolutely free -from any entanglements—of any kind. I’m thirty and as fit as a fiddle. -My share in the business and some other things come to about fifteen -hundred a year. It’s all very decently invested, but, of course, I’d -show you all that. I’m not bad about managing those things, although you -mightn’t think so. I want to buy a little place somewhere in England and -settle down—a little place with a bit of land. I do think I could make -Katherine happy—I’d devote myself to that.” - -“She cares for you?” asked Trenchard. - -“Yes,” said Philip quite simply. - -“Well, I’m damned,” said Trenchard. - -This was not so rude as it appeared to be. He was not thinking about -Philip at all—only about Katherine. She had fallen in love, she, -Katherine, the staid, humorous, comfortable companion. He had not -realised, until now, that he had always extracted much complacent -comfort from the belief that she cared for him more than for any other -member of the family. He did not know that every individual member -extracted from Katherine the same comfort. He looked at Philip. What did -she see in the man to lead her to such wild courses? He was nice enough -to look at, to listen to—but to love? It seemed to him that his quiet -daughter must have been indulging in melodrama. - -“Why, you know,” he cried at last, “it never entered my -head—Katherine’s marrying anybody. She’s very young—you’re very young -too.” - -“I don’t know,” said Philip, “I’m thirty—lots of men have families by -then.” - -“No, but you’re young though—both of you,” persisted Trenchard. “I -don’t think I want Katherine to marry anybody.” - -“Isn’t that rather selfish?” said Philip. - -“Yes. I suppose it is,” said Trenchard, laughing, “but it’s natural.” - -“It isn’t, you see,” said Philip eagerly, “as though I wanted to take -her away to Russia or in any way deprive you of her. I know how much she -is to all of you. She’s sure to marry some day, isn’t she? and it’s much -better that she should marry someone who’s going to settle down here and -live as you all do than someone who’d go right off with her.” - -“It’s all right, I shouldn’t let him,” said Trenchard. He bent his eyes -upon the eager lover, and again said to himself that he liked the young -man. It would certainly be much pleasanter that Katherine should care -about a fine healthy young fellow, a good companion after dinner, a good -listener with a pleasant sense of humour, than that she should force -into the heart of the family some impossibility—not that Katherine was -likely to care about impossibilities, but you never knew; the world -to-day was so full of impossibilities.... - -“I think we’ll send for Katherine,” he said. - -He rang the bell, Rocket came, Katherine was summoned. As they waited -Trenchard delivered himself of a random, half-humorous, half-conscious, -half-unconscious discourse: - -“You know, I like you—and I don’t often like modern young men. I -wouldn’t mind you at all as a son-in-law, and you’d suit me as a son -much better than Henry does. At least I think so, but then I know you -very slightly, and I may dislike you intensely later on. We none of us -know you, you see. We never had anybody drop in upon us as you did.... -It doesn’t seem to me a bit like Katherine—and I don’t suppose she -knows you any better than the rest of us do. _She_ mayn’t like you later -on. I can’t say that marriage is going to be what you think it is. -You’re very unsettling. You won’t keep quiet and take things easily, and -Katherine is sure not to like that. She’s as quiet as anything.... If it -were Millie now. I suppose you wouldn’t care to have Millie instead? -she’d suit you much better. Then, you know, the family won’t like your -doing it. My wife won’t like it.” He paused, then, standing, his legs -wide apart, his hands deep in his pockets, roared with laughter: “It -_will_ disturb them all—not that it won’t be good for them perhaps. -You’re not to think though that I’ve given my consent—at any rate -you’re not to marry her for a long time until we see what you’re like. -I’m not to give her just to anyone who comes along, you know. I rather -wish you’d stayed in Russia. It’s very unsettling.” - -The door opened—Katherine entered. She looked at Philip, smiled, then -came across to her father and put her arm through his. She said nothing, -but was radiant; her father felt her hand tremble as it touched his, and -that suddenly moved him as, perhaps, nothing had ever moved him before. - -“Do you want to marry him?” he asked. - -“Yes,” she answered. - -“But you hardly know him.” - -“I know him very well indeed,” she said, looking at Philip’s eyes. - -“But I don’t want you to marry anyone,” her father went on. “We were all -very nice as we were.... What’ll you do if I say you’re not to marry -him?” - -“You won’t say that,” she answered, smiling at him. - -“What do you want to marry him for?” he asked. “He’s just an ordinary -young man. You don’t know him,” he repeated, “you can’t yet, you’ve seen -so little of him. Then you’ll upset us all here very much—it will be -very unpleasant for everybody. Do you really think it’s worth it?” - -Katherine laughed. “I don’t think I can help it, father,” she answered. - -Deep in Trenchard’s consciousness was the conviction, very common to men -of good digestion over fifty, that had he been God he would have managed -the affairs of the world very agreeably for everybody. He had not, -often, been in the position of absolute power, but that was because he -had not often taken the trouble to come out of his comfortable shelter -and see what people were doing. He felt now that he could be Jove for a -quarter of an hour without any discomfort to himself—a very agreeable -feeling. - -He was also the most kind-hearted of men. “Seriously, Katherine,” he -said, separating himself from her, drawing his legs together and -frowning, “you’re over age. You can do what you like. In these days -children aren’t supposed to consider their parents, and I don’t really -see why they should ... it’s not much I’ve done for you. But you’re fond -of us. We’ve rather hung together as a family.... I like your young man, -but I’ve only known him a week or two, and I can’t answer for him. You -know _us_, but you don’t know _him_. Are you sure you’re making a wise -exchange?” - -Here Philip broke in eagerly but humbly. “It isn’t that there need be -any change,” he said. “Katherine shall belong to you all just as much as -ever she did.” - -“Thank you,” said Trenchard laughing. - -“I’ll be proud,” Philip cried, impulsively, jumping up from his chair, -“if you’ll let me marry Katherine, but I’ll never forget that she was -yours first. Of course I can’t come into the family as though I’d always -been one of you, but I’ll do my best.... I’ll do my best....” - -“My dear boy,” said Trenchard, touched by the happy atmosphere that he -seemed, with a nod of his head, to fling about him, “don’t think _I’m_ -preventing you. I want everyone to be pleased, I always have. If you and -Katherine have made up your minds about this, there isn’t very much for -me to say. If I thought you’d make her miserable I’d show you the door, -but I don’t think you will. All I say is—we don’t know you well enough -yet. Nor does she. After all, does she?” He paused, and then, enjoying -the sense of their listening attention, thought that he would make a -little speech. “You’re like children in a dark wood, you know. You think -you’ve found one another—caught hold of one another—but when there’s a -bit of a moon or something to see one another by you may find out you’ve -each of you caught hold of someone quite different. Then, there you are, -you see. That’s all I can tell you about marriage; all your lives you’ll -be in the forest, thinking you’ve made a clutch at somebody, just for -comfort’s sake. But you never know whom you’re catching—it’s someone -different every five minutes, even when it’s the same person. Well, -well—all I mean is that you mustn’t marry for a year at least.” - -“Oh! a year!” cried Philip. - -“Yes, a year. Won’t hear of it otherwise. What do you say, Katherine?” - -“I think Philip and I can wait as long as that quite safely,” she -answered, looking at her lover. - -Trenchard held out his hand to Philip. “I congratulate you,” he said. -“If you’ve made Katherine love you you’re a lucky fellow. Dear me—yes, -you are.” He put his hand on Philip’s shoulder. “You’d better be good to -her,” he said, “or there’ll be some who’ll make you pay for it.” - -“Be good to her! My God!” answered Philip. - -“Now you’d better clear. Reveal yourselves to the family.... There, -Katherine, my dear, give me a kiss. Don’t neglect me or I shall poison -the villain.... There, there—God bless you.” - -He watched them depart with real affection both for them and for -himself. - -“I’m not such a bad father after all,” he thought as he settled down -into his chair. - - * * * * * - -Outside the study door, in the dark corner of the little passage, Philip -kissed Katherine. Her lips met his with a passion that had in it -complete and utter self-surrender. - -They did not speak. - -At last, drawing herself gently away from him, she said: “_I’ll_ tell -Mother—I think it would be better not for both of us....” - -“Yes,” he whispered back, as though they were conspirators. “I don’t -think I’ll face them all now—unless you’d like me to help you. I’ll -come in to-night.” - -With a strange, fierce, almost desperate action she caught his arm and -held him for a moment with his cheek against hers. - -“Oh! Philip ... my _dear_!” Her voice caught and broke. They kissed once -again, and then, very quietly, went back into the world. - -Meanwhile they had been watched; Henry had watched them. He had been -crossing at the farther end of the little passage, and stopping, holding -himself back against the wall, had seen, with staring eyes, the two -figures. He knew instantly. They were Philip and Katherine. He saw -Katherine’s hand as it pressed into Philip’s shoulder; he saw Philip’s -back set with so fierce a strength that Henry’s knees trembled before -the energy of it. He was disgusted—he was wildly excited. “This is real -life.... I’ve seen something at last. I didn’t know people kissed like -that, but they oughtn’t to do it in the passage. Anyone might see -them.... Katherine!” - -Staggered by the contemplation of an utterly new Katherine with whom, -for the rest of his life, he would be compelled to deal, he slipped into -a room as he heard their steps. When they had gone he came out; he -knocked on his father’s door: - -“I’m sorry to bother you, Father,” he began. “I wanted to know whether I -might borrow—” he stopped; his heart was beating so wildly that his -tongue did not belong to him. - -“Well, get it and cut.” His father looked at him. “You’ve heard the -news, I see.” - -“What news?” said Henry. - -“Philip and Katherine. They’re engaged, they tell me. Not to marry for a -year though.... I thought you’d heard it by the look of you. What a mess -you’re in! Why can’t you brush your hair? Look at your tie up the back -of your collar! Get your book and go! I’m busy!” - -But Henry went without his book. - - * * * * * - -Katherine went up to her mother’s room. She would catch her alone now -for half an hour before tea-time, when many of the family would be -assembled, ready for the news. With such wild happiness was she -surrounded that she saw them all in the light of that happiness; she had -always shared so readily in any piece of good fortune that had ever -befallen any one of them that she did not doubt that now they too would -share in this fortune—this wonderful fortune!—of hers. She stopped at -the little window in the passage where she had had the first of her -little personal scraps of talk with Philip. Little scraps of talks were -all that they had been, and yet now, looking back upon them, how -weighted they seemed with heavy golden significance. The sky was -amber-coloured, the Abbey tower sharply black, and the low archway of -Dean’s Yard, that she could just catch with her eye, was hooped against -the sky, pushing upwards to have its share in the evening light. There -was perfect quiet in the house and beyond it, as she went to her -mother’s room. This room was the very earliest thing that she could -remember, this, or her mother’s bedroom in the Glebeshire house. It was -a bedroom that exactly expressed Mrs. Trenchard, large, clumsy, lit with -five windows, mild and full of unarranged trifles that nevertheless -arranged themselves. At the foot of the large bed, defended with dark -sateen faded curtains, was a comfortable old-fashioned sofa. Further -away in the middle of a clear space was a table with a muddle of things -upon it—a doll half-clothed, a writing-case, a silver ink-stand, -photographs of Millie, Henry and Katherine, a little younger than they -were now, a square silver clock, a pile of socks with a needle sticking -sharply out of them, a little oak book-case with ‘Keble’s Christian -Year’, Charlotte Yonge’s ‘Pillars of the House’, two volumes of Bishop -Westcott’s ‘Sermons’ and Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Wives and Daughters’. There was -also a little brass tray with a silver thimble, tortoiseshell -paper-knife, a little mat made of bright-coloured beads, a reel of red -silk and a tiny pocket calendar. Beside the bed there was a small square -oaken table with a fine silver Crucifix and a Bible and a prayer book -and copy of ‘Before the Throne’ in dark blue leather. The pictures on -the walls—they hung against a wall-paper of pink roses, faded like the -bedroom curtains and the dark red carpet, but comfortably, happily -faded—were prints of ‘Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus’, ‘Crossing the -Brook’, and ‘Christ leaving the Temple’. These three pictures were the -very earliest things of Katherine’s remembrance. There were also several -photographs of old-fashioned but sturdy ladies and gentlemen—an officer -in uniform, a lady with high shoulders against a background of a grey -rolling sea. There were photographs of the children at different ages. -There were many cupboards, and these, although they were closed, seemed -to bulge, as though they contained more clothes than was comfortable for -them. - -There was a faint scent in the room of eau-de-cologne and burning -candles. The little clock on the table gave an irritating, -self-important whirr and clatter now and then, and it had been doing -that for a great many years. - -Mrs. Trenchard was lying upon her sofa making a little crimson jacket -for the half-clothed doll. She did not move when Katherine came in, but -went on with her work, her fat, rather clumsy-looking fingers moving -very comfortably up and down the little piece of red cloth. - -“Who is that?” she said. - -“It’s I, Mother,” said Katherine, remaining by the door. - -“Ah, it’s you, dear,” her mother answered. “Just give me that doll on -the table. It’s for Miss Sawyer’s Bazaar in the Hampstead Rooms. I said -I’d dress three dolls, and I only remembered this morning that they’ve -got to go off to-morrow. I thought I’d snatch this quiet time before -tea. Yes, it’s for Miss Sawyer, poor thing. I’m sure I shall run out of -red silk, and I don’t suppose there’s any in the house. Did you want -anything, Katherine?” - -Katherine came forward, picked up the doll from the table and gave it to -her mother. Then she went to one of the broad high windows and stood -looking out. She could see the river, over whose face the evening, -studded with golden lamps, was dropping its veil. She could see, very -dimly, Westminster Bridge, with dots and little splashes of black -passing and repassing with the mechanical indifference of some moving -toy. The sight of her mother’s room had suddenly told her that her task -would be a supremely difficult one; she did not know why she had not -realised that before. Her personal happiness was overwhelmed by her -consciousness of her mother; nothing at this moment seemed to be of -importance save their relations, the one to the other. “I’m going to -hurt her,” she thought, as she turned round from the window. All her -life it had been her urgent passion to save her mother from pain. - -“Mother dear,” she said, “I’ve got something very important to tell you. -Mr. Mark has asked me to marry him, and I’ve accepted him. Father says -we’re to wait for a year.” - -She moved forward and then stopped. Mrs. Trenchard looked at her, -suddenly, as a house of cards crumples up at a single touch, her face -puckered as though she were going to cry. For an instant it was like the -face of a baby. It was so swift that in a flash it was gone, and only in -the eyes there was still the effect of it. Her hands trembled so that -she forced them down upon her lap. Then her face, except for her eyes, -which were terrified, wore again exactly her look of placid, rather -stupid composure. The force that she had driven into her hands had done -its work, for now she could raise them again; in one hand she held the -doll and in another the little red jacket. - -“My _dear_ Katherine!” she said. Then—“Just give me that reel of silk, -dear, on the table.” Then—“But it’s absurd—you don’t—” she seemed to -struggle with her words as though she were beating back some other -personality that threatened to rise and overwhelm her. “You don’t—” She -found her words. “You don’t know him.” - -Katherine broke in eagerly. “I loved him at the very beginning I think. -I felt I knew him at once. I don’t know; it’s so hard to see how it -began, but I can’t help it, Mother. I’ve known it myself for weeks now; -Mother—” She knelt down beside the sofa and looked up, and then, at -something in her mother’s eyes, looked down again. “Please—please—I -know it seems strange to you now, but soon you’ll get to know him—then -you’ll be glad—” She broke off, and there followed a long silence. - -Mrs. Trenchard put down the doll very carefully, and then, with her -hands folded on her lap, lay back on her sofa. She watched the dark -evening as it gathered in beyond the windows; she heard her maid’s knock -on the door, watched her draw the curtains and switch on the light. - -It was only four o’clock, but it was very cold. - -“I think I’ll have my shawl, dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard. “The Indian one -that your Uncle Timothy gave me—it’s in the third drawer—there—to the -right.... Thank you. I must go down. Grandfather’s coming down to tea -this afternoon.” - -Katherine drew closer to the sofa, after she had brought the shawl; she -laid her hand upon her mother’s, which were very cold. - -“But, Mother, you’ve said nothing! I know that now it must seem as -though I’d done it without asking you, without telling you, but I didn’t -know myself until yesterday afternoon. It came so suddenly.” - -“Yesterday afternoon?” Mrs. Trenchard drew her shawl closely about her. -“But how could he—Mr. Mark—yesterday afternoon? You weren’t alone with -him—Aggie was there. Surely she—” - -“No. He wrote on a piece of paper and slipped it across to me, and I -said ‘yes.’ We both felt we couldn’t wait.” - -“I don’t like him,” Mrs. Trenchard said slowly. “You knew that I didn’t -like him.” - -The colour rose in Katherine’s cheeks. - -“No,” she said, “I knew that you thought some of his ideas odd. But you -didn’t know him.” - -“I don’t like him,” said Mrs. Trenchard again. “I could never like him. -He isn’t a religious man. He has a bad effect upon Henry. You, -Katherine, to accept him when you know that he doesn’t go to church and -was so rude to poor Mr. Seymour and thinks Russia such a fine country! I -can’t think,” said Mrs. Trenchard, her hands trembling again, “what’s -come over you.” - -Katherine got up from her knees. “You won’t think that when you know him -better. It’s only that he’s seen more of the world than we have. He’ll -change and we’ll change, and perhaps it will be better for all of us. -Down in Glebeshire we always have done so much the same things and seen -the same people, and even here in London—” - -Her mother gave a little cry, not sharp for anyone else in the world, -but very sharp indeed for Mrs. Trenchard. - -“You! Katherine—you! If it had been Millie!” - -They looked at one another then in silence. They were both of them -conscious of an intensity of love that they had borne towards one -another through the space of a great many years—a love that nothing -else had ever approached. But it was an emotion that had always been -expressed in the quietest terms. Both to Katherine and her mother -demonstrations were unknown. Katherine felt now, at what promised to be, -perhaps, the sharpest crisis that her life had yet experienced, an -urgent desire to break through, to fling her arms round her mother, to -beat down all barriers, to assure her that whatever emotion might come -to her, nothing could touch their own perfect relationship. But the -habits of years muffled everything in thick, thick wrappings—it was -impossible to break through. - -“Your father is pleased?” said Mrs. Trenchard. - -“Yes,” answered Katherine. “He likes Philip. But we must wait a year.” - -“Your father has never told me anything. Never.” She got up slowly from -the sofa. - -“He couldn’t have told you,” Katherine said eagerly. “He has only just -known. I came straight to you from him.” - -Mrs. Trenchard now stood, looking rather lost, in the middle of her -room; the shawl had slipped half from her shoulders, and she seemed, -suddenly, an old woman. - -The vision of something helpless in her, as she stood there, stirred -Katherine passionately. - -She took her mother into her arms, stroking her hair, kissing her cheeks -and whispering to her: “Darling—darling—it doesn’t make any difference -to us—it can’t—it can’t. Nothing can. Nothing.... Nothing!” - -Mrs. Trenchard kissed her daughter very quietly, remained in her embrace -for a little, then drew herself away and went to her mirror. She tidied -her hair, patted her dress, put some eau-de-Cologne on her handkerchief, -laid the shawl carefully away in the drawer. - -“I must go down now. Father will want his tea. I’ll take the doll—I -shan’t have another chance of finishing it.” She walked to the door, -then, turning, said with an intensity that was amazing in its sudden -vehemence and fire: “No one shall take you from me, Katherine. No one. -Let him do what he likes. No one shall take you.” - -She did not appear an old woman, then, as she faced her daughter. - -Meanwhile, in the drawing-room, the family had already gathered together -as though it were aware that something had occurred. Mr. Trenchard, -Senior, surrounded by his rugs, his especial table, his silver snuff-box -(he never took snuff in the drawing-room, but liked his box to be -there), a case of spectacles, and the last number of ‘Blackwood’s -Magazine’. Great Aunt Sarah, Aunt Aggie, Aunt Betty, and Millie. Millie, -watching them, was, to her own immense surprise, sorry for them. - -Millie, watching them, wondered at herself. What had happened to her? -She had returned from Paris, eager to find herself as securely inside -the family as she had always been—longing after the wide, vague -horizons of the outside world to feel that security. She had laughed at -them a little, perhaps, but she had always understood and approved of -their motives. - -Now she found herself at every turn criticising, wondering, defending -against her own intelligence, as though she had been the merest -stranger. She loved them—all of them—but—how strange they were! And -how terrible of her that she should find them strange! They were utterly -unaware of any alteration in her; she seemed to herself to be a spy in -their midst.... - -Happily, however, they were all, this afternoon, most comfortably -unaware of any criticism from anyone in the world. They sat about the -room, waiting for their tea and saying very little. They knew one -another so well that conversation was a mere emphasis of platitudes. -Aunt Aggie talked, but nobody listened, unless one of the -above-mentioned assurances were demanded. - -Her dry, sharp little voice, like the fire and the ticking of the clock, -made an agreeable background. - -Upon this innocent gathering, so happy and tranquil, Henry burst with -his news. He came with all the excited vehemence sprung from his own -vision of the lovers. He could see only that; he did not realise that -the others had not shared his experience. It was almost as though he had -tumbled into the middle of them, so abrupt, so agitated, so incoherent -was he! - -“They’re engaged!” he burst out. - -“My dear Henry!” said Millie. “What’s the matter?” - -“I tell you! Katherine and Mark. They’ve been into father, and he says -they’re to wait a year, but it’s all right. He says that he didn’t know -till they told him. Katherine’s with Mother now,—Mark’s coming in -to-night; Katherine!” - -He broke off, words failed him, and he was suddenly conscious of his -Uncle’s eye. - -“What?” said Aunt Aggie. - -“They’re engaged,” repeated Henry. - -“Whom?” cried Aunt Aggie, ungrammatically, with a shrill horror that -showed that she had already heard. - -“Katie and Philip,” Henry almost screamed in reply. - -What Aunt Aggie, whose eyes were staring as though she saw ghosts or a -man under her bed, would have said to this no one could say, but Aunt -Sarah drove, like a four-wheeled coach, right across her protruding -body. - -Aunt Sarah said: “What are you all talking about? What’s the matter with -Henry? Is he ill? I can’t hear.” - -Millie went up to her. “Katherine’s engaged, Aunt Sarah, to Mr. Mark.” - -“What do you say about Katherine?” - -“She’s engaged.” - -“She’s what?” - -“ENGAGED!” - -“Who to?” - -“Mr. Mark.” - -“Eh? What?” - -“Mark!” - -At the shouting of that name it did indeed seem that the very walls and -ceiling of that old room would collapse. To Aunt Aggie, to Millie, to -Henry, to Aunt Betty, this raid upon Katherine struck more deeply than -any cynical student of human nature could have credited. For the moment -Philip Mark was forgotten—only was it apparent to them all from -Grandfather Trenchard and Great Aunt Sarah to Henry that Katherine, -their own absolute property, the assurance given to them that life would -be always secure, solid, unalterable, had declared publicly, before the -world, that she preferred a stranger, a complete, blown-from-anywhere -stranger, to the family. What would happen to them all, to their -comforts, their secret preferences and habits (known as they all, -individually, believed, only to Katherine), to their pride, to their -self-esteem? They loved one another, yes, they loved the Trenchard -family, the Trenchard position, but through all these things, as a -skewer through beef, ran their reliance upon Katherine. It was as though -someone had cried to them: “The whole of Glebeshire is blown -away—fields and houses, roads and rivers. You must go and live in -Yorkshire. Glebeshire cares for you no longer!” - -“THEY’RE TO WAIT A YEAR, FATHER SAYS!” shouted Millie. - -Aunt Sarah shook her white-plumed head and snorted: - -“Katherine! Engaged! To a Stranger! Impossible!” - -Aunt Aggie was conscious, at the moment, of nothing except that she -herself had been defeated. They had tricked her, those two. They had -eluded her vigilance.... They were now, in all probability, laughing at -her. - -“The last thing I want to do,” she said, “is to blame anybody, but if -I’d been listened to at the beginning, Mr. Mark would never have been -asked to stay.... It was thoughtless of George. Now we can all see—” - -But Millie, standing before them all, her face flushed, said: - -“The chief thing is to consider Katherine’s happiness. Mr. Mark is -probably delightful. She was sure to marry somebody. How can people help -falling in love with Katherine? We all love her. She loves us. I don’t -see what Mr. Mark can do to prevent that—and he won’t want to. He -_must_ be nice if Katherine loves him!” - -But the final word was spoken by Grandfather Trenchard, who had been -hitherto utterly silent. In his clear, silvery voice he said: - -“A great deal can happen in a year!” - -At that moment Katherine and her mother came in. - - - - - BOOK II - THE FEATHER BED - - - - - CHAPTER I - KATHERINE IN LOVE - -Katherine Trenchard, although she had, for a number of years now, gone -about the world with open eyes and an understanding heart, was, in very -many ways, absurdly old-fashioned. I say “absurd” because many people, -from amongst her own Trenchard relations, thought her prejudices, -simplicities, and confidences absurd, and hoped that she would grow out -of them. The two people who really knew her, her Uncle Timothy and -Rachel Seddon, hoped that she never would. Her “old-fashioned” habits of -mind led her to believe in “people” in “things” and in “causes”, and it -was her misfortune that up to this year of which I am speaking she had -never been disappointed. That may be because she had grown up amongst -the rocks, the fields, the lanes of Glebeshire, true ground where -sincerity and truth flourish yet in abundance—moreover it is assured -that man lives up to the qualities with which he is by his friends -credited, and all the Trenchard family lived up to Katherine’s belief in -their word of honour. - -She was not so simple a character that she found the world perfect, but -she was in no way subtle, and, because she herself acted in her faults -and virtues, her impetuosities and repentances, her dislikes and -affections with clear-hearted simplicity, she believed that other -persons did the same. Her love for her mother was of this quite -unquestioning sort; her religion too was perfectly direct and -unquestioning: so, then, her love for Philip.... - -She had never before been in love, nor had she ever considered men very -closely as anything but visitors or relations. The force and power of -the passion that now held her was utterly removed from anything that had -ever encountered her before, but she was a strong character, and her -simplicity of outlook helped her. Philip seemed to her to be possessed -of all the qualities of the perfect hero. His cleverness, his knowledge -of the world, his humour were only balanced by his kindness to everyone -and everything, his unselfishness, his honesty of speech and eye. She -had thought him, once, a little weak in his anxiety to be liked by all -the world, but now that was forgotten. He was, during these days, a -perfect character. - -She had not, however, lost her clear-sighted sense of humour; that -humour was almost cynical sometimes in its sharp perception of people -and things, and did not seem to belong to the rest of Katherine at all. -It was driven more often upon herself than upon anyone else, but it was, -for a character of Katherine’s simplicity, strangely sharp. A fair field -for the employment of it was offered to her just now in the various -attitudes and dispositions of her own immediate family, but, as yet, she -was unable to see the family at all, so blinding was Philip’s radiance. - -That year England enjoyed one of the old romantic Christmases. There -were sparkling dazzling frosts. The snow lay hard and shining under -skies of unchanging blue, and on Christmas Eve, when the traffic and -smoke of the town had stolen the purity away, more snow fell and -restored it again. - -It had always been the rule that the Trenchards should spend Christmas -in Glebeshire, but, this year, typhoid fever had visited Garth only a -month or two before, and London was held to be safer. Katherine had not -had, in her life, so many entertainments that she could afford to be -blasé about them, and she still thought a Pantomime splendid, “The Only -Way” certainly the most magnificent play in the world, and a dance a -thing of perfect rapture, if only she could be more secure about the -right shapes and colours of her clothes. She had no vanity -whatever—indeed a little more would have helped her judgment: she never -knew whether a dress would suit her, nor why it was that one thing -“looked right” and another thing “looked wrong”. Millie could have -helped her, because Millie knew all about clothes, but it was always a -case with Katherine of something else coming first, of having to dress -at the last minute, of “putting on any old thing because there was no -time.” - -Now, however, there was Philip to dress for, and she did really try. She -went to Millie’s dressmaker with Millie as her guide, but unfortunately -Mrs. Trenchard, who had as little idea about dress as Katherine, -insisted on coming too, and confused everyone by her introduction of -personal motives and religious dogmas into something that should have -been simply a matter of ribbons and bows. Katherine, indeed, was too -happy to care. Philip loved her in any old thing, the truth being that -when he went about with her, he saw very little except his own -happiness.... - -It is certainly a fact that during these weeks neither of them saw the -family at all. - - * * * * * - -Rachel Seddon was the first person of the outside world to whom -Katherine told the news. - -“So that was the matter with you that day when you came to see me!” she -cried. - -“What day?” said Katherine. - -“You’d been frightened in the Park, thought someone was going to drop a -bag over your head, and ran in here for safety.” - -“I shall always run in here for safety,” said Katherine gravely. Rachel -came, in Katherine’s heart, in the place next to Mrs. Trenchard and -Philip. Katherine had always told Rachel everything until that day of -which Rachel had just spoken. There had been reticence then, there would -be reticences always now. - -“You will bring him very quickly to see me?” said Rachel. - -“I will bring him at once,” answered Katherine. - -Rachel had liked Philip when she met him at the Trenchards; now, when he -came to call, she found that she did not get on with him. He seemed to -be suspicious of her: he was awkward and restrained. His very youthful -desire to make the person he was with like him, seemed now to give way -to an almost truculent surliness. “I don’t care whether you like me or -not,” he seemed to say. “Katherine’s mine and not yours any longer.” - -Neither Philip nor Rachel told Katherine that they did not like one -another. Roddy Seddon, Rachel’s husband, on the other hand, liked Philip -very much. Lying for many years on his back had given him a preference -for visitors who talked readily and gaily, who could tell him about -foreign countries, who did not too obviously pity him for being “out of -the running, poor beggar.” - -“You don’t like the feller?” Roddy said to his wife. - -“He doesn’t like me,” said Rachel. - -“Rot,” said Roddy. “You’re both jealous. You both want Katherine.” - -“I shan’t be jealous,” answered Rachel, “if he’s good enough for her—if -he makes her happy.” - -“He seems to me a very decent sort of feller,” said Roddy. - -Meanwhile Rachel adored Katherine’s happiness. She had chafed for many -years now at what she considered was the Trenchards’ ruthless sacrifice -of Katherine to their own selfish needs. - -“They’re never going to let her have any life of her own,” she said. Now -Katherine _had_ a life of her own, and if only that might continue -Rachel would ask no more. Rachel had had her own agonies and disciplines -in the past, and they had left their mark upon her. She loved her -husband and her child, and her life was sufficiently filled with their -demands upon her, but she was apprehensive of happiness—she saw the -Gods taking away with one hand whilst they gave with the other. - -“I knew more about the world at ten,” she thought, “than Katherine will -ever know. If she’s hurt, it will be far worse for her than it ever was -for me.” - -Although she delighted in Katherine’s happiness, she trembled at the -utter absorption of it. “We aren’t meant to trust anything so much,” she -thought, “as Katherine trusts his love for her.” - -Katherine, perhaps because she trusted so absolutely, did not at present -ask Philip any questions. They talked very little. They walked, they -rode on the tops of omnibuses, they went to the Zoo and Madame Tussaud’s -and the Tower, they had tea at the Carlton Restaurant and lunch in Soho, -they went to the Winter Exhibition at Burlington House, and heard a -famous novelist give a portentous lecture on the novel at the “Times” -Book Club. They were taken to a solemn evening at the Poets’ Club, where -ladies in evening dress read their own poetry, they went to a -performance given by the Stage Society, and a tea-party given by four -lady novelists at the Lyceum Club: old Lady Carloes, who liked -Katherine, chaperoned her to certain smart dances, whither Philip also -was invited, and, upon two glorious occasions, they shared a box with -her at a winter season of German Opera at Covent Garden. They saw the -Drury Lane pantomime and Mr. Martin Harvey and one of Mr. Hall Caine’s -melodramas and a very interesting play by Sir Arthur (then Mr.) Pinero. -They saw the King driving out in his carriage and the Queen driving out -in hers. - -It was a wild and delirious time. Katherine had always had too many -duties at home to consider London very thoroughly, and Philip had been -away for so long that everything in London was exciting to him. They -spoke very little; they went, with their eyes wide open, their hearts -beating very loudly, side by side, up and down the town, and the town -smiled upon them because they were so young, so happy, and so absurdly -confident. - -Katherine was confident because she could see no reason for being -otherwise. She knew that it sometimes happened that married people did -not get on well together, but it was ridiculous to suppose that that -could be the case with herself and Philip. She knew that, just at -present, some members of her family did not care very greatly for -Philip, but that was because they did not know him. She knew that a year -seemed a long time to wait, but it was a very short period compared with -a whole married lifetime. How anyone so clever, so fine of soul, so wise -in his knowledge of men and things could come to love anyone so ordinary -as herself she did not know—but that had been in God’s hands, and she -left it there. - -There was a thing that began now to happen to Katherine of which she -herself was only very dimly perceptive. She began to be aware of the -living, actual participation in her life of the outside, abstract world. -It was simply this—that, because so wonderful an event had transformed -her own history, so also to everyone whom she saw, she felt that -something wonderful must have happened. It came to more than this; she -began now to be aware of London as something alive and perceptive in the -very heart of its bricks and mortar, something that knew exactly her -history and was watching to see what would come of it. She had always -been concerned in the fortunes of those immediately about her—in the -villages of Garth, in all her Trenchard relations—but they had filled -her world. Now she could not go out of the Westminster house without -wondering—about the two old maids in black bonnets who walked up and -down Barton Street, about a tall gentleman with mutton-chop whiskers and -a white bow, whom she often saw in Dean’s Yard, about a large woman with -a tiny dog and painted eyebrows, about the young man with the bread, the -young man with the milk, the very trim young man with the post, the very -fat young man with the butcher’s cart, the two smart nursemaids with the -babies of the idle rich, who were always together and deep in whispered -conversation; the policeman at the right corner of the Square, who was -friendly and human, and the policeman at the left corner who was not; -the two young men in perfect attire and attaché cases who always lounged -down Barton Street about six o’clock in the evening with scorn for all -the world at the corners of their mouths, the old man with a brown -muffler who sold boot laces at the corner of Barton Street, and the -family with the barrel-organ who came on Friday mornings (man once been -a soldier, woman pink shawl, baby in a basket), a thick-set, grave -gentleman who must be somebody’s butler, because his white shirt was so -stiff and his cheeks blue-black from shaving so often, a young man -always in a hurry and so untidy that, until he came close to her, -Katherine thought he must be Henry ... all those figures she had known -for years and years, but they had been only figures, they had helped to -make the pattern in the carpet, shapes and splashes of colour against -the grey. - -Now they were suddenly alive! They had, they must have, histories, -secrets, triumphs, defeats of a most thrilling order! She would like to -have told them of her own amazing, stupendous circumstances, and then to -have invited their confidences. The world that had held before some -fifty or sixty lives pulsated now with millions. But there was more than -that before her. Whereas she had always, because she loved it, given to -Garth and the country around it a conscious, individual existence, -London had been to her simply four walls with a fire and a window. From -the fire there came heat, from the window a view, but the heat and the -view were made by man for man’s convenience. Had man not been, London -was not.... Garth had breathed and stormed, threatened and loved before -Man’s spirit had been created. - -Now, although as yet she did not recognise it, she began to be aware of -London’s presence—as though from some hidden corner, from long ago some -stranger had watched her; now, because the room was lit, he was revealed -to her. She was not, as yet, at all frightened by her knowledge, but -even in quiet Westminster there were doorways, street corners, trees, -windows, chimneys, houses, set and square and silent, that perceived her -coming and going—“Tum—te tum—Tat—Tat—Tat ... -Tat—Tat—Tat—Tum—te—tum.... - -“We know all about it, Katherine Trenchard—We know what’s going to -happen to you, but we can’t tell you—We’re older and wiser, much older -and much, much wiser than you are—Tat—Tat—Tat....” - -She was so happy that London could not at present disturb her, but when -the sun was suddenly caught behind black clouds, when a whirr of rain -came slashing down from nowhere at all, when a fog caught with its -yellow hand London’s throat and squeezed it, when gusts of dust rose -from the streets in little clouds as though the horses were kicking -their feet, when a wind, colder than snow came, blowing from nowhere, on -a warm day, Katherine needed Philip, clung to him, begged him not to -leave her ... she had never, in all her life, clung to anyone before. - -But this remains that, during these weeks, she found him perfect. She -liked nothing better than his half-serious, half-humorous sallies at -himself. “You’ve got to buck me up, Katherine—keep me from flopping -about, you know. Until I met you no one had any real influence on -me—never in all my days. Now you can do anything with me. Tell me when -I do anything hateful, and scold me as often as you can. Look at me with -the eyes of Aunt Aggie if you can—she sees me without any false -colouring. I’m not a hero—far from it—but I can be anything if you -love me enough.” - -“Love him enough!” Had anyone ever loved anyone before as she loved him? -She was not, to any ordinary observer, very greatly changed. Quietly and -with all the matter-of-fact half-serious, half-humorous common-sense she -went about her ordinary daily affairs. Young Seymour came to tea, and -she laughed at him, gave him teacake, and asked him about the latest -novel just as she had always done. Mr. Seymour had come expecting to see -love’s candle lit for the benefit of his own especial genius. He was -greatly disappointed, but also, because he hated Mark, gratified. “I -don’t believe she loves him a bit,” he said afterwards. “He came in -while I was there, and she didn’t colour up or anything. Didn’t show -anything, and I’m pretty observant. She doesn’t love him, and I’m jolly -glad—I can’t stand the man.” - -But those who were near her knew. They felt the heat, they watched the -colour, of the pure, unfaltering flame. Old Trenchard, the Aunts, -Millie, Henry, her mother, even George Trenchard felt it. “I always -knew,” said Millie, “that when love came to Katherine it would be -terrible”. She wrote that in a diary that she kept. - -Mrs. Trenchard said nothing at all. During those weeks Katherine was, -for the first time in her life, unaware of her mother. - -The afternoon of the Christmas Eve of that year was never afterwards -forgotten by Katherine. She had been buying last desperate additions to -Christmas presents, had fought in the shops and been victorious; then, -seeing through the early dusk the lights of the Abbey, she slipped in at -the great door, found a seat near the back of the nave, and remembered -that always, at this hour, on Christmas Eve, a Carol Service was held. -The service had not yet begun, and a hush, with strange rhythms and -pulsations in it, as though some phantom conductor were leading a -phantom orchestra, filled the huge space. A flood of people, dim and -very silent, spread from wall to wall. Far away, candles fluttered, -trembled and flung strange lights into the web of shadow that seemed to -swing and stir as though driven by some wind. Katherine sank into a -happy, dreamy bewilderment. The heat of the building after the cold, -frosty air, some old scent of candles and tombstones and ancient walls, -the consciousness of utter, perfect happiness carried her into a state -that was half dream, half reality. She closed her eyes, and soon the -voices from very far away rose and fell with that same phantom, remotely -inhuman urgency. - -A boy’s voice that struck, like a dart shot by some heavenly archer, at -her heart, awoke her. This was “Good King Wenceslaus”. A delicious -pleasure filled her: her eyes flooded with tears and her heart beat -triumphantly. “Oh! how happy I am! And I realise it—I _know_ that I can -never be happier again than I am now!” - -The carol ceased. After a time, too happy for speech, she went out. - -In Dean’s Yard the snow, with blue evening shadows upon it, caught light -from the sheets of stars that tossed and twinkled, stirred and were -suddenly immovable. The Christmas bells were ringing: all the lights of -the houses in the Yard gathered about her and protected her. What stars -there were! What beauty! What silence! - -She stood, for a moment, taking it in, then, with a little shiver of -delight, turned homewards. - - - - - CHAPTER II - MRS. TRENCHARD - -Millie, like many of the Trenchard ladies before her, kept a diary. She -had kept it now for three years, and it had not during that time, like -the diaries of other young ladies, died many deaths and suffered many -resurrections, but had continued with the utmost regularity and -discipline. This regularity finds its explanation in the fact that -Millie really was interested in other people as well as in herself, was -sometimes surprised at her cleverness and in turn suspicious of it—in -fact, she knew as much about the world as most girls of eighteen who -have been “finished” in Paris: she thought that she knew more than she -did, and was perfectly determined to know a great deal more than she -thought she knew. - -These were some entries: - -_Dec. 6th._ Tried on the new white silk, but it won’t do even now—too -tight and makes me skimpy—Refused to let mother come with me this time. -Took Aunt Betty instead, and we saw a _peach_ of a hat at Reneé’s which -I’d give my eyes for, only of course I haven’t got the money now with -Christmas coming and everything. Aunt Betty said it was much better -wanting things you can’t have, because then you go on being excited, but -that’s of course _absurd_ and just like Aunt Betty. - -Bought Aunt Aggie a calendar-blotter thing for Christmas which she won’t -like (blue leather with silver corners) but I _can’t_ help it. I’m sick -of thinking what to get her, and she won’t be contented whatever it is. -Meanwhile, in the afternoon: the sensation of a lifetime—All sitting in -the drawing-room, waiting for tea. When in bursts Henry with the wild -news that Katie’s engaged herself to Philip Mark. We all turned -blue—I’d like to have been someone outside and seen us. No one had -really suspected it. _I_ hadn’t myself—although one might have, I -suppose, if one had watched more closely. It’s very exciting, and if -Katie’s happy I don’t care about anything else. At least I do. It was so -lovely coming back from Paris and having her all to oneself. We -understand one another so _much better_ than any of the others do. I’m -the only one in the family who really knows her. I never thought of her -as being married, which was silly, I suppose. It’s funny to think of her -liking a man, whom she’s only just seen, better than all of us. It -wouldn’t be funny with most people, but Katherine’s so _quiet_ and so -_steady_. It all depends on what _he’s_ like. Finished ‘La Faute de -l’abbé Mouret’. _Loved_ it. Downstairs I’m reading ‘Sesame and -Lilies’—well-written but awfully silly. - -_Dec. 9th._ Dreary day buying presents with mother at the Stores. _Why_ -she will go there I can’t think, and she takes it like a week on the -Riviera or a box at the opera. She says nothing about Philip—not a -word. He dined last night, and was most tactful. I never saw anyone so -determined to make us all devoted to him, but he’s got a difficult -business with Aunt Aggie and mother. I _like_ him, and have a kind of -idea that I understand him better than any of the others do. He’s -certainly not the God that Katherine thinks him—and he knows he isn’t. -He’s a little uncomfortable about it, I think. He’s certainly very much -in love with her. Letter from Louise Pougé—She’s engaged—to no one -very particular. She’s younger than I am—_and_ prettier—lots. - -Spoke to Henry about clean handkerchiefs. He’s really incredible at his -age. Philip seems to influence him though. That may do something. - -_Dec. 13th._ Dismal day. Out of sorts and cross. Dreadfully restless. I -don’t know why. It’s all wrong this Christmas, not being down at Garth -and Katherine so occupied. On days like these I have terrible scruples -about myself. I suppose I _am_ terribly conceited really—and yet I -don’t know. There are plenty of people I admire ever so much more than -myself. I suppose it’s seeing Katherine so happy that makes me restless. -It must be nice to have anyone as devoted as that to you.... I’ve always -been very cynical about being in love, but when one watches it, quite -close, with anyone as good as Katherine ... anyway it’s been a beastly -day, and Aunt Aggie went on like an old crow at dinner. I wish I knew -what mother was feeling about it all—she’s so quiet. - -_Dec. 17th._ Had a long talk with Philip this evening. I must say I -liked him—he was so modest about himself. He said that he wished he -were a little more as Katherine thinks he is, and that he’s going to try -to be. I said that’s all right so long as he made Katherine happy and -didn’t take her right away from us all. He said that he would do -anything to make mother like him, and did I think that she liked him -better now? I said that I was sure that she did—but I’m not sure -really. It’s impossible to know what mother thinks. Katherine came in -whilst we were talking. Afterwards, I don’t know why, I felt afraid -somehow. Katie’s so _sure_. I know I’d never be sure of anybody, least -of all anyone in love with me. But then I know so much more about men -than Katie does. And I’m sure Philip knows lots more about women than -Katie thinks. Katie and mother are _so_ alike in some ways. They’re both -as obstinate as anything. Such a lovely afternoon out with the -Swintons—Snow in the Green Park, sparkling all over and the air like -after you’ve eaten peppermints. Lady Perrot asked me to go with them to -New Year’s supper at the Savoy. Hope I’ll be allowed. - -_Dec. 23rd._ Had a walk with Katie—first walk had alone since her -engagement. She was so happy that she was almost—a beastly -word—_frisky_, Katie frisky! We’re miles away from one another just -now, and that’s the truth. I suppose one must simply wait until this -period’s passed away. But supposing it never passes away? Supposing she -disappears altogether—from all of us. At any rate, what can one say? I -like Philip, and can honestly say so, but I don’t think him the angel -Gabriel. Not that Katie at present cares, in the least, what one -thinks—she doesn’t wait to hear. She is making no plans, thinking of no -possible future, imagining nothing. She never had any imagination, or at -any rate never used it. Perhaps she’ll get some now from Philip, who has -_plenty_—far too much. It’s _his_ trouble, I believe that he’s always -imagining something a little better than he’s got.... We Trenchards have -none. I haven’t any really—it’s only curiosity. Henry and I might have -some if we were all very uncomfortable. But of course the whole family -only keeps together because it can’t imagine things being different. -_Are_ things going to be different now?... Rachel Seddon came to tea. -Don’t like her. Thinks she owns Katie—and Katie’s let her. Went with -the Aunts to the Messiah. Very long, with nice bits. Aunt Aggie had a -crick in the neck, and wriggled all the time. Hope I get some money on -Christmas Day or I shall be in an _awful_ hole. - -_Dec. 26th._ Two pounds from father, one from grandfather, ten shillings -Cousin Alice, five Aunt Grace, kettle-holder Aunt Aggie, two dozen -handkerchiefs Uncle Bob, fountain-pen father, new hat mother (quite -hopeless), photo-gravure ‘Happy Warrior’ Aunt Betty, two books ‘Reuben -Hallard’ by Westcott (Mudie second-hand) ‘Rossetti’s Poems’ from -Henry—lovely amethyst brooch Katie (darling!) two novels by Turgenieff -from Philip—lots of other things. - -Nice day on the whole, but not _quite right_ somehow. Wish mother didn’t -always look so anxious when there’s a dinner party. You always _expect_ -things to happen wrong, and really Rocket knows his business by this -time. All of us a little forced, I think. It seemed funny not being at -Garth and Philip the first person we’ve ever had not of the family. Aunt -Sarah keeps forgetting who he is, or pretends to. I wish he didn’t make -up to mother quite so much. That isn’t the way to make her like him. I -really _do_ understand him much better than anyone else does—_much_ -better than Katie. - -_Dec. 31st._ Going to the Savoy party to-night. Hope it will be fun. -Never expected mother to let me, but she’s awfully sweet to me lately. -She’s a darling, but we’re really always just a little afraid of one -another. Of course I’m not out yet, so I’ll have to be quiet to-night. -Mother never would have dreamt of letting me go six months back. End of -the year—made several resolutions. Not to be snappy, nor superior, nor -cynical, nor selfish. That’s enough for anyone to look after! Wonder -what things will be like this year, and how Katie and Philip will turn -out. Feel as though things will all go wrong, and yet I don’t know why. -Bought the hat I saw a fortnight ago. Finished ‘House of Gentlefolks’. -_Adored_ it. Discussed it with Philip. Going to get all the other -Turgenieffs. Think Russia must be a wonderful country. Time to dress. I -know I’ll just _love_ the party.... - - * * * * * - -Only Mrs. Trenchard herself could say whether or no she had enjoyed this -Christmas. She displayed the same busy placidity as on other occasions; -of her fears, disappointments, surprises, she said nothing. The turkey -was a success, the plum-pudding burnt with a proper glow, no one was -ill, she had forgotten, in sending out her parcels, no single Trenchard -relation—surely all was well. - -Her brother, Timothy, who knew her better than anyone else did, had long -abandoned the penetration of her motives, aims, regrets. There had been -a time when she had been almost intimate with him, then something (he -never knew what) had driven her in more obstinately than ever upon -herself. Something he had said.... He could point almost exactly to the -day and hour. She had been a stranger to him from that moment. - -Her history was, however, very simple. - -When she had been a very, very small child she had decided for herself -that the way to give life a real value was to fix one’s affection upon -someone: perhaps there had been also the fear of life as a motive, the -discovery that the best way to be protected from all kinds of perils was -to be so fond of someone that nothing else mattered. With a quiet, -undemonstrative but absolutely tenacious hold she attached herself to -her nurse, who deserted her on the appearance of a younger sister, to -her mother, who died, to her father, who was always so busy that loving -him was like being devoted to a blotting pad. When she was ten years of -age she went to school, and clung to a succession of older girls, who, -however, found, in her lack of all demonstrations, her almost cynical -remarks, her inability to give any expression whatever to her emotions, -something, at first, terrifying, and afterwards merely tiresome. - -When she was about eighteen she discovered that the person to whom a -woman should be properly attached was her husband. She waited then very -calmly until she was twenty, when George Trenchard appeared, proposed to -her, and was accepted. She took it so utterly for granted that her -devotion to him would fill sufficiently the energy of her remaining days -that it wasn’t until the end of a year of married life that she -discovered that, although he liked her very much, he could do quite -beautifully without her, and did, indeed, for three-quarters of every -day forget her altogether. No one, except herself, knew whether that -discovery hurt her. She, of course, said nothing to anyone about it. She -waited for the arrival of her children. Katherine, Henry and Mildred -came, and at last it seemed that Mrs. Trenchard’s ship had come into -port. During their early years, at any rate, they clung to her -tenaciously, did not in the least mind that she had nothing to say to -them: they found her sure and safe and, best of all possible things in a -parent, always the same. It was when Katherine was six years old that -Timothy said to her one day: - -“Look here, Harriet, don’t get so wrapt in the children that you’ll -never be able to unwrap yourself again. I’ve seen it happen dozens of -times, and it always gives endless trouble later on. It’s all very well -now, but the time will come when they’ll break away—it _must_ come, and -you’ll suffer horribly unless you’re ready for it. I’m not married -myself, it’s true, but I see all the more for that very reason.” - -This was the speech that severed Mrs. Trenchard from her brother. She -never forgot nor forgave it. She never forgave it because she could not -forget it: his words were to haunt her from the moment of their -utterance until the last conscious instant of her life. She had been -born entirely without imagination, but she had not been born without the -wish for romance. Moreover, the Faunder tradition (which is the same as -the Trenchard tradition) taught her to believe that there was something -enfeebling and dangerous about imagination, and that the more one -thought about things not immediately within sight the less likely one -was to do one’s daily task with efficiency. Her longing for a romantic -life therefore (that is for the justification of her own personal -existence) was assisted by no private dreams nor castle-building. No -Faunder or Trenchard had ever built a castle in the air when there were -good square manors and vicarages waiting to be constructed on good solid -ground. She directed the whole of her passionate life towards her -relations with her children, but never even to herself would she admit -that she had any passionate life at all. Take away the children and -there was nothing left for her except her religion; because the loss of -them would be the one tragedy that would drive her to question the -justice of her God was justification of itself for her passionate -determination. - -Now Timothy had said that she would lose them—well, Timothy should see. -With other children, with other mothers, it might be so. God Himself -should not take them from her. - -Nevertheless, as the children grew, the shadows of his words ever -pursued her and hemmed her in. She watched, with close attention, other -families, and saw that Timothy’s warning was justified often enough, but -always she was able to find for herself some reason. The weakness of -selfishness or carelessness of the parent. Not weak, nor selfish, nor -careless could any watching Powers, waiting to pounce, accuse her of -being! - -When the children grew older she discovered certain things about them. -Henry often annoyed her with his untidiness and strangely unjustified -egotism. He always thought about himself, and yet never did anything. -She liked Henry least of her children. - -Mildred was delightful, clever, the “show child”, but for that very -reason would in all probability be, afterwards, the most restless of -them. As the two girls grew Mrs. Trenchard told herself that, perhaps, -Millie would have to be sacrificed, and in telling herself this she -implied that if she would only, when the time came, allow Millie without -a murmur to depart, the Gods would be satisfied with that and Katherine -would remain. - -It came to this, that by the time that Katherine was twelve she was the -centre of her mother’s existence. Mildred and Henry would be held as -long as it was possible to hold them, but, if the worst came, they -should go. Katherine would always remain.... - -It seemed indeed that she would. She loved her home, her parents, her -relations, Glebeshire, the whole of the Trenchard inheritance. She -placed her mother first in her life, and she was able to satisfy the -love in her mother’s heart without saying anything about it or drawing -anyone’s attention towards it. She had all the qualities that her mother -admired—sincerity, trust, common-sense, practical punctuality, moral as -well as physical: above all, she took things for granted without asking -endless questions, as was Henry’s unfortunate habit. There grew then in -the lives both of Mrs. Trenchard and Katherine a passionate affection, -which was never allowed by either of them to find outward expression. -This became, behind the commonplace matter-of-fact of all their days, a -kind of romantic conspiracy. Even when Katherine was still a child Mrs. -Trenchard knew that the hours that they spent alone together had some -strange almost incoherent quality, something that was mixed, -inextricably, with the high lanes, the grassy lawns, the distant strip -of sea beyond the fields, the rooks in the high trees, the smell of the -village shop, boot-laces, liquorice, tallow, cheese and cotton, the dark -attic bedroom of Katherine’s, the cries of village children beyond the -garden wall, afternoon Sunday school upon hard benches under glazed -lamps to the accompaniment of the harmonium; all the things that -belonged to Garth belonged also to the love between Mrs. Trenchard and -Katherine. Katherine had been first taken to the sea when she had been a -very little girl; she had been shown Rafiel and the Pirates’ Cove with -its cave (too small for any but very thin pirates), and the village with -the cottages cut out of the rock and the sea advancing and retreating as -a lazy cat stretches and withdraws its paws upon the pebbled beach. -Driving home through the twilight in the high dog-cart behind the fat -and beloved family pony, Katherine had been besieged with questions. -What had she thought of it all? What had she liked best? Had it been -wonderful? She had said nothing. She was obstinately silent. At last, -persecuted beyond bearing, she looked, imploringly, at her mother. Her -eyes had met her mother’s, and, as complete understanding passed between -them, it seemed that they made, there and then, a compact of mutual help -and protection that was never afterwards to be broken. Mrs. Trenchard -had never, never been known to mention scenery, sunsets or buildings, -except for strictly practical reasons. She would say: “Come in, -children, you’ll catch cold, the sun’s setting”, or “I _don’t_ think -we’ll have rain to-day. There’s not a cloud”, or “It’s so hot, there’s -quite a mist. I hope there’ll be enough strawberries and cream for -everyone.” That was her attitude, and yet she loved Glebeshire, every -stone and tree, with an unfaltering and unarguing devotion. She never -said “Glebeshire is the loveliest spot in the world”. But only: “Oh! -you’ve never been to Glebeshire? You don’t know the Clarence Faunders -then? They’re only five miles from us”, or “Yes. We live in -Glebeshire—a little village not far from Polchester. We’re very lucky -in our clergyman, a Mr. Smart, one of the Smarts, etc.” Moreover, she -never when she was quite alone said to herself: “Oh! what a heavenly -day!” or “How lovely the new leaves are”, or “Look at the primroses!” -She only said to herself: “Lucy Cartwright’s Annie has got to have that -ointment”, or “I must tell Rebekah about the poor Curtises. She could -take them the things.” - -Nevertheless, when she discovered that Katherine cared for Glebeshire -with a love as deep as her own, how happy she was! How firmly that -discovery bound them together! For them both that journey twice a year -from London to Garth was as exciting as though they had never taken it -before. The stations, whose names were like the successive wrappers that -enclose a splendid present, Rasselas, the little windy station where -they changed from the London Express into the halting, stumbling little -train that carried them towards the sea; then Stoep in Roselands, -tiniest station of all, with the sea smell blowing across the dark -fields, the carriage with its lights and Jacob, the coachman, the drive -through the twilight lanes, the gleaming white gates, the house itself -and old Rebekah on the doorstep ... yes, of all these things was the -love between Mrs. Trenchard and her daughter made. - -Most wonderful of all was it that, with Katherine, Mrs. Trenchard never -knew a moment’s awkwardness or embarrassment. With everyone else in the -world and, perhaps especially with her own family, Mrs. Trenchard was -often awkward and embarrassed, although no one but herself was aware of -it. Of this embarrassment Mrs. Trenchard had a horrible dread: it was to -her as though she were suddenly lifted off her feet by a giant hand and -held dangling: she felt that all the world must see how her skirts blew -in the wind. With Katherine she was always safe: she grew, most -urgently, to depend upon this safety. Then, as the years passed she felt -that she might, with justice, consider Katherine secure. Katherine -seemed to have no interest in young men: already she adopted a rather -motherly attitude towards them and, perhaps because Henry was the young -man immediately before her, considered them rather helpless, rather -clumsy, rather unwieldy and ungainly. She was always kind but a little -satirical in her relations to the other sex: young men were, perhaps, -afraid of her. - -Mrs. Trenchard did, of course, consider the possibility of Katherine’s -marriage, but, if that ever occurred, it would be, she knew, with -someone in the family, someone like themselves, who would live near by, -who would worship Katherine but never interfere with her, who would give -her children, to whom Mrs. Trenchard could be a delightful grandmother. -This surrender the Gods might demand—it would need more than such a -marriage to separate, now, Katherine from her mother. Mrs. Trenchard, -like all unimaginative people, relied very strongly upon little facts -and well-accustomed places and familiar family relations. She did not -believe that Victoria Street would walk away or that the old woman (Mrs. -Pengello, an ancient widow with a pension, two granddaughters and a cast -in her eye) at the Garth post office would appear one morning as a -radiant young beauty, or that her brother Timothy would go on to the -music halls. Her world was thus a place of security, and Katherine was -one of the most secure things in it. “Ah! Timothy, you’re wrong after -all,” she would sometimes, in the watches of the night, think to -herself. “Nothing can take Katherine from me now. You may be as right as -you like about Millie and Henry. Katherine is enough....” - -She had, during these last years, been wrapped in with a strange, placid -content: Millie had been at school in Paris: there was nothing inside -the Trenchard fortress that spoke of the outside world. No secret spirit -ever whispered to Mrs. Trenchard: “Are you not being selfish in keeping -your daughter? You will die some day, and then she will have a lonely -old maid’s life when she might have been so happy. The children’s lives -are their own. What right have you to Katherine’s life and ambitions and -love? Would you, in your youth, have given up your future for your -parents? Why should she?” - -There was nothing that Mrs. Trenchard desired more than Katherine’s -happiness. If Katherine had not loved her she would have let her go, but -now ... Katherine’s life was bound up with hers so tightly that nothing, -nothing could part them.... - -Then there came a night of fog, a stranger bowing in the doorway, and -all the old days were dead. Mrs. Trenchard was still stunned, the fog -was yet about her eyes, and in her heart was a dread that had not yet -found its voice nor driven her to determine what she would do.... -Meanwhile there was no one in the world who knew her. She did not know -herself. Until now there had been in her life no crisis strong enough to -force open that realisation. - - * * * * * - -One morning early in January Mrs. Trenchard said to Katherine at -breakfast: “Will you come to the Stores with me this afternoon, -Katherine? I have to buy some hot-water bottles and one or two other -things. Two of them leak badly ... some hot-water bottles ... and I’d -like you to help me.” - -“I’m lunching with Rachel, mother,” Katherine said. “But I’ll be back by -three if that’s time enough.” - -“Three o’clock. Very well, dear. They oughtn’t to leak—we’ve had them -quite a short time. Shall I meet you there?” - -“No. I’ll come back. We might miss there. I’ll be back by three.” - -At ten minutes past three in a large rather confused hat with a black -bird and white feathers Mrs. Trenchard was seated waiting in the -drawing-room. The fire had had coal poured upon it by Rocket, and it was -very black: the room was cold and dark, and Mrs. Trenchard, feeling like -an unwelcome guest in her own house, shivered. At twenty minutes past -three Mrs. Trenchard began to be afraid that there had been an accident. -Katherine was always so punctual. Millie came in. - -“_Dear_ mother, what on earth!” - -“I’m waiting for Katherine. She was to be back at three from Rachel -Seddon’s. We are—were—going to the Stores. You don’t think there can -have been an accident?” - -“Katherine! Why, I saw her twenty minutes ago. I’ve just come back from -Lady Carloes. Katie was at Hyde Park Corner with Philip.” - -“Philip!” - -Mrs. Trenchard got up, took off one black glove, then put it on again. -She looked at the clock. - -“Will you come to the Stores with me, Millie? I’ve got to get some -hot-water bottles and some other things.... Two of ours leak.... I’d -like you to help me.” - -Millie looked once at the clock, and her mother saw her. Then Millie -said: - -“Of course I will. We won’t be very long, will we?” - -“Why, no, dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard, who would have been happy to spend -a week at the Stores had she the opportunity. “Quite a little time.” - -They set off together. - -Millie was not yet of such an age that she could disguise her thoughts. -She was wondering about Katherine, and Mrs. Trenchard knew that this was -so. Mrs. Trenchard always walked through the streets of London as a -trainer in the company of his lions. Anything might happen, and one’s -life was not safe for a moment, but a calm, resolute demeanour did a -great deal, and, if trouble came, one could always use the whip: the -whip was the Trenchard name. To-day, however, she gave no thought to -London: she was very gentle and kind to Millie—almost submissive and -humble. This made Millie very uncomfortable. - -“I’m rather foolish about the Stores, I’m afraid. I know several places -where you can get better hot-water bottles and cheaper. But they know me -at the Stores now.” - -Once she said: “I hope, Millie dear, I’m not keeping you from anything. -We shall be home by half-past four.” - -In exchange for these two little remarks Millie talked a great deal, and -the more she talked the more awkward she seemed. She was very unhappy -about her mother, and she wished that she could comfort her, but she -knew her so little and had been always on such careless terms with her -that now she had no intuition about her. - -“What is she thinking?... I know Katherine has hurt her terribly. She -oughtn’t to wear a hat like that: it doesn’t suit her a bit. Why isn’t -it _I_ who have forgotten, and Katie here instead to console her? Only -then she wouldn’t want consolation....” - -As they walked up the steps of the Stores they were stared at by a -number of little dogs on chains, who all seemed to assert their -triumphant claims on somebody’s especial affections. The little dogs -stirred Mrs. Trenchard’s unhappiness, without her knowing why. All down -Victoria Street she had been thinking to herself: “Katherine never -forgot before—never. It was only this morning—if it had even been -yesterday—but this morning! Millie doesn’t understand, and she didn’t -want to come—Katie....” - -She walked slowly into the building, and was at once received by that -friendly, confused smell of hams and medicines which is the Stores’ note -of welcome. Lights shone, warmth eddied in little gusts of hot air from -corner to corner: there was much conversation, but all of a very decent -kind: ladies, not very grand ones and not very poor ones, but -comfortable, motherly, housekeeping ladies were everywhere to be seen. - -No wonder, surely, that Mrs. Trenchard loved the Stores! Here was -everything gathered in from the ends of the earth that was solid and -sound and real. Here were no extravagances, no decadencies, no flowing -creations with fair outsides and no heart to them, nothing foreign nor -degenerate. However foreign an article might be before it entered the -Stores, once inside those walls it adopted itself at once to the claims -of a Cathedral City—even the Eastern carpets, stained though their past -lives might be with memories of the Harem, recognised that their future -lay along the floor of a Bishop’s study, a Major’s drawing-room or the -dining-room of a country rectory. If ever Mrs. Trenchard was alarmed by -memories of foreign influences, of German invasions, or Armenian -atrocities, she had only to come to the Stores to be entirely reassured. -It would be better for our unbalanced and hysterical alarmists did they -visit the Stores more frequently.... - -But frequent visits had bred in Mrs. Trenchard a yet warmer intimacy. -Although she had never put her feeling into words, she was determined -now that the Stores was maintained solely in the Trenchard and Faunder -interests. So pleasant and personally submissive had the young men and -young women of the place been to her all these years, that she now -regarded them with very nearly the personal benevolence that she -bestowed upon her own Rebekah, Rocket, Jacob and so on. She felt that -only Trenchards and Faunders could have produced an organisation whose -spirit was so entirely sprung from their own views and observances. She -did not defend or extol those views. There simply they were! and out of -them the Stores were born. She paid her call here, therefore, rather as -a Patroness visits a Hospital in which she is interested—with no -conceit or false pride, but with a maternal anxiety that everything -should be well and prosperous. Everything always was well and -prosperous.... She was a happy Patroness! - -“That’s a splendid ham!” were invariably her first words, and “I do like -the way they arrange things here,” her second. She could have wandered, -very happily, all day from compartment to compartment, stopping -continually to observe, to touch, to smile, to blow her nose (being -moved, very often, quite emotionally) to beam happily upon the customers -and then to turn, with a little smile of intimacy, to the young men in -frock coats and shiny hair, as though she would say: “We’ve got a good -crowd to-day. Everyone seems comfortable ... but how can they help it -when everything is so beautifully done?” - -Her chief pride and happiness found its ultimate crown in the furniture -department. Here, hung as it was somewhere up aloft, with dark -bewildering passages starting into infinity on every side of it, was the -place that her soul truly loved. She could gaze all day upon those sofas -and chairs. Those wonderful leather couches of dark red and dark blue, -so solid, so stern in their unrelenting opposition to flighty -half-and-half, so self-supporting and self-satisfying, so assured of -propriety and comfort and solid value for your money. She would sink -slowly into a huge leather arm-chair, and from her throne smile upon the -kind gentleman who washed his hands in front of her. - -“And how much is this one?” - -“Nine pounds, eight and sixpence, ma’am.” - -“Really. Nine pounds, eight and sixpence. It’s a splendid chair.” - -“It is indeed, ma’am. We’ve sold more than two dozen of this same -article in this last fortnight. A great demand just now.” - -“And so there ought to be—more than two dozen! Well, I’m not -surprised—an excellent chair.” - -“Perhaps we can send it for you? Or you prefer—?” - -“No, thank you. Not to-day. But I must say that it’s wonderful for the -money. That sofa over there—” - -Up here, in this world of solid furniture, it seemed that England was -indeed a country to be proud of! Mrs. Trenchard would have made no mean -Britannia, seated in one of the Stores’ arm-chairs with a Stores’ -curtain-rod for her trident! - -Upon this January afternoon she found her way to the furniture -department more swiftly than was usual with her. The Stores seemed -remote from her to-day. As she passed the hams, the chickens, the -medicines and powders, the petticoats and ribbons and gloves, the books -and the stationery, the cut-glass and the ironware, the fancy pots, the -brass, the Chinese lanterns, the toys, the pianos and the gramophones, -the carpets and the silver, the clocks and the pictures, she could only -be dimly aware that to-day these things were not for her, that all the -treasures of the earth might be laid at her feet and she would not care -for them, that all the young men and young women in England might bow -and smile before her and she would have no interest nor pleasure in -them. She reached the furniture department. She sank down in the -red-leather arm-chair. She said, with a little sigh: - -“She has never forgotten before!” - -This was, considering her surroundings and the moment of its expression, -the most poignant utterance of her life. - -Millie’s chief emotion, until this moment, had been one of intense -boredom. The Stores seemed to her, after Paris, an impossible -anachronism; she could not understand why it was not instantly burnt up -and destroyed, and all its solemn absurdities cast, in dirt and ashes, -to the winds. - -She followed her mother with irritation, and glances of cynical contempt -were flung by her upon the innocent ladies who were buying and chatting -and laughing together. Then she remembered that her mother was in -trouble, and she was bowed down with self-accusation for a hard -heartless girl who thought of no one but herself. Her moods always thus -followed swiftly one upon another. - -When, in the furniture department, she heard that forlorn exclamation -she wanted to take her mother’s hand, but was shy and embarrassed. - -“I expect Katie _had_ to go with Philip.... Something she _had_ to do, -and perhaps it only kept her a moment or two and she got back just after -we’d left. We didn’t wait long enough for her. She’s been waiting there, -I expect, all this time for us.” - -Mrs. Trenchard’s cheek flushed and her eyes brightened. - -“Why, Millie, that’s most likely! We’ll go back at once ... that’s most -likely.... We’ll go back at once.” - -“This is a very cheap article,” said the young man, “or if Madame would -prefer a chair with—” - -“No, no,” said Mrs. Trenchard quite impatiently. “Not to-day. Not -to-day, thank you.” - -“There are the hot-water bottles,” said Millie. - -“Oh, of course.... I want some hot-water bottles. Ours leak ... three of -them....” - -“In the rubber department, Madam, first to the right, second to the -left....” - -But Mrs. Trenchard hurried through the hot-water bottles in a manner -utterly foreign to her. - -“Thank you. I’m sure they’re very nice. They won’t leak, you say? How -much?... Thank you ... no, I prefer these.... If you’re sure they won’t -leak.... Yes, my number is 2157.... Thank you.” - -Outside in Victoria Street she said: “I might have given her until -quarter to four. I daresay she’s been waiting all this time.” - -But Millie for the first time in all their days together was angry with -Katherine. She said to herself: “She’s going to forget us all like this -now. We aren’t, any of us, going to count for anything. Six months ago -she would have died rather than hurt mother....” - -And behind her anger with Katherine was anger with herself because she -seemed so far away from her mother, because she was at a loss as to the -right thing to do, because she had said that she had seen Philip with -Katherine. “You silly idiot!” she thought to herself. “Why couldn’t you -have kept your mouth shut?” - -Mrs. Trenchard spoke no word all the way home. - - * * * * * - -Katherine was not in the house when they returned. Millie went upstairs, -Mrs. Trenchard stared at the desolate drawing-room. The fire was dead, -and the room, in spite of its electric light, heavy and dark. Mrs. -Trenchard looked at the reflection of her face in the mirror; with both -hands she pushed her hat a little, then, with a sudden gesture, took it -off, drawing out the pins slowly and staring at it again. Mrs. Trenchard -glanced at the clock, and then slowly went out, holding her hat in her -hand, advancing with that trailing, half-sleepy movement that was -peculiarly hers. - -She did then what she had not done for many years: she went to her -husband’s study. This hour before tea he always insisted was absolutely -his own: no one, on any pretext, was ever to disturb him. To-day, -cosily, with a luxurious sense that the whole world had been made for -him, and made for him exactly as he liked it, he was, with a lazy -pencil, half-writing, half-thinking, making little notes for an essay on -William Hazlitt. - -As his wife entered he was reading: “How fine it is to enter some old -town, walled and turreted, just at the approach of nightfall, or to come -to some straggling village, with the lights streaming through the -surrounding gloom; and then, after enquiring for the best entertainment -the place affords, to take one’s ease at one’s inn! These eventful -moments in our lives’ history are too precious, too full of solid, -heartfelt happiness to be frittered and dribbled away in imperfect -sympathy. I would have them all to myself, and drain them to the last -drop.” - -How thoroughly George Trenchard agreed with that. How lucky for him that -he was able to defend himself from so much of that same “imperfect -sympathy”. Not that he did not love his fellow-creatures, far from it, -but it was pleasant to be able to protect oneself from their too -constant, their too eager ravages. Had he been born in his beloved -Period, then he fancied that he might, like magnificent Sir Walter, have -built his Castle and entertained all the world, but in this age of -telephones and motorcars one was absolutely compelled.... He turned -Hazlitt’s words over on his tongue with a little happy sigh of regret, -and then was conscious that his wife was standing by the door. - -“Hullo!” he cried, starting up. “Is anything the matter?” - -It was so unusual for her to be there that he stared at her large, heavy -figure as though she had been a stranger. Then he jumped up, laughing, -and the dark blue Hazlitt fell on to the carpet. - -“Well, my dear,” he said, “tea-time?” - -She came trailing across the room, and stood beside him near the fire. - -“No ...” she said, “not yet ... George.... You, look very cosy here,” -she suddenly added. - -“I am,” he answered. He looked down at the Hazlitt, and her eyes -followed his glance. “What have you been doing?” - -“I’ve been to the Stores.” - -“Why, of course,” he said, chaffing her. “You live there. And what have -you been buying this time?” - -“Hot-water bottles.” - -“Well, _that’s_ exciting!” - -“Ours leaked.... Two of them, and we’d had them a very short time. I -took Millie with me!” - -“Very good for her. Clear some of her Parisian fancies.” - -There was a pause then, and he bent forward as though he would pick up -the book, but he pulled himself up again. - -“Katherine’s been out with Philip all the afternoon.” - -He smiled one of his radiant, boyish smiles. - -“She’s happy, isn’t she? It does one good to see her. She deserves it -too if anyone in this world does. I like him—more and more. He’s seen -the world, and has got a head on his shoulders. And he isn’t conceited, -not in the least. He’s charming to her, and I think he’ll make her a -very good husband. That was a lucky thing for us his coming along, -because Katherine was sure to marry someone, and she might have set her -heart on an awful fellow. You never know in these days.” - -“Ah! I don’t think so,” said Mrs. Trenchard, nervously turning her hat -over in her hands, “that wouldn’t be like Katie at all.” - -“No, well, perhaps it wouldn’t,” said George cheerfully. There was -another pause, and now he bent right down, picked up the book, grunting -a little, then stood, turning over the pages. - -“I’m getting fat,” he said, “good for all of us when we get down to -Garth.” - -“George ...” she began and stopped. - -“Well, my dear.” He put his hand on her shoulder, and then as though -embarrassed by the unexpected intimacy that his action produced, -withdrew it. - -“Don’t you think we might go out to the theatre one evening—theatre or -something?” - -“What! With the children? Family party! Splendid idea!” - -“No, I didn’t mean with the children—exactly. Just you and I alone. -Dine somewhere—have an evening together.” - -It was no use to pretend that he was not surprised. She saw his -astonishment. - -“Why, of course—if you’d really care about it. Mostly pantomimes just -now—but I daresay we could find something. Good idea. Good idea.” - -“Now that—now that—the children are beginning to marry and go off by -themselves. Why, I thought ... you understand....” - -“Of course. Of course,” he said again. “Any night you like. You remind -me....” - -He whistled a gay little tune, and turned over the pages of the Hazlitt, -reading sentences here and there. - -“Tea in a minute?...” he said gaily. “Just got a line or two more to -finish. Then I’ll be with you.” - -She looked at him as though she would say something more: she decided, -however, that she would not, and trailed away. - - * * * * * - -Returning to the drawing-room, she found Katherine standing there. -Katherine’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled: she was wearing a -little black hat with red berries, and the black velvet ribbon round her -neck had a diamond brooch in it that Philip had given her. Rocket was -bending over the fire: she was laughing at him. When she saw her mother -she waved her hand. - -“Mother, darling—what kind of an afternoon have you had? I’ve had the -loveliest time. I lunched at Rachel’s, and there, to my immense -surprise, was Philip. I hadn’t the _least_ idea he was coming. Not the -slightest. We weren’t to have met to-day at all. Just Lord John, Philip, -Rachel and I. Then we had _such_ a walk. Philip and I. Hyde Park Corner, -right through the Park, Marble Arch, then through Regent’s Park all the -way up Primrose Hill—took a ’bus home again. _Never_ enjoyed anything -so much. You’ve all been out too, because here’s the fire dead. I’ve -been telling Rocket what I think of him. Haven’t I, Rocket?... Where are -the others? Millie, Aunt Aggie. It’s tea-time.” - -“Yes, dear, it is,” said Mrs. Trenchard. - -It was incredible, Katherine was utterly unconscious. She remembered -nothing. - -Mrs. Trenchard looked at Rocket. - -“That’ll do, Rocket. That’s enough. We’ll have tea at once.” - -Rocket went out. She turned to her daughter. - -“I’m glad you’ve enjoyed your afternoon, dear. I couldn’t think what had -happened to you. I waited until half-past three.” - -“Waited?” - -“Yes—to go to the Stores. You said at breakfast that you’d come with -me—that you’d be back by three. I waited until half-past.... It was -quite all right, dear. Millie went with me. She had seen you—you and -Philip at Hyde Park Corner—so, of course, I didn’t wait any longer.” - -Katherine stared at her mother: the colour slowly left her face and her -hand went up to her cheeks with a gesture of dismay. - -“Mother!... How _could_ I!” - -“It didn’t matter, dear, in the slightest ... dear me, no. We went, -Millie and I, and got the hot-water bottles, very good and strong ones, -I think, although they said they couldn’t positively guarantee them. You -never can tell, apparently, with a hot-water bottle.” - -Katherine’s eyes, now, were wide and staring with distress. - -“How _could_ I possibly have forgotten? It was talking about it at -breakfast when Aunt Aggie too was talking about something, and I got -confused, I suppose. No, I haven’t any excuse at all. It was seeing -Philip unexpectedly....” - -She stopped abruptly, realising that she had said the worst thing -possible. - -“You mustn’t let Philip, dear, drive everything out of your head,” Mrs. -Trenchard said, laughing. “We have some claim on you until you are -married—then, of course....” - -The colour mounted again into Katherine’s face. - -“No, mother, you mustn’t say that,” she answered in a low voice, as -though she was talking to herself. “Philip makes _no_ difference—none -at all. I’d have forgotten in any case, I’m afraid, because we talked -about it at breakfast when I was thinking about Aunt Aggie. It was -nothing to do with Philip—it was my fault absolutely. I’ll never -forgive myself.” - -All the joy had left her eyes. She was very grave: she knew that, slight -as the whole incident was, it marked a real crisis in her relations, not -only with her mother, but with the whole house. Perhaps during all these -weeks, she had forgotten them all, and they had noticed it and been hurt -by it. She accused herself so bitterly that it seemed that nothing could -be bad enough for her. She felt that, in the future, she could not show -her mother enough attention and affection. But now, at this moment, -there was nothing to be done. Millie would have laughed, hugged her -mother and forgotten in five minutes that there had been any crime. But, -in this, Katherine’s character resembled, exactly, her mother’s. - -“Really, Katie, it didn’t matter. I’m glad you liked the walk. And now -it’s tea-time. It always seems to be tea-time. There’s so much to do.” - -They were then, both of them, conscious that Aunt Aggie had come in and -was smiling at them. They wished intensely to fling into the pause some -conversation that would be trivial and unimportant. They could think of -nothing to say.... - -“Why, Katherine,” said Aunt Aggie, “where _have_ you been? Millie says -she’s been to the Stores.... You said at breakfast ...” - -“I was kept ...” said Katherine sharply, and left the room. - -“I’ll be down in five minutes, Aggie,” said Mrs. Trenchard. “Tea-time—” - -Her sister watched her as she went out, carrying her hat in her hand. -Half-way upstairs she saw Henry, who was half-tumbling, half-sliding -from step to step: he was evidently hurrying, in his confused way, to do -something that he had forgotten to do or to finish some task that he -should long ago have completed. - -“Henry,” she said, “I wonder whether—” - -“Right, mother,” he called back to her. “I must—” the rest of his -sentence was swallowed by distance. She turned and looked after him, -then walked through the long passages to her room. She entered it, -closed the door, and stood by her dressing-room staring in front of her. -There was complete, intense silence here, and all the things lay about -the room, as though waiting for her to address them. - -“George, Millie, Henry, Katherine ... Millie didn’t want to go ... -Katherine....” - -On her table was a list of articles, the week’s washing—her own list. - -Handkerchiefs—12. - -Stockings—8 pairs. - -She looked at it without seeing it, then with a sudden, vindictive, -passionate movement tore it in half, and then those halves into smaller -pieces, tore the smaller pieces into little shreds of paper that -fluttered in the air and then fell on to the floor at her feet. - - - - - CHAPTER III - LIFE AND HENRY - -Philip was entirely happy during the first days of his engagement—so -happy that he assured himself that he had never before known what -happiness was. When, however, this glorious state had continued for four -or five weeks he was aware that that most sensitive and unreliable of -his spiritual possessions, his conscience, was being attacked. He was -aware that there was something that he ought to do, something that he -did not want to do—he was aware that he must tell Katherine about Anna -and his life with her. Now when he had said to Mr. Trenchard that his -life was free of all complications and that there was nothing in it that -need be hidden from the world, he was, quite honestly, convinced that -that was so. His life with Anna was entirely at an end: he had done her -no wrong, she owed him no grudge, he did not know that he had ever taken -any especial pains in Moscow to hide his relations with her, and he did -not believe that anyone there thought the worse of him for them. He had -come to England with that chapter closed, eager to begin another. His -only thought of Anna when he had proposed to Katherine was that this was -exactly what she had intended him to do—that she would be pleased if -she knew. His conscience was always at rest when he thought that -everyone liked him.... - -Now he knew, quite definitely, after a month of his engagement to -Katherine, that some of the members of the Trenchard family did not like -him—No amount of _his_ determination to like _them_ could blind him to -the truth of this unpleasant fact—Mrs. Trenchard did not like him, Aunt -Aggie did not like him, probably Mr. Trenchard, senior, and Great-Aunt -Sarah did not like him (he could not tell, because they were so silent), -and he was not sure whether Henry liked him or not. Therefore, in front -of this alarming array of critics his conscience awoke. - -The other force that stirred his conscience was Katherine’s belief in -him. In Moscow no one had believed in anyone—anyone there, proved to be -faultless, would have been, for that very reason, unpopular. Anna -herself had held the most humorous opinion of him. (She liked -Englishmen, respected their restraint and silence, but always laughed at -their care for appearances.) Although he had known that his love for -Katherine had sprung partly from his sense of her difference from Anna, -he, nevertheless, had expected the qualities that had pleased him in the -one to continue in the other. He discovered that Katherine trusted him -utterly, that she believed, with absolute confidence, in every word that -fell from his lips, and he knew that, if the old whole world came to her -and told her that he had had for several years a mistress in Moscow and -he denied it to her, that she would laugh at the world. This knowledge -made him extremely uncomfortable. First, he tried to persuade himself -that he had never had a mistress, that Anna had never existed, then, -when that miserably failed, he told himself that he could always deny it -if she asked him, then he knew that he loved her so much that he would -not lie to her (this discovery pleased him). He must, he finally knew, -tell her himself.... He told himself that he would wait a little until -she believed in him less completely; he must prepare her mind. He did -not even now, however, consider that she would feel his confession very -deeply; Anna would simply have laughed at his scruples. - -Meanwhile he loved her so deeply and so completely that Anna’s figure -was a ghost, dimly recalled from some other life. He had almost -forgotten her appearance. She had a little black mole on her left -cheek—or was it her right?... - -Somewhere in the beginning of February he decided that he would -cultivate Henry, not because he liked Henry, but because he thought that -Katherine would like it—also, although this he did not confess to -himself, because Henry was so strange and unexpected that he was half -afraid of him. - -Of course Henry ought to be sent to one of the Universities, it was -absurd to keep a great, hulking boy of nineteen hanging about, wasting -his own time and the time of his family, suffering no discipline and -learning nothing of any value. George Trenchard had told Philip that -Henry was too young for Oxford, and was to have a year of “seeing the -world” before he “went up”. A fine lot of seeing the world Henry was -doing, slouching about the house, reading novels and sulking! Philip, in -spite of his years in Russia, felt very strongly that every Englishman -should be shaven clean and wear clothes from a good tailor. About men of -other nationalities it did not matter, but smartness was expected from -an Englishman. Henry, however, was in that unpleasant condition known as -“sprouting.” He had a little down on one cheek, apparently none on the -other; in certain lights his chin boasted a few hairs of a forlorn and -desolate appearance, in other lights you would swear that there were -none. His forehead often broke into pimples (these were a terrible agony -to him). - -“Why can’t he do something with his hair?” thought Philip, “brush it and -have it cut regularly. Why is it that awful dusty colour? He might at -least do something to his clothes. Mrs. Trenchard ought to see to it.” - -Mrs. Trenchard did try to “see to it”. She was perpetually buying new -clothes for Henry; she took him to her husband’s tailor and dragged him, -again and again, to have things “tried on”. Henry, however, possessed -the art of reducing any suit, within twenty-four hours of his first -wearing it, to chaos. He was puzzled himself to know what he did. - -“But, Henry, it was new last week!” - -“_I_ know. How can I help it? I haven’t done anything to the beastly -thing. It simply came like that.” - -He affected a lofty indifference to clothes, but Philip, who saw him -look frequently into the looking-glass, suspected the sincerity of this. -Katherine said to Philip: - -“You have so much influence on Henry. Do talk to him about his clothes -and other things. He won’t mind it from you. He gets so angry if we say -anything.” - -Philip was not at all sure that Henry would “not mind it from him”. When -they were alone Henry would listen with the greatest interest to the -things that Philip told him; his eyes would soften, his mouth would -smile, his voice would quiver with his excitement. Then, quite suddenly, -his face would cloud, he would blush and frown, almost scowl, then, -abruptly, with some half-muttered word, fall into a sulky silence. Once -he had broken in to Philip’s information with: “Oh! I suppose you think -I don’t know anything about it, that I’m a stupid idiot.... Well, if I -am, what do you bother to talk to me for?” - -This, of course, annoyed Philip, who always liked to feel, after a -conversation with anyone, that “everything had gone off all right”. Had -it not been for Katherine, he would not have bothered with the fellow. -Another thing puzzled and even alarmed Philip. Henry would often, when -he thought that he was unwatched, stare at Philip in a perplexed -brooding fashion with a look in his eye that said: “I’ll find out one -day all right. You think that no one’s watching you, that I’m not worth -anyone’s trouble.... You wait and see.” - -Henry would look at Philip’s buttons, studs, tie, handkerchief with this -same puzzled stare. It was another side of that surveillance of which -Philip had been conscious ever since Tim Flaunder’s visit to his rooms. -“Ah!” thought Philip, “once I’m married, they can watch as much as they -like.... A year’s a long time though.” - -He decided then to cultivate Henry and to know the boy better. “I’ll -show him that there’s nothing in me to be suspicious about—that I’m -worthy of marrying his sister. I’ll make a friend of him.” - -He asked George Trenchard whether he might give Henry an evening. “Take -him out to dinner and a music-hall. I’ll look after him.” - -Trenchard said: - -“My dear fellow, if you can make Henry look something like an ordinary -civilised being we’ll all be in your debt for ever. I don’t envy you -your job ... but, of course, do what you like with him.” - -When Philip told Mrs. Trenchard she said: - -“How nice for Henry! How kind of you to bother with the boy! He goes out -so little. How nice for Henry!” - -When Philip asked Henry himself, Henry coloured crimson, looked at his -boots, muttered something about shirts, stammered “Thanks ... very glad -... awful bore for you”, and finally stumbled from the room. - -Philip thought Jules for dinner, The Empire, The Carlton for supper. -Katherine’s delight when he told her compensated him for all the effort -of the undertaking. - -To understand Henry’s emotion at Philip’s invitation would be to -understand everything about Henry, and that no one has ever done. His -chief sensation was one of delight and excitement—this he hid from all -the world. He had waited, during more years than he could remember, for -the arrival of that moment when he would be treated as a man. Lately he -had said to himself, “If they’re all going to laugh at me always, I’ll -show them one day soon.” He had a ferocious disgust at their lack of -penetration. He had, from the very first, admired Philip’s appearance. -Here was a man still young, with perfect clothes, perfect ability to get -in and out of a room easily, perfect tranquillity in conversation. He -had been offended at Philip’s treatment of Seymour, but even that had -been a bold, daring thing to do, and Henry was forced to admit that he -had been, since that episode, himself sometimes doubtful of Seymour’s -ability. Then Philip in his conversation had shown such knowledge of the -world; Henry could listen all day to his talk about Russia. To be able -to travel so easily from one country to the other, without fear or -hesitation, that was, indeed, wonderful! - -Afterwards had occurred one of the critical moments in Henry’s career; -his passionate memory of that afternoon when he had seen the embrace of -Katherine and Philip, changed those two into miraculous beings, apart -from all the world. He heard Philip for the audacity of it, he also -admired him, envied him, speculated endlessly about it. “Ah! if somebody -would love me like that”, he thought. “I’d be just as fine. They think -me a baby, not fit even to go to college, I could—I could ...” He did -not know what it was that he could do. Perhaps Philip would help him. - -And yet he did not really like Philip. He thought that Philip laughed at -him, despised him. His one continual fear was lest Philip should teach -Katherine, Henry’s adored and worshipped Katherine, also to despise him. -“If he were to do that I’d kill him”, he thought. He believed utterly in -Katherine’s loyalty, “but she loves Philip so now. It’s changed her. -She’ll never belong to us properly again.” Always his first thought was: -“So long as he’s good to her and makes her happy nothing matters.” - -Now it seemed that Philip _was_ making her happy. Katherine’s happiness -lit, with its glow, the house, the family, all the world. When, -therefore, Philip asked Henry to dine with him, the great moment of -Henry’s life seemed to have come, and to have come from a source -honourable enough for Henry to accept it. - -“If only I dare,” Henry thought, “there are so many things that I should -like to ask him.” The remembered passion of that kiss told Henry that -there could be nothing that Philip did not know. He was in a ferment of -excitement and expectation. To the family he said: - -“I’m afraid I shan’t be in, Tuesday evening. Sorry, but Philip and I are -dining together. Expect I’ll be in, Wednesday, though.” - -It is a fact, strange but true, that Henry had never entered one of the -bigger London restaurants. The Trenchards were not among those more -modern parents who spend their lives in restaurants and take their -infant sons in Eton jackets to supper at the Savoy after the Drury Lane -pantomime. Moreover, no one ever thought of taking Henry anywhere. He -had been at school until a few months ago, and when, in the holidays, he -had gone to children’s parties he had always behaved badly. George -Trenchard went very seldom into restaurants, and often, for days -together, forgot that he had a son at all. Down in Glebeshire Henry was -allowed to roam as he pleased; even in London no restrictions were -placed on his movements. So long as he went to the Abbey twice on Sunday -he could do what he liked. A friend of Seymour’s had put him up as a -member of a club in a little street off St. James: the entrance was only -a guinea, and “anyone could be a member”. Henry had, three months ago, -received a book of club rules, a list of members, and a printed letter -informing him that he was now elected, must pay five guineas entrance -and a guinea subscription. He had extorted the money from his father, -and, for twenty-four hours, was the proudest and happiest human being in -London. He had never, alas! dared to venture inside the building. -Seymour’s friend had forgotten him. The Club had remained strangely -ignorant of his existence. On three occasions he had started out, and on -three occasions his fears had been too strong for him. Once he had -arrived at the very club door, but a stout gentleman, emerging and -staring at him haughtily, had driven the blood from his heart. He had -hurried home, feeling that he had been personally insulted. He found, on -his return, that some vehicle had splashed mud on to his cheek. “There! -you see what happens!...” - -He was not far from tears. - -He had, behind his unhappy experiences, the resolved certainty that he -was marked apart by destiny for some extraordinary future: his very -misfortunes seemed to prove this. He had bought for himself a -second-hand copy of that romance to which I have made earlier allusion. -It exercised, at this time, an extraordinary influence upon him, and in -the hero’s fight against an overwhelming fate he saw his own history, -even when the circumstance was as trivial as his search for a stud under -the washing-stand. So young was he, so crude, so sentimental, impulsive, -suspicious, self-confident, and lacking in self-confidence, loyal, -ambitious, modest and conceited that it was not strange that Philip did -not understand him. - - * * * * * - -On the evening of his dinner with Philip he dressed with the utmost -care. There were three dress-shirts in his drawer, and it was, of -course, fate that decided that there should be something the matter with -all of them—one of them had been worn once already, one was frayed at -the cuffs, one had a cracked and gaping stud hole. He pared the frayed -cuffs with his scissors, and hoped for the best. He then produced the -only valuable article in his possession, a pearl stud given to him by -his Uncle Bob on his last birthday. He was greatly afraid of this stud, -because the head of it screwed into the body of it, and he was never -sure whether he had screwed it sufficiently. Suppose it were to leap -into the soup! Suppose it were to fall off and he not see it and lose -it! Such catastrophes were only too probable where he was concerned. He -screwed it in so vigorously to-night that he made a grey mark round the -stud-hole. He dabbed this with a sponge, and the grey mark was greyer. -His father had told him that he must never wear a “made-up” evening tie, -but he had not told him how to tie one that was not made-up, and Henry -had been too timid to enquire. To-night, by a sudden twist of genius, he -produced something that really seemed satisfactory; one end was longer -than the other, but his father approved of a little disorder—when the -tie was too neat it was almost “made-up”. Henry’s dress-clothes, lying -there upon the bed, seemed a little faded. The trousers glistered in the -electric light, and the tails of the coat were sadly crumpled. But when -they were on his body Henry gazed at them with pleasure. One trouser leg -seemed oddly longer than the other, and his shirt cuff had disappeared -altogether, but the grey mark round the stud was scarcely visible, and -his collar was beautifully clean. - -His face was red and shining, his hair was plastered down with water; it -was a pity that there were three red pimples on his forehead, but there -had been four yesterday. His ears, too, were dreadfully red, but that -was from excitement. - -He had an opera hat and a black greatcoat with a velvet collar, so that -he felt very smart indeed as he slipped out of the house. He was glad -that he had escaped the family, although he fancied that Aunt Aggie -watched him from the top of the stairs. He would have liked to have seen -Katherine for a moment, and had he spoken his heart out, he would have -assured her that, for her sake, he would do his best to love Philip. It -was for her sake, after all, that he had dressed so carefully, for her -sake that he wanted to be a fine figure in the world. If he _had_ seen -her, all that he would have said would have been: “So long, Katherine. -Dining with Philip, you know. See you in the morning....” - -He rode on an omnibus from Whitehall to Piccadilly Circus, and walked -then to Jules’. The clocks were striking half-past seven, the appointed -hour, as he entered. A stout man like an emperor insisted on disrobing -him of his greatcoat, and he felt suddenly naked. He peeped into the -room, which was very empty, and all the waiters, like figures in Mme. -Tussaud’s, stared at him together. He was sure that his tie had mounted -above his collar; he put up his hand, found that this was so, and -thought that the emperor was laughing at him. He bent down to tie his -shoe, and then, just as a large party entered the restaurant, there was -a little pop, and the head of his pearl stud was gone. He was on his -knees in a second. - -“Beg pardon, sir,” said the Emperor. “Allow me.” - -“No,” said Henry, whose face was purple, whose heart was beating like a -hammer, and through whose chasm in his shirt a little wind was blowing -against his vest. - -“It’s my stud. I can—I beg your—Oh, there—No, it isn’t—” - -He was conscious of towering forms above him, of a lady’s black silk -stockings, of someone saying: “Why, dammit”; of a sudden vision of the -pearl and a large masculine boot thundering towards it. - -From his position on the floor he cried in agony: “Oh, do look out, -you’re stepping on it!... I say ... Please!” - -He heard a sharp little cry, then, just as he seized it, Philip’s voice: - -“Why, Henry!” - -He staggered up from his knees, which were white with dust: his purple -face, his disordered hair, a piece of pink vest that protruded from his -shirt made an unusual picture. Someone began to laugh. - -“I say,” said Philip quickly, “come in here.” He led the way into the -lavatory. “Now, what’s the matter?” - -Henry stared at him. Why couldn’t the silly fool see? - -“It’s my stud ... the head came off ... might have happened to anyone.” - -“That’s all right,” said Philip cheerfully. “Got it now? That’s good. -Look here, I’ll screw it in for you.” - -“The other piece ...” said Henry, who was near tears ... “It’s slipped -down—inside.” - -“I’m afraid you’ll have to take your trousers off,” said Philip gravely. -“Just let ’em down. It’s all right. There’s no one here who matters.” - -Henry undressed. A smart man with hair like a looking-glass came in, -stared and went out again. Two attendants watched sympathetically. After -some time the stud was arranged, and Henry was dressed again. - -“You’d better just let me tie your tie,” said Philip. “It’s so difficult -in here. One can’t see to do it oneself.” - -Henry said nothing. He brushed his hair again, suffered himself to be -dusted and patted by the attendant, and followed Philip into the -restaurant. He was so miserable that suicide was the only alternative to -a disgraced and dishonoured life. He was sure that everyone in the -restaurant was laughing at him; the grave waiter who brought him his -soup, the fat, round button of a waiter who brought the champagne in a -bucket of ice, the party opposite, two men and two women (beasts!), all -these were laughing at him! His forehead was burning, his heart deadly -cold. He glared at Philip, gulped down his food without knowing at all -what it was that he was eating, said “yes” and “no”; never looked at -Philip, but stared, fiercely, round him as though he were looking for -someone. - -Philip persisted, very bravely, in a succession of bright and -interesting anecdotes, but at last he flagged. He was afraid that he had -a terrible evening before him ... never again.... - -“He’s thinking,” said Henry to himself, “that I’m impossible. He’s -wondering what on earth he asked me for. Why did he if he didn’t want -to? Conceited ass ... that about the stud might have happened to anyone. -He’ll tell Katherine....” - -“Coffee?” said Philip. - -“No, thank you,” said Henry. - -“All right. We’ll have it later. We’d better be getting on to the show. -Ready?” - -They moved away; they were in a cab; they were caught into the heart of -some kaleidoscope. Lights flashed, men shouted, someone cried in a high -treble. Lights flashed again, and they were sitting in the stalls at the -“Empire” music-hall. Henry hailed the darkness with relief; he felt as -though his body were bruised all over, and when he looked up and saw a -stout man upside down on a tight-rope he thought to himself: “Well, he -can’t see me anyhow.... He doesn’t know that the top of my stud came -off.” - -There followed then a number of incredible people. (It must be -remembered that he had never been to a music-hall before.) There was a -man with two black eyes and a red nose who sang a song about the wives -he had had (seven verses—one wife to every verse), there was a stout -lady who sang about porter, and there were two small children who danced -the Tango—finally a gentleman in evening dress and a large white -button-hole who recited poems whilst his friends in the background -arranged themselves in illustrative groups. In this strange world -Henry’s soul gradually found peace. It was a world, after all, in which -it was not absurd to grope on one’s knees for the top of one’s stud—it -was the natural and clever thing to do. When the lady who sang about the -porter kissed her hand to the audience, Henry, clapping -enthusiastically, felt a throb of sympathy. “I’m so glad she’s been a -success to-night,” he thought to himself, as though she had been his -cousin or his aunt. “She’ll feel pleased.” He wanted, by this time, -everyone to be happy.... When, at the last, the fat man in evening -clothes recited his tale of “the good old British Flag,” and was -surrounded instantly by a fluttering cloud of Union Jacks, Henry was -very near to tears. “I’ll make them send me to Oxford,” he said to -himself. “At once ... I’ll work like anything.” - -The lights went up—ten minutes’ interval—whilst the band played tunes -out of “Riogletta”, and behind the curtain they prepared for that -immensely popular ballet “The Pirate”. - -“Let’s walk about a bit, shall we?” said Philip. - -Henry, humbly, with a timid smile agreed. He tumbled over a lady as he -passed out of his row, but he did not mind now, his eyes were shining -and his head was up. He followed Philip, admiring his broad shoulders, -the back of his head, his sturdy carriage and defiant movement of his -body. He glared haughtily at young men lolling over the bar, and the -young men glared back haughtily at him. He followed Philip upstairs, and -they turned into the Promenade (Henry did not know that it was the -Promenade). With his head in the air he stepped forward and plunged -instantly into something that flung powder down his throat, a strange -and acrid scent up his nose: his fingers scraped against silk. - -“There! clumsy!” said a voice. - -A lady wearing a large hat and (as it appeared to Henry) tissue of gold, -smiled at him. - -“It doesn’t matter,” she said, putting some fat fingers on his hand for -a moment. “It doesn’t, dear, really. Hot, isn’t it?” - -He was utterly at a loss, scarlet in the face, his eyes staring wildly. -Philip had come to his rescue. - -“Hot, it is,” said Philip. - -“What about a drink, dear?” said the lady. - -“Not just now,” said Philip, smiling at her as though he’d known her all -his life. “Jolly good scrum up here, isn’t there?” - -“Everyone bangin’ about so,” said the lady. “What about a drink _now_? -Rot waitin’.” - -“Sorry,” said Philip. “Got an engagement. Very important—” The lady, -however, had suddenly recognised an old friend. “Why, Charlie!” Henry -heard her say: “Who ever ...” - -They sat down on a sofa near the bar and watched the group. Henry was -thinking: “He spoke to her as though he had known her all his life....” -He was suddenly aware that he and his father and mother and aunts, yes, -and Katherine too were babies compared with Philip. “Why, they don’t -know anything about him. Katherine doesn’t know anything really....” He -watched the women who passed him; he watched their confidential whispers -with gentlemen who all seemed to have red faces and bulging necks. He -watched two old men with their hats cocked to one side; they had faces -like dusty strawberries, and they wore white gloves and carried -silver-topped canes. They didn’t speak, and nothing moved in their faces -except their eyes. He watched a woman who was angry and a man who was -apologetic. He watched a girl in a simple black dress who stood with -grave, waiting eyes. She suddenly smiled a welcome to someone, but the -smile was hard, practised, artificial, as though she had fastened it on -like a mask. Philip belonged to these people; he knew their ways, their -talk, their etiquette, their tragedies and comedies. Henry stared at -him, at his gaze, rather uninterested and tired. (Philip, at that -moment, was thinking of Katherine, of the bore that her young brother -was: he was remembering the last time that she had kissed him, of her -warm cheek against his, of a little laugh that she had given, a laugh of -sheer happiness, of trusting, confident delight.) Henry sat there, -frightened, thrilled, shocked, proud, indignant and terribly -inquisitive. “I’m beginning to know about life. Already I know more than -they do at home.” - -Two boys who must have been younger than he passed him; they were smart, -shining, scornful. They had the derisive, incurious gaze of old men, and -also the self-assertive swagger of very young ones. Henry, as he looked -at them, knew that he was a babe in arms compared with them; but it -seemed to him to-night that all his family was still in the cradle. -“Why, even father,” he thought, “if you brought him here I don’t believe -he’d know what to say or do.” - -They went downstairs, then found their seats, and the curtain rose on -the ballet. The ballet was concerned with pirates and Venice in the good -Old Days. The first scene was on an island in the Adriatic: there were -any number of pirates and ladies who loved them, and the sun slowly set -and the dancers on the golden sand sank, exhausted, at the feet of their -lovers, and the moon rose and the stars came out in a purple sky. Then -the Pirate Chief, an enormous Byronic figure with hair jet black and -tremendous eyebrows, explained through his hands, that there was a lady -in Venice whom he loved, whom he must seize and convey to his island. -Would his brave fellows follow him in his raid? His brave fellows would! -One last dance and one last drink, then death and glory! The curtain -came down upon figures whirling madly beneath the moon. - -There followed then the Doge’s Palace, a feast with much gold plate, -aged senators with white beards, who watched the dancing with critical -gaze, finally a lovely lady who danced mysteriously beneath many veils. -She was, it appeared, a Princess, sought in marriage by the Doge, her -heart, however, lost utterly to a noble Stranger whom she had once seen -but never forgotten. The Doge, mad with love for her, orders her to be -seized. She is carried off, wildly protesting, and the golden scene is -filled with white dancers, then with fantastic masked figures, at last -with dancers in black, who float like shadows through the mazes of the -music. - -The third scene is the Piazza. The country people have a -holiday—drinking and dancing. Then enters a magnificent procession, the -Doge leading his reluctant bride. Suddenly shouts are heard. It is the -Pirates! A furious fight follows, the Pirates, headed by their chief, -who wears a black mask, are, of course, victorious. The Princess is -carried, screaming, to the Pirates’ ship, treasure is looted, pretty -village maidens are captured. The Pirates sail away. Last scene is the -Island again. The ladies are expecting their heroes, the vessel is -sighted, the Pirates land. There are dances of triumph, the spoil, -golden goblets, rich tapestries, gleaming jewels are piled high, finally -the captive lady Princess, who weeps bitterly, is led by the Chieftain, -still masked, into the middle of the stage. She, upon her knees, begs -for pity. He is stern (a fine melancholy figure). At last he removes the -mask. Behold, it is the noble Stranger! With what rapture does she fall -into his arms, with what dances are the triumphant Pirates made happy, -upon what feasting does the sun again set. The moon rises and the stars -appear. Finally, when the night-sky is sheeted with dazzling lights and -the moon is orange-red, the Pirates and their ladies creep away. Only -the Chieftain and his Princess, locked in one another’s arms, are left. -Someone, in the distance, pipes a little tune ... the curtain descends. - -Impossible to describe the effect that this had upon Henry. The nearest -approach to its splendour in all his life before had been the Procession -of Nations at the end of the Drury Lane pantomime, and, although he had -found that very beautiful, he had nevertheless been disturbed by a -certain sense of incongruity, Aladdin and his Princess having little to -do with Canada and Australia represented, as those fine countries were, -by two stout ladies of the Lane chorus. I think that this “Pirate” -ballet may be said to be the Third Crisis in this critical development -of Henry, the first being the novel about the Forest, the second his -vision of Katherine and Philip. - -It will be, perhaps, remembered that at Jules’ restaurant Henry had -drunk champagne and, because of his misery and confusion there, had had -no consciousness of flavour, quantity or consequences. It was certainly -the champagne that lent “The Pirate” an added colour and splendour. - -As the boy followed Philip into Leicester Square he felt that any -achievement would be now possible to him, any summit was to be climbed -by him. The lights of Leicester Square circled him with fire—at the -flame’s heart were dark trees soft and mysterious against the night -sky—beneath these trees, guarded by the flame, the Pirate and the -Princess slept. - -It seemed to him that now he understood all the world, that he could be -astonished and shocked by nothing, that every man, be he never so -degraded, was his brother.... He was unaware that his tie was again -above his collar and his shoe lace unfastened. He strode along, thinking -to himself: “How glorious!... How splendid!... How glorious!” - -Philip, too, although the Empire ballet had once been commonplace -enough, although, moreover, he had come so little a time ago from the -country where the ballet was in all the world supreme, had been plunged -by the Pirate into a most sentimental attitude of mind. He was to-night -terribly in love with Katherine, and, when the lights had been turned -down and the easy, trifling music had floated out to him, caught him, -soothed and whispered to him, he had held Katherine in his arms, her -cheek touching his, her heart beating with his, his hand against her -hair. - -Her confidence in him that, at other times, frightened him, to-night -thrilled him with a delicious pleasure. His old distrust of himself -yielded, to-night, to a fine, determined assurance. “I will be all that -she thinks I am. She shall see how I love her. They shall all see.” - -“I think we’ll go down into the Grill Room,” said Philip, when they -arrived at the Carlton. “We can talk better there.” - -It was all the same to Henry, who was busy feasting with the Pirate upon -the Adriatic Island, with the Princess dancing for them on the golden -sand. They found a quiet little table in that corner which is one of the -pleasantest places in London, so retired from the world are you and yet -so easy is it to see all that goes on amongst your friends, enemies and -neighbours. - -“Oysters?... Must have oysters, Henry.... Then grilled bones ... then -we’ll see. Whisky and soda—split soda, waiter, please....” - -Henry had never eaten oysters before, and he would have drunk his whisky -with them had Philip not stopped him. “Never drink whisky with -oysters—you’d die—you would really.” - -Henry did not like oysters very much, but he would have suffered the -worst kind of torture rather than say so. The bones came, and the whisky -with them. Henry drank his first glass very quickly in order to show -that he was quite used to it. He thought, as he looked across the table, -that Philip was the finest fellow in the world; no one had ever been so -kind to him as Philip—How could he ever have disliked Philip? Philip -was going to marry Katherine, and was the only man in all the world who -was worthy of her. Henry felt a burning desire to confide in Philip, to -tell him all his most secret thoughts, his ambitions, his troubles.... - -He drank his second glass of whisky, and began a long, rather stumbling -narration. - -“You know, I shall never be able to tell you how grateful I am to you -for giving me such a ripping evening. All this time ... I’ve been very -rude sometimes, I expect ... you must have thought me a dreadful ass, -and I’ve wanted so much to show you that I’m not.” - -“That’s all right,” said Philip, who was thinking of Katherine. - -“No, it isn’t all right,” said Henry, striking the table with his fist. -“I must tell you, now that you’ve been so kind to me. You see I’m shy -really, I wouldn’t like most people to know that, but I am. I’m shy -because I’m so unfortunate about little things. You must have noticed -long ago how unlucky I am. Nothing ever goes right with me at home. I’m -always untidy and my clothes go to pieces and I break things. People -seem to think I want to ...” His voice was fierce for a moment. - -“That’s all right,” said Philip again. “Have some more bone.” - -“Yes, thank you,” said Henry, staring darkly in front of him. “I don’t -know why I’m so unfortunate, because I know I _could_ do things if I -were given a chance, but no one will ever let me try. What do they keep -me at home for when I ought to be at Oxford? Why don’t they settle what -I’m going to be? It’s quite time for them to make up their mind.... It’s -a shame, a shame....” - -“So it is. So it is,” said Philip. “But it will be all right if you wait -a bit.” - -“I’m always told I’ve got to wait,” said Henry fiercely. “What about -other fellows? No one tells them to wait.... I’m nineteen, and there are -plenty of men of nineteen I know who are doing all kinds of things. I -can’t even dress properly—soot and fluff always come and settle on _my_ -clothes rather than on anyone else’s. I’ve often noticed it. Then people -laugh at me for nothing. They don’t laugh at other men.” - -“You oughtn’t to care,” said Philip. - -“I try not to, but you can’t help it if it happens often.” - -“What do you want to be?” said Philip. “What would you like to do?” - -“I don’t mind; anything,” said Henry, “if only I did it properly. I’d -rather be a waiter who didn’t make a fool of himself than what I am. I’d -like to be of use. I’d like to make people proud of me. I’d like -Katherine—” - -At that name he suddenly stopped and was silent. - -“Well?” said Philip. “What about Katherine?... Have some more whisky.... -Waiter, coffee.” - -“I want to do something,” said Henry, “to make Katherine proud of me. I -know it must be horrible for her to have a brother whom everyone laughs -at. It’s partly because of her that I’m so shy. But she understands me -as none of the others do. She knows I’ve got something in me. She -believes in me. She’s the only one.... I can talk to her. She -understands when I say that I want to do something in the world. _She_ -doesn’t laugh. And I’d die for her.... Here, now, if it was necessary. -And I’ll tell you one thing. I didn’t like you at first. When you got -engaged to Katherine I hated it until I saw that she’d probably have to -be engaged to someone, and it might as well be you.” - -“Thank you,” said Philip, laughing. - -“I saw how happy you made her. It’s hard on all of us who’ve known her -so long, but we don’t mind that ... if you _do_ make her happy.” - -“So,” said Philip, “it’s only by the family’s permission that I can keep -her?” - -“Oh, you know what I mean,” said Henry. “Of course she’s her own -mistress. She can do what she likes. But she _is_ fond of us. And I -don’t think—if it came to it—that she’d ever do anything to hurt us.” - -“If it came to what?” said Philip. - -But Henry shook his head. “Oh! I’m only talking. I meant that we’re -fonder of one another as a family than people outside can realise. We -don’t seem to be if you watch us, but if it came to pulling us -apart—to—to—taking Katherine away, for instance, it—it wouldn’t be -easy.” - -“Another soda, waiter,” said Philip. “But I don’t want to take Katherine -away. I don’t want there to be any difference to anyone.” - -“There _must_ be a difference,” said Henry, shaking his head and looking -very solemn. “If it had been Millie it mightn’t have mattered so much, -because she’s been away a lot as it is, but with Katherine—you see, -we’ve always thought that whatever misfortune happened, Katherine would -be there—and now we can’t think that any longer.” - -“But that,” said Philip, who’d drunk quite a number of whiskies by this -time, “was very selfish of you. You couldn’t expect her never to marry.” - -“We never thought about it,” said Henry. He spoke now rather confusedly -and at random. “We aren’t the sort of people who look ahead. I suppose -we haven’t got much imagination as a family. None of the Trenchards -have. That’s why we’re fond of one another and can’t imagine ever not -being.” - -Philip leant forward. “Look here, Henry, I want us to be friends—real -friends. I love Katherine so much that I would do anything for her. If -she’s happy you won’t grudge her to me, will you?... I’ve felt a little -that you, some of you, don’t trust me, that you don’t understand me. But -I’m just what I seem: I’m not worthy of Katherine. I can’t think why she -cares for me, but, as she does, it’s better, isn’t it, that she should -be happy? If you’d all help me, if you’d all be friends with me—” - -He had for some minutes been conscious that there was something odd -about Henry. He had been intent on his own thoughts, but behind them -something had claimed his attention. Henry was now waving a hand in the -air vaguely, he was looking at his half-empty glass with an intent and -puzzled eye. Philip broke off in the middle of his sentence, arrested -suddenly by this strangeness of Henry’s eye, which was now fixed and -staring, now red and wandering. He gazed at Henry, a swift, terrible -suspicion striking him. Henry, with a face desperately solemn, gazed -back at him. The boy then tried to speak, failed, and very slowly a -large fat tear trembled down his cheek. - -“I’m trying—I’m trying,” he began. “I’ll be your friend—always—I’ll -get up—stand—explain.... I’ll make a speech,” he suddenly added. - -“Good Lord!” Philip realised with a dismay pricked with astonishment, -“the fellow’s drunk.” It had happened so swiftly that it was as though -Henry were acting a part. Five minutes earlier Henry had apparently been -perfectly sober. He had drunk three whiskies and sodas. Philip had never -imagined this catastrophe, and now his emotions were a confused mixture -of alarm, annoyance, impatience and disgust at his own imperception. - -Whatever Henry had been five minutes ago, there was no sort of question -about him now. - -“Someone’s taken off my—b-boots,” he confided very confidentially to -Philip. “Who—did?” - -The one clear thought in Philip’s brain was that he must get Henry home -quietly—from the Carlton table to Henry’s bed, and with as little noise -as possible. Only a few people now remained in the Grill Room. He -summoned the waiter, paid the bill. Henry watched him. - -“You must—tell them—about my boots,” he said. “It’s absurd.” - -“It’s all right,” said Philip. “They’ve put them on again now. It’s time -for us to be moving.” He was relieved to see that Henry rose at once -and, holding for a moment on to the table, steadied himself. His face, -very solemn and sad, with its large, mournful eyes and a lock of hair -tumbling forward over his forehead, was both ridiculous and pathetic. - -Philip took his arm. - -“Come on,” he said. “Time to go home.” - -Henry followed very meekly, allowed them to put on his coat, was led -upstairs and into a “taxi.” - -Then he suddenly put his head between his hands and began to sob. He -would say nothing, but only sobbed hopelessly. - -“It’s all right,” said Philip, as though he were speaking to a child of -five. “There’s nothing to cry about. You’ll be home in a moment.” He was -desperately annoyed at the misfortune. Why could he not have seen that -Henry was drinking too much? But Henry had drunk so little. Then he had -had champagne at dinner. He wasn’t used to it. Philip cursed his own -stupidity. Now if they made a noise on the way to Henry’s room there -might follow fatal consequences. If anyone should see them! - -Henry’s sobs had ceased: he seemed to be asleep. Philip shook his arm. -“Look here! We must take care not to wake anyone. Here we are! Quietly -now, and where’s your key?” - -“Wash key?” said Henry. - -Philip had a horrible suspicion that Henry had forgotten his key. He -searched. Ah! there it was in the waistcoat pocket. - -Henry put his arms round Philip’s neck. - -“They’ve turned the roa’ upside down,” he whispered confidentially. “We -mustn’t lose each other.” - -They entered the dark hall. Philip with one arm round Henry’s waist. -Henry sat on the lowest step of the stairs. - -“I’ll shtay here to-night,” he said. “It’s shafer,” and was instantly -asleep. Philip lifted him, then with Henry’s boots tapping the stairs at -each step, they moved upwards. Henry was heavy, and at the top Philip -had to pause for breath. Suddenly the boy slipped from his arms and fell -with a crash. The whole house re-echoed. Philip’s heart stopped beating, -and his only thought was, “Now I’m done. They’ll all be here in a -moment. They’ll drive me away. Katherine will never speak to me again.” -A silence followed abysmally deep, only broken by some strange snore -that came from the heart of the house (as though it were the house that -was snoring) and the ticking of two clocks that, in their race against -one another, whirred and chuckled. - -Philip picked Henry up again and proceeded. He found the room, pushed -open the door, closed it and switched on the light. He then undressed -Henry, folding the clothes carefully, put upon him his pyjamas, laid him -in bed and tucked him up. Henry, his eyes closed as though by death, -snored heavily.... - -Philip turned the light out, crept into the passage, listened, stole -downstairs, let himself into the Square, where he stood for a moment, in -the cold night air, the only living thing in a sleeping world, then -hastened away. - -“Thank Heaven,” he thought, “we’ve escaped.” He had _not_ escaped. Aunt -Aggie, a fantastic figure in a long blue dressing-gown, roused by -Henry’s fall, had watched, from her bedroom door, the whole affair. She -waited until she had heard the hall-door close, then stole down and -locked it, stole up again and disappeared silently into her room. - - * * * * * - -When Henry woke in the morning his headache was very different from any -headache that he had ever endured before. His first thought was that he -could never possibly get up, but would lie there all day. His second -that, whatever he did, he must rouse suspicion in no one, his third that -he really _had_ been terribly drunk last night, and remembered nothing -after his second whisky at the Carlton, his fourth that someone must -have put him to bed last night, because his clothes were folded -carefully, whereas it was his own custom always to fling them about the -room. At this moment Rocket (who always took upon himself the rousing of -Henry) entered with hot water. - -“Time to get up, sir,” he said. “Breakfast-bell in twenty minutes. Bath -quite ready.” - -Henry watched. “He’ll suspect something when he sees those clothes,” he -thought. But Rocket, apparently, suspected nothing. Henry got up, had -his bath and slowly dressed. His headache was quite horrible, being a -cold headache with a heavy weight of pain on his skull and a taste in -his mouth of mustard and bad eggs. He felt that he could not possibly -disguise from the world that he was unwell. Looking in the glass he saw -that his complexion was yellow and muddy, but then it was never, at any -time, very splendid. He looked cross and sulky, but then that would not -surprise anyone. He went downstairs and passed successfully through the -ordeal: fortunately Aunt Aggie was in bed. Only Millie, laughing, said -to him: “You don’t look as though evenings with Philip suited you, -Henry—” - -(How he hated Millie when she teased him!) - -“Well, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Trenchard placidly, “there must be thunder -about—thunder about. I always feel it in my back. George dear, do put -that paper down, your tea’s quite cold.” - -“Well,” said George Trenchard, looking up from the ‘Morning Post’ and -beaming upon everyone, “what did Philip do with you last night, Henry. -Show you the town—eh?” - -“We had a very pleasant evening, thank you, father,” said Henry. “We -went to the Empire.” - -“You came in very quietly. I didn’t hear you. Did you hear him, -Harriet?” - -“No,” said Mrs. Trenchard. “I do hope you locked the front door, Henry.” - -“Oh, yes, mother. That was all right,” he said hurriedly. - -“Well, dear, I’m very glad you had a pleasant evening. It was kind of -Philip—very kind of Philip. Yes, that’s Aunt Aggie’s tray, Katie dear. -I should put a little more marmalade—and that bit of toast, the other’s -rather dry—yes, the other’s rather dry. Poor Aggie says she had a -disturbed night—slept very badly. I shouldn’t wonder whether it’s the -thunder. I always know by my back. Thank you, Katie. Here’s a letter -from Rose Faunder, George, and she says, ‘etc., etc.’” - -After breakfast Henry escaped into the drawing-room; he sank into his -favourite chair by the fire, which was burning with a cold and glassy -splendour that showed that it had just been lit. The room was foggy, dim -and chill, exactly suited to Henry, who, with his thin legs stretched -out in front of him and his headache oppressing him with a reiterated -emphasis as though it were some other person insisting on his attention, -stared before him and tried to think. - -He wanted to think everything out, but could consider nothing clearly. -It was disgusting of him to have been drunk, but it was Philip’s -fault—that was his main conclusion. Looking back, everything seemed to -be Philip’s fault—even the disaster to himself. There was in Henry a -strange puritanical, old-maidish strain, which, under the persuasion of -the headache, was allowed full freedom. Philip’s intimacy with those -women, Philip’s attitude to drink, to ballets, even to shirt studs, an -attitude of indifference bred of long custom, seemed to Henry this -morning sinister and most suspicious. Philip had probably been laughing -at him all the evening, thought him a fool for getting drunk so easily -(terrible idea this), would tell other people about his youth and -inexperience. Thoughts like these floated through Henry’s aching head, -but he could not really catch them. Everything escaped him. He could -only stare into the old mirror, with its reflection of green carpet and -green wall-paper, and fancy that he was caught, held prisoner by it, -condemned to remain inside it for ever, with an aching head and an -irritated conscience. - -He was ill, he was unhappy, and yet through it all ran the thought: “You -are a man now. You have received your freedom. You’ll never be a boy -again....” - -He was aroused from his thoughts by the sudden vision of Katherine, who -was, he found, sitting on the elbow of his arm-chair with her hand on -his shoulder. - -“Hullo,” he said, letting her take his hand. “I didn’t hear you come -in.” - -“I didn’t know you were in here,” she answered. “You were hidden by the -chair. I was looking for you, though.” - -“Why?” said Henry, suspiciously. - -“Oh, nothing—except that I wanted to hear about last night. Did you -enjoy it?” - -“Very much.” - -“Was Philip nice?” - -“Very nice.” - -“What did you do?” - -“Oh, we dined at Jules, went to the Empire, had supper at the Carlton, -and came home.” He looked at Katherine’s eyes, felt that he was a surly -brute and added: “The ballet was called ‘The Pirate’. I thought it was -fine, but it was the first one I’d seen—I don’t think Philip cared much -for it, but then he’s seen so many in Moscow, where they go on all night -and are perfectly splendid.” - -Katherine’s hand pressed his shoulder a little, and he, in response, -drew closer to her. - -“I’m glad Philip was nice to you,” she said, gazing into the fire. “I -want you two to be great friends.” There sprang then a new note into her -voice, as though she were resolved to say something that had been in her -mind a long time. “Henry—tell me—quite honestly, I want to know. Have -I been a pig lately? A pig about everybody. Since I’ve been engaged have -I neglected you all and been different to you all and hurt you all?” - -“No,” said Henry, slowly. “Of course you haven’t ... but it has been -different a little—it couldn’t help being.” - -“What has?” - -“Well, of course, we don’t mean so much to you now. How can we? I -suppose what Philip said last night is true, that we’ve been all rather -selfish about you, and now we’re suffering for it.” - -“Did Philip say that?” - -“Yes—or something like it.” - -“It isn’t true. It simply shows that he doesn’t understand what we all -are to one another. I suppose we’re different. I’ve been feeling, since -I’ve been engaged, that we _must_ be different. Philip is so continually -surprised at the things we do.” - -Henry frowned. “He needn’t be. There’s nothing very wonderful in our all -being fond of you.” - -She got up from the chair and began to walk up and down the room. -Henry’s eyes followed her. - -“I don’t know what it is,” she said suddenly. “But during these last -weeks it’s as though you were all hiding something from me. Even you and -Millie. Of course I know that Aunt Aggie hates Philip. She never _can_ -hide her feelings. But mother ...” Katherine broke out. “Oh! it’s all so -silly! Why can’t we all be natural? It’s unfair to Philip. He’s ready -for anything, he wants to be one of us, and you, all of you—” - -“It isn’t quite fair,” said Henry slowly, “to blame only us. We’ve all -been very nice to Philip, I think. I know Aunt Betty and Millie and -father like him very much.” - -“And you?” said Katherine. - -“I don’t think I’d like anyone who was going to take you away.” - -“But he isn’t going to take me away. That’s where you’re all so wrong. -He’s just going to be one more of the family.” - -Henry said nothing. - -Katherine then cried passionately: “Ah, you don’t know him! you simply -don’t know him!” She stopped, her eyes shining, her whole body stirred -by her happiness. She came over and stood close to him: “Henry, whatever -happens, _whatever_ happens, nothing can take me away from you and -mother and the rest. Nor from Garth.... If you’re _sure_ of that then -you needn’t be afraid of Philip.” - -Henry looked up at her. “Suppose, Katherine—just suppose—that he -insisted on your going, leaving us all, leaving Garth, going right away -somewhere. What would you do?” - -Katherine smiled with perfect confidence. “He wouldn’t insist on -anything that would make me so unhappy—or anyone unhappy. All he wants -is that everyone should like everyone else, and that no one should be -hurt.” - -“I’m not sure,” said Henry, “whether it isn’t that sort who hurt people -most in the end.” He took her hand in his. “He can do anything he likes, -Katherine, anything, and I’ll adore him madly, so long as he doesn’t -hurt you. If he does that—” - -Aunt Aggie, standing in the doorway with the look of one who must live -up to having had breakfast in bed, interrupted him: - -“Ah, Katherine, there you are. The last thing I want is to give trouble -to anyone, but I passed so poor a night that I feel quite unequal to -marking those pillow-cases that I offered yesterday to do for your -mother. I was so anxious yesterday afternoon to help her, as indeed I -always am, but of course I couldn’t foretell that my night would be so -disturbed. I wonder whether you—” - -“Why, of course, Aunt Aggie,” said Katherine. - -Henry’s morning reflections resolved themselves finally into the -decision that to continue his emancipation he would, definitely, before -the day closed, penetrate into the heart of his Club. He found, when he -arrived there, that he was so deeply occupied with thoughts of -Katherine, Philip and himself that he knew no fear. He boldly passed the -old man in the hall who exactly resembled a goat, climbed the stairs -with the air of one who had been doing it all his life, and discovered a -room with a fire, a table with papers, some book-cases with ancient -books, and Seymour. That gentleman was standing before the fire, a smile -of beaming self-satisfaction upon his red fat face; he greeted Henry -with that altruistic welcome that was peculiarly his own. A manner that -implied that God had sent him especially into the world to show other -men how to be jolly, optimistic, kind-hearted and healthy. - -“Why, who ever expected to see you here?” he cried. “You’re yellow about -the gills, my son. Have a whisky and soda.” - -“No, thank you,” said Henry, with an internal shudder. “I thought I’d -just look in.” - -“Why, of course,” said Seymour. “How jolly to see you!” - -They drew their chairs in front of the fire and talked—at least Seymour -talked. He told Henry what a lucky fellow he, Seymour, was, how jolly -the world was, how splendid the weather was. He let slip by accident the -facts that three publishers were fighting for his next book, that -America had gone mad about his last one (“although I always said, you -know, that to be popular in America was a sure sign that one was no -good”), and that he’d overheard some woman at a party saying that he was -the most interesting young man of the day. He told these tales with an -air as though he would imply—“How absurd these people are! How -ridiculous!” - -Then, suddenly, he paused. It seemed that he had remembered something. - -“By the way, Trenchard—I knew there was something. There’s a fellow in -this Club, just been lunching with him. I don’t expect he’s gone. I want -you to meet him, I was thinking about you at luncheon. He’s just come -from Moscow, where he’s been two years.” - -“Moscow?” said Henry. - -“Yes. I’ll go and find him. He may have left if I don’t go now.” - -Seymour hurried away to return an instant later with a very-much dressed -young man in a purple suit and a high, shrill voice. He gave Henry a -languid finger, said that he wouldn’t mind a drink, and sat down in -front of the fire. Seymour began a fresh monologue, the young man -(Morrison was his name) drank his whisky with a delicate foreign -attitude which Henry greatly admired, said at last that he must be -going. It was only then that Henry plucked up courage. - -“I say—Seymour tells me you’ve just come from Moscow.” - -“Yes—damned rotten town,” said Morrison, “two years of it—nearly -killed me.” - -“Did you happen to know,” said Henry, “a man there called Mark?” - -“What! Phil Mark! Think I did!... Everyone knew Phil Mark! Hot stuff, my -word!” - -“I beg your pardon?” said Henry. - -Mr. Morrison looked at Henry with curiosity, stared into his glass, -found that it was empty, rose and brushed his trousers. - -“Went the pace—had a mistress there for years—a girl out of the -ballet. Everyone knew about it—had a kid, but the kid died ... -conceited sort o’ feller—no one liked him. Know I didn’t.” - -“It can’t have been the same man,” said Henry slowly. - -“No? daresay not,” said Morrison languidly, “name of Philip though. -Short square feller, bit fat, black hair; he was in Maddox and -Custom’s—made a bit of money they said. He chucked the girl and came to -England—here somewhere now I believe....” - -He looked at Henry and Seymour, found them silent, disliked the stare in -Henry’s eyes, saw a speck of dust on his waistcoat, was very serious -about this, found the silence unpleasant and broke away— - -“Well, so long, you fellows.... Must be toddling.” - -He wandered out, his bent shoulders expressing great contempt for his -company. - -Seymour had watched his young friend’s face. He was, for once, at a -loss. He had known what would occur; he had produced Morrison for no -other purpose. He had hated Mark since that day at the Trenchard’s house -with all the unresting hatred of one whose whole peace of mind depends -on the admiration of others. Morrison had told him stories about Mark: -he did not, himself, wish to inform Henry, because his own acquaintance -with the family and knowledge of Miss Trenchard’s engagement made it -difficult, but he had no objection at all to Morrison’s agency. He was -frightened now at Henry’s white face and staring eyes. - -“Did you know this?” Henry said. - -“’Pon my word, Trenchard—no idea. Morrison was talking the other day -about Englishmen in Moscow, and mentioned Mark, I think, but I never -connected him. If I’d thought he was coming out with it like that of -course I’d have stopped it, but _he_ didn’t know—” - -“He’s lying.” - -“Don’t know why he should. He’d no idea your sister was engaged. It’s a -bit rotten, isn’t it? I’m awfully sorry—” - -Henry stared at him. “I believe you _did_ know: I believe you meant him -to tell me. That’s what you brought him for—you hate Mark anyway.” -Henry laughed, then broke off, stared about him as though he did not -know where he was, and rushed from the room. He did not know through -what streets he passed; he saw no people, heard no noise; was conscious -neither of light nor darkness. He knew that it was true. Mark was a -blackguard. Katherine—Katherine.... - -As he crossed the bridge in St. James’ Park he tumbled against a man and -knocked off his hat. He did not stop to apologise. What was he to do? -What was he to do? Why had it been he who had heard this? - -In the dark hall of the house he saw Katherine. She spoke to him; he -tore past her, tumbling upstairs, running down the passage as though -someone pursued him. His bedroom door banged behind him. - - - - - CHAPTER IV - GARTH IN ROSELANDS - -Philip, on the day following his evening with Henry, left London to -spend three weeks with some relations who lived near Manchester. This -was the first parting from him that Katherine had suffered since the -beginning of their engagement, and when she had said good-bye to him at -the station, she seemed to return through empty streets, through a town -without colour or movement, and the house, when she entered it, echoed, -through its desolate rooms and passages, to her steps. - -She resolved at once, however, that now was the time to show the family -that she was the same Katherine as she had ever been. As she waited for -a little in her bedroom, finally dismissing Philip’s presence and -summoning the others, she laughed to think how simply now she would -brush away the little distrusts and suspicions that seemed, during those -last weeks, to have grown about her. - -“They _shall_ know Phil,” she thought to herself. “They can’t help -loving him when they see him as he really is. Anyway, no more keeping -anything back.” It seemed to her, at that moment, a very simple thing to -impart her happiness to all of them. She had no fear that she would -fail. Then, almost at once, the most delightful thing occurred. - -Two or three days after Philip’s departure Mrs. Trenchard, alone with -Katherine in the dining-room before breakfast, said: - -“I’ve written to Philip, my dear, to ask him to go down with us to -Garth.” - -Katherine’s eyes shone with pleasure. - -“Mother!... How delightful of you! I was hoping that perhaps you might -ask him later. But isn’t it tiresome to have him so soon?” - -“No—my dear—no. Not tiresome at all. I hope he’ll be able to come.” - -“Of course he’ll be able to come,” laughed Katherine. - -“Yes—well—I’ve written to ask him. We go down on the fifth of March. -Your father thinks that’s the best day. Griffiths writes that that -business of the fences in Columb meadow should be looked into—Yes. No, -Alice, not the ham—tell Grace to boil two more eggs—not enough—I’m -glad you’re pleased, Katherine.” - -Katherine looked up, and her eyes meeting her mother’s, the confidence -that had been clouded ever since that fatal affair with the hot-water -bottles seemed to leap into life between them. Mrs. Trenchard put out -her hand, Katherine moved forward, but at that moment Aunt Aggie and -Aunt Betty entered; breakfast began. - -“I believe,” thought Katherine, “Aunt Aggie waits outside the door and -chooses her moment. She’s always interrupting....” The fact that there -was now some restraint between her mother and herself was only -emphasised the more by the feeling of both of them that an opportunity -had been missed. - -And why, Katherine wondered afterwards, had her mother asked Philip? If -he had been invited to come to them after Easter—but now, to go down -with them, as one of the family! Was not this exactly what Katherine had -been desiring? And yet she was uncomfortable. She felt sometimes now -that her mother, who had once been her other self, in whose every -thought, distress, anxiety she had shared, was almost a stranger. - -“It’s just as though there were ghosts in the house,” she thought. As -she went to bed she was, for the first time in her life, lonely. She -longed for Philip ... then suddenly, for no reason that she could name, -began to cry and, so crying, fell asleep. She was much younger than -everyone thought her.... - -Throughout the three weeks that followed she felt as though she were -beating the air. Rachel Seddon had taken her husband abroad. There was -no one to whom she could speak. She wrote to Philip every day, and -discovered how useless letters were. She tried to approach Millie, but -found that she had not the courage to risk Millie’s frankness. Her -sister’s attitude to her was: “Dear Katie, let’s be happy and jolly -together without talking about it—it’s much better....” There had been -a time, not so very long ago, when they had told one another everything. -Henry was the strangest of all. He removed himself from the whole -family, and would speak to no one. He went apparently for long solitary -walks. Even his father noticed his depression, and decided that -something must really be done with the boy. “We might send him abroad -for six months—learn some French or German ...” but of course nothing -was done. - -Aunt Betty was the only entirely satisfactory member of the family. She -frankly revelled in the romance of the whole affair. She was delighted -that Katherine had fallen in love “with such a fine manly fellow” as -Philip. Her attention was always centred upon Katherine to the exclusion -of the others, therefore she noticed no restraint nor awkwardness. She -was intensely happy, and went humming about the house in a way that -annoyed desperately her sister Aggie. She even wrote a little letter to -Philip, beginning “My dear Boy,” saying that she thought that he’d like -to know from one of the family that Katherine was in perfect health and -looking beautiful. She received a letter from Philip that surprised and -delighted her by its warmth of feeling. This letter was the cause of a -little battle with Aggie. - -They were alone together in Betty’s room when she said, half to herself: - -“_Such_ a delightful letter from the ‘dear boy’.” - -“_What_ dear boy?” said Aunt Aggie sharply. - -Aunt Betty started, as she always did when anyone spoke to her sharply, -sucked her fingers, and then, the colour mounting into her cheeks, said: - -“Philip. He’s written to me from Manchester.” - -“I do think, Betty,” Aggie answered, “that instead of writing letters to -young men who don’t want them you might try to take a little of the -burden of this house off my shoulders. Now that Katherine has lost all -her common-sense I’m supposed to do everything. I don’t complain. They -wish me to help as much as I can, but I’m far from strong, and a little -help from you ...” - -Then Aunt Betty, with the effect of standing on her toes, her voice -quite shrill with excitement, spoke to her sister as she had never, in -all her life, spoken to anyone before. - -“It’s too bad, Aggie. I used to think that you were fond of Katherine, -that you wished her happiness—Now, ever since her engagement, you’ve -done nothing but complain about her. Sometimes I think you really want -to see her unhappy. We ought to be glad, you and I, that she’s found -someone who will make her happy. It’s all your selfishness, Aggie; just -because you don’t like Philip for some fancied reason ... it’s unfair -and wicked. At anyrate to me you shan’t speak against Katherine and -Philip.... I love Katherine, even though you don’t.” - -Now it happened that, as I have said elsewhere, Aggie Trenchard loved -her niece very deeply. It was a love, however, that depended for its -life on an adequate return. “That young man has turned Katherine against -me. Ever since he first came into the house I knew it.” Now at her -sister’s accusation her face grew grey and her hands trembled. - -“Thank you, Betty. I don’t think we’ll discuss the matter. Because -you’re blind and know nothing of what goes on under your nose is no -reason that other people’s sight should be blinded too. Can’t you see -for yourself the change in Katherine? If you loved her a little more -sensibly than you do, instead of romancing about the affair, you’d look -into the future. I tell you that the moment Philip Mark entered this -house was the most unfortunate moment in Katherine’s life. Nothing but -unhappiness will come of it. If you knew what I know—” - -Aunt Betty was, in spite of herself, struck by the feeling and softness -in her sister’s voice. - -“What do you mean?” she asked. - -“I mean nothing. I’m right, that’s all. _You’re_ a silly, soft fool, -Elizabeth, and so you always were. But Harriet ... asking him to go down -to Garth with us, when she hates him as I know she does! _I_ don’t know -what it means. Do you suppose that I don’t love Katherine any longer? I -love her so much that I’d like to strangle Mr. Philip Mark in his -sleep!” - -She flung from the room, banging the door behind her. - - * * * * * - -Philip arrived on the evening before the departure into the country. He -came well pleased with all the world, because his Manchester relations -had liked him and he had liked his Manchester relations. Viewed from -that happy distance, the Trenchards had been bathed in golden light. He -reviewed his recent agitations and forebodings with laughter. “Her -family,” he told his relations, “are a bit old-fashioned. They’ve got -their prejudices, and I don’t think they liked the idea, at first, of -her being engaged—she’s so valuable. But they’re getting used to it.” -He arrived in London in the highest spirits, greeted Rocket as though he -had been his life-long friend, and going straight up to his room to -dress for dinner, thought to himself that he really did feel at home in -the old house. He looked at his fire, at the cosy shape of the room, -heard a purring, contented clock ticking away, thought for a moment of -Moscow, with its puddles, its mud, its dark, uneven streets, its country -roads, its weeks of rain. - -“No, I’ve found my place,” he thought, “_this_ is home.” - -And yet, during dinner, his uneasiness, like a forgotten ghost, crept -back to him. Henry had a headache, and had gone to bed. - -“He’s not been very well lately,” said Aunt Aggie to Philip, “that -evening with you upset him, I believe—over-excited him, perhaps. I’m -glad you liked Manchester.” He could not deny that dinner was a little -stiff. He was suddenly aware over his pudding that he was afraid of Mrs. -Trenchard, and that his fear of her that had been vague and nebulous -before his absence was now sharp and defined. - -He looked at her, and saw that her eyes were anything but placid and -contented, like the rest of her. - -“More pudding, Philip?” she asked him, and his heart beat as though he -had received a challenge. - -Afterwards in the drawing-room he thought to himself: “’Tis this beastly -old house. It’s so stuffy”—forgetting that two hours earlier it had -seemed to welcome him home. “We’ll be all right when we get down to the -country,” he thought. - -Finally he said good-night to Katherine in the dark little passage. As -though he were giving himself some desperate reassurance, he caught her -to him and held her tightly in his arms: - -“Katie—darling, have you missed me?” - -“Missed you? I thought the days were never going to pass.” - -“Katie, I want to be married, here, now, to-night, at once. I hate this -waiting. I _hate_ it. It’s impossible—” - -Katherine laughed, looking up into his eyes. - -“I like you to be impatient. I’m so happy. I don’t think anything can -ever be happier. Besides, you know,” and her eyes sparkled—“you may -change—you may want to break it off—and then think how glad you’ll be -that we waited.” - -He held her then so fiercely that she cried out. - -“Don’t say that—even as a joke. How dare you—even as a joke? I love -you—I love you—I love you.” He kissed her mouth again and again, then -suddenly, with a little movement of tenderness, stroked her hair very -softly, whispering to her, “I love you—I love you—I love you—Oh! how -I love you!” - -That night she was so happy that she lay for many hours staring at the -black ceiling, a smile on her lips. He, also, was awake until the early -morning.... - -The departure to the station was a terrific affair. There were Mr. -Trenchard, senior, Great Aunt Sarah (risen from a bed of sickness, -yellow and pinched in the face, very yellow and pinched in the temper, -and deafer than deaf), Aunt Aggie, Aunt Betty, George Trenchard, Mrs. -Trenchard, Millie (very pretty), Henry (very sulky), Katherine, Philip, -Rocket and Aunt Sarah’s maid (the other maids had left by an earlier -train)—twelve persons. The train to be caught was the eleven o’clock -from Paddington, and two carriages had been reserved. The first business -was to settle old Mr. Trenchard and Aunt Sarah. They were placed, like -images, in the best corners, Mr. Trenchard saying sometimes in his -silvery voice: “It’s very kind of you, Harriet,” or “Thank ye, Betty, my -dear,” and once to Millie, “I like to see ye laughing, my dear—very -pretty, very pretty”. Aunt Sarah frowned and wrinkled her nose, but was, -in her high black bonnet, a very fine figure. Her maid, Clarence, was -plain, elderly and masculine in appearance, having a moustache and a -stiff linen collar and very little hair visible under her black straw -hat. She, however, knew just how Great-Aunt Sarah liked to be.... - -The others in that compartment were Aunt Aggie, George Trenchard (he sat -next to his father and told him jokes out of the papers) and Mrs. -Trenchard. In the other carriage Katherine and Philip had the corners by -the window. Aunt Betty sat next to Philip, Millie and Henry had the -farther corners. When the train started, Katherine’s heart gave a jump, -as it always did when she set off for Garth. “We’re really off. We’ll -really be in Garth by the evening. We’ll really wake up there to-morrow -morning.” - -Philip had not seen Henry since his return from Manchester, so he tried -to talk to him. Henry, however, was engaged upon a very large edition of -“War and Peace,” and, although he answered Philip’s enquiries very -politely, he was obviously determined to speak to no one. Millie had -Henry Galleon’s “Roads” to read, but she did not study it very -deeply—Aunt Betty had a novel called “The Rosary” and her knitting; now -and then she would break into little scraps of talk as: “But if I moved -the bed across lengthways that would leave room for the book-case,” or -“I do think people must be clever to make up conversations in books,” or -“There’s Reading”. The lovers, therefore, were left to one another.... - -Katherine had upon her lap the novel that had so greatly excited Henry; -he had insisted upon her reading it, but now it lay idly there, -unopened. That little smile that had hovered about her lips last night -was still there to-day. Often her eyes were closed, and she might have -seemed to be asleep were it not that the little smile was alive—her -eyes would open, they would meet Philip’s eyes, they would be drawn, the -two of them, closer and closer and closer. - -They talked together, their voices scarcely above a whisper. The day was -one of those that are given sometimes, in a fit of forgetfulness, by the -gods, at the beginning of March. It was a very soft, misty day, with the -sun warm and golden but veiled. Trees on the dim blue horizon were -faintly pink, and streams that flashed for an instant before the windows -were pigeon-colour. Everywhere the earth seemed to be breaking, flowers -pushing through the soil, rivers released from their winter bondage -laughing in their new freedom, the earth chuckling, whispering, humming -with the glorious excitement of its preparation, as though it had never -had a spring in all its life before, as though it did not know that -there would yet be savage winds, wild storms of rain, many cold and -bitter days. Blue mist—running water—trees with their bursting buds—a -haze of sun and rain in the air—a great and happy peace. - -Katherine and Philip, although they saw no one but one another, were -aware of the day—it was as though it had been arranged especially for -them. The rise and fall of their voices had a sleepy rhythm, as though -they were keeping time with the hum of the train: - -“I’m so glad,” said Katherine, “that your first view of Glebeshire will -be on a day like this.” - -“I’m a little afraid,” he answered. “What will you say if I don’t like -it?” - -She seemed really for an instant to be afraid. “But, of course, of -course, you will.” - -“Everyone doesn’t. Someone told me the other day that either it was -desolate enough to depress you for a lifetime or stuffy like a -hot-house, and that the towns were the ugliest in the United Kingdom.” - -Katherine sighed and then smiled. - -“I expect they’d think Manchester the loveliest place on earth,” she -said. Then, looking at him very intently, she asked him: “Do you regret -Russia—the size and the space and the strangeness? I daresay you do. Do -you know, Phil, I’m rather jealous of Russia, of all the things you did -before I knew you, I wonder whether I’d have liked you if I’d met you -then, whether you’d have liked me. I expect you were very different. -Tell me about it. I’m always asking you about Moscow, and you’re so -mysterious—yes, I believe I’m jealous.” - -Philip looked away from her, out of the window, at the fields with their -neat hedges, the gentle hills faintly purple, villages tucked into nests -of trees, cows grazing, horses mildly alert at the passing train. For a -moment he was conscious of irritation at the tidy cosiness of it all. -Then he spoke, dreamily, as though he were talking in his sleep: - -“No. That’s all behind me. I shall never go back there again. I don’t -think of it often, but sometimes I fancy I’m there. Sounds will bring it -back, and I dream sometimes.... One gets so used to it that it’s hard -now to say what one did feel about it. I had a little flat in a part of -the town called the Arbat. Out of my window I could see a church with -sky-blue domes covered with silver stars, there was a shop with food, -sausages and all kinds of dried fish, and great barrels of red caviare -and mountains of cheese. The church had a cherry-coloured wall, with a -glittering Ikon at the gate and a little lamp burning in front of it. -There were always some cabs at the end of my street, with the cabmen in -their fat, bunched-up clothes sleeping very often, their heads hanging -from the shafts. Lines of carts from the country would pass down the -street with great hoops of coloured wood over the horses’ necks and -wild-looking peasants in charge of them. They didn’t seem wild to me -then—they were quite ordinary. Always just before six the bells at the -church would ring, one slow, deep note and a little funny noisy jangle -as well—one beautiful and unearthly; the other like a talkative woman, -all human.... In the autumn there’d be weeks of rain and the mud would -rise and rise, and the carts and cabs go splashing through great streams -of water. When the snow came there’d be fine days and the town on fire, -all sparkling and quivering, and every ugly thing in the place would be -beautiful. There’d be many days too when the sky would fall lower and -lower and the town be like grey blotting-paper and the most beautiful -things hideous. Opposite my window there was a half-built house that had -been there for three years, and no one had troubled to finish it. There -was a beggar at the corner—a fine old man with no legs. He must have -made a fortune, because everyone who passed gave him something. It would -be fine on a snowy night when the night-watchmen built great fires of -logs to keep them warm. - -“On a starry night I could see the domes of St. Saviour’s Cathedral like -little golden clouds—very beautiful.” - -“And what was the inside of your flat like?” asked Katherine. She had -been leaning a little forward, her hands clasped together, deeply -interested. - -“Oh! very small! I made it as English as I could. It had central heating -and, in the winter, with the double windows, it got very stuffy. I had -English pictures and English books, but it was never very comfortable. I -don’t know why. Nothing in Russia’s comfortable. I had a funny old -servant called Sonia. She was fond of me, but she drank; she was always -having relations to stay with her. I would find funny-looking men in the -kitchen in the morning. She had no idea of time, and would cook well or -badly as she pleased. She liked to tell fairy stories; she stole and she -drank and she lied, but I kept her because I couldn’t bother to change -her.” - -He stopped—then began again, but now more dreamily than before, as -though he’d been carried far away from the train, from England, from -Katherine. “Yes—that was it—one couldn’t be bothered. One couldn’t be -bothered about anything, and one didn’t need to bother, because no one -else bothered either. Perhaps that’s just why I loved it, as I see now -that I did love it. No one cared for anything but what was in the -air—dreams, superstitions, stories. The country itself was like that -too—so vague, so vast and boundless, so careless and heedless, so -unpractical, so good for dreams, so bad for work, so unfinished, letting -so many things go to pieces, so beautiful and so ugly, so depressing and -so cheerful, so full of music and of ugly sounds ... so bad to live in, -so good to dream in. I was happy there and I didn’t know it—I was happy -and didn’t know it.” His voice had sunk to a whisper, so that Katherine -could not catch his words. She touched the sleeve of his coat. - -“Come back, Phil, come back,” she said, laughing. “You’re lost.” - -He started, then smiled at her. - -“It’s all right ... but it’s odd. There are so many things that didn’t -seem to me to be curious and beautiful then that are so now.” Then, -looking at Katherine very intently, as though he were calling her back -to him, he said: - -“But don’t talk to me about Russia. It’s bad for me. I don’t want to -think of it. I’ve left it for ever. And when you ask me questions it -revives me, as though it still had some power.... You say that you’re -afraid of it—why,” he ended, laughing, “I believe I’m afraid of it -too—I don’t _want_ to think of it. It’s England now and Glebeshire and -you—and you,” he whispered. They were interrupted then by an attendant, -who told them that it was time for the first luncheon. - - * * * * * - -Afterwards, when the shadows were lengthening across the fields and the -misty sun rode low above the far hills, they sat silently dreaming of -their great happiness. It was an afternoon that was to remain, for both -of them, throughout their lives, in spite of all after events, a most -perfect memory. There are moments in the histories of all of us when we -are carried into heights that by the splendour of their view, the fine -vigour of their air, the rapture of their achievement offer to us a -sufficient reassurance against the ironic powers. We find in them a -justification of our hopes, our confidences, our inspirations, our -faith.... - -So, for these few hours at least, Katherine and Philip found their -justification. - -This was a moment that two others, also, in that carriage were never -afterwards to forget. Millie, under the warm afternoon sun, had fallen -asleep. She woke to a sudden, half-real, half-fantastic realisation of -Philip. She was awake, of course, and yet Philip was not quite human to -her—or was it that he was more human than he had ever been before? She -watched him, with her young, eager, inquisitive gaze, over the cover of -her book. She watched him steadily for a long time. - -She had always liked the clean, bullet-shaped head, his black eyes, his -sturdiness and set, square shoulders, his colour and his strength. She -had always liked him, but to-day, in this sudden glimpse, he seemed to -be revealed to her as someone whom she was seeing for the first time. -Millie, in all the freshness of her anticipated attack upon the world, -had at this period very little patience for bunglers, for -sentimentalists, for nervous and hesitating souls. Now, strangely, she -saw in Philip’s eyes some hinted weakness, and yet she did not despise -him. “I believe,” she thought, “he’s afraid of us.” That discovery came -as though it had been whispered to her by someone who knew. Her old -conviction that she knew him better than did the others showed now no -signs of faltering. “I believe I could help him as they none of them -can,” she thought. “No, not even Katherine.” She had, in spite of her -determined, practical common-sense, the most romantic idea of love, and -now, as she thought of the two of them wrapped up there before her eyes -in one another, she felt irritated by her own isolation. “I wonder -whether Katherine understands him really,” she thought. “Katherine’s so -simple, and takes everything for granted. It’s enough for her that she’s -in love. I don’t believe it’s enough for him.” She had always in very -early days felt some protecting, motherly element in her love for -Katherine. That protection seemed now to spread to Philip as well. “Oh! -I do hope they’re going to be happy,” she thought, and so, taking them -both with her under her wing, dozed off to sleep again.... - -The other was, of course, Henry. - -No one could ever call Henry a gay youth. I don’t think that anyone ever -did, and although with every year that he grows he is stronger, more -cheerful and less clumsy and misanthropic, he will never be really gay. -He will always be far too conscious of the troubles that may tumble on -to his head, of the tragedies of his friends and the evils of his -country. - -And yet, in spite of his temperament, he had, deep down in his soul, a -sense of humour, an appreciation of his own comic appearance, a ready -applause for the optimists (although to this he would never, never -confess). “He’s a surly brute,” I heard someone say of him once—but it -is possible (I do not say probable) that he will be a great man one of -these days, and then everyone will admire his fine reserve, “the -taciturnity of a great man”; in one of his sudden moments of confidence -he confessed to me that this particular journey down to Glebeshire was -the beginning of the worst time in his life—not, of course, quite the -beginning. Philip’s appearance on that foggy night of his grandfather’s -birthday was that—and he is even now not so old but that there may be -plenty of bad times in store for him. But he will know now how to meet -them; this was his first test of responsibility. - -He had always told himself that what he really wanted was to show, in -some heroic fashion, his love for Katherine. Let him be tested, he -cried, by fire, stake, torture and the block, and he would “show them.” -Well, the test had come. As he sat opposite her in the railway carriage -he faced it. He might go up to Philip and say to him: “Look here, is it -true? Did you have a mistress in Moscow for three years and have a son -by her?” But what then? If Philip laughed, and said: “Why, of course ... -everyone knows it. That’s all over now. What is it to you?” He would -answer: “It’s this to me. I’m not going to have a rotten swelp of a -fellow marrying my sister and making her miserable.” - -Then Philip might say: “My dear child—how young you are! all men do -these things. I’ve finished with that part of my life. But, anyway, -don’t interfere between me and Katherine, you’ll only make her miserable -and you’ll do no good.” - -Ah! that was just it. He would make her miserable; he could not look at -her happiness and contemplate his own destruction of it. And yet if -Philip were to marry her and afterwards neglect her, and leave her as he -had left this other woman, would not Henry then reproach himself most -bitterly for ever and ever? But perhaps, after all, the story of that -wretched man at the Club was untrue, it had been, perhaps, grossly -exaggerated. Henry had a crude but finely-coloured fancy concerning the -morals of the Man of the World. Had not Seymour dismissed such things -with a jolly laugh and “my dear fellow, it’s no business of ours. We’re -all very much alike if we only knew.” Had he not a secret envy of this -same Man of the World who carried off his sins so lightly with so -graceful an air? But now it was no case of an abstract sinner—it was a -case of the happiness or unhappiness of the person whom Henry loved best -in life. - -A subtler temptation attacked him. He knew (he could not possibly doubt) -that if his parents were told, Philip would have to go. One word from -him to his mother, and the family were rid of this fellow who had come -out of nowhere to disturb their peace. The thing was so infernally easy. -As he sat there, reading, apparently, his novel, his eyes were on -Katherine’s face. She was leaning back, her eyes closed, smiling at her -thoughts. What would Katherine do? Would she leave them all and go with -him? Would she hate him, Henry, for ever afterwards? Yes, that she would -probably do.... Ah, he was a weak, feeble, indeterminate creature. He -could make up his mind about nothing.... That evening he had had with -Philip, it had been glorious and disgusting, thrilling and sordid. He -was rather glad that he had been drunk—he was also ashamed. He was -intensely relieved that none of the family had seen him, and yet he saw -himself shouting to them: “I was drunk the other night, and I talked to -rotten women and I didn’t care what happened to me.... I’m a boy no -longer.” - -He hated Philip, and yet, perhaps, Philip was leading him to freedom. -That fellow in the novel about the sea and the forests (Henry could see -him challenging his foes, walking quietly across the square towards his -friend, who was waiting to slay him). He would have admired Philip. -Henry saw himself as that fine solitary figure waiting for his -opportunity. How grand he could be had he a chance, but life was so -lofty, so unromantic, so conventional. Instead of meeting death like a -hero, he must protect Katherine ... and he did not know how to do it.... - -As the sun was sinking in a thick golden web that glittered behind the -dark purple woods—woods that seemed now to stand like watchers with -their fingers upon their lips—the train crossed the boundary river. -That crossing bad been, ever since he could remember, a very great -moment to Henry. To-day the recognition of it dragged him away from -Philip and Katherine, from everything but Glebeshire. - -He looked across at Katherine instinctively—she, sitting now upright, -gazing out of the window, turned as though she had known and smiled at -him. They were in Glebeshire, there was the first valley, mysterious, -now like a dark purple cup, there the white winding road that went over -the hill on to Rasselas, Liskane, Clinton and Truxe, there was the first -break in the hills, where you always peered forward expecting to catch a -shimmer of the sea, here that cluster of white cottages that, when he -had been small, had seemed to be tumbling down the hill, very dangerous -to live in ... at last the pause at Carlyon, the last stop before -Rasselas. - -It was quite dark now. The light had suddenly been drawn from the sky, -and the earth was filled with new sounds, new scents, new mysteries. The -train stopped for a minute before Rasselas, and, suddenly all about it, -through the open window there crowded whispers, stealthy movements, the -secret confidences of some hidden stream, the murmured greetings of the -trees. The train lay there as though it had wanted them all to know how -lovely the evening was. On the road that skirted the train a man with a -lantern greeted a cart. “Well, good-night to ’ee,” a voice said clear -and sharp like an invitation; Henry’s heart began to beat furiously. -Glebeshire had welcomed them. - -With a jerk the train stumbled forward again, and they were in Rasselas. -The little station, which was of some importance because it was a -junction for Pelynt and therefore also for Rafiel, lay very quietly at -the bottom of the wooded hill. A porter went down the train swinging a -lantern and crying: “Change for P’lynt. Change for P’lynt.” - -A stream flowed near by, and the scent of a garden flooded the station: -there would be already snowdrops and primroses and crocuses. The whole -party of them were bundled out on to the platform—a great pile of -luggage loomed in the distance. Heads from the carriage windows watched -them, then a pause, a cry, and the train was off, leaving them all high -and dry, with the wind blowing round their hair and clothes and ankles -like a friendly and inquisitive dog. There was sea in the wind. - -“Smell the sea!” cried Millie. “I must have left it in the restaurant -car,” said Aunt Aggie. “Too provoking. I particularly wanted you to read -that article, Harriet. I think you might have noticed, Millie ... you -were sitting next to me.” - -“There’s Jacob!” Henry, suddenly happy and excited and free from all -burdens, cried: - -“Hallo! Jacob! How are you? How’s everyone? How’s Rebekah?” - -Jacob, with a face like a red moon, smiled, touched his hat, stormed at -a young man in buttons. “Do ’ee bustle a bit, John. Didn’t I tell ’ee -the box with the black ’andles?... very comfortable, Mr. ’Enry, sir, -thank ’ee, as I ’opes you finds yourself. Been a bit o’ sickness around -down along in the village ... but not to ’urt....” - -Could they all get in? Of course they could. The luggage was all on the -luggage-cart, and Rock and Clarence with it; a silver moon, just rising -now above the station roofs, peeping at her, laughed at her serious -dignity. - -“No, we’ll go on the box, Philip and I,” said Katherine. “Of course I -shan’t be cold. No, really, we’d rather, wouldn’t we, Philip? Plenty of -room, Jacob.” - -They were off, up the little hill, down over the little bridge and -through the little village. Katherine, sitting between Philip and Jacob, -pressing her cheek against Philip’s rough tweed coat, her hand lying in -his under the rug, seemed to slip, dreaming, fulfilling some earlier -vision, through space. She had wondered sometimes, in the earlier days, -whether there could be any greater happiness in life than that -ever-thrilling, ever-satisfying return to Garth. She knew now that there -was a greater happiness.... - -A white world of crackling, burning stars roofed them in; an owl flew by -them through the grey dusk; the air smelt of spring flowers and fresh -damp soil. The stream that had been with them since their entrance into -Glebeshire still accompanied them, running with its friendly welcome at -their side. Beyond the deep black hedges cows and horses and sheep moved -stealthily: it seemed that they might not disturb the wonderful silence -of the night. - -“Are you warm enough?” he asked her; he caught her hand more tightly and -kissed her cheek, very softly and gently. She trembled with happiness, -and pressed more closely against his coat. - -“Can you smell the sea yet? You will when you get to the top of Rasselas -Hill. This is the high road to Pelynt. It runs parallel with the railway -until we get to the cross roads, Pelynt Cross, you know.... You’ll smell -the sea there. You can see it on a clear day. To the left of you there -is just Pelynt Moor. It runs for miles and miles, right along by the -Drymouth Road.... Look through the break in the hedge. Do you see that -light across the field? That’s John Pollen’s cottage. John was murdered -just about a hundred years ago. He was an old miser, and some men robbed -him, but they never found his head. They say he wanders about still -looking for it.... Oh, if this could go on for ever. Philip, are you -happy?” - -“Happy?” ... Ah! she could feel his body quiver. - -“Yes, and now we’re coming down to the Well. There’s a little wood just -at the body of the hill. We always call it the Well because it’s so dark -and green. It’s the most famous wood for primroses in all Glebeshire. -They’ll be coming now.... We’ll walk here.... I cried once because I -thought I was lost here. They forgot me and went home. Then I was -comforted by the postman, who found me and carried me home.... Jacob, do -you remember?” - -“Ah, Miss Kathie, doan’t ’ee think that I’d forget ought about ’ee. Not -likely. And your mother in a fine takin’, poor soul, too. We’re a-coming -to P’lynt Cross now, sir—as famous as any spot o’ ground in the ’ole of -Glebeshire, sir—Hup, then! Hup, then—Whey—Oh! oh! Hup, then!” - -They pulled to the top, leaving the wood in the dip behind them. The -wind met them, flinging its salt and freshness in their faces with a -rough, wild greeting. Philip could hear suddenly the humming of the -telegraph wires, as though they had sprung from their imprisonment in -the valley and were chanting their victory. To his left, vague and -formless under the starlight, stretched Pelynt Moor, waiting there, -scornfully confident in its age and strength and power, for daylight. -The salt wind flung its arms around them and dragged them forward; -Philip, listening, could hear, very stealthily, with the rhythm of armed -men marching, the beating of the sea.... - -“Now we’re near—now we’re very near. It’ll be Garth Cross in a minute. -There it is. Now we turn off down to the Almshouses. We don’t really -come into the village.... There are the Almshouses and the Common.... -Now round the corner.... There it is—there’s the Gate—the Gate!... Oh! -Philip, are you _happy_?” - -She was crying a very little: her eyes were blurred as they turned up -the long drive, past all the rhododendron bushes, past the lawn with the -giant oak at the farther end of it, round the curve to the hall door, -with Rebekah standing under the porch to welcome them. Philip was down, -and had helped her to the ground. She stood a little away from them all -as they laughed and chattered about the door. She wiped her eyes with -her gloved hand to stop the tears. - -Philip was conscious of standing in a long dark hall with stairs at the -end of it and a large oak chest with a glass case that contained a -stuffed bird taking up much of the space; that, he always afterwards -remembered, was his first impression of the house, that it was absurd to -put so large a chest just there where everyone would knock against it. A -misty babel of talk surrounded him: he was conscious of a tall old woman -wearing a high, stiffly-starched white cap: she had a fine colour, very -dark red cheeks, hair a deep black and flashing eyes. She must be -between sixty and seventy, but her body was straight and vigorous. This -was, he supposed, Rebekah. He saw, in the background, old Mr. Trenchard -being helped up the stairs by Rocket; he heard Aunt Betty in a happy -twitter, “Ah, now, this is nice ... this _is_ nice ... how nice this -is.” He heard Mrs. Trenchard’s slow, sleepy voice: “No—the train was -punctual, Rebekah, quite punctual. We had luncheon on the train ... yes, -we were quite punctual.” - -Someone said: “I’ll show Philip his room,” and George Trenchard, -laughing, cried to him: “Come on, Philip, this way—this way.” -Trenchard, like a boy, bounded up the stairs in front of him. They were -old, black, winding and creaking stairs that sighed as you mounted them. -Trenchard cried: “To the right now—mind your head!” They turned through -a little passage, so low that Philip must bend double and so dark that -he could see nothing before him. He put out his hand, touched -Trenchard’s broad back, and was surprised at his sense of relief. Now -they walked along another passage, very narrow, white walls with -coloured sporting prints hanging on them. “Ah! here’s the Blue Room. -Here you are. Hope you’ll like it—got a decent view. Brought you hot -water? Ah, yes, there it is. When you’ve washed come down just as you -are. Don’t bother to change.... It’s only supper to-night, you know.... -Right you are.” - -His room was charming, with cherry-coloured wall-paper on walls that -seemed a thousand years old. He flung his windows open, and there was -the moon, thin, sharp, quivering with light in the sky, and he could -hear the stream that had accompanied him ever since his entry into -Glebeshire still singing to him. The night air was so sweet, the trees, -that sighed and trembled and sighed again, so intimate. There was an -intimacy here that he had never felt in any country before. - -There was an intimacy and also, for him, at any rate, some strange -loneliness.... He closed the window. He found his way down into the -hall, and there saw Katherine. “Quick!” she cried. “Quick! I hoped that -you’d come down before the others. We’ve got ten minutes.” She was -almost dancing with excitement (she his staid, reserved Katherine). She -was pulling him by the arm, out through the door, under the porch, into -the garden. She ran across the lawn, and he, more slowly, followed her. -He caught her and held her close to him. - -“You love it, Philip—don’t you? You must. Of course you’ve hardly seen -anything to-night. To-morrow we must both get up early, before anyone -else, and come down. But look back now. Isn’t the house simply—? Isn’t -it? Don’t you feel the happiness and cosiness and friendliness? Oh, you -must! You must!” - -“When I’ve got you I don’t want anything. Everything is lovely.” - -“But you’re happy now to be here, aren’t you?” - -“Very happy.” - -“And you won’t be disappointed, will you? You must promise me that you -won’t be disappointed.” - -“I promise you.” - -“And there’s so much to show you! Oh! it’s so wonderful to have all the -old places that I’ve loved so long, to have them all to show you—to -share them all with you.... Oh, wonderful, wonderful!” - -“Yes, I’ll share them all with you. But—but ... Katherine, darling. No, -turn round—come closer. There, like that: I don’t want to share _you_ -with _them_. I don’t want to share you with anyone or anything.” - -“You don’t—you can’t. Of course you can’t. I’m all yours—but then this -is part of me, so _it’s_ all yours too.” - -“And you couldn’t live away from it? You couldn’t imagine having to be -right away from it—if I _had_ to live somewhere else?” - -“But why should you? You won’t have to live somewhere else. And let’s -not imagine anything. Things are so lovely, so perfect, as they are. I -don’t like imagining things. I can’t when _this_ is all so real.” - -“Katie ... Katie ... No, come closer. Much closer. I don’t care if I do -hurt you. I want to. I want _you, you, you_. It’s what I said last -night. Let’s marry soon—not this awful year. I feel—I don’t know—I -imagine too much. I suppose—Rut I feel as though you’d escape me, as -though they’d all come between and take you away. If once you were -_mine_ I’d never care again. We’d stay anywhere, do anything you like. -But this is so hard—to wait like this. To see you caring so much for -other people, who don’t, perhaps, care for me. I _want_ you. I _want_ -you—_all_ of you. And I’ve only got half.” - -“Half!” She laughed triumphantly. “You _have_ all of me—_all_ of -me—for _ever_! Philip, how funny you are! Why, you don’t trust me! I’d -wait for ever if necessary, and never doubt for an instant that anything -could come between. I trust you as I trust this place.” - -A voice broke in upon them. Someone called. - -“Katherine! Katherine!” - -Slowly she drew away from him. “That’s mother. I must go.” - -He caught her hand. “Stay a little longer. They can wait.” - -“No, it’s mother. She wants me. Come on, Phil darling. Supper time. -We’ll creep out again afterwards.” - -She crossed the lawn, expecting Philip to follow her. But he stayed -there under the oak tree. He heard the voices laughing and calling in -the lighted house. He was suddenly desperately lonely. He was -frightened.... He crossed hurriedly the lawn, and as he walked he knew -that what he wanted was that someone, someone who really knew him, -should come and comfort him. - -Before he entered the hall he stopped and looked back into the dark -garden. Was there someone beneath the oak, someone who watched him with -an ironical, indulgent smile?... No, there was no one there. But he knew -who it was that could comfort him. With a swift, sharp accusation of -disloyalty he confessed to himself that it was Anna for whom, during -that instant, he had looked. - - - - - CHAPTER V - THE FEAST - -Some entries in Millie’s diary: - -_March 12th._ Wind and rain like anything. Been in most of the day -patching up the screen in my bedroom with new pictures—got them as much -like the old ones as possible. Went for an hour’s tussle with the wind -out to the Cross, and it was fine. Wish I could have got over to Rafiel. -The sea must have been fine to-day coming in over the Peak. Father drove -Philip over to Polchester in the morning. Felt bored and out of temper -in the evening. - -_March 13th._ Katie and Philip had their first tiff this morning—at -least first I’ve seen. He wanted her to go off with him for the day. -She’d got to stop and help mother with the Merrimans from Polneaton, -coming to tea. Mother said it didn’t matter, but I could see that she -was awfully pleased when K. stayed. But if I’d been K. I’d have gone. -What _does_ a family matter when one’s in love? and she _is_ in love, -more than anyone I’ve ever seen. But I think she’s disappointed with -Phil for not caring more about Garth, although she never owns it. I’m -sorry for him. He wanders about not knowing what to do with himself, and -everyone’s too busy to think of him. I try, but he doesn’t want me, he -wants Katherine, and thinks he ought to have her all the time. Aunt -Aggie makes things worse in every way she can.... - -_March 15th._ Cross all day. Garth isn’t quite so nice this time -somehow. Is it because of Paris? I don’t think so—it used to make one -care all the more. I think Philip upsets one. When you see someone -criticising something you’ve always loved, it makes you hot defending -it, but also, although you’d never own it, it makes you see weak spots. -Then he stirs my imagination as no one ever has done before. I believe -he always sees the place he’s not in much more vividly than the place he -is. If I were Katie I’d marry him to-morrow and make sure of him. Not -that he isn’t in love with her—he _is_—more every day—but he doesn’t -want to divide her with us, and she doesn’t understand it and we won’t -have it—so there you are! - -_March 16th._ Henry very queer to-day. I wish they’d send him to Oxford -or do something with him. It’s so hard on him to let him hang around -doing nothing—it’s so bad for him, too. I think he hates Philip, but is -fascinated by him. He took me into the garden after lunch to-day as -though he were going to tell me something very important. He was so very -mysterious, and said I could advise him, and he was dreadfully worried. -Then he suddenly stopped, said it was nothing, and wasn’t it a fine day? -I know I shall kill Henry one day. He thinks he’s so important and has -got a great destiny, whereas he can’t even keep his face clean. So I -told him, and then I wanted to hug him and comfort him. I’m really -awfully fond of him, but I do wish he was nice and smart like other men. - -_March 17th._ Had a long walk with Philip this afternoon. Really I do -like him most tremendously, partly, I think, because he always treats me -as though I’d come out years ago and knew all about everything. He -talked all the time about Katherine, which was natural enough, I -suppose. He said (what he’d told me in London) that he was frightened by -her idea of him, and wished she thought him more as he was. He said he -hated a long engagement, that he wished it were over—then he said that -he was a poor sort of fellow for anyone so fine as Katherine, and I said -that I didn’t think it did to be too humble about oneself and that I -always made myself out as grand as I could in my mind. - -He said that it was Russia made one like that, that after you’d been in -Russia a little you doubted everyone and everything, most of all -yourself. I said that I thought that rather flabby ... but I do like -him. I don’t think Katie ought to insist so much on his liking Garth. -She’ll frighten him off it altogether if she does that. - -_March 19th._ Rachel Seddon arrived. Mother asked her down. She doesn’t -generally come at this time, and she’s only just back from abroad, but I -think she wants to see how the engagement’s getting on. Of course she -doesn’t like Philip—you can see that in a moment—and of course he -knows it. But he wants to make her like him. I wish he didn’t care so -much whether people like him or no. Henry quite his old self to-night, -and we danced (I tried to teach him a cake-walk) in my room, and smashed -a lamp of Aunt Aggie’s—I’d quite forgotten her ceiling was my floor. -The house is awfully old and shaky—letter from Rose La Touche—Paris -does seem funny to think of here.... - - * * * * * - -Part of a letter that was never posted— - -“I haven’t written to you all these weeks because I was determined not -to write to Russia until I was settled and happy and married for life. -Then, also, you yourself have not written. Have you all, over there, -forgotten me? Russians never do write letters, do they? I don’t suppose -I ought to be disappointed—you warned me. If I’d forgotten all of you -there—but I haven’t. I thought for a time that I had, but I haven’t ... -then a bell rings, and all the servants troop in and kneel down in a row -with their heels up, and George Trenchard reads a bit out of the New -Testament and, very fast, a prayer about ‘Thy humble servants’, and he -has his eye on the weather out of the window all the time. Afterwards -there is the Post—also eggs, bacon, marmalade, brown bread and white -and the family arriving one by one with ‘sorry I’m late!’ Fancy a -Russian saying: ‘Sorry I’m late’!... so the day’s begun. Afterwards, -everyone has their own especial job. I don’t know what my especial job -is supposed to be. George has his writing and the whole place—fences, -weeds, horses, dogs—anything yon like. He fancies himself Walter Scott -at Abbotsford, and is as happy as the day is long; Mrs. Trenchard has -the village and the inside of the house (with Katherine her lieutenant). -There is no living soul from the infant of a week to the old man of -ninety-seven (John Wesley Moyle—he sees visions) who does not have his -or her life exactly and precisely arranged. Mrs. Trenchard has a quiet -hypnotic power that fills me with terror, because I know that I shall -soon be ranged with all the others. She is kindness itself I am sure, -and no cloud passing across the sun’s face makes less sound—and yet she -has always her way. Oh, Paul, old man, I’m frightened of her as I have -never been of anyone before. When I see her here I want to run. I had a -horrible dream last night. The terror of it is with me still. I thought -that I said good-night to everyone and went up to my bedroom. To my -surprise I found Mrs. Trenchard there, and instead of my usual bed was -an enormous feather-bed—an _enormous_ one stretching from wall to wall. -‘You will sleep on that to-night,’ said Mrs. Trenchard, pointing to it. -In some way I knew that if I once lay down upon it I should never get up -again. I said ‘No, I would not lie down.’ ‘I think you’d better,’ she -said in her slow way. ‘I think you’d better.’ ‘No!’ I cried, ‘I defy -you!’ Instantly the feather-bed like a cloud rose, filled the room, was -above me, under me, around me. It pressed in upon me. I tore at it, and -the feathers floated in a great stifling fog against my eyes, up my -nose, in my mouth. I screamed for mercy, I fought, I fell, I was -suffocating, death was driving down upon me ... I woke. There’s nonsense -for you! And yet not such nonsense neither. On a stuffy day here, when -everything steams and the trees and grass and hedges close up about the -house like an army, when Mrs. Trenchard, with Katherine, is arranging -meals and lives, birth and death, when, trying to escape down one of the -lanes, they rise so high above one’s head that it’s like being drowned -in a green bath, I tell you the feather-bed is not so far -away—suffocation seems no idle dream. The fact of the matter is that -there’s nothing here for me to do. It didn’t matter having nothing to do -in Russia—although, as a matter of fact, I always had plenty, because -no one else had anything to do that couldn’t be stopped at any moment -for the sake of a friend, or a drink, or a bit of vague thinking. I -suppose it’s the order, the neatness, the punctuality and, at the same -time, the solid, matter-of-fact assumption that things must be exactly -what they look (which they never are) that fusses me. But really of -course I came down here to make love to Katherine—and I only get a bit -of her. She cherishes the faith that I want the family as badly as I -want her, and that the family want me as badly as she does. She has got -a thousand little duties here that I had never reckoned on, and they are -like midges on a summer’s evening. I would throw myself into their life -if they would let me, but there doesn’t seem any real place for me. It’s -fighting with shadows. George Trenchard takes me for drives, Millie, -Katherine’s sister, takes me for walks—Katie herself is, I do believe, -with me whenever she can be.... I ought to be satisfied. But only last -night Great Aunt Sarah, who is in her dotage (or pretends to be), said, -in the drawing-room to Millie, in a loud whisper, ‘Who is that young -man, my dear, sitting over there? I seem to know his face.’ That sort of -thing doesn’t exactly make you feel at home. With all this, I feel the -whole time that they are criticising me and waiting for me to make some -big blunder. Then they’ll say to Katherine, ‘You see, my dear!’ Oh, of -course, I’m an ass to make a fuss. Any sensible fellow would just wait -his year, marry Katherine and say good-bye to the lot. But I shan’t be -able to say good-bye to the lot. That’s the whole business ... partly -because I’m weak, partly because Katherine adores them, partly because -that is, I believe, Mrs. T.’s plan. To absorb me, to swallow me, to have -me ever afterwards, somewhere about the place, a colourless imitation of -the rest of them. So they’ll keep Katie, and I’m not important enough to -matter. That’s her plan. Is she stronger than I? Perhaps after all I -shall snatch Katherine from them and escape with her—and then have her -homesick for ever after.... Why am I always imagining something that -isn’t here? Russia poisoned my blood—sweet poison, but poison all the -same. You’ll understand this letter, but if George Trenchard, or indeed -any ordinary sensible Englishman were to read it, what an ass he’d think -me! ‘If he thought more about the girl he was going to marry than about -himself he wouldn’t have all this worry.’ But isn’t it just that. If, in -nine months from now, I, swallowed whole by Mrs. T., marry Katie, will -that be much fun for her? I shall be a sort of shadow or ghost. I can -see myself running Mrs. Trenchard’s errands, hurrying down to be in time -for breakfast (although she never scolds anyone), sometimes waking, -seeing myself, loathing, despising myself. Ah! Anna would understand ... -Anna, even when she laughed, understood ... Anna ... I don’t think I -shall send this. I’m determined to drive you all from me until, in a -year’s time, I can think of you safely again. I described Moscow to -Katherine in the train, and speaking of it, has reminded me ...” - - * * * * * - -Katherine could not remember that there had ever been a year since her -eighth birthday when she had missed “The Feast” at Rafiel. “The Feast” -was held always on the 24th of March, unless that day were a Sunday: it -had been held, old Dr. Pybus, the antiquarian of Pelynt, said, ever -since Phoenician days. To Katherine the event was the crowning day of -the spring. After the 24th there would be, of course, many cold, -blustering days: nevertheless the spring, with primroses, violets, -anemones thick in the four valleys that ran down to Rafiel, the sky blue -with white clouds like bubbles, the stream running crystal-clear over -the red soil, the spring was here, and “The Feast” was its crowning. - -For the fishermen and their families “The Feast” meant a huge tea in the -Schools, great bonfires on the Peak, and a dance on the fish-market, a -drink at ‘The Pilchards,’ and, above all, for the younger men and women, -love and engagements. It was on “The Feast” day that the young men of -Rafiel asked the young women whether ‘they would walk out’, and the -young women said ‘yes’ or ‘no’ according to their pleasure. On a fine -night, with the bonfires blazing to the sky and showers of golden sparks -like fire-flies over the quiet sea, there was no happier village in the -world than Rafiel. In its little square harbour the stars, and the fires -and the amphitheatre-shaped village looked down and the ghosts of the -Phoenicians peered over the brow of the hill, sighed for the old times -that they once knew, and crept at last, shivering, back into their -graves. - -This was to be the greatest “Feast” that Katherine had ever known, -because Philip was, of course, to be with her. It was to be, for them -both, the crowning of their love by the place, the soil, the good -Glebeshire earth. To Katherine it seemed that if anything untoward -happened on this day, it would be as though Glebeshire itself rejected -them. She would confess to no one how solemn it seemed to her.... - -Uncle Tim was in charge of the party. Timothy Faunder had not, for many, -many years missed a “Feast”; thither he went, his outward appearance -cynical and careless as ever, but obeying, inwardly, more sacred -instincts than he would acknowledge. He would be in charge of Katherine, -Millie, Philip, Rachel—Henry did not care to go. - -The 24th of March was wonderful weather. Uncle Tim, coming over from his -house up the road, to luncheon, said that he had never seen a finer day. -He said this to his sister Harriet, standing before the window of her -little room, looking down upon the lawn that reflected the sunny shadows -like a glass, looking down upon the clumps of daffodils that nodded -their heads to him from the thick grass by the garden wall. Harriet was -very fond of her brother; she had an intimate relationship with him that -had never been expressed in words by either of them. She was a little -afraid of him. She was sitting now writing notes. She did not pause as -she talked to him, and sometimes she rubbed the side of her nose with -her fingers in a puzzled way. She wrote a large sprawling hand, and -often spelt her words wrongly. - -This conversation was before luncheon. - -“Well, Harriet,” Tim said. “How are you?” - -She looked up for a moment at his big, loose, untidy body, his shaggy -beard, his ruffled hair. - -“Why do you never brush your hair, Tim? It’s such a bad example for -Henry. And you’re standing in the light.... Thank you.... Oh—I’m very -well. Why didn’t you come in last night, as you said you would?... Yes, -I’m quite well, thank you.” - -“I went walking,” said Timothy. “I do brush my hair, only I am not going -to put grease on it for anybody ... How do you like the young man?” - -Mrs. Trenchard nodded her head several times as though she were adding -up a sum. - -“He likes it here, I think, although of course it must be quiet for -him—‘And if Tuesday—isn’t convenient—suggest—another day—next -week!’” - -“So you don’t like him even so much as you expected to?” - -“No.” She answered quite abruptly, spreading her large hand flat out -upon the table as though, by her sudden pounce, she had caught a fly. -“He’s weaker than I had fancied, and vainer.... More insignificant -altogether.... Miss Propert, The Close, Polchester....” - -“He’s weak, yes,” said Tim, staring down upon his sister. “But he isn’t -insignificant. He’s weak because his imagination paints for him so -clearly the dreadful state of things it would be if affairs went wrong. -He wants then terribly to make them right. But he hasn’t the character -to do much himself, and he knows it. A man who knows he’s weak isn’t -insignificant.” - -Mrs. Trenchard made no reply. - -“Well, what are you going to do about it?” at last said Tim. - -“Oh, he’ll marry Katherine of course.” - -“And then?” - -“And then they’ll live here.... ‘Dear Canon, I wonder whether ...’—” - -“And then?” - -“And then—why then it will be just as it is now.” - -“Oh! I see!” - -Timothy turned his back upon her, staring down upon all the green that -came up like a river to the walls of the house. His eyes were grave, his -back square, his hands locked tight. He heard the scratching of his -sister’s pen—otherwise there was deep silence about them. He wheeled -round. - -“Harriet, look here! I’ve never—no, I think, never—asked you a -favour.” - -She turned in her chair and faced him, looking up to him with her wide, -rather sleepy, kindly eyes—now a little humorous, even a little -cynical. - -“No, Tim—never,” she said. - -“Well, I’m going to ask you one now.” - -“Yes?” Her eyes never flickered nor stirred from his. - -“It’s this. I like the young man—like him, for God knows what reason. I -think I must myself once have seen the world as he does. I know I -believed that it could be such a splendid world with such a little -effort—if only everyone were nice to everyone. I understand young -Philip—I believe that this is a crisis in his life and in Katherine’s. -There are three possible endings to the engagement. He can marry her, -carry her off and live his own life. He can marry her, not carry her off -and live your life. The engagement can break down, and he disappear back -to where he came from. You love Katherine, you are determined not to -lose her, therefore you intend to make the first impossible. You see -that Katherine is so deeply attached to him that it will break her heart -if he goes—therefore the last is not to be. There remains only the -second. To that you devote all your energies. You are quite selfish -about it. You see only yourself and Katherine in the matter. You see -that he is weak and afraid of you.... You will break him in, then turn -him into the paddock here to graze for the rest of his life. It would -serve you right if Katherine were to run away with him.” - -“She won’t do that,” said Mrs. Trenchard quietly. - -“Who knows? I wish she would, but she’s faithful, faithful, faithful -down to the soles of her shoes.... Bless her!” - -Mrs. Trenchard smiled. “Dear Tim. You are fond of her, I know.... -There’s the luncheon-bell.” - -“Wait a minute.” He stood over her now. “Just listen. I believe you’re -wrong about Katherine, Harriet. She’s old-fashioned and slow compared -with the modern girl—we’re an old-fashioned family altogether, I -suppose. It’s the first time she’s been in love in her life, and, as I -said just now, she’s faithful as death—but she’ll be faithful to him as -well as to you. Let him have his fling, let him marry her and carry her -off, go where he likes, develop himself, be a man she can be proud of! -It’s the crisis of his life and of hers too—perhaps of yours. You won’t -lose her by letting her go off with him. She’ll stick to you all the -more firmly if she knows that you’ve trusted him. But to keep him here, -to break his spirit, to govern him through his fear of losing her—I -tell you, Harriet, you’ll regret it all your life. He’ll either run away -and break Katie’s heart or he’ll stay and turn into a characterless, -spiritless young country bumpkin, like thousands of other young fellows -in this county. It isn’t even as though he had the money to be a -first-class squire—just enough to grow fat (he’s rather fat now) and -rotten on. Worse than dear George, who at least has his books. - -“And he isn’t a stupid fool neither ... he’ll always know he might have -been something decent. If I thought I had any influence over him I’d -tell him to kidnap Katie to-morrow, carry her up north, and keep her -there.” - -Mrs. Trenchard had listened to him with great attention; her eyes had -never left his face, nor had her body moved. She rose, now, very slowly -from her chair, gathered her notes together carefully, walked to the -door, turned to him, saying: - -“How you do despise us all, Tim!” then left the room. - - * * * * * - -After luncheon they started off. Philip, sitting next to Katherine in -the waggonette, was very silent during the drive; he was silent because -he was determined that it was on this afternoon that he would tell -Katherine about Anna. - -Without turning directly round to her he could see her profile, her dark -hair a little loose and untidy, her cheek flushed with pleasure, her -eyes smiling. “No, she’s not pretty,” he thought. “But she’s better than -that. I can’t see what she’s like—it’s as though she were something so -close to me and so precious that I could never see it, only feel that it -was there. And yet, although I feel that she’s unattainable too—she’s -something I can never hold completely, because I shall always be a -little frightened of her.” - -He made this discovery, that he was frightened, quite suddenly, sitting -there on that lovely afternoon; he saw the shadows from the clouds, -swooping, like black birds, down over the valley beneath him: far beyond -him he saw a thread of yellow running beside the water of the stream -that was now blue in the sunshine and now dark under the hill; there -were hosts of primroses down there, and the hedges that now closed the -carriage were sheeted with gold: when the hedges broke the meadows -beyond them flowed, through the mist, like green clouds, to the hazy -sea; the world throbbed with a rhythm that he could hear quite clearly -behind the clap-clap of the horses’ hoofs—‘hum—hum—hum—hum’—The air -was warm, with a little breath of cold in it; the dark soil in the -ditches glistened as though, very lately, it had been frozen. - -Riding there through this beautiful day he was frightened. He was aware -that he did not know what Katherine would do when he told her. During -his years in Russia he had grown accustomed to a world, inevitably, -recklessly, voluble. Russians spoke, on any and ever occasion, exactly -what was in their mind; they thought nothing of consequences whether to -themselves or any other; their interest in the ideas that they were -pursuing, the character that they were discussing, the situation that -they were unravelling, was always so intense, so eager, so vital that -they would talk for days or weeks, if necessary, and lose all sense of -time, private feelings, restraint and even veracity. Philip had become -used to this. Had Katherine been a member of a Russian family he would, -two days after his engagement, have had everything out with them all—he -would have known exactly where he stood. With the Trenchards he did not -know anything at all; from the moment of his engagement he had been -blindfolded, and now he felt as though in a monstrous game of “Blind -Man’s Buff” he were pushed against, knocked on the elbows, laughed at, -bumped against furniture, always in black, grim darkness. Since he had -come down to Garth he had lost even Katherine. He felt that she was -disappointed in some way, that she had never been quite happy since -their journey together in the train. Well, he would put everything -straight this afternoon. He would tell her about Moscow, Anna, all his -life—tell her that he could not, after their marriage, live at Garth, -that it would stifle him, make him worthless and useless, that she must -show him that she definitely cared for him more than for her family.... - -He felt as though, with a great sweeping stroke of his arm, all the -cobwebs would be brushed away and he would be free. He rehearsed to -himself some of the things that he would say: “You must see, dear, that -the family don’t like me. They’re jealous of me. Much better that we go -away for a year or two—right away—and allow them to get used to the -idea. Then we can come back.” - -But what would she say about Anna? Did she know anything about men, -their lives and affairs? Would her fine picture of him be dimmed? He -hoped a little that it would. He wanted simply to love her, that she -should understand him and that he should understand her, and then they -two together (the world, Garth, the Trenchards blown to the wind) -should— - -“That’s Tredden Cove, that dip beyond the wood,” said Katherine. “We -used to go there—” - -Yes, he was frightened. He felt as though this afternoon would be the -crisis of his life. (There had been already a great many crises in his -life.) He was impatient; he wanted to begin, now, in the waggonette. He -could imagine turning to her, saying: “Katie, darling, I want to tell -you—” - -He was conscious that Lady Seddon was watching him. “Jolly day, isn’t -it?” he said. He thought to himself. “She hates me as the others do.” - -They had come to the Cross-Roads. Jacob put on the drag, and they began, -very slowly, to creak down a precipitous hill. The fantastic element in -the affair that Philip had been expecting as a kind of reply to his own -sense of his personal adventure seemed to begin with this hill. It -resembled no ordinary hill; it plunged down with a sudden curve that -seemed to defy the wheels of any carriage; on their right the bank broke -sheer away far down to one of the Rafiel four valleys, vivid green now -with tufted trees. There was no fence nor wall, and one slip of the -wheels would have hurled the carriage over. At a turn of the road a -cluster of white cottages, forming one figure together as though they -had been a great stone flung from the hill-top by some giant, showed in -the valley’s cup. At his sense of that remoteness, of that lifting -wildness of the rising hills, at the beauty of the green and grey and -silver and white, he could not restrain a cry. - -Katherine laughed. “That’s Blotch End,” she said. “One turn and we’re at -the bottom.” The carriage wheeled round, crossed a brown bridge and had -started down the road to Rafiel.... On one side of the road was a stream -that, hurrying down from the valley, hastened past them to the sea; on -the other side of them a wooded hill, with trees like sentinels against -the sky—then the village street began, ugly at first, as are the -streets of so many Glebeshire villages, the straight, uniform houses, -with their grey slate roofs, now and then hideous-coloured glass over -the doorways, and, ugliest of all, the Methodist chapel with ‘1870’ in -white stone over the door. But even with such a street as this Rafiel -could do something: the valley stream, hidden sometimes by houses, -revealed itself suddenly in chuckling, leaping vistas. Before the houses -there were little gardens, thick now with daffodils and primroses and -hyacinths: through the deep mouth of the forge fires flamed, and a -sudden curve of the street brought a bridge, a view of the harbour and a -vision of little houses rising, tier on tier, against the rock, as -though desperately they were climbing to avoid some flood. This contrast -of the wild place itself, with the ugly patches of civilisation that had -presented themselves first, was like the voice of the place chuckling at -its visitors’ surprise. - -First the row of villas, the tailor’s shop with a pattern picture in the -window, the sweet shop, the ironmonger’s—now this sudden huddle of -twisted buildings, wildly climbing to the very sky, a high, rugged peak -guarding the little bay, two streams tossing themselves madly over the -harbour ridges, the boats of the fleet rocking as though dancing to some -mysterious measure, a flurry of gulls, grey and white, flashing, -wheeling, like waves and foam against the sky, the screaming of the -birds, the distant thud of the sea ... this was Rafiel. - -They left the carriage and turned to go back to the schools, where the -tea had already begun. Katherine slipped her arm into Philip’s: he knew -that she was waiting for him to speak about the place, and he knew, too, -that she was not expecting his praise as confidently as she would have -expected it three weeks ago. A little of her great trust in him was -shadowed by her surprise that he had not surrendered to Glebeshire more -completely. Now he could tell her that it was to the Trenchards and not -to Glebeshire that he had refused to surrender. - -She could not tell, of course, that all his attention now was fixed on -his determination to tell her everything as soon as he was alone. -Walking with him up the road was that secret figure who attends us -all—the fine, cherished personality whom we know ourselves to be. - -To Philip, more than many others, was the preservation of that secret -personality essential. He was, this afternoon, determined to live up to -the full height of it. - -In the schools, at two long tables, the whole village was feeding: the -room was steaming with heat: huge urns at the ends of the tables were -pouring out tea with a fierce, scornful indifference, as though they -would show what they could do but despised their company. The fishermen, -farmers, their wives and families, shining with soap, perspiration and -excitement, sat, packed so tightly together that eating seemed an -impossibility: there were plates of bread and butter, saffron buns, -seed-cake piled up and running over: there were the ladies of the -village, who said: “Now, Mr. Trefusis, do try another,” or “Mary’s -rather tired, I think, Mrs. Maxwell. Shall I lift her down?” or “Well, -Mrs. Pascoe, out and about again, I see,” or “How’s the new cottage, -Henry? Better than the old one, I expect.” - -From the other side of the world came: “Aw, thank ’ee, Ma’am—not so -bad, thank ’ee. Up to Glossen’s Farm they ’ad it praper wild, so they -tell me”—“Yes ... true enough. All over spots ’er arms was, poor -worm”—“Didn’t worry we, thank ’ee, Miss. Marnin’ or evenin’ all the -same to we ... Ah, yes, poor Mr. Izards—’e did suffer terrible, poor -dear....” - -Philip perceived with a sense of irritated isolation how instantly and -how easily the other members of his party were swallowed up by the -Ceremony. He himself was introduced to a prim young woman in a blue hat, -who flung remarks to him over a tea-tray and seemed to regard his -well-cut clothes with contempt. The fishermen did not look happy in -their stiff Sunday clothes, but he liked their faces. They reminded him -more of Russian peasants than any people whom he had seen since his -landing in England. No, he must not think about that ... Russia was -banished for ever. - -Uncle Timothy, Millie, even Lady Seddon were warmly welcomed, but -Katherine was adored. He understood, perhaps for the first time, what -that place must mean to her. They called her ‘Miss Kathie’, they shouted -to her across the room, they cracked jokes with her; an old man, with a -long white beard like a prophet, stood up and put his hand on her -shoulder as he talked to her. Once she broke away from them and came to -him. - -“Phil, I want you to come and be introduced to a great friend of mine,” -she said. - -He followed her, feeling that all eyes watched him, with criticism and -even with hostility. A large, immensely broad man, in a navy blue suit, -with a red, laughing face, hair cut very close to his head, and eyes of -the honestest, stood up as they came across. He looked at Katherine with -the devotion and confidence of a faithful dog. - -“This is Mr. Richard Curtis,” Katherine said. “He used to pick up shells -for me when I was three. He has a boat here with his brother. He’s -always in good spirits, aren’t you, Dick, even when you scald your arm -with boiling water?” - -This was an allusion to some confidence between them, and as their eyes -met, Philip felt a pang of ridiculous jealousy. The man’s face was -flaming, and his eyes were more devoted than ever. He held out a large, -horny hand to Philip. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “I’m proud to shake -’ands with the man wot Miss Katherine is goin’ to marry. We thought, -once on a time, p’raps as she’d always be ’ere, along with we, but wot -we want most is fer ’er to be ’appy—and that we knows now she will be. -I ’ope you’ll be often down—along, sir, in time to come—that is, sir, -if you’re not goin’ to take ’er right away from us.” - -“Why, of course not, Dick,” said Katherine. “When we’re married we’re -going to live quite close. You’ve only got to find us a house.” - -Philip knew that he should say something pleasant; he could think of -nothing; he muttered a few words and then turned away, confused, -irritated, embarrassed. What had happened to him? He was always so -pleasant with everyone, especially with strangers; now, at every turn, -he seemed compelled by someone stronger than he to show his worst side. -“Oh, if I can only get Katherine out of all this,” he thought -passionately, “even for a little time. Then I’ll come back another man. -To have her to myself. Everything’s coming between us. Everything’s -coming between us....” - -At last he had his desire. They had left the others. She had led him, -out past the row of white cottages, to a rock on the side of the hill, -high over the sea, with the harbour below them, the village, curved like -a moon in the hills’ hollow, behind the harbour, and a little cluster of -trees at the hill top striking the blue night sky: opposite them was the -Peak rock, black and jagged, lying out into the water like a dragon -couchant. They could see the plateau above the Peak where the bonfire -was to be, they could see the fish-market silver grey in the evening -light, and the harbour like a green square handkerchief with the boats -painted upon it. The houses, like an amphitheatre of spectators, watched -and waited, their lights turning from pale yellow to flame as the -evening colours faded; crying, singing, laughing voices came up to their -rock, but they were utterly, finally remote. She leaned her head against -his shoulder, and they sat there in silence. - -At last, half-dreamily, gazing forward into the sea that, stirred by no -wind, heaved ever and again, with some sigh, some tremor born of its own -happiness, she talked. “You can see the bonfire and the figures moving -around it. Soon the moon will be right above the Peak.... Isn’t -everything quiet? I never knew last year how different this one would be -from any that I had ever known before.” She turned half towards him, -caught his hand and held it. “Phil, you must be very patient with me. -I’ve felt so much that you were part of me that I’ve expected you to see -things always as I do. Of course that was ridiculous of me. You _can’t_ -love this place quite as I do—it must take time.... You aren’t angry -with me, are you?” - -“Angry?” he laughed. - -“Because the closer I get to you—the longer we’re engaged, the less, in -some ways, I seem to know you. I never realised until you came how shut -up as a family we’ve been, how wrapt up in ourselves. That must be hard -for you to understand....” - -“There it goes!” he broke in suddenly. - -The bonfire leapt into fire: instantly the village glowed with flame, a -golden pool burnt beneath the Peak, the houses that had been blue-grey -in the dusk now reflected a rosy glow, and whirling, dancing sparks flew -up to join the stars. Little black figures were dancing round the blaze; -down on the fish-market other figures were moving, and the faint echo of -a fiddle and a horn was carried across the water. - -Something said to Philip, ‘Tell her—now.’ - -He plunged with the same tightening of the heart that he would have -known had he sprung from their rock into the pools of the sea below -them. He put his arm more tightly around her, and there was a desperate -clutch in the pressure of his fingers, as though he were afraid lest she -should vanish and he be left with sky, land and sea flaming and leaping -beneath the fire’s blaze. - -“Katie, I’ve something I must tell you,” he said. He felt her body move -under his arm, but she only said, very quietly: “Yes, Phil?” Then in the -little fragment of silence that followed she said, very cosily and -securely: “So long as it isn’t to tell me that you don’t love me any -more, I don’t mind what it is?” - -“No—it isn’t that. It’s something I should have told you, I suppose, -long ago. I would have told you, only it was all so over and done with -for me that I couldn’t imagine its mattering to anyone. I told your -father that there was no complication in my life, and that’s true—there -is none. There’s nothing I have nor think nor do that isn’t yours.” - -She said very quietly: “You were in love with someone before you knew -me?” - -He was surprised and immensely reassured by the quietness and -tranquillity of her voice. - -“That’s it—That’s it,” he said, eagerly, his heart bounding with relief -and happiness. “Look here, Katie. I must tell you -everything—_everything_, so that there can’t be anything between us any -more that you don’t know. You see, when I went to Russia first I was -very young—very young for my age too. Russia isn’t much of a place when -you don’t know the language and the weather’s bad—and I’d gone -expecting too much. I’d heard so much about Russia’s hospitality and -kindness, but I was with English people at first, and most of them were -tired to death of Russia, and only saw its worst side and didn’t paint -it very cheerfully. Then the Russians I did meet had to struggle along -in bad French or English (it’s all rot about Russians being great -linguists), and if a Russian isn’t spontaneous he isn’t anything at all. -Then when I did go to their houses their meals simply killed me. They -make one eat such a lot and drink such a lot and sit up all night—I -simply couldn’t stand it. So at first I was awfully lonely and -unhappy—awfully unhappy.” - -She sighed in sympathy and pressed closer to him. - -“I’m not the sort of man,” Philip went on, “to stand being lonely. It’s -bad for me. Some men like it. It simply _kills_ me. But after about six -months or more I knew a little Russian, and I got to know one or two -Russians individually. There’s one thing I can tell you—that until you -know a Russian personally, so that he feels that he’s got some kind of -personal part in you, you simply don’t know him at all. It’s so easy to -generalise about Russians. Wait until you’ve made a friend.... I made a -friend, several friends. I began to be happier.” - -Katherine pressed his hand. The bonfire was towering steadily now in a -great golden pillar of smoke and flame to heaven. The music of the -fiddle and the horn, as though they were its voice, trembled dimly in -the air: all the stars were shining, and a full moon, brittle like -glass, flung a broad silver road of light across the black Peak and the -sea. There was no breeze, but the scent of the flowers from the gardens -on the rocks mingled with the strong briny odour of the sea-pinks that -covered the ground at their feet. - -“The spring came all in a moment, like a new scene at the play. I was -introduced to some theatre people, who had a house in the country near -Moscow. You’ve no idea of the slackness and ease of a Russian country -house. People just come and go—the doors are all open, meals are always -going on—there’s always a samovar, and sweets in little glass dishes, -and cold fish and meat and little hot pies. In the evening there was -dancing, and afterwards the men would just sleep about anywhere. I met a -girl there, the first Russian woman who had attracted me. Her name was -Anna Mihailovna, and she was a dancer in the Moscow Ballet.” - -He paused, but Katherine said nothing nor did she move. - -“She attracted me because she had never known an Englishman before, and -I was exactly what she had always thought an Englishman would be. That -pleased me then—I wanted, I even felt it my duty, to be the typical -Englishman. It wasn’t that she admired the typical Englishman -altogether: she laughed at me a great deal, she laughed at my having -everything so cut and dried, at my dogmatising so easily, at my -disliking Russian unpunctuality and lack of method. - -“She thought me rather ridiculous, I fancy, but she felt motherly to me, -and that’s what most Russian women feel to most men. I was just -beginning to love Russia then. I was beginning to dream of its wonderful -secrets, secrets that no one ever discovers, secrets the pursuit of -which make life one long, restless search. Anna fascinated me—she let -me do always as I pleased. She seemed to me freedom itself: I fell madly -in love with her.” - -Katherine’s hand gave then a sudden leap in his; he felt the ends of her -fingers pressing against his palm. Some of his confidence had left him: -some of his confidence not only in himself but in his assurance of the -remoteness of his story and the actors in it. He felt as though some -hand were dragging him back into scenes that he had abandoned, -situations that had been dead. The fire and the sea were veiled, and his -eyes, against their will, were fastened upon other visions. - -“That year was a very wonderful one for me. We took a flat together, and -life seemed to be realised quite completely for me. This, I thought, was -what I had always desired ... and I grew slack and fat and lazy—outside -my business—I always worked at that decently. Early in the next year we -had a boy. Anna took him with the same happy indifference that she had -taken me: she loved him, I know, but she was outside us all, speculating -about impossibilities, then suddenly coming to earth and startling one -with her reality. I loved her and I loved Moscow—although sometimes too -I hated it—but we used also to have the most awful quarrels; I was -angry with her, I remember, because I thought that she would never take -me seriously, and she would laugh at me for wanting her to. I felt that -Russia was doing me no good. Our boy died, quite suddenly, of pneumonia, -and then I begged her to marry me and come and live in England. How she -laughed at the idea! She didn’t want to be married to anyone. But she -thought that perhaps England would be better for me. She did not seem to -mind at all if I went. That piqued me, and I stayed on, trying to make -myself essential to her. I did not care for her then so much as for my -idea of myself, that she would break her heart if I went. But she knew -that—how she would laugh as she looked at me.... She refused to take me -seriously. Russia was doing me harm—I got slack, sleepy, indifferent. I -longed for England. The chance came. Anna said that she was glad for me -to go, and laughed as she said it. I took my chance.... I’ve told you -everything,” he suddenly ended. - -He waited. The tune across the water went: ‘La-la-la, la, la-la-la-la, -la, la.’ Many, many little black figures were turning on the -fish-market. The blaze of the bonfire was low and its reflection in the -sea smoking red. - -When he had finished Katherine had very gently drawn her hand away from -his, then suddenly, with a little fierce gesture, pushed it back again. - -“What was your boy’s name?” she asked, very quietly. - -“Paul.” - -“Poor little boy. Did you care for him very much?” - -“Yes, terribly.” - -“It must have been dreadful his dying.” - -He felt then a sudden dismay and fear. Perhaps, after all she was going -to dismiss him; he fancied that she was retreating from him—he felt -already that she was farther away from him than she had ever been, and, -with a desperate urgency, his voice trembling, his hand pressing her -arm, he said: - -“Katie—Katie—You’re disgusted with me. I can feel it. But you must go -on loving me—you _must_, you _must_. I don’t care for anything but -that. All men have had affairs with women. It’s all dead with me, as -though it had been another man. There’s no one in the world but you. -I—I—” - -His hand shook; his eyes, if she could have seen them, were strained -with terror. - -She turned to him, put her arms round his neck, drew his head towards -her, kissed him on his eyes, his mouth, his cheeks. - -“Phil—Phil,” she whispered. “How little you understand. My dear—my -dear.” - -Then raising her eyes away from him and staring again in front of her, -she said: - -“But I want to know, Phil. I _must_ know. What was she like?” - -“Like?” he repeated, puzzled. - -“Yes. Her appearance, her clothes, her hair, _everything_. I want to be -able to see her—with my own eyes—as though she were here....” - -He stared at her for a moment—then, very slowly, almost reluctantly, he -began his description.... - - - - - CHAPTER VI - SUNDAY - -On no day of the year—spring, summer, autumn, or winter, did any -inhabitant of Garth House rise before Rebekah. Grimly complete, starch -and stiff and taciturn, she would be about the dim house, feeling -nothing of the cold blackness of a winter morning, finding apparently no -pleasure in the beauty of a summer dawn. Her business was with the -House—human beings (yes, Trenchards as well as the rest) she -despised—for Houses she could feel reverence ... they were stronger -than she. - -Upon the Sunday morning that followed the “Feast” at Rafiel, very early -indeed, she was moving about the passages. Looking out on to the lawn -and bushes, wet with mist, she knew that it would be a bad day.... -Weather mattered to her nothing: people (although the Trenchards might -think otherwise) mattered to her nothing. Her business was with the -House.... - - * * * * * - -That Sunday began badly for Aunt Aggie—and, therefore, for everyone -else. Before she woke—in the dusty labyrinth of her half-waking -dreams—she knew that her tooth was aching. In her dreams this tooth was -of an enormous size, holding, although it was in form and figure a -veritable tooth, a huge hammer that it brought down, with a regular -beat, upon Aunt Aggie’s jaw. She screamed, struggled, fought, awoke—to -find that the tooth had receded to its proper place and size, was still -faintly beating, but not aching—only threatening. This threat was, in -its way, more terrible than a savage ache. When would the ache begin? -Ah, here it was!... no, only the throb.... Would hot or cold food -irritate it? Would the wind?... She got out of bed and drew her blind. -Her clock told her that the hour was seven. Why had Annie not called -her? Annie had overslept herself—what was it to Annie if Aunt Aggie -were late for Early Service? But it must be something to Annie. Annie -_must_ be warned. Annie ... Aunt Aggie was conscious that she had a -headache, that the weather was abominable, and that crossing through the -wood to the church would certainly start the tooth. But she was -resolved. Very grimly, her mouth tightly closed, her heart beating -because she was expecting that, at every moment, that tooth.... Aunt -Aggie had her bath, dressed, informed Annie, who came, very greatly -agitated, at half-past seven, that this would not be the last she heard -of it, walked off to church. During the singing of the collection hymn -her tooth leapt upon her.... It came to her like some malign and secret -enemy, who would influence her not so deeply through actual pain as -through his insistence on what, please God, he would do afterwards. She -hurried home to breakfast through the wet, grey morning, saying to -herself: “It shall not ache! I forbid it to ache! You hear me! You shall -not!” and always that sinister whisper replied in her ear: “Wait. Just -see what I’ll do to you in a moment.” - -In her bedroom some iodine, which she applied to her gum, reduced the -inside of her mouth to sawdust; through the dried discomfort of it all -her enemy still beat at her heart ironically. - -She was determined that the tooth should not alter her day. She knew how -easily ordinary human beings succumbed—such weakness should not be -hers. Nevertheless her love of honesty compelled her to admit that, this -morning, the house looked horrible. It had, as she had often told -Harriet, been always overcrowded with ‘things’—with mats and jars and -pots and photographs, old books, magazines, ink-bottles, china -ornaments, stones and shells, religious emblems, old calendars, and -again photographs, photographs, photographs.... It was not that the -house was definitely untidy, but that once a thing was there, _there_ it -remained. The place looked like home, because it was filled with -properties that any newcomer would instantly discard. Everything was dim -and faded—carpets, curtains, books, pictures; Katherine, Millie, Henry -could remember how the water-colour of “Rafiel Beach,” the photograph of -Trezent Head, the dining-room marble clock, surmounted by the Goddess -Diana minus her right leg, the book-case in the drawing-room, with rows -and rows of the novels of Anthony Trollope (each in three volumes), the -cuckoo clock in the dark corner on the first landing, the glass case -with sea shells in the hall near the hat-rack, the long row of faded -Trenchard and Faunder photographs in the drawing-room, the little corner -cupboard with the Sunday games in it—Bible Lotto, puzzle map of -Palestine, Bible Questions and Bible Answers—all these things had been -“first there” since the beginning of time, even as the oak on the lawn, -the rough grass meadows that ran to the very posts of the house, the -little wood and the tennis lawn with the brown hole in the middle of it -had always been ‘there.’ Aunt Aggie herself had grown profoundly -accustomed to it all—in her heart she would not have had a shell nor a -photograph removed from its place. Nevertheless, upon this grey Sunday -morning she was oppressed, almost triumphantly, about her sense of the -dinginess and confusion of the house. It was as though she said to -herself: “There! it’s not my tooth at all that makes me feel out of -sorts with things. It’s simply Harriet’s inability to put things -straight.” She found then that everyone was very quiet at -breakfast—‘sulky’ one could be justified in calling it. Moreover, there -were ‘sausages again!’ Harriet knew perfectly well that Aggie hated -sausages—nevertheless she persisted, with the devotion of a blind slave -to an august ritual, in having, always, sausages for Sunday breakfast. -Aggie was, in spite of her tooth, hungry this morning, but when, with an -unconscious self-consciousness, during a silence, she said: “No sausage -for me, thanks. You know, Betty, that I never care for them.” No one -said: “Have an egg, Aggie: it can be boiled in a moment.” - -Only Harriet, with her attention obviously elsewhere, remarked -carelessly: “We can have the ham in, Aggie, if you like”—to which Aggie -could only reply: “You know I dislike cold ham, Harriet.” - -But, indeed, Sunday breakfast was never a very jolly meal—how could it -be? The hour was throbbing with a consciousness of the impending -difficulties and problems of the day. There was Church, there was Sunday -School, there were callers in the afternoon: there were meals, the very -heavy midday meal with roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, tea with a -great deal of stiff conversation, something in the manner of Ollendorff, -supper, when the chill on the food typified the exhausted spirits of the -tired company. During too many years had Henry, Millie, Katherine, and -still more Aggie, Betty and Mrs. Trenchard worn Sunday clothes, eaten -Sunday meals, suffered Sunday restraint, known Sunday exhaustion for it -to be possible for any of them to regard Sunday in a normal, easy -fashion. Very right and proper that they should so regard it. I would -only observe that if there _is_ to be a thorough explosion of Trenchard, -of Faunder tempers—if there is to be, in any kind of way, a “family -scene” Sunday will be, almost certainly, the background selected for it. -Aunt Aggie, looking around her, on this morning, at her assembled -friends and relations, ‘thought them all very sulky indeed. Wrapped up -entirely in their own selfish thoughts’.... The day began badly. - -Half an hour before church Rachel Seddon and Uncle Tim were alone -together in the drawing-room. She was standing, prepared and waiting, -staring through the windows at the wild meadow that seemed now soaked -with moisture, bent before the dripping wind. She was thinking very -deeply. She did not at first hear Uncle Tim, and when, turning suddenly, -she saw him, she thought how exactly he suited the day. By his -appearance he instantly justified the atrocious weather: he was wearing -a rough grey suit and a low flannel collar: his heard and hair -glistened, as though the damp had soaked through them, he carried a -muddy trowel in his hand. He came hurriedly into the room, as though he -were searching for something. Then when he saw Rachel he stopped, put -the trowel down on one of the drawing-room chairs, smiled at her, and -came across to her. She had never known him very well, but she had -always liked him—his genial aloofness, the sense that he always gave of -absolute independence, cheerful but never dogmatic, pleased her. Now she -was troubled, and felt that he could help her. - -“What’s the matter with Katie?” she said, abruptly, looking at him with -sharp but deeply honest eyes. - -He felt in his tumbled pockets for his pipe and tobacco, then slowly -said: - -“I was just off for worms—I wanted Henry, but I suppose he’s going to -church.... Katie?... Why?” - -“I don’t know why. I want to know. It’s been these last few days—ever -since—ever since—Saturday, Friday, Thursday—the day at Rafiel. She’s -unhappy.” - -“The lovers have had a quarrel.” - -“If it were only that!... no, that’s not Katie, and you know it isn’t. -Philip’s done something—told her something—” - -“Ah, you think that because you dislike him.” - -“I don’t know that I do—now. I certainly did at first, but now—here -... I don’t know. He’s so much younger than I’d expected, and he is -really trying his best to suit himself to the family and the place. I’m -sorry for him. I rather like him after all. But _what_ is the matter -with everyone? Why is the house so uncomfortable? Why can’t it all be -just smooth and easy? Of course we all hated Katie being engaged at -first—I suppose we thought that she might have done better. But now -everyone ought to be used to it: instead of being used to it, it’s -positively ‘nervy’ the atmosphere.” - -“It’s simply,” said Uncle Tim, pressing down his tobacco into his pipe, -“the attack by a Young Man with Imagination upon a family without any. -The Young Man’s weak of course—people with imagination always are—he’s -weak and impatient, and insists upon everything being perfect. All the -family wants is to be let alone—but it will never be let alone again. -The break-up is beginning.” - -“The break-up?” said Rachel. - -“It’s like this. If Harriet catches me smoking here in the morning -there’ll be a row.” He picked up the trowel and waved it. “Nearly the -whole of our class in England has, ever since the beginning of last -century, been happily asleep. It isn’t good for people to have a woman -on the throne for sixty years—bless her all the same, _and_ her making -a success of it. So we’ve slept and slept and slept. The Old Lady died. -There was the Boer War: there were motorcars, flying machines, -telephones. Suddenly England was an island no longer. She’s _got_ to pay -attention to other people, other ideas, other customs. She’s _got_ to -look out of her window instead of just snoozing on the sofa, surrounded -by her mid-Victorian furniture. Everything’s cracking: new classes are -coming up, old classes are going down. Birth is nothing: autocracies are -anachronisms.... A volcano’s coming. Everything will be blown sky-high. -Then the folk who are left will build a new city—as bad, as stupid, as -selfish as the old one, perhaps—but different ... as different as Garth -from China and China from Paradise.” - -“And Katherine and Philip?” said Rachel. - -“Oh, young Mark’s just one of the advance-guard. He’s smashing up the -Trenchards with his hammer—the same way that all the families like us -up and down England are being smashed up. If it isn’t a young man from -abroad, it’s a letter or a book or a telephone number or a photograph or -a suicide or a Lyceum melodrama. It doesn’t matter what it is. The good -old backbone of England has got spine disease. When your good -grandmother died _your_ lot went; now _our_ lot is going.... When I say -going I mean changing.” - -“There was a funny little man,” said Rachel, “whom Uncle John used to -know. I forget his name, but he talked in the same way when grandmother -died, and prophesied all kinds of things. The world hasn’t seemed very -different since then, but grandmother was an impossible survival, and -_her_ lot went, all of them, long before she did. All the same, if -you’ll forgive me, I don’t think that England and possible volcanoes are -the point for the moment. It’s Katie I’m thinking about. If she’s -unhappy now what will she be after she’s married to him?—If Katie were -to make an unhappy marriage, I think it would be the greatest sorrow of -my life. I know ... I’ve known ... how easily things can go wrong.” - -“Ah, things won’t go wrong.” Uncle Tim smiled confidently. “Young Mark’s -a good fellow. He’ll make Katherine happy all right. But she’ll have to -change, and changing hurts. She’s been asleep like the others.... Oh, -yes! she has! There’s no one loves her better than I, but she’s had, in -the past, as much imagination as that trowel there. Perhaps now Philip -will give her some. She’ll lose him if she doesn’t wake up. He’s restive -now under the heavy hands of my dear relations—He’ll be gone one fine -morning if they don’t take care. Katie must look out....” He waved his -trowel in the direction of the garden. “All this is like a narcotic. -It’s so safe and easy and ordered. Philip knows he oughtn’t to be -comfortable here. Katie, Millie and Henry are beginning to know it. Even -Harriet, Aggie, Betty, George will get a tiny glimmering of it one day. -But they’re too old to change. That’s their tragedy. All the same, you -see, before this time next year George will be proposing to take Harriet -for a trip abroad—Italy probably—a thing he’s never done since the day -of his marriage.” - -And at that very moment George entered, very smart and big and red, with -yellow gloves and a flower in his button-hole. - -“What’s that?” he cried, with his usual roar of laughter. “Who says I’ll -do what?” - -“Take Harriet abroad before this time next year,” said Tim. - -“I?... Not much!... We know better than that. England’s good enough for -us. There isn’t a spot in the world to touch this place in the -summer—so why should we stir? You’ll be saying we ought to go to Russia -next, ... smoking your beastly pipe in here too. Why don’t you dress -decently and go to church?” - -A Church Invasion followed. The Invasion rustled and listened to the -bell that called across the garden. ‘Com-ing?... Com-ing?... -Com-ing?’... Then ‘Come! Come! Come!’ and said: “Where’s Katie?... It -isn’t Litany to-day, so there’ll be time before lunch. Where’s Henry?... -We’d better start, the bell’s stopping. Just hold my prayer-book a -minute, Millie dear, whilst I do this....” - -Finally the Invasion called: “Katie! Katie! Katherine!... We’re going!” -and a voice, very far away answered: - -“Yes.... I’ll catch you up! Go on!” - -The Invasion left, followed by Uncle Tim, smiling to himself, the trowel -in his hand. The house was very still then, relapsing with a little sigh -of content into its Sunday quiet: a bird was chattering gently to itself -in the wet garden. - -Katherine hurried into the drawing-room, her cheeks flushed, buttoning -her gloves, her prayer-book under her arm. Her black dress, a little -open at the front, had a stiff black lace collar at the back, -Elizabethan fashion; now, for the first time in her life, she was -wearing something that she had herself thought about and planned. It was -for Philip.... - -She looked about the empty drawing-room, then hurried away through the -little wood. How unlike her to be late! She was always the first of the -party. But to-day she had been dreaming in her bedroom, sitting, with -her hands in her lap, looking out of the window, wondering, longing to -know ... No, she was not jealous. Her curiosity had no tinge of jealousy -in it. Why should she be jealous? Was not the thing over, closed? Had -not the woman herself dismissed him? That strange figure in that strange -country! The wild town, as he had described it, like a village with -towers and towers, gold and green and blue, and the carts with painted -roofs and the strange writing on the shop-walls ... and the woman -standing there, in the middle of it. This woman, who had known Philip -better than Katherine knew him, whom Philip had madly loved, who had -borne Philip a son. She was still living there, loving, now, perhaps -someone else, looking back perhaps with some scorn and some pity and -some affection to the days when Philip had kissed her, to the hour when -their son had died, to that first meeting in the strange country house, -where everyone might come and go as they pleased. No, there was no -jealousy; but Katherine wanted to have her there, standing in front of -her, so that she might study her clothes, her hair, her eyes. Here was a -woman whom Philip had madly loved—and he had ceased to love her. Well, -he might also cease to love Katherine. But that other woman had -dismissed him. Fancy dismissing him! When one had shared with him such -experiences how could one ever let him go?... Ah, what, _what_ was she -like? Was her voice soft or harsh? How did she look when Philip made -love to her? When Philip made love to her.... Yes, there was pain in -that. - -Katherine hurried under the low porch of the church. She could hear the -voice: ‘Wherefore I pray and beseech you, as many as are here present, -to accompany me with a pure heart....’ - -As the congregation knelt she slipped into a seat at the back of the -church. She had always loved the shabby, ugly little place. It had, for -one thing, nothing to boast about—had no fine carvings like the Rafiel -Church, no splendid tombs like the two Dunstan St. Firths at Poloynt, no -wonderful glass like the Porthcullin memorial window at Borhaze; frankly -ugly, white-washed, with thin narrow grey glass in the side-walls and a -hideous purple Transfiguration above the altar, with plain, ugly seats, -a terrible modern lectern, a shabby nondescript pulpit, a font like an -expensive white sweet, and the most shining and vulgar brass tablet -commemorating the Garth heroes of the Boer War. - -No other church could ever mean so much to Katherine as this, her shabby -friend. She was glad that it was no show place for inquisitive tourists -to come tramping over with haughty eyes and scornful boasts. It was her -own ... she loved it because strangers would always say: “How hideous!” -because she could remember it on wonderful summer evenings when through -the open doors the congregation could hear the tinkling sheep-bells and -smell the pinks from the Rectory garden, on wild nights when the sea -gales howled round its warm, happy security, on Christmases, on Easters, -on Harvest Festivals: she loved it on the evenings when, with its lights -covering its plainness, the Garth villagers would shout their souls away -over “Onward, Christian soldiers” or “For all the Saints” or would sink -into sentimental tenderness over “Abide with me” and “Saviour, again to -Thy dear name”; she loved it because here she had been sad and happy, -frightened and secure, proud and humble, victorious and defeated ... as -this morning she sank on her knees, burying her face in her hands, she -felt at first as though her Friend had found her, had encircled her with -His arm, had drawn her into safety.... - -And yet, after a little while, her unrest returned. As Mr. Smart and the -congregation hurried through the psalms for the day, trying, as it were, -to beat one another in the friendly race, Katherine felt again that -insistent pressure and pursuit. Her mind left the church: she was back -again with Philip at Rafiel ... and now she was searching that -mysterious town for that elusive, laughing figure. Katherine had in her -mind a clear picture; she saw a woman, tall and thin, a dark face with -black, ironical eyes, hair jet black, a figure alert, independent, -sometimes scornful, never tragic or despairing. “If she knew me she -would despise me” ... this thought came flashing like a sudden stream of -light across the church. “If she knew me she’d despise me ... despise me -for everything, even perhaps for loving Philip”—and yet she felt no -hostility; of a certainty no jealousy, only a little pain at her heart -and a strange conviction that the world was altered now simply because -there was a new figure in it. And there were so many things that she -wanted to know. Why had Anna dismissed Philip? Was it simply because she -was tired of him? Was it perhaps for his own sake, because she thought -that he was wasting his life and character there. No, Anna probably did -not think about his character.... Did she still care for him and, now -that he was gone, long for him? Well, Katherine had him now, and no one -should take him.... Would she, perhaps, write to Philip and try to -compel him to return? Did she think of the son who had died? Had she -much heart or was she proud and indifferent? - -“... grant that this day we fall into no sin, neither run into any kind -of danger: but that all our doings may be ordered by Thy governance to -do that which is right....” Mr. Smart’s voice brought back the church, -the choir with two girls in large flowered hats, the little boys, Mr. -Hart, the butcher, and Mr. Swithan, the grocer, the broad backs in the -family pew. Aunt Aggie, Aunt Betty, Henry, Mrs. Trenchard, Millie, -Philip, George Trenchard, Rachel Seddon (the family pew was a hideous -box with a door to it, and you could see only the top half of the -Trenchards.... They, however, could see everything: Mrs. Trenchard could -see the choir, and the choir knew it). Because Katherine was never late, -therefore was she denied the opportunity of studying the Collective -Trenchard Back. To-day she had it in front of her, and it seemed, -suddenly, to be something with which she herself had no concern at all. -For an amazing, blinding, and most desolating moment she viewed the -Trenchards as a stranger might view them. Her loneliness was appalling. -She belonged to no one. She had no place nor country: her mother and -Philip had left her ... only a strange woman, watching her to see what -she would do, laughed at her. As she stood up and Mr. Smart gave out the -hymn, she saw that there was a hole in her glove. She felt shabby and -hot, and covered the hole with her other hand, because during that -moment she was positively, actively conscious of the other woman’s -curious, hostile gaze; then, as the hymn began, security came back to -her—her heart beat quietly again. - - * * * * * - -“Why were you late, dear?” said Aunt Aggie, walking back through the -wood. - -“I dawdled.” - -“Dawdled! How unlike you, dear! I remember years ago when I dawdled one -Sunday mother saying ... Oh, dear, there it begins again!” - -“Is your tooth bad?” - -“Never mind, dear, say nothing about it. The last thing I should wish -for would be a fuss. I thought poor Mr. Smart at his very worst this -morning. Since his last child was born he’s never preached a good -sermon. Really, it’s difficult to be patient with him.” - -“Have you done anything for it, Aunt Aggie?” - -“Iodine. It comes and goes. If it were only steady....” - -Katherine knew that it was of the utmost importance to be sympathetic, -but all that she could think of in her head was, “How silly to worry -about a tooth! How silly to worry about a tooth!...” She knew at once -that Aunt Aggie saw that she was unsympathetic, and that she resented it -deeply. - -“Mind you say nothing, dear,” she said, as they crossed the lawn. “You -know that I hate a fuss.” And Katherine, who had stopped on the grass -and was staring at the horizon, did not even answer. Then Aunt Betty -came up and said: “What a delightful sermon! Mr. Smart gets better and -better.” - -Aunt Aggie did not trust herself to speak. - -Meanwhile Philip also had been unhappy. He did frankly hate an English -Sunday, and to-day the damp-grey heaviness overwhelmed him, so that he -was almost melodramatic in his resentment. - -Four days now had passed since the “Feast”, and he thought that they had -been the worst four days of his life. He, positively, had not slept: he -had been driven by a wild, uncertain spirit, inspiring him now to this -action and now to that, making him cry out in the middle of the night. -“What is she thinking about it? Is it changing her love for me?... -Perhaps she doesn’t love me any more, and is afraid to tell me. She -didn’t seem angry then when I told her, but she may not have -realised—now—” He wanted her to tell him everything, and he wanted her -also never to allude to the affair again. He had confessed to her, and -there was no more to be said—and yet she must say what now, after four -days, she felt about it. Meanwhile she said nothing and he said nothing. -There was constraint between them for the only time since their first -meeting. He had thought that his confession would have smashed the -cobwebs—it had only made them the more blinding. - -Meanwhile it was all so desperately serious to him that he simply could -not endure the watching and waiting family. His insistent desire that -‘things should be perfect’ had from the beginning been balked by the -family’s presence, now his sense that they all wanted to take Katherine -away from him awoke in him a real hysterical nightmare of baffled -impotence. He would willingly have strangled Aunt Aggie, Henry and Mrs. -Trenchard, and then set fire to the house and garden. Then, into the -middle of it all, came this impossible Sunday. - -He set his teeth over the roast beef, Aunt Aggie’s complaints and George -Trenchard’s hearty commonplace; directly luncheon was over he seized -Katherine. - -“Look here! we must go for a walk—now—at once!” - -“My dear Phil! I can’t—there’s my Sunday School at three. I haven’t -looked at anything.” - -“Sunday School! Oh, my God!... Sunday School! Look here, Katie, if you -don’t walk with me first I shall go straight down to the village pond -and drown myself.” - -“No, you mustn’t do that.” She seemed quite grave about it. “All -right—wait for me. I’ll be down in two minutes.” - -They set off along the road to Pelynt Cross, the thin sea mist driving -in their faces. - -He broke out: “I must go away from here. To-morrow, at once—I simply -can’t stand it any longer.” - -“Can’t stand what?” - -“Seeing you swallowed up by the family, who all hate me and want to get -rid of me. You yourself are changing—you aren’t frank with me any -longer. You don’t say what you think. What use am I here anyway? What -good is it my hanging round doing nothing? I’m sick of it. I’m losing -you—I’m miserable. A Sunday like this is enough to make one commit -murder.” - -She put her hand inside his arm and drew him closer to her. - -“I know what it is,” she said. “You’ve been wondering why I haven’t -spoken to you about what you told me the other day. You’ve been thinking -that I ought to, haven’t you?” - -“No, it’s only that I’ve wondered whether perhaps you’ve changed your -mind since then. Then you didn’t seem to be angry, but, thinking about -it afterwards—” - -“Why, Phil,” she said, “how could there be anything different? It’s all -gone, finished. You don’t suppose that I ever imagined that you’d never -loved another woman before you met me. I’m interested, that’s all. -You’ve told me so little about her. I’d like to know all sorts of -things—even quite little unimportant things—” - -“It would be much better,” he said slowly, “if we just left it and -didn’t talk about it.” - -“But I thought you wanted me to talk about it?” she cried. “How funny -you are!” - -“No, I didn’t _want_ you to talk about it. It’s only that I didn’t like -there being constraint—I don’t see why you should care. It’s like -talking about someone who’s dead.” - -“But she isn’t dead. Do you suppose, Phil—would she, do you think, like -you to go back?” - -“No, I’m sure she wouldn’t—at least I don’t think so.” - -“Was she the kind of woman who forgets easily, who can put people out of -her life just as she wants to?” - -“Anna ...” His voice lingered over the name. “No, I don’t think she ever -forgot. She was simply independent.” - -“Would she think of your boy and want him back?” - -“She might.” He suddenly stopped. “She might. That evening he was so ill -she—” - -Katherine looked across the fields to Pelynt Cross, dim and grey beneath -the rain. - -“She had a heart, then,” she said slowly. - -He suddenly wheeled about with his face to Garth. He spoke sharply and -roughly in a voice that she had never heard him use before. - -“Don’t, Katie—leave her alone. What do you go on about her for?” - -“But if it’s all dead?” - -“Oh, drop it, I say! That’s enough.” - -She knew that she was a fool, but something—or was it somebody?—drove -her on. - -“But you said just now that you wanted me to be frank.” - -His voice was a cry. - -“You’ll drive me mad, Katie. You don’t seem to have any conception—” - -“Very well. I won’t say anything.” - -They were quite silent after that: the silence swelled, like a rising -cloud, between them: it became impossible to break it ... they were at -Garth gates, and they had not spoken. She would have said something, but -he turned abruptly off into the garden. She walked, with her head up, -into the house. - -She went up to her room, arranged her Sunday School books, felt suddenly -a grinding, hammering fatigue, as though she had been walking all day; -her knees were trembling and her throat was dry. She sat by her window, -looking down on to the garden, where the sea mist drove in walls of thin -rain against the horizon. Behind the mist the trees seemed to peer at -her as though they were wondering who she was. “I don’t care,” she -thought, “he shouldn’t have spoken to me like that.” But how had it -happened? At one moment they had been so close together that no force, -no power, would separate them—a word and they had been so far apart -that they could not see one another’s eyes. - -“I don’t care. He shouldn’t—” - -She got up, rubbed her cheeks with her hand because they were burning, -and, with a glance at Philip’s photograph (someone she had known years -ago and would never know again), went out. The house was silent, and she -met no one. As she crossed the lawn she thought: “How absurd! We’ve -quarrelled—a real quarrel”—then—“It wasn’t my fault. He shouldn’t—” -She held her head very high indeed as she walked down the road to the -Bridge, but she saw no one, felt no rain upon her cheek, was not -conscious that she was moving. At the door of the Schools she saw Mrs. -Smart, and heard someone say quite sensibly and happily: - -“We’re early. There won’t be many this afternoon, I expect.” - -“Mrs. Douglas has told me that she won’t be able to come—I wonder, -Katie, whether you’d mind taking—” - -“Why, of course.” - -Mrs. Smart was little and round and brown like a pippin. She was always -breathless from having more to wrestle with than she could grasp. She -was nervous, too, and short-sighted, and the one governing motive of her -life was to bear her husband a son. She had now four daughters; she knew -that her husband felt it very deeply. She had once unburdened herself to -Katherine, but, after that, had been shyer with her than before. -Katherine, against her will, had been often irritated by Mrs. Smart—she -had wondered at her restlessness and incapacity to keep up with the -business in hand, but to-day, out of the sinister gloom of that horrible -afternoon, the little woman seemed to Katie suddenly sympathetic, -eloquent, moving. Katie could hear her voice, rather husky, rather -uncertain, on that afternoon of her confession: “... and we did really -hope that Lucy would be a boy, we really did. He would have been called -Edward. Harold has such plans for a son—we have often thought together -what we would do ... and now, I’m afraid....” - -Inside the schoolroom door Katie paused, looked at the room with the -bare benches arranged in squares, the shining maps of the world and -Europe, the case with beetles and butterflies, the hideous harmonium. - -She suddenly caught Mrs. Smart’s hand and pressed it through the damp -little glove. She knew that Mrs. Smart would be surprised—she had never -been demonstrative to her before.... She moved to her part of the room, -three only of her class were present, and to these were added two small -boys from another division. - -“Now, children,” said Mr. Smart’s cheerful voice (he always spoke to -boys as though he were luring animals into a cage), “let us start with -hymn No. 436, shall we?” After the hymn, a prayer, and then, for an hour -that subdued, restrained hum which belongs to the Sunday School only; -being religious as well as disciplined, persuasive as well as obedient. -Katherine now was very proud—as she said: “Well, Robin, and what did -Moses do then?” she was thinking—“But he must come to me—that’s fair. -It was not my fault. He blamed me first for not speaking, and afterwards -when I did speak.... Besides, if it’s all over and finished, why should -he mind?” She looked very young as she sat there, her mouth hard and set -and her eyes full of trouble. Her sensation was as though she had been -suddenly marooned; the desolation, the terror, the awful loneliness -came, as the evening fell, creeping up towards her. “Suppose he never -makes it up—Suppose he goes away and leaves me.” She caught her hands -tightly together on her lap and her breath suddenly left her. - -“Yes, Johnny. His name was Aaron. That’s right.” - -The ordeal was over; she was hurrying back through the dusk to the -lighted house. She went up again to her room, and sat down again by the -window. She listened. The house was very still, but she thought that, -perhaps, he would guess that she was here, in her bedroom, and would -come up. She wished that her heart would stop beating so that she might -hear the better. - -She listened to every sound, to distant voices, to the whimper of rain -upon the window, to the sharp crack of some shutting door. Her whole -mind now was concentrated upon his coming: her eyes left the window and -turned to the door. She waited.... - -Quite suddenly, as though someone else had commanded her, she began to -cry. She did not move her hands to her face, but little dry sobs shook -her body. She hated herself for her weakness, and then that very -contempt broke her down completely, so that with her hands pressed -against her face, desolately and almost, it might seem, ironically, she -wept. Through her crying she heard the door open, and, looking up, saw -her mother there. Mrs. Trenchard closed the door very carefully. “Why, -Katherine!” she said in a whisper, as though this were a matter simply -between the two of them. “I came to see,” said Mrs. Trenchard, “whether -you weren’t coming in to tea. The Drakes are here.” - -It was no use to pretend that she had not been crying. She rubbed her -eyes with her handkerchief, turning her back for a moment on her mother -and gazing down on to the dark lawn that had all melted now into the -rain. Then, when she had gained her control, she faced the room again. - -“It’s nothing, mother. I’ve had a headache. It’s better. I’ll lie down a -little and then come in. Is Agnes Drake here?” - -“Yes. She wants to see you.” - -“Well. I’ll come.” - -But Mrs. Trenchard did not go away. Her large soft eyes never left her -daughter’s face. - -“What’s really the matter, dear?” - -“Really—a headache. This weather and then Sunday School. I felt bad in -church this morning.” - -“You’ve been unlike yourself, dear, for some days.” - -“No, mother—I’ve been just the same.” - -“You’ve been unhappy.” - -Katherine raised her head proudly and gave back her mother’s gaze. - -“There’s been nothing—nothing at all—” - -But Mrs. Trenchard’s eyes never faltered. She suddenly, with an action -that was full of maternal love, but love restrained by fear of its -rejection, love that had tenderness in its request to be accepted, -raised her hands as though she would take her daughter, and hold her -safe and never let her depart into danger again. - -“Katie—” her voice was soft, and she let her hands fall again. “Give it -up, dear. Break the engagement. Let him go.” - -Katherine did not answer, but she raised her head higher than it had -been before, and then, suddenly, as though the irony of her whole -relationship with her mother, with Philip, with the very world itself, -had driven in upon her, she smiled. - -Mrs. Trenchard went on: “You aren’t happy, Katie, darling. We all notice -it. It was so sudden, the engagement. You couldn’t tell at the time. But -now—I’ve never said anything, have I? You’ve seen that I’ve been -perfectly fair, but you know that I’ve never liked him—I said give it -its chance. But now that he’s been down here, you can judge how -different we all are—it’s plain that it won’t do. Of course you -couldn’t tell at the time. But now—” - -“Ah,” Katherine said quietly, “that’s why you asked him here. I -wondered.” - -At the sudden hostility in Katherine’s voice Mrs. Trenchard started. -Then, quite timidly, as though she were asking some great favour, she -said: - -“You mustn’t be angry with me for that. I only care about your -happiness. I’m older—If I think that you are not going to be happy I’m -worried and distressed of course. What can he be to me compared with -you? And lately you yourself have been different—different to all of us -... Yes ... You know that if I thought that he would make you happy....” -Her voice was quickly sharp sounding on a trembling, quivering note. -“Katie—give him up. Give him up. There’ll be somebody much better. -There are all of us. Give him up, darling. Tell him that you don’t love -him as you thought you did.” - -“No, I don’t,” said Katherine, her voice low. “I love him more than ever -I thought I could love anything or anyone. I love him more every day of -my life. Why you—all of you—” She broke away from her fierceness. She -was gentle, putting her hand against her mother’s cheek, then bending -forward and kissing her. - -“You don’t understand, mother. I don’t understand myself, I think. But -it will be all right. I know that it will.... You must be patient with -me. It’s hard for him as well as for you. But nothing—_nothing_—can -change me. If I loved him before, I have twice as much reason to love -him now.” - -Mrs. Trenchard looked once more at Katherine, as though she were seeing -her for the last time, then, with a little sigh, she went out, very -carefully closing the door behind her. - - * * * * * - -Meanwhile, another member of the Trenchard family, namely Henry, had -found this especial Sunday very difficult. He always hated Sunday -because, having very little to do on ordinary days of the week, he had -nothing at all to do on Sunday. Never, moreover, in all his life before -had the passing of time been so intolerably slow as it had during these -last weeks. The matter with him, quite simply, was that his imagination, -which had been first stirred on that afternoon of Philip’s appearance, -was now as lively and hungry as a starved beast in a jungle. Henry -simply didn’t know what to do with himself. Miserably uncertain as to -his right conduct in the matter of Philip and Katherine, speculating now -continually about adventures and experiences in that wider world of -which he had had a tiny glimpse, needing desperately some definite -business of preparation for business that would fill his hours, and -having nothing of the sort, he was left to read old novels, moon about -the fields and roads, quarrel with Millie, gaze forebodingly at -Katherine, scowl at Philip, have some moments of clumsy sentiment -towards his mother, bite his nails and neglect his appearance. He began -to write a novel, a romantic novel with three men asleep in a dark inn -and a woman stealing up the ricketty stairs with a knife in her hand. -That was all that he saw of the novel. He knew nothing at all about its -time nor place, its continuation nor conclusion. But he heard the men -breathing in their sleep, saw the moonshine on the stairs, smelt the -close, nasty, beery smell of the tap-room below, saw the high -cheek-bones and large nose of the woman and the gleaming shine of the -knife in her hand. - -He walked for many miles, to Rafiel, to St. Lowe, to Dumin Head, inland -beyond Rasselas, to Pendennis Woods, to Polchester, to the further side -of Pelynt—and always, as he walked with his head in the air, his -Imagination ran before him like a leaping, towering flame. The visions -before his soul were great visions, but he could do nothing with them. -He thought that he would go forth and deliver the world, would love all -men, prostitutes, lepers, debauchers (like Philip); he flung his arms -about, tumbled over his untidy boot laces, saw life as a gorgeous-tinted -plain, with fame and glory awaiting him—then returned to Garth, -quarrelled with Millie, sulked and bit his nails. - -This was a hard time for Henry. - -He had determined that he would not present himself in the drawing-room -at tea-time, but when half-past four arrived, the afternoon had already -stretched to such ghastly lengths that something had to be done. He came -slipping, stumbling downstairs, and found Philip, with a waterproof -turned up over his ears and every sign of the challenger of wild -weather, standing in the hall. Henry would have passed him in silence, -but Philip stopped him. - -“Look here,” he said, in a low mysterious voice, “will you do something -for me?” - -“What?” said Henry, suspiciously. - -“I’m going out for a long walk. Shan’t be back until supper. Give this -letter to Katherine, and tell her I want her to read it before I get -back.” - -“Why don’t you give it to her yourself? She’s up in her room.” - -“Because I want you to.” - -Henry took the letter, and Philip was gone, sending into the house a -little gust of cold wind and rain as he plunged through the door. Henry -looked after him, shook his head as though the destinies of the world -were on his shoulders, put the letter into his pocket and went into the -drawing-room. The Drake family was calling. There were Mrs. Drake, old -and sharp and weather-beaten, like a sign post on the top of a hill; her -son, Francis Drake, who, unlike his famous namesake, seemed unable to -make up his mind about anything, was thin and weedy, with staring eyes, -and continually trying to swallow his fist; and little Lettice Drake, -aged seven, fifteen years younger than any other in the family; her -parents had never entirely got over their surprise at her appearance: -she was sharp and bony, like her mother. Mrs. Trenchard, Aunt Aggie and -Millie were entertaining; Great-Aunt Sarah was seated in state, in black -silk and white cap, and her stern eye was fixed upon Mr. Drake, whose -appearance she did not like. This made Mr. Drake very nervous. - -Afternoon-tea on Sunday comes at the very moment when the day seems most -unbearable—Later, at about six o’clock, Sunday fatigue will happily -begin to descend and envelop its victims, but at half-past four one is -only able to remember that it is a mistake to have so large a meal in -the middle of the day, that Sunday clothes are chill and uncomfortable, -and that all the people in whom one has the least interest in life will -shortly make their appearance. - -There is also the prospect of evening service, followed by cold supper: -the earlier hours of the day stretch now behind one at so vast and -unwieldy a length that it seems impossible that one will ever reach the -end of the day alive. Aunt Aggie felt all this—she also hated the -Drakes. She saw that Henry, moody in a corner by himself, regarded her -with a cynical eye: her tooth, which had been quiet since luncheon, was -throbbing again. She endeavoured to be pleasant to little Lettice, -although she hated children, and she knew that children knew it. - -“Wonderfully she’s grown!” she said, bending down towards the child, who -watched her with cold curiosity. “And what’s your favourite game now, -Lettice? Too old for dolls, I expect.” - -There was no reply. - -“Tell Miss Trenchard about your games, dear,” said Mrs. Drake. - -There was no reply. - -“You must come and play here one day, dear,” said Aunt Aggie. “Such a -big room as we’ve got upstairs—and lots of toys. You’d like that, -wouldn’t you?” - -There was no reply. - -“She’s shy, I expect,” said Mrs. Drake. “So many children are.” - -Aunt Aggie drew nearer to Lettice. - -“You mustn’t be shy with me, dear. I’m so proud of children. You shall -have _such_ a piece of cake in a minute!” - -But with a little movement of her bony fingers Lettice Drake, in a voice -of chill detachment, said: - -“You’ve got a thpot on your faith,” referring to a little black mole on -Aunt Aggie’s right cheek. The voice was so chill, the indifference so -complete that the failure of Aunt Aggie’s tactics was obvious to the -dullest onlooker. Unfortunately Henry laughed; he had not intended to -laugh: he did not feel at all in a humorous mood—but he laughed from -nervousness, discomfort and disgust. He knew that Aunt Aggie would not -forgive this ... he hated quarrels with Aunt Aggie. She did not look at -him, but her back told him what she was thinking. He wished, bitterly, -that he had more self-control; he knew that, of all possible insults, -Aunt Aggie would regard most bitterly a mock at her appearance in a -public place. The Drakes might be considered a public place. - -Mrs. Trenchard said: “Where’s Katie? You’d like to see her, Agnes, I’m -sure. Perhaps she doesn’t know you’re here. I’ll see. I know you’d like -to see her.” Mrs. Trenchard went away. Then Aunt Sarah, who had been -hitherto absolutely silent, began, her eye never leaving Mrs. Drake’s -face. - -“You’re the daughter of Aggie Mummings, whom I used to know. You must -be. Poor Aggie ... I remember your mother quite well—a feeble thing -always, never knowing her mind and always wanted people’s advice. I used -to say to her: ‘Aggie, if you let men see how feeble you are you’ll -never get married’—but she did after all—which shows you never can -tell—I think, Millie, I’ll have some more hot in this ... yes, I -remember your mother very well, poor thing.” - -“I’ve heard her speak of you, Miss Trenchard,” said Mrs. Drake. - -Mr. Drake suddenly attacked Millie. - -“Well now—about Paris—you know—very different from this hole, ain’t -it?” - -“Very different,” said Millie. “But I don’t consider this ‘a hole’.” - -“Don’t you now? Well—that’s very interesting. Don’t you?... _I_ do.” - -Millie had nothing to say. - -“It’s slow, you know—horrid slow—just weather, _I_ call it. Whether -it’s raining or not, you know—. Yes ... I wonder you don’t find it slow -after Paris.” - -“I was at school there, you see,” said Millie. “It’s different when -you’re at school.” - -“I suppose it is. Yes, I s’pose so.” He began to cram his fist into his -mouth, was surprised at its boniness, regarded it gravely, said: “Well, -yes ... I s’pose so ... Yes ... Well ...” and was silent. - -Then Mrs. Trenchard at last returned: Katherine was with her. Henry at -once saw that Katherine had been crying. The effect of this discovery -upon Henry was elemental in its force. He had, during all his life, -regarded Katherine as almost omnipotent in her strength and wisdom. He -had, moreover, always thought to himself: “One day she will have her -reward,” and his vision of Katherine’s future happiness and glory had -been one of his favourite dreams. Now that cad had been making her -cry.... He was, at that moment, on the very edge of making a scene ... -he would fling Philip’s letter down there, in front of them, Drakes and -all. He would cry: “There! that’s from the beast who’s been making her -cry—and I tell you he’s a cad. He had a woman for years in Russia and -had a son too—that’s the kind of fellow he is.” But Katherine was -smiling and laughing. The Drakes certainly would not see that she had -been crying: even Millie did not, apparently, notice it; Millie, having -done her duty by the Drakes, was going upstairs to write letters. She -said good-bye and left the room ... two minutes later Henry slipped out -after her. - -He caught her at the top of the stairs. - -“I say,” he said. “Come into my room for a minute. I’ve got something to -tell you.” - -“Oh, bother,” answered Millie. “I want to write letters.” - -“Never mind. You must. It’s important.” - -“Aren’t the Drakes awful?” she said, standing inside his door and -observing the disorder of his room with a scornful lip. - -“Yes, they are,” said Henry. “Wasn’t Aunt Aggie angry when I laughed?” - -“A silly sort of thing to do anyway. _What_ a room! You might put those -clothes away, and why can’t you have another shelf for the books? That -table—” - -“Oh, rot! Dry up!” Henry moved about uneasily, kicking a book along the -floor. “I’ve got something I want to—I can’t keep it to myself any -longer.” - -“What is it? About Philip and Katie?” - -“No, not about Katie. At least—not unless he’s told her. It’s about -Philip.” - -“What is it?” Millie said again. - -“He’s the most awful cad—an absolute outsider. I’ve known it for weeks, -only I haven’t decided what to do.” - -“I don’t believe it,” Millie said, slowly. “You don’t know enough about -men to tell whether a man’s an outsider or not.... What’s he done?” - -“In Russia—in Moscow—he had a mistress for years—and they had a son. -He’s never said anything about it, but it’s true. They say he had an -awful reputation in Moscow.” - -“Who’s ‘they’?” said Millie, slowly. The colour mounted into her cheeks. - -“A man I know—a friend of Seymour’s. Oh! I know it’s true. There isn’t -any sort of doubt about it.” - -“I daresay it is. Men are like that,” Millie said, with profundity. - -“Decent men aren’t. Not the sort of man who will marry Katie.” - -Millie said nothing, and there was a long silence in the room. Then, -with a deep sigh, Millie said: - -“If it _is_ true what does it matter if it’s all over?” - -“Perhaps it isn’t. Besides, if he’s that kind of man he’ll do it again. -And anyway, if Katie were to know—” - -“Ah! if Katie were to know—” - -They stood there, young (very young) defenders of Katherine. They would -both of them, always, afterwards remember that moment, that hour, that -Sunday. There came for both of them, suddenly, an active, urgent demand -on their participation in a sudden adventure, a real, serious adventure, -and they simply did not know what to do with it. With neither of them -was their apprehension, disgust, dismay so great as their curiosity. The -first thing, after the pause, that Millie said was: - -“I wonder what she’s like, that other woman I mean.” - -Henry had been wondering for weeks. He now produced his conclusions. - -“It’s my idea,” he said, “that she was simply bored with him, couldn’t -endure him any longer. I expect they had awful rows—Russians do, you -know, and Philip’s got a temper I should think. Then he came home, -and—sort of to save his pride because the other woman had kicked him -out—made love to the first woman he saw. Katherine _was_ the first, you -know.” - -Millie felt a momentary surprise at her brother’s unexpected cleverness. -Then she shook her head: “No, I’m sure it’s not that. He loves -Katherine, I know, anyone can see it.” - -“Well, then,” said Henry, with sudden volcanic happiness, “he’s making -her awfully miserable. She was crying this afternoon, and I’ve got a -letter in my pocket now that he told me to give to her for her to read -while he was out.... They’ve had a quarrel.” - -“Perhaps he’s told her.” - -“If he’s making her unhappy—” - -“I wonder what she thinks about it—” - -Henry’s thought, with all the simplicity that was in his real nature, -was only of Katherine. Millie, although she loved her sister, was -absorbed by the vision of life—dramatic, tragic, gay, sinister, -rapturous—that was slowly being unfolded before her. What she would -have liked would have been for both Philip and Katherine to have told -her, minutely and precisely, how the affair appeared to them. How she -could listen to them if they made her their confidante! Meanwhile she -must content herself with Henry. - -“What are you going to do?” she asked. - -“Do!... There are things I can do,” he hinted darkly. “Meanwhile, you -just keep your eyes open and see whether he’s bad to Katherine. If he is -we must stop it. That’s all that matters.” - -“I wonder what she was like—that other woman,” Millie said, not looking -at Henry, but at her own reflection in his looking-glass, then, without -another word to him, she turned and left the room. - -After she had gone he wondered whether he’d been wise to tell her. She -had offered no advice, she had not even, he thought, been immensely -interested, she had certainly been, in no way, shocked. - -“Girls _are_ queer” was his final reflection. When the bell began to -ring, with its strange little questioning invitation, he suddenly -thought that he would go to church. He sometimes found evening service, -with its candles and old familiar tunes and star-lit sky, romantic and -moving: to-night he felt that his restlessness and indecision must be -influenced. He came downstairs, and found Katherine standing and staring -through the little window to the left of the hall door. She started when -she heard his voice, as though she had been lost in her own company. - -“I’ve got a letter for you,” he said, roughly. “From Philip. He’s gone -out for a long walk until supper, and he said you were to read it before -he came back.” - -He gave it her. She said nothing. He turned abruptly away, and faced his -mother. - -She had on her black Sunday hat and was buttoning her gloves. - -“I’m going to church.” - -“Well,” said Mrs. Trenchard, “I think we shall be the only ones. Unless -Katherine’s coming.” - -“No, I’m not coming,” said Katherine. - -He walked away with his mother, feeling self-conscious with her, as he -always did, but to-night, whether from some especial sense of gloom, of -dripping, wet trees, of wind and rain, or from some real perception of -agitation in his mother, he felt a strong impulse of protection towards -her. He would have liked to have put his arm through hers, to have -defied the world to harm her, to run and fetch and carry for her, to -help her in any possible way. He had felt this before, but he had never -known how to begin, and he knew that any demonstration of any kind would -embarrass them both terribly. - -Mrs. Trenchard said things like: - -“Those two shirts of yours, Henry—those last two blue ones—have shrunk -terribly. I’ll never go to that place in Oxford Street again. They’ve -shrunk so dreadfully,” or “If you think you’d rather have those thicker -socks next time you must tell me.... Do you like them better?” - -Henry was always vexed by such questions. He thought that he should have -been managing his own clothes at his age, and he also could not be -bothered to give his mind seriously to socks. - -“I don’t know, mother.” - -“But you must care for one or the other.” - -“No, I don’t.” - -“I think the thick ones are better. They don’t feel quite so comfortable -perhaps.... Ah! there’s the bell stopping. We shall be late.” - -In church, influenced by the flickering candles, the familiar chants, -the sense of a cosy and intimate trust in a Power who would see one -safely through the night, just as one’s burning night-light had guarded -one when one had been very small, Henry became sentimental and happy. He -looked out of the corner of his eye at his mother, at the so familiar -wave of her hair, the colour and shape of her cheek, the solid comfort -of her figure, and suddenly thought how old she was looking. This came -as a revelation to him: he fancied that even in the last week there had -been a little change. He moved closer to her: then he saw that her eye -was fixed upon a small choir-boy who had been eating sweets. The eye was -stern and so full of command and assurance that Henry’s sentiment -suddenly shrivelled into nothing. His mother wanted nobody’s help—he -sighed and thought about other things. Soon he was singing “Abide with -me” in his ugly, untuneful voice, pleased that the choir lingered over -it in an abominable fashion, trying now and then to sing ‘second’, and -miserably failing. - -But, although he did not know it, Mrs. Trenchard had realised her son’s -mood.... - - * * * * * - -So, at last, tired, a little hysterical, feeling as though heavy steam -rollers had, during the day, passed over their bodies, they were all -assembled for supper. Sunday supper should be surely a meal very hot and -very quickly over: instead it is, in all really proper English families, -very cold and quite interminable. There were, to-night, seated round the -enormous table Mrs. Trenchard, Aunt Betty, Aunt Aggie, Katherine, Millie -and Henry. George Trenchard and Rachel Seddon were spending the evening -with Timothy Faunder: Philip had not yet returned from his walk. A -tremendous piece of cold roast beef was in front of Mrs. Trenchard; in -front of Henry were two cold chickens. There was a salad in a huge glass -dish, it looked very cold indeed. There was a smaller glass dish with -beetroot. There was a large apple-tart, a white blancmange, with little -“dobs” of raspberry jam round the side of the dish. There was a plate of -stiff and unfriendly celery—item a gorgonzola cheese, item a family of -little woolly biscuits, clustered together for warmth, item a large -“bought” cake that had not been cut yet and was grimly determined that -it never should be, item what was known as “Toasted Water” (a grim -family mixture of no colour and a faded, melancholy taste) in a vast -jug, item, silver, white table-cloth, napkin-rings quite without end. -Everything seemed to shiver as they sat down. - -Aunt Aggie, as she saw the blancmange shaking its sides at her, thought -that she would have been wiser to have gone straight upstairs instead of -coming in to supper. She knew that her tooth would begin again as soon -as she saw this food. She had had a wretched day. Katherine, before -luncheon, had been utterly unsympathetic, Henry at tea-time had laughed -at her.... At any rate, in a minute, there would be soup. On Sunday -evening, in order to give the servants freedom, they waited upon -themselves, but soup was the one concession to comfort. Aunt Aggie -thought she would have her soup and then go up quietly to bed. One eye -was upon the door, looking for Rocket. Her tooth seemed to promise her: -“If you give me soup I won’t ache.” - -“Beef, Aggie—or chicken,” said Mrs. Trenchard. “No soup to-night, I’m -afraid. They’ve all got leave to-night, even Rocket and Rebekah. There’s -a meeting at the Chapel that seemed important ... yes ... beef or -chicken, Aggie?” - -Aunt Aggie, pulling all her self-control together, said: “Beef, please.” -Her tooth, savage at so direct an insult, leapt upon her. - -Aunt Betty, in her pleasant voice, began a story. “I must say I call it -strange. In the ‘Church Times’ for this week there’s a letter about -‘Church-Kneelers’ by ‘A Vicar’—complaining, you know ... Well—” - -“Beef or chicken, Millie?” said Mrs. Trenchard. - -“Chicken, please,” said Millie. “Shall I cut the bread?” - -“White, please,” said Henry. - -“Well—” went on Aunt Betty. “As I was saying, on ‘Church-Kneelers’ -signed by ‘A Vicar’. Well, it’s a very curious thing, but you remember, -Harriet, that nice Mr. Redpath—” - -“One moment, Betty, please,” said Mrs. Trenchard. - -“Not so much as that, Harry. Simply the leg. Thank you, dear. _Simply_ -the leg. That nice Mr. Redpath—with the nice wife and so many dear -little children—he was curate to Mr. Williams of St. Clemens for years. -Harriet, _you’ll_ remember—one year all the children had scarlet fever -together, and two of the poor little things died, although I couldn’t -help thinking that really it was rather a mercy—” - -“Mustard, please,” said Henry. - -“More beef, Aggie?” said Mrs. Trenchard. - -“No, _thank_ you,” said Aggie, snapping her teeth upon a piece of bread. -She was thinking: “How selfish they all are! They can’t see how I’m -suffering!” - -“Well, _that_ Mr. Redpath—You _must_ remember him, Harriet, because he -had a red moustache and a rather fine white forehead—when he left Mr. -Williams got a living somewhere in Yorkshire, near York, I think, or was -it Scarborough? Scarborough, because I remember when I wrote to -congratulate him he answered me in such a nice letter, and said that it -would be just the place for the children. _You_ remember, Katherine, I -showed it you.” - -“Yes,” said Katherine. - -Henry, hearing her voice, looked across at her and then dropped his eyes -upon his plate. - -She seemed herself again. Had her letter made her happy? With a sudden -start he realised that Millie also was watching her.... - -“Well, it must have been about 1900 that Mr. Redpath went to -Scarborough. I remember it was the year before that dreadful wet school -treat here, when we didn’t know where to put all the children. I know -the year after he went there poor Mrs. Redpath died and left him with -all those little children—” - -Just at that moment Philip came in. He came with the spray of the sea -still wet upon his cheeks, his hair shining with it. His colour flaming, -his eyes on fire. He had been, in the wind and darkness, down the Rafiel -Road to the point above Tredden Cove where the sea broke inland. Here, -deafened by the wind, blinded by the night, the sea-mist, now lashing -his face, now stroking it softly with gentle fingers, he had stood on -the edge of the world and heard the waters that are beyond the world -exult in their freedom and scorn for men. He, too, standing there, had -had scorn for himself. He had seen Katherine’s eyes as she turned from -him in the garden, he had seen his own wretched impatience and temper -and selfishness. “By heaven,” he thought, as he strode back, “I’ll never -be so contemptible again. I’ll make them all trust me and like me. As -for Katherine ...” and so he burst in upon them, without even brushing -his hair first. Also, the only vacant chair was next to Aunt Aggie.... - -Aunt Betty, who thought that Philip’s entry had been a little violent -and abrupt, felt that she had better cover it with the continuation of -her story. - -“And so the next year Mr. Redpath married again—quite a young woman. I -never saw her, but Nelly Hickling knew her quite well. She always said -that she reminded her of Clara Foster. You know, Harriet, the younger -one with the dark hair and pretty eyes.” - -But Philip had looked across at Katherine, her eyes had met his, and -very faintly, as it were secretly, she smiled: the whirl of that -encounter had hidden Aunt Betty’s voice from him. He did not know that -he was interrupting her. - -“It was a good walk, and it’s raining like anything. The sea was coming -in over the Cove like thunder.” - -No one answered him, and he realised suddenly that all the food was -cold. No matter: he was used to Sunday supper by this time, and he was -of a ferocious hunger. “Lots of beef, please,” he said, with a laugh. - -Aunt Aggie shuddered. Her tooth was in her eye and her toes at the same -moment; Annie had forgotten to call her, there had been no eggs for -breakfast, Katherine at luncheon had been unsympathetic, at tea, before -strangers (or nearly strangers), Henry had laughed at her, at supper -there had been no soup, Betty, who in the morning had been idiotic -enough to think Mr. Smart’s sermon a good one, in the evening had been -idiotic enough to commence one of her interminable stories, the day had -as usual been dreary and heavy and slow, and now that terrible young -man, whom she had always hated, must come in, late and dripping, without -even washing his hands, makes no apologies, demands food as though he -were a butcher, smiles upon everyone with perfect complacency, is not -apparently in the least aware of other people’s feelings—this horrible -young man, who had already made everyone about him miserable and cross -and restless: no, deeply though Aunt Aggie had always disliked Philip, -she had never really hated him until this evening. - -Although he was sitting next to her, he could not possibly have been -more unconscious of her.... - -“You are interrupting my sister,” she said. - -He started and flushed. “Oh! I beg your pardon,” he stammered. - -“No, please, it’s nothing,” said Aunt Betty. - -“You were saying something about Mr. Williams, Betty dear,” said Mrs. -Trenchard. - -“No, please, it’s nothing,” said Aunt Betty. - -There was silence after that. Philip waited, and then, feeling that -something must be done, said: “Well, Henry, I wish you’d been out with -me. You’d have loved it. Why didn’t you come?” - -“I’m sure he was better at church,” said Aunt Aggie. Her tooth said to -her: “Go for him! Go for him! Go for him!” - -Philip realised then her hostility. His face hardened. What a tiresome -old woman she was, always cross and restless and wanting attention! He -kept silent. That annoyed her: he seemed so big and overbearing when he -sat so close to her. - -“And I don’t know,” she went on, “whether you are really the best -companion for Henry.” - -Everyone looked up then at the bitterness in Aunt Aggie’s voice; no one -heard Mrs. Trenchard say: - -“Do have some tart, Henry.” - -“What do you mean?” said Philip sharply. His proximity to her made in -some way the anger between them absurd: they were so close that they -could not look at one another. - -“Oh, nothing ... nothing....” She closed her lips. - -“Please ...” Philip insisted. “Why am I a bad companion for Henry?” - -“Because you make him drink ... disgusting!” she brought out furiously: -when she had spoken her eyes went to Katherine’s face—then, as she saw -Katherine’s eyes fixed on Philip’s, her face hardened. “Yes. You know -it’s true,” she repeated. - -Henry broke in. “What do you say, Aunt Aggie? What do you mean? -Drink—I—what?” - -“You know that it’s true, Henry. That night that you dined with Philip -in London—You came back—disgraceful. Philip had to carry you. You fell -on the top of the stairs. He had to lift you up and carry you into your -room. I watched it all. Well—I didn’t mean to say anything. I’m sorry, -Harriet, if I—perhaps not quite the right time—but I—I—” - -Her voice sank to muttering; her hands shook like leaves on the -table-cloth and her tooth was saying: “Go for him! Go for him! Go for -him!” - -And for Philip it was as though, after all these weeks of waiting, not -only the family but the whole place had at last broken into its definite -challenge. - -Beyond the room he could feel the garden, the lawn, the oak, the -sea-road, the moor, even Rafiel itself, with its little square -window-pane harbour, crowding up to the window, listening, crying to -him: “You’ve got to be broken! You’ve got to go or be broken!...” The -definite moment had come at last. - -His eyes never left Katherine’s face as he answered: - -“It’s perfectly true. I don’t know how it happened, but we had been -having supper quite soberly together, and then Henry was suddenly drunk. -I swear he’d had simply nothing to drink. He was quite suddenly drunk, -all in a moment. I was never more surprised in my life. I suppose I -should have prevented it, but I swear to you it would have surprised -anyone—really, you would have been surprised, Mrs. Trenchard.” - -Henry, whose face was first flaming, then white, said, sulkily: “It -wasn’t Philip’s fault.... I wasn’t used to it. Anyway, I don’t see why -there need be such a fuss about it. What Aunt Aggie wants to drag it in -now for just when everyone’s tired after Sunday. It isn’t as though I -were _always_ drunk—just once—everyone’s drunk sometime.” - -“I’ve never said anything,” Aunt Aggie began. - -“No, that’s just it,” Philip broke in, suddenly flashing round upon her. -“That’s just it. You’ve never said anything until now. Why haven’t you? -Why, all this time, have you kept it, hugging it to yourself?... That’s -what you’ve all been doing. You never tell me anything. You never treat -me really frankly, but if you’ve got something you think will do damage -you keep it carefully until the best moment for letting it go off. -You’re all as secret with me as though I were a criminal. You ask me -down here, and then keep me out of everything. I know you dislike me and -think I oughtn’t to marry Katherine—but why can’t you say so instead of -keeping so quiet! You think I shouldn’t have Katherine—but you can’t -stop it, and you know you can’t.... I’m sorry.” He was conscious of the -silence and many pairs of eyes and of much quivering cold food and the -ticking of a large grandfather’s clock saying: ‘You are rude. You _are_ -rude—You _shouldn’t_—do it—You _shouldn’t_—do it.’ - -But he was also conscious of a quivering life that ran, like -quicksilver, through the world outside, through all the streams, woods, -paths, into the very heart of the sea. His eyes were on Mrs. Trenchard’s -face. - -“I apologise if I’ve been rude, but to-day—a day like this—awful—” He -broke off abruptly, and moved as though he would get up. It was then -that the Dreadful Thing occurred. - -He pushed his chair, and it knocked against Aunt Aggie’s, jolting her. -She, conscious that she was responsible for an abominable scene, -conscious that she had lost all that fine dignity and self-command in -which, through her lifetime, she had seen herself arrayed, conscious of -her tooth, of a horrible Sunday, of many Sundays in front of her equally -horrible (conscious, above all, of some doubt as to whether she _were_ a -fine figure, whether the world would be very different without her, -conscious of the menace of her own cherished personal allusion), driven -forward, moreover, by the individual experiences that Mrs. Trenchard, -Millie, Henry, Katherine had had that day (because all their experiences -were now in the room, crowding and pressing against their victims), -seeing simply Philip, an abominable intrusion into what had formerly -been a peaceful and honourable life, Philip, now and always her enemy -... at the impact of his chair against hers, her tooth said “Go!” - -She raised her thin hand and slapped him. Her two rings cut his cheek. - -When the House was finally quiet and dark again, Rebekah alone was left. -Stiff, solemn, slow, she searched the rooms, tried the doors, fastened -the windows, marched with her candle up the back stairs into the heart -of the house. - -It had been a dull, uneventful Sunday. Nothing had occurred. - - - - - CHAPTER VII - ROCHE ST. MARY MOOR - -Terror is a tall word; it should not, perhaps, be used, in this trivial -history, in connection with the feelings and motives of so youthfully -comfortable a character as Philip—nevertheless very nearly akin to -terror itself was Philip’s emotion on discovering the results of his -disgraceful encounter with Aunt Aggie ... because there were no results. - -As he had watched Aunt Aggie trembling, silent, emotional, retreat -(after striking Philip she had risen and, without a word, left the -room), he had thought that the moment for all his cards to be placed -dramatically upon the Trenchard table had at last come. Perhaps they -would tell him that he must go; they would openly urge Katherine to -abandon him, and then, faced, with force and violence, by the two -alternatives, he was assured, absolutely assured, of her loyalty to -himself. He saw her, protesting that she would love them all, reminded -that (Philip being proved an abomination) she must now choose, finally -going out into the world with Philip. - -He went to his room that Sunday evening triumphant. No more Trenchard -secrets and mysteries—thanks to that horrible old woman, the way was -clear. He came down the next morning to breakfast expecting to be -treated with chilly politeness, to be asked to interview George -Trenchard in his study, to hear Trenchard say: “Well, my dear boy—I’m -very sorry of course—but you must see with me that it’s better to break -off ...” and then his reply. - -“That, sir, must remain with Katherine. I am bound to her....” No, he -had no fear of the result. As he came down the stairs on that Monday -morning, a fine hot spring day, with the mist of the spring heat hazy -above the shining grass, his eyes were lighter, his spirits higher than -they had been since his first coming to Garth. He entered the -dining-room, and thought that he had dreamt yesterday’s incidents. - -Millie cried—“Hullo, Phil! Late as usual.” - -George Trenchard said: “Philip, what do you say to a drive over to -Trezent? It’s a good day and I’ve some business there.” - -Aunt Aggie gave him her withered hand to shake with exactly the proud, -peevish air that she always used to him. There was a scratch on his face -where her rings had cut him; he looked at her rings ... yes, he was -surely dreaming. Then there crept to him the conviction that the -plot—the family plot—seen before vaguely, mysteriously and -uncertainly—was now developing before his eyes as something far deeper, -far more soundless, far more determined than he had ever conceived. Mrs. -Trenchard, smiling there at the head of the table, knew what she was -about. That outburst of Aunt Aggie’s last night had been a slip—They -would make no more. - -His little quarrel with Katherine had needed no words to mark its -conclusion. He loved her, he felt, just twice as deeply as he had loved -her before ... he was not sure, though, that he was not now a little—a -very little—afraid of her.... - - * * * * * - -In the middle of the week, waking, very early on the most wonderful of -all spring mornings, his inspiration came to him. - -He got up, and about half-past seven was knocking on Katherine’s door. -She spoke to him from within the room. - -“Katie!” - -“Yes!” - -He whispered to her in the half-lit house, across whose floors the -light, carrying the scent of the garden-flowers, shook and trembled; he -felt a conspirator. - -“Look here! You’ve got to dress at once and come off with me somewhere.” - -“Go off!” - -“Yes, for the day! I’ve thought it all out. We can take the pony-cart -and just catch the nine o’clock at Rasselas. That’ll get us to Clinton -by ten. We’ll be down in Roche Cove by eleven—spend the day there, -catch the eight-thirty back and be in the house again by half-past ten -to-night.” - -There was a pause, filled with the delighted twittering of a company of -sparrows beyond the open passage-window. - -At last her voice: - -“Yes. I’ll come.” - -“Good.... Hurry!... I’ll tell them downstairs.” - -When the family assembled for breakfast and he told them, his eyes -challenged Mrs. Trenchard’s. - -“Now, look here,” his eyes said, “I’m the dreadful young man who is -teaching your boy Henry to drink, who’s ruining your domestic -peace—surely you’re not, without protest, going to allow me a whole day -with Katherine!” - -And her eyes answered him. - -“Oh, I’m not afraid.... You’ll come back. You’re a weak young man.” - -In the train he considered, with a beating heart, his project. The day -encouraged adventure, boldness, romance; he was still young enough to -believe in the intangible illusion of a Deity Who hangs His signs and -colours upon the sky to signify His approval of one bold mortal’s -projects, and no ironic sense of contrast attacked, as yet, his belief. -If the Trenchards refused to make the incident of Sunday night a crisis, -he would, himself, force them to recognise it. He had been passive long -enough ... he did not know that, all his life, he had never been -anything else. - -In the train they talked to one another very little. He watched her and -was bewildered, as are all lovers, by her proximity and her remoteness. -The very love that brought her so close to him made her the more remote -because it clothed her in strange mystery. - -She was further from him than Anna had ever been, because he loved her -more deeply ... and at the thought of Anna—so constant now and so -sinister—he had a sudden fear of the success of his project.... - -Clinton St. Mary is a village, with one ugly street, on the very edge of -Roche St. Mary Moor. It has visitors from the outside world because, in -a hollow in the moor, lie the remains of St. Arthe Church, one of the -earliest Christian buildings in Great Britain, ‘buried until lately in -the sand, but recently excavated through the kind generosity of Sir John -Porthcullis, Bart., of Borhaze, and shown to visitors, 6d. a -head—Wednesday and Saturday afternoons free.’ Tourists therefore -continually patronise ‘The Hearty Cow’ in Clinton, where there is every -day a cold luncheon—ham, chicken, beef, tart, junket, cheese—for -half-a-crown a-head. Katherine also had relations here, the Vicar, the -Rev. James Trenchard, being a cousin ‘and a dear old man’. However, -to-day the world should be for themselves alone. In the village they -bought ginger-beer, ham-sandwiches, saffron buns, chocolate. They set -off across the Moor. - -When they had walked a very little way they were suddenly engulfed. -Behind them the road, the trees, the village were wrapped in blue haze: -to the right, very faintly the yellow sand-hills hovered. In the sandy -ground at their feet little pools that caught blue fragments of sky -shone like squares of marble: out of the tufts of coarse grass larks -rose, circling, like sudden sprays of some flashing into the air as a -fountain flashes: no mortal being was visible in this world. - -They walked for two hours and exchanged scarcely a word. Philip felt as -though he had never had Katherine alone with him before since the day of -their engagement—always there had been people between them, and, if not -people, then his own silly fancies and imaginations. As he looked his -love was now neither reasoning nor hesitating. “I am stronger than you -all,” he could shout to the ironical heavens, for the first time in all -his days. Then she spoke to him, and her voice reminded him of his -desperate plans.... His confidence left him. It was his great misfortune -that he never believed in himself. - -Very little, this morning, was Katherine troubled about dreams or -fancies. She was happy, as she had always been happy, with absolute -simplicity, her trust in the ultimate perfection of the world being so -strong in her that a fine day, her closeness to Philip, her own bodily -health and fitness were enough to sweep all morbidities far away. She -had not been happy lately—some new force had been stirring in her that -was strange to her and unreal, like a bad dream. - -But now her unhappiness of the last weeks was as faint as the hazy mist, -as shadowy as the thin curtain of sea that now spread before them, hung -like gauze between two humped and staring sand-hills. They rushed down -the deep cup of the sand-valley and up, through the thin wiry grass, to -the top, then down again, then up once more to be perched on the very -edge of the path that twisted down to their Cove. The sea-breeze, warm -and soft, invited them.... Down they went. - -The Cove was hidden by black rocks, piled together, seeming, through the -mist, to be animals herded together to guard its sanctity. Under the -rocks the Cove lay, curved like a small golden saucer, the sea forming -here a thin glassy lake, protected by a further range of rocks that -extended, as though placed there by human agency, across the mouth of -the tiny circle. The water within the rocks was utterly clear, the -seaweed, red-gold and green, covering the inside of the cup: when the -waves broke beyond the barrier they were echoed here by a faint ripple -that trembled, in green shadows, like a happy sigh across the surface, -and, with this ripple, came the echo of the dull boom that the surging -tide was making in the distant caves: this echo was a giant’s chuckle, -sinister, malevolent, but filtered. When the tide was coming in, the -ripples, running in faint lines from side to side, covered the shining -surface of the rocks and stones, with layers of water, thin and fine -like silk, now purple, now golden, now white and grey. - -The silk stretched over the rocks, drew itself taut, then spilt itself -suddenly, with a delighted ecstasy, in cascades of shining water, into -the breast of the retreating tide. As the tide went out, very -reluctantly the colour withdrew from the rocks, leaving them, at last, -hard and dry beneath the sun ... but at the heart of the smooth, glassy -cup, on these warm spring days, there was a great peace and content: -birds, sea-gulls, sparrows, thrushes, came to the edge of the golden -sand, and with trembling, twittering happiness listened to the hollow -booming in the distant caves. - -Lying there, on the little beach, upon such a spring day as this, man -might be assured that the world had been made only for his especial -comfort and safety. The intense blue of the sky, the green wall of hill -behind him, these things could not change: for an hour of his journey, -life, gay rather than solemn, humorous rather than ironic, satisfying -and complete, would seem to be revealed to him. He would wonder that he -had ever doubted it.... - -Katherine and Philip lay, for a long time, saying very little, listening -to the gentle hiss of the water, watching the line, beyond the rocks, -where the sea was suddenly deep blue, feeling the sun upon their faces, -and the little breeze that, once and again, with a sudden gesture of -merriment ruffled the faces of the golden pools with a flurry of grey -splashes and shadows. They ate their sandwiches and saffron buns and -drank their ginger-beer, which resembled hot-soap-and-water: Katherine -waited. She knew that Philip had something to say to her, that he had -brought her here with some purpose, and she seemed to know also that -that gentle sunny hour of the late morning was to be the last moment in -some stage in her life. Her first meeting with him, his proposal to her, -her talk afterwards with her mother, her coming to Garth with him, his -confession at Rafiel, their first quarrel yesterday—all these had been -stages in her growth. She waited now with a struggle, a maturity that -had been far from her experience a year ago. - -He began at last, holding her hand covered by both of his, searching her -eyes with his, very grave; she saw with a little loving smile to herself -that he intended to be of an immense seriousness, that his sense of -humour was very far away. He began as though he were carrying through -the most tremendous business of his life—and a sparrow, perched on the -water’s edge, seemed to watch his gravity with a twitter of superior -amusement. - -“Do you mind my talking now a little? There’s something I’ve got to -say.” - -“It’s a beautiful place for talking. There’s no Aunt Aggie ... only one -sparrow to overhear us.” - -“But it’s really important—terribly important. It’s simply this—that -last night was a crisis. I’m never going back to Garth again.” - -Katherine laughed, but her eyes were suddenly frightened. - -“My dear Phil ... What do you mean?” - -“No, I’m not—I mean—at least not until certain things have happened. -You’re not going back either—” - -“_I’m_ not going back?” - -“No, not as Miss Katherine Trenchard—one day as Mrs. Philip Mark, -perhaps.” - -Katherine drew her hand from his, sat up, looked out to the deep blue -line of sea, said, at last, quietly: - -“Now please, Philip, explain the joke. The afternoon’s too lovely to be -wasted.” - -“There is no joke. I’m perfectly serious. I can’t stand it any longer. -_I cannot stand it_—and when I say ‘it’ I mean the family, their -treatment of me, their dislike of me, their determination to swallow me -up in their feather-bed and make an end of me—the whole long -engagement; _you’re_ suffering. _I’m_ suffering. You were wretched -yesterday—so was I. When you’re wretched I could burn the whole family, -Garth and Glebeshire and all included and waste no pity whatever.” - -But Katherine only laughed: - -“Do you know, Phil, you’re exaggerating the whole thing in the most -ridiculous manner. It’s quite natural—it’s because you don’t know our -habits and manners. Aunt Aggie lost her temper last night—we were all -rather worked up—Sunday can be awful. She won’t lose her temper again. -We had a quarrel. Well, I suppose all lovers have quarrels. You think -they’ll all be terribly shocked because you let Henry drink too much -that night in London. That shows that you simply don’t know the family -at all, because if you did you’d know that it’s never shocked at -anything that it hasn’t seen with its own eyes. Aunt Aggie _saw_ Henry, -so she _was_ shocked—but for the others.... If they were to know—well, -what you told me at Rafiel—then—perhaps—” - -“Then?” Philip cried eagerly. - -“They might be—I don’t know what they’d do.” She turned her eyes to his -face again. “But you’re so impatient, Phil. You want everything to -happen in a minute—You’re discontented because they all have their own -lives, which you can’t share. But you’re so strange. _I’m_ the person -whose life you ought to share, and yet you don’t. You’ve hardly looked -at all this. You’ve taken no interest at all in the fishermen or the -villagers. Garth is nothing to you—” - -“I _hate_ Garth!” he broke out furiously. “I—” Then he dropped his -voice. “That’ll all come later.... I’ll just say this about myself. It’s -only what I’ve always told you, that I’m simply not worthy for you to -care about me. You may have had some illusions about me at first. You -can’t have any now. I’m weak and backboneless, always wanting things -better than I can have them, ready to be influenced by simply anyone if -they’re nice to me, hating it when people aren’t nice. I’m no good at -all, except for one thing—my love for you.” - -He bent forward and drew her towards him. - -“I have never known anything like it before. I shall never know anything -like it again—and just because I do know myself so well I’m going to -hold on to it and let nothing take it from me. They, all of them—are -doing their best to take it from me. Your mother knows me much better -than you do.... She despises me completely and she knows the way to -influence me.” - -Katherine would have spoken, but he stopped her. - -“Oh, yes, she does. Have you noticed that she and I are never alone -together, that we never have talks nor walks nor anything? She is always -perfectly kind, but she knows, and I know that she knows, that if I were -once to get really intimate with her I might overcome my fright of her, -that it’s by my imagination of her that she’s influencing me. And she is -... she is ... she is.” His hand trembled against Katherine. “You don’t -know. You don’t see! You love her and think that she’s simply your -mother. But you don’t know.... Already she can get me to do anything she -likes. If she wants me to waste every day doing nothing, thinking -nothing, becoming a stupid bore, with no ambitions, no lips of his own, -no energy—and that’s what she _does_ want—she’s making me exactly -that. I feel her when she’s not there—all over the house, in the -garden, in the roads. I can’t escape her. In half a year’s time, when -the wedding day comes, all I shall want is to be allowed to cut the -flowers for the dinner-table and to hold your mother’s wool when she’s -winding it.” - -He paused, stood suddenly upon his feet: “It’s like my own mother over -again—only Mrs. Trenchard’s cleverer ... but I tell you, Katie, you -shan’t marry a man like that. If you marry me down there, and we’re to -spend all our lives there, a year after marriage you’ll despise me, hate -me for the thing I’ve become.... I’ve thought it all out. That scene -last night decided me. You shan’t go back—not until we’re married.” - -He stood proudly facing her, his whole body stirred to his decision. But -even then, as she looked at him she saw that his upper lip trembled a -little—his upper lip had always been weak. He looked down at her, then -sat very close to her, leaning towards her as though he were pleading -with her. - -“I know that ever since our engagement you’ve been thinking that I’ve -imagined things. Perhaps I have. Perhaps that’s my way, and always has -been. And Russia increased my tendency. But if _that’s_ true then it -ought to be taken into account just as much as though I’d got a game leg -or was blind of one eye. You can’t just dismiss it and say: ‘He’s a -silly ass—he oughtn’t to imagine things’. I know that if I were -sensible I should just hang on for six months more, marry you and then -take you right off. But I know myself—by that time I shall simply do -exactly what your mother tells me—and she’ll tell me to dig potatoes in -the garden.” - -“You’re unjust to yourself, Phil,” looking up at him. “You’re not so -weak ... and soon you’ll love Garth. You’ll understand the family, even -perhaps mother. It must come—it _must_. I want it so.” - -“It will never come,” he answered her firmly. “You can make up your mind -to that now for ever. The only way we can live altogether like a happy -family in the future is for me to become a chair or table or one of your -aunt’s green cushions. That’s what I shall become if I don’t do -something now.” - -She waited because she saw that he had more to say. - -“And do you suppose that even then any of us would be happy? See already -how everyone is changed! Millie, Henry, Aunt Aggie, you, even your -father. Isn’t he always wondering now what’s come over everyone? There’s -a surprised look in his eyes. And it’s I!... I!... I! It’s like a pebble -in your shoe that you can’t find. I’m the pebble, and they’ll never be -comfortable so long as I’m here. They’re not only threatened with losing -you, they’re threatened with losing their confidence, their trust, their -superstitions.” - -“I’m one of them,” Katherine said. “You forget that. We may be slow and -stupid and unimaginative, as you say, but we _are_ fond of one another. -You’re impatient, Phil. I tell you to wait ... wait!” - -“Wait!” He looked out to sea, where the bar of blue was now sown with -white dancing feathers. “I can’t wait ... there’s something else. -There’s Anna.” - -Katherine nodded her head as though she had known that this would come. - -“Ever since that day at Rafiel she’s been between us; you’ve known it as -well as I. It hasn’t been quite as I’d expected. I thought perhaps that -you’d be shocked. You weren’t shocked. I thought that I’d be confused -myself. I haven’t been confused. You’ve wanted to know about -her—anything I could tell you. You’ve simply been curious, as you -might, about anyone I’d known before I met you—but the business has -been this, that the more you’ve asked the more I’ve thought about her. -The more she’s come back to me. It hasn’t been that I’ve wanted her, -even that I’ve thought tenderly about her, only that your curiosity has -revived all that life as though I were back in it all again. I’ve -remembered so much that I’d forgotten.” - -Katherine took his hand and came close to him. “Yes. I knew that it was -like that,” she said. “I knew that it was foolish of me to ask -questions, to make you talk about her, and I couldn’t help myself—I -knew that it was foolish, and I couldn’t help myself. And the strange -thing is that I don’t suppose I’ve ever wondered about anyone whom I -didn’t know in my life before. I’ve never been able to imagine people -unless I had pictures or something to help me. But now—I seem to see -her as though I’d known her all my days. And I’m not jealous—no, truly, -truly, I’m not jealous. And yet I don’t like her—I grudge—I grudge—” - -She suddenly hid her face in the sleeve of his coat and her hand went up -to his cheek. - -Philip, holding her with his arm as though he were protecting her, went -on: “And you’ve felt that I didn’t want you to ask me questions about -her—and you’ve been silent. I knew that you were silent because you -were afraid of my restlessness, and that has made restraint between us. -You wouldn’t speak and I wouldn’t speak, and we’ve both been thinking of -Anna until we’ve created her between us. It’s so like her—_so like_ -her. Why,” he went on, “you’ll think this absurd perhaps—but I don’t -know—it’s not so absurd when you’ve lived with her. I wrote and told -her about us—about our engagement. I’ve never had an answer from her, -but I can fancy her saying to herself: ‘It would be amusing to bring him -back to me—not that I want him. I should be bored to death if I had to -live with him again—but just for the humour of it. He was always so -weak. He’ll come if I ask him.’ - -“I can imagine her saying that, and then I can imagine her just -projecting herself over here into the middle of us—simply for the fun -of it. I can see her laughing to herself in the way she used to when she -saw people behaving in what she thought was a childish fashion. So now -she’ll think us all childish, and she’ll simply come here, her laughing, -mocking spirit—and do her best to break us all up.” - -“You’re afraid of her!” Katherine cried, as though she were challenging -him. - -“Yes. I’m afraid of her,” he acknowledged. - -“Well, I’m not,” she answered. “She can do her utmost. She can laugh as -much as she pleases.” - -“She shall be given no chance,” he answered eagerly. “See, Katherine! -Listen!... All that matters is that we should be married. She can’t -touch us then—Garth can’t touch us, the family can’t touch us. I -suddenly saw it as an inspiration—that you’ve got to come up with me -now—to London. We’ll get a special licence. We’ll be married to-morrow. -If we catch the five-thirty from Truxe we’ll be up there soon after -midnight. We can get a trap in Clinton to drive us over. It’s got to be. -It’s just got to be. There can be no alternative.” - -She shook her head smiling. “What a baby you are, Phil! Just because -Aunt Aggie lost her temper last night we’ve got to be married in half an -hour. And what about our promise to father of a year’s engagement?” - -“That’s all right,” he answered eagerly. “If your father had wanted to -break off the engagement before the year’s up he’d have done so, you can -be sure.” - -She laughed. “But I don’t want to be married all in a minute. You don’t -know how women care about trousseaux and presents and bells and—” - -“Ah! Please, Katie!... It’s most awfully serious! Please—” - -She was grave then. They stood up together on the little beach, her arm -round his neck. - -“Phil. I do understand better than you think. But do you know what it -would mean if we were to run away now like this? My mother would never -forgive me. It would mean that I was throwing off everything—the place, -mother, all my life.... Of course I would throw it away for you if that -were the only course to take. But it isn’t the only course. You see life -exaggerated, Phil. Everything that happened yesterday has irritated you. -To-morrow—” - -“To-morrow may be too late,” he answered her. “At least give my idea -half an hour, I’ll go off now for a walk by myself. In half an hour’s -time I’ll be back. Do your best for me.” - -She looked at him, bent forward and kissed him. - -“Yes, go—Come back in half an hour.” - -She watched him climb the rocks, wind up the path, turn at the bend and -look back to her, then disappear. She sat down on the beach, rested her -elbows on her knees and looked out to sea. She was utterly alone: the -pool, now spun gold, beneath a sun that was slowly sinking to bars of -saffron, quivered only with the reaction of the retreating tide; the -rocks were black and sharp against the evening sky. - -Katherine, as she sat there, had, at first, a desperate wish for the -help of some older person’s advice. It was not that she could, for an -instant, seriously contemplate this mad proposal of Philip’s—and yet he -had imparted to her some of his own fear and distrust of the possible -machinations of heaven. What he had said was true—that ever since he -had told her about Anna it had been as though they had taken some third -person into their lives—taken her unwillingly, almost unconsciously, -but nevertheless destructively. Then also, although Katherine had denied -it, she knew now that what he had said about the family was true. She -not only could not hope now that they and Philip would ever live happily -together—it was also the fact that they had changed. Her mother had -changed—her Aunts, her father, Millie, Henry—they had all -changed—changed to her and changed to themselves. - -Katherine, moreover, now for the first time in her life criticised her -family—even her mother. She felt as though she and Philip had needed -help, and that the family, instead of giving it, had made difficulties -and trouble. Her mother had, deliberately, made trouble—had been hard -and unkind to Philip, had brought him to Garth that he might seem to -Katherine unsuited there, had put him into impossible positions and then -laughed at him. Her mother had come to her and asked her to give Philip -up; in retrospect that scene of yesterday afternoon seemed a deliberate -challenge—but a challenge offered behind Philip’s back. - -Now her whole impulse was that Philip must at all costs be protected and -defended, and, for the first time, this afternoon, sitting there alone -with the world all hers, she realised how her feeling for him had -changed. When she had first known him she had fallen in love with him -because she had thought him the strongest, most adventurous, most -fearless of mortal souls. Now—she knew that he was weak, afraid of -himself, unbalanced, a prey to moods, impulses, terrors—and with that -knowledge of him her love had grown, had flung its wide arm about him, -had caught him to her heart with a fierce protection that the attraction -for his strength had never given her. - -With her new knowledge of him came also her direct antagonism with that -other woman. She knew that what Philip had said was true, that her -curiosity had increased for them both the live actuality of that figure. -Katherine had always been afraid of cynical people, who must, always, -she felt, despise her for the simplicity of her beliefs, the confidence -of her trust. She remembered a woman who had, at one time, been a close -friend of Aunt Aggie’s, a sharp, masculine woman with pincenez, who, -when Katherine had said anything, had looked at her sharply through her -glasses, laughed as though she were ringing a coin to see whether it -were good metal, and said: ‘Do you think so?’ - -Katherine had hated her and been always helpless before her, clumsy, -awkward and tongue-tied. Now it was a woman of that kind whom she was -called out to challenge. Her thought in church yesterday was with her -now more strongly than ever. “How she would despise me if she knew -me!...” and then, “what a power she must have if she can come back like -this into Philip’s life.” - -And yet not such a power! Always before him was that world where he was -not: his fancy, running before him, cried to him: “Yes. There! There! -was happiness,” or “In such a fashion happiness will come to you”—as -though the only end of life was happiness, the security of the ideal -moment. Yes, Katherine knew why Anna had laughed at Philip. - -Her thoughts turned back again then to his mad idea of their escape to -London, and, suddenly, as though some woman were with her whom she had -never seen before, some voice within her cried: “Ah! I wish he’d make me -go! simply take me prisoner, force me by brutal strength, leave me no -will nor power.” Her imagination, excited, almost breathless, began to -play round this. She saw his return, heard him ask her whether she would -go with him, heard her answer that she would not, heard him say: “But -you are in my power now. I have arranged everything. Whether you like it -or not we go....” - -She would protest, but in her surrender, triumphant at heart, she would -see her utter defeat of that other woman, whose baffled ghost might -whistle across the dark moor back to its own country to find other -humours for its decision. - -“Poor Ghost,” she might cry after it, “you did not know that he would -prove so strong!” Nor would he.... Her dream faded like the trembling -colours in the evening sea. - -And otherwise, unless that were so, she could not go. She had no -illusions as to what her escape with him would mean. There would be no -return for her to Garth—even Glebeshire itself would cast her out. As -she thought of all her days, of her babyhood, when the world had been -the green lawn and the old oak, of her girlhood, when Rafiel and -Polchester had been the farthest bounds, of all the fair days and the -wild days, of the scents and the sounds and the cries and the laughter, -it seemed that the little cove itself came close to her, pressing up to -her, touching her cheek, whispering to her: “You will not go!... You -will not go!... You will not go!” No, of her own will she could not go. -The golden pool was very full, swelling with a lift and fall that caught -the light of the sun as though the evening itself were rocking it. -Against the far band of rocks the tide was breaking with a white flash -of colour, and the distant caves boomed like drums. But the peace was -undisturbed; birds slowly, with a dreamy beat of wings, vanished into a -sky that was almost radiant white ... and behind her, the dark rocks, -more than ever watching, guarding beasts that loved her, waited for her -decision. - -Then all things faded before her vision of her mother. That so familiar -figure seemed to come towards her with a freshness, a piquancy, as -though mother and daughter had been parted for years. “We’ve -misunderstood one another,” the figure seemed to say: “there shall never -be misunderstanding again.” There seemed, at that moment, to be no one -else in Katherine’s world: looking back she could see, in all her past -life, only her mother’s face, could hear only her mother’s voice. - -She remembered the day when she had told her about the engagement, the -day when she had forgotten about the Stores, yesterday in her -bedroom.... - -She buried her face in her hands, feeling a wild, desperate despair—as -though life were too strong for her and her will too weak. - -She felt a touch on her shoulder, and saw that Philip had returned, his -face in the dusk was pale like the white sky. - -“Well?” he said. - -She shook her head, smiling a dismal little smile. “I can’t go.... You -know that I can’t.” - -(That other woman in her whispered: ‘Now he must compel you.’) - -Philip looked out to sea. - -“I can’t,” she repeated. “I can’t leave it all.” - -(‘Ah! make me go!’ that other whispered.) - -He turned away from her and looked back at the rocks. - -“You care for all this more than for me.” - -“You know that that is not true. I care for you more than anyone or -anything in the world. But these have all been fancies of yours, Phil. -In six months time—” she broke off. - -(‘Force me, compel me to go with you,’ the other woman whispered to him. -But he did not hear.) - -“Yes. We’ll go back,” he said. - -They were silent. Suddenly he gripped her shoulder, and they both turned -and looked behind them. - -“I thought I heard someone laugh,” he whispered. - -She rose, then before they moved away, put her arm round him with a -close, maternal gesture that she had never used to him before. - - - - - BOOK III - KATHERINE AND ANNA - - - - - CHAPTER I - KATHERINE ALONE - -It happened that in the middle of July there was to be a -Trenchard-Faunder wedding in London. It was to be a quite especial -Trenchard-Faunder wedding that no Trenchard or Faunder must miss. A Miss -Dorothy Faunder, daughter of Colonel Faunder of Foxley Park, Wilts, was -to marry her cousin Humphrey Trenchard, second son of Sir Geoffrey -Trenchard of Tredent Hall, Truxe, in Glebeshire, and 22 Bryanston -Square, W.... - -The wedding was to be towards the end of the season, before Goodwood and -Cowes; and St. Margaret’s, Westminster, was to be the scene of the -Ceremony. Of course the George Trenchards of Garth would be -present—there was never any question of that—but at the same time it -was an inconvenient interference with normal life. Trenchards and -Faunders saw, as a rule, little of London in the season unless there was -a daughter coming out or a wedding or a Presentation at Court. George -Trenchard greatly disliked being torn from Garth during July and August, -and it was only an exceptional demand that could uproot him. - -This demand _was_ exceptional. Of course they must all be there. - -On the evening before the departure for London Katherine sat alone in -her bedroom looking through her bright window on to the garden beneath -her. The July evening was close and oppressive—the garden was almost -black, with a strange quivering bar of pale yellow light behind the -trees. The scents came up to the open window heavily—there was no -breeze. Now and then a dog barked as though it were challenging someone. -Although there was no breeze, the trees sometimes shivered very faintly. - -One star glittered between the black clouds. - -Katherine sat at the open window smelling the pinks and the roses, her -room dim behind her with a pale metallic glow. She felt oppressed by the -evening, and at the same time strangely excited, as though something was -about to happen. But beyond this she was conscious of a curious -combative loneliness that should have been a miserable thing, but was in -reality something challenging and almost defiant. Defiant of what? -Defiant of whom? She thought of it as she sat there. - -Her thoughts went back to that day that she had spent with Philip at -Roche St. Mary Moor. Her loneliness had begun quite definitely from that -day. Only a fortnight later Philip had departed. She had not seen him -since then. But even had he been with her she thought that he would not, -very greatly, have affected her loneliness. He might even have -accentuated it. For Philip had behaved very strangely since that -afternoon at Roche St. Mary. It was, Katherine thought, as though, -having made his bolt for freedom and failed, he simply resigned himself. -He only once afterwards alluded to the affair. One day he said to her -quite suddenly: “After all, it’s worth it—so long as you’re there.” - -“What’s worth it?” she had asked him. - -“But if you were to leave me,” he went on, and stopped and looked at -her. - -“What’s worth it?” she had repeated. - -“Being swallowed up,” he had answered her. “Your mother and I are going -to pay calls together this afternoon.” - -He had during these last weeks been wonderful about her mother; he had -agreed to everything that she proposed, had run errands for her, -supported her opinions, “been quite a son to her,” Aunt Betty, happy at -this transformation, had declared—and he had been perfectly miserable. -Katherine knew that. - -And his misery had kept them apart. Katherine had never loved him so -intensely as she did during those last days, and he had loved her with a -kind of passionate, almost desperate, intensity. But their love had -never brought them together. There had always been someone between. - -It was as good as though he had said to her: “We have still another six -months before our marriage. You have told me definitely that you will -not give up the family. Your mother is determined not to surrender a bit -of you to me, therefore I am to be surrendered to your mother. I am -willing that this should be so because I love you, but if I change, if I -am dull and lifeless you mustn’t be surprised. - -“There’s the earlier life, which one can’t forget all at once, however -deeply one wants to. Meanwhile, I hate your mother and your mother hates -me. But she’ll never let me go unless you force her to. She knows that I -can’t break away so long as you’re here. And she means you to be here -always. What would a strong man do? Forget the earlier life, I suppose. -So would I if I had you all to myself. But I have to share you—and that -gives the earlier life a chance.” - -Although he had never opened his lips, Katherine heard him saying all -this as though he were there in front of her, there with his charm and -his hopeless humours about himself, his weakness that she had once -thought was strength, and for which now she only loved him all the more. - -But the terrible thing about those last weeks had been that, although -she knew exactly what he was thinking, they had simply avoided all open -and direct discussion. She had wished for it, but what could she say? -Only the same things again—that it would be all right when they were -married, that he would love the family then, that she would be _his_ -then and not the _family’s_.... Always at this point in her argument she -was pulled up sharply, because that was a lie. She would not be _his_ -when they were married. She knew now, quite definitely, that her mother -was utterly, absolutely resolved never to let her go. - -And meanwhile there was Anna.... - -Katherine, putting Philip aside for a moment, thought of the members of -the family one by one. They were all separated from her. She summoned -this ghostly truth before her, there in her dim room with the hot -scented air surrounding her, quite calmly without a shudder or a qualm. -Her mother was separated from her because, during the last six months, -they had never, with one exception, spoken the truth to one another. -Aunt Aggie was separated from her because, quite definitely, ever since -that horrible Sunday night, she hated Aunt Aggie. Henry was separated -from her because during these last months he had been so strange with -his alternate moods of affection and abrupt rudeness that she now -deliberately avoided him. Aunt Betty was separated from her because she -simply didn’t see things in the least as they were. Her father was -separated from her because he laughed at the situation and refused to -consider it at all. Millie—ah! Millie, the friend of all her life!—was -separated from her because they were concealing things the one from the -other as they had never done in all their days before. - -Katherine faced these facts. She had an illusion about her life that she -had always been right in the very heart of her family. She did not know -that it had been their need of her that had put her there, and that now -that she was turning away from them to someone else, they were all -rejecting her. They also were unaware of this. They thought and she -thought that it had been always a matter of Love between them all—but -of course Love in most cases is only a handsome name for selfishness. - -So Katherine sat alone in her room and waited for the thunder to come. -Meanwhile she was immensely surprised that this discovery of her -loneliness did not immediately depress her, but rather aroused in her a -pugnacity and an independence that seemed to her to be quite new -qualities. And then, following immediately upon her pugnacity, came an -overwhelming desire to kiss them all, to do anything in the world that -they wished, to love them all more than she had ever done before. And -following upon that came an aching, aching desire for Philip, for his -presence, his eyes, his hair, his neck, his hands, his voice.... - -And following upon that came Anna. Anna had become an obsession to -Katherine. If, in her earlier life, she had thought very intently of -persons or countries remote from her, she would, perhaps, have known how -to deal with the woman, but never before, in any crisis or impulse, had -her imagination been stirred. If she had ever thought about imagination, -she had decided that Rachel Seddon’s “Imagination!... you haven’t got a -scrap, my dear!” hurled at her once in the middle of some dispute, was -absolutely true. But her love for Philip had proved its preserver, had -proved it, roused it, stirred it into a fierce, tramping monster, with -whom she was simply unable to deal. - -If only, she felt, she had been able to speak of her to Philip! Surely -then the questions and the answers would have stripped Anna of her -romance, would have shown her to be the most ordinary of ordinary women, -someone unworthy of Philip, unworthy of anyone’s dreams. But bringing -Anna into the air had been forbidden—anything better than to start -Philip thinking of her—so that there she had lingered, somewhere in the -shadow, romantic, provoking, mocking, dangerous, coloured with all the -show of her foreign land, with the towers and plains and rivers of -romance. - -Nevertheless it had not been all Katherine’s imagination. There had been -in the affair some other agency. Again and again Katherine had been -conscious that, in opposition to her will, she was being driven to hunt -for that figure. In the middle of some work or pleasure she would start, -half frightened, half excited, conscious that someone was behind her, -watching her. She would turn, and in the first flash of her glance it -would seem to her that she caught some vanishing figure, the black hair, -the thin, tall body, the laughing, mocking eyes. - -It was simply, she would tell herself, that her curiosity refused to be -quiet. If only she might have known whether Philip thought of Anna, -whether Anna thought of Philip, whether Anna wanted Philip to return to -her, whether Anna really despised him, whether ... and then with a -little shudder of dismissal, she would banish the Phantom, summoning all -her admirable Trenchard common-sense to her aid.... “That was past, that -was gone, that was dead.” - -She was, upon this afternoon, at the point of summoning this resolution -when the door opened and Millie came in. For a moment so dark was the -room that she could not see, and cried: “Katie, are you there?” - -“Yes. Here by the window.” - -Millie came across the room and stood by Katherine’s chair. In her voice -there was the shadow of that restraint that there had been now between -them ever since the Sunday with the Awful Supper. - -“It’s only the Post. It’s just come. Two letters for you—one from -Philip that I thought that you’d like to have.” - -Katherine took the letters, laid them on her lap, looking up at her -sister with a little smile. - -“Well ...” said Millie, hesitating, then, half turning, “I must go back -to Aunt Betty—I’m helping her with the things.” - -“No. Don’t go.” Katherine, who was staring in front of her now into the -black well of a garden, lit by the quivering, shaking light, put out her -hand and touched Millie’s sleeve. Millie stood there, awkwardly, her -white cotton dress shining against the darkness, her eyes uncertain and -a little timid. - -“I ought to go, Katie dear.... Aunt Betty—” - -“Aunt Betty can wait. Millie, what’s the matter?” - -“What’s the matter?” - -“Yes, between us. For a long time it’s been—and worse since Philip went -away.” - -“Nothing,” said Millie, slowly, then, quite suddenly, with one of those -movements so characteristic of her, she flung herself on to her knees, -caught Katherine’s hands, then stretched forward and pulled Katherine’s -head down to hers—then kissed her again and again. The two sisters held -one another in a close embrace, cheek against cheek, breast to breast. -So they stayed for some time. - -At last Millie slid down on to the floor and rested there, her head, -with all its fair hair ruffled and disordered, on Katherine’s lap. - -“Well ...” said Katherine at last, her head against her sister’s cheek. -“Why, all this time, have you been so queer? Is it because you hate -Philip?” - -“No, I like him.” - -“Is it because you hate me?” - -“No, I love _you_.” - -“Is it because you hate my marrying Philip?” - -“No—if you’d do it at once.” - -“Do it at once?” - -“Yes—now—go up to London—Marry him to-morrow—” - -“My _dear_ Millie!... our year isn’t up—nearly.” - -“What does it matter about your year? Better to break your year than to -have us all at one another’s throats—miserable. And then perhaps after -all to lose Philip.” - -“Lose Philip?” - -“Yes. He’ll go back to Russia.” - -The words flashed before Katherine’s eyes like lightning through the -garden. Her heart gave a furious jump and then stopped. - -“Why do you think he’d do that?” she asked at last. “Do you think he -doesn’t love me?” - -“No, it’s because he loves you so much that he’d do it. Because he’d -rather have none of you than only a bit of you, rather have none of you -than share you with us.” She turned round, staring into Katherine’s -eyes. “Oh, I understand him so well! I believe I’m the only one in all -the family who does! You think that I’m not grown up yet, that I know -nothing about life, that I don’t know what people do or think, but I -believe that I do know better than anyone! And, after all, it’s Philip -himself that’s made me see! He understands now what he’s got to give up -if he marries you—all his dreams, all his fun, all his travels, all his -imagination. _You_ don’t want to give up anything, Katie. You want to -keep all this, Garth and the sea, even the oldest old man and woman in -the place, above all, you want to keep all of us, mother most of all. -You know that mother hates Philip and will always make him unhappy, but -still you think that it’s fair that you should give up nothing and he -everything. But you’re up against more than Philip, Katie—you’re up -against all his imagination that won’t let him alone however much he -wants it to—and then,” Millie finally added, turning her eyes back to -the other garden—“There’s the other woman.” - -“Why!” Katherine cried—“You know?... Who told you?” - -“And _you_ know?” cried Millie. “He told you after all?” - -“But who told you?” Katherine insisted, her hand on Millie’s shoulder. - -“Henry.” - -“Then _he_ knows. Who else?” - -“None of the family, I think, unless Henry’s told the others. I’ve never -said a word.” - -“Who told _him_?” - -“A man at his Club.” - -There was silence. Then Katherine said: - -“So _that’s_ why you’ve been so queer?” - -“Yes. I didn’t know whether he’d told you or no. I was afraid to say -anything. I thought perhaps he’d told you and it was making you -miserable. Then I thought that you ought to know. I thought sometimes -that I’d speak to Philip, and then I was afraid of Henry doing something -awful, blurting it all out to everybody. I haven’t known what to do. -But, Katie darling, you aren’t unhappy about it, are you?” - -“No—not unhappy,” said Katherine. - -“Because you mustn’t be. What does it matter what Phil did before he -loved you, whom he knew? What _does_ it matter so long as you take her -place? If ever anybody loved anybody, Philip loves you....” Then she -said quickly, eagerly: “What was she like, Katie? Did he tell you? Did -he describe her? Was she lovely, clever? What was her name?” - -“Anna,” Katie said. - -“Does he think of her still? Does he want to see her again?” - -“I don’t know,” Katherine said slowly. “That’s what’s been so hard all -these months. We simply don’t talk of her. He doesn’t want to think of -her, nor of Russia, nor of any of that past life. He says it’s all -dead—” - -“Well,” said Millie, eagerly. - -“But it isn’t to me. I don’t hate her, I’m not jealous, it doesn’t alter -one scrap of my love for Phil, but—I don’t know—I feel as though if we -talked about it everything would clear away. I’d see then that she was -just an ordinary person like anyone else, and I wouldn’t bother about -her any more, as it is, simply because I don’t know anything, I imagine -things. I don’t know whether Philip thinks of her or not, but I expect -that he does, or thinks of my thinking of her, which is the same thing.” - -“Well, _I’ve_ thought of her!” Millie declared, “again and again. I’ve -wondered a thousand things, why she gave Philip up, whether she loves -him still, whether she hates his being in love with someone else, -whether she writes to him, what she’s like, what she wears.... Doesn’t -it prove, Katie, how shut up we’ve always been? Why, even in Paris I -never really thought about anybody whom I couldn’t actually see, and -life used to seem too simple if you just did the things in front of your -nose—and now it’s only the things that aren’t anywhere near you that -seem to matter.” Millie said all this as though she were fifty years old -at least. It was indeed a real crisis that she should be admitted into -the very heart of all this thrilling affair; she was rewarded at last -with her flaming desire, that ‘she should share in life.’ It was almost -as though she herself had a lover. - -Katherine waited, then she broke out suddenly: “But it’s all so stupid -this. Why can’t things be perfectly simple? Why can’t Philip like them -and they like Philip? Why can’t Philip and I marry and spend part of the -year here and part of the year away?” - -“You’ve got to choose,” Millie said, “Mother or Philip—Philip or the -family—Philip or Glebeshire. The old life or the new one. You’ve tried -to mix it all up. You can’t. Philip can change us. He _is_ changing us -all, but mix with us never. If he is forced to, he’ll simply disappear.” - -“My dear, what’s happened to you?” Katherine cried. “How wise you’ve -become! How you’ve grown up!” - -“I am,” said Millie, with a solemnity that proved that ‘grown-up’ was -the last thing that she really was. She sprang to her feet. She spoke as -though she were delivering a challenge. - -“Katie, if you let things go, if you let Mother have her way, one of two -things will happen; either Philip won’t be able to stand it and will -vanish to Russia, or he’ll endure it, will be smothered by us all, and -there’ll only be the corpse left for your enjoyment. - -“Katie!” Her eyes shone with excitement, her voice quivered with the -thrill of her intensity. “You must marry him _now_—whilst you’re in -London. You must chuck us all, show Mother that Philip comes before -everything, take it into your own hands, send that Russian woman’s ghost -back to Russia ... just as Browning and Mrs. Browning did, slip off one -day, buy some smelling-salts at the chemist’s and be married!” - -She laughed. She clapped her hands. - -“Oh! Katie! Katie!... It’s the only way, the only possible way!” - -But Katherine replied: “You’re wrong, Millie. I can keep it all. I -_will_ keep it all. I love Phil, but I love Mother and you and Henry and -This—This—all of it. If I were to marry Phil now Mother would never -forgive me—you know that she would not. I could never come back. I must -lose it all.” - -“You’d rather lose Philip then?” - -“No. _That_ never!” - -“Well—Anna’s after him, Katie. Russia’s after him. He’s awfully -unhappy—and you’re unfair. You’re giving him nothing, not even himself. -You say that you love him, but you want things all your way. I tell you -you deserve to lose ...” then suddenly softening again: “But I’ll help -you, Katie dear, whatever way it is. Oh! I’m so glad that we’ve spoken. -We’re together now, and nothing can part us.” - -Katherine caught her hand and held her close. “What would Mother do, do -you think, if she knew about Anna?” she said, at last. - -“I don’t know,” Millie answered, “Mother’s so strange. I believe she’d -do nothing. She’d know that if she dismissed him she’d lose you.” - -Then Katherine suddenly, holding Millie so close to her that their -hearts beat as one, said: “I love him so. I love him so.... Everything -must go if he wants it to.” - -And then, as though the house, the land, the place that had always been -hers, answered her challenge, a lightning flash struck the darkness and -the rain broke in a thunder of sound. - - * * * * * - -All through the wedding-ceremony Katherine felt insanely that she was no -longer a Trenchard—insanely because if she was not a Trenchard what was -she? Always before in these Trenchard gatherings she had known herself -wonderfully at home, sinking down with the kind of cosy security that -one greets as one drops into a soft, familiar bed. Every Trenchard was, -in one way or another, so like every other Trenchard that a Trenchard -gathering was in the most intimate sense of the word a family party. At -a Beaminster gathering you were always aware of a spirit of haughty -contempt for the people who were still outside, but at a Trenchard or -Faunder assembly the people outside did not exist at all. “They were not -there.” The Beaminsters said: “Those we don’t know are not worth -knowing.” The Trenchards said: “Those we can’t see don’t exist”—and -they could only see one another. All this did not mean that the -Trenchards were not very kind to the human beings in the villages and -towns under their care. But then these dependents _were_ Trenchards, -just as old Trenchard chairs and tables in old Trenchard houses were -Trenchards. - -The Beaminsters had been broken all in a moment because they had tried -to do something that their Age no longer permitted them to do. The -Trenchards were much more difficult to break, because they were not -trying to do anything at all. There was no need for them to be -“Positive” about anything.... - -As old Mrs. Trenchard, mother of Canon Trenchard of Polchester, once -said to a rebellious daughter: “My dear, it’s no use your trying to do -anything. People say that new generations have come and that we shall -see great changes. For myself, I don’t believe it. England, thank God, -is not like one of those foreign countries. England never changes about -the Real Things,” and by ‘England’ of course she meant ‘Trenchards.’ - -Katherine knew exactly whom she would see at St. Margaret’s, -Westminster. From Glebeshire there would be Canon Trenchard, his wife -and his two girls, also the Trenchards of Rothin Place, Polchester. -There would be Sir Guy Trenchard from Truxe, and Miss Penelope Trenchard -from Rasselas. There would be the head of all the Trenchards—Sir Henry -Trenchard of Ruston Hall, in Norfolk, and there would be Garth -Trenchard, Esq., from Bambury Towers, in Northumberland. There would be -the Medlicott Trenchards of South Audley Street, the Robert Trenchards -from somewhere in South Kensington (he was a novelist), and the Ruston -Trenchards from Portland Place. Of the Faunders there was no end—Hylton -Faunder, the famous painter, one of the props of the Royal Academy, the -Rev. William Faunder of St. Mary’s, Monkston, one of the best of -London’s preachers, the Misses Faunder of Hampstead, known for their -good work, and others, others ... from Hampshire, Wiltshire, Kent, -Suffolk, Durham, Cumberland, every county in England. - -Well, there they all were in rows; again and again you beheld the same -white high forehead, the same thin and polished nose, the same mild, -agreeable, well-fed, uncritical eyes. How well Katherine knew those -eyes! She herself had them, of course, but her mother had them so -completely, so magnificently, that once you had seen Mrs. Trenchard’s -eyes you would be able, afterwards, to recognise a Trenchard anywhere. -But now, as Katherine looked about the church, it suddenly struck her, -with a little shiver of alarm, that all the eyes were blind. She was -sitting with her mother and Millie, and she looked at them quickly to -see whether they’d noticed anything strange or unusual—but no, very -placidly and agreeably, they were enjoying the comfort and ‘rightness’ -of the whole affair.... - -She was lonely, then, with a sudden shock of acute distress. She felt -suddenly, with positive terror, that she did not belong to anyone at -all. Philip was miles and miles away; as though it were the voice of -prophecy, something seemed to tell her that she would never see him -again. The service then seemed endless—she waited desperately for it to -close. At last, when they all moved on to 22 Bryanston Square, her -impatience simply seemed more than she could control. The presents were -there, and many, many beautiful clothes and shining collars and cakes -that no one wanted to eat, and over and over again, a voice (it seemed -always the same voice) saying: “How nice! How delightful!... so glad ... -so fortunate....” At last she was on her way back to Westminster. She -had now only this one thought, that unless she were very quick she would -never see Philip again. He had said that he would come to her for a -moment after the wedding, and, when at the doorway of the drawing-room -she caught a reflection of his figure in the mirror, her heart bounded -with relief. How silly of her. What had she supposed? Nevertheless, -quite breathlessly, she caught his hand. - -“Oh, Phil! I’m so glad!... Come up to the schoolroom. We shall be alone -there!” - -The schoolroom, that had once been the nursery, packed away at the very -top of the house, was bathed with the rich evening glow. He caught her -in his arms, held her, and she kissed him, passionately, with clinging, -eager kisses. Then, with a little happy sigh, she released him. - -The old shabby room, with its old shabby books, Charlotte Mary Yonge and -Mrs. Ewing and Henry, and the Christmas Supplements on the walls and the -old grate that seemed still to be sunk in happy reveries of roasted -chestnuts and toffee and toast, reassured her. - -“Oh, Phil!” she cried. “I thought I was never going to get to you!” - -She looked at him, carefully, luxuriously, with all the happiness of -possessing something known and proved and loved. Why, were it the -ugliest face in the world, the oldest, shabbiest body, nothing now could -change her attachment. That was why, with true love, old age and decay -did not, could not matter—and here, after all, was _her_ possession, as -far from old age as anyone could be, strong and thick-set and with the -whole of life before it! But he seemed tired and depressed. He was very -quiet, and sat there close to her, holding her hand, loving her, but -subdued, saying very little. He _had_ changed. He was not now that -eager, voluble figure that had burst through the fog on that first -wonderful evening so long ago. - -“Phil—you’re tired!” she said quickly, looking up into his eyes. - -“Yes. I am rather,” he answered. “It’s been awfully hot. Was it very -splendid?” - -“The wedding?... No, horrid.... Just like any other, and I can’t tell -you anything about it, because I didn’t notice a thing.” - -But he didn’t ask her. He didn’t want to know anything about it. He only -wanted to have her there. They sat quietly, very close to one another. -Her terror and her loneliness left her. The Abbey clock boomed the hour, -and a little clock in the room gave a friendly, intimate echo. - -“Your mother’s asked me to go back to Garth with you,” he suddenly said. - -Katherine remembered how triumphant she had been when, upon a certain -earlier occasion, he had told her that. Now her alarm returned; her hand -trembled on his knee. - -“What did you say?” - -“Oh! I’m going of course. You’ll be there, and I want to do what your -mother wishes.” - -He said this very quietly, and looked at her with a little smile. - -“Phil, don’t go!” she said suddenly. “You’re happier here. We’ll be up -in October.” - -“October!” he answered, still very quietly, “that’s a long time to -wait—and I haven’t had very much of you lately. It won’t help things -very much my staying here—and I want to please your mother,” he ended. -“I’ve a kind of idea,” he went on, “that she’ll get to like me later, -when she really gets to know me. I’ve been thinking all this time in -London that I behaved very badly when I was down there before. Wanted -everything my own way.” - -Katherine could say nothing. In between them once more was that shadow. -To speak right out would mean the old business all over again, the -business that they had both resolutely dismissed. To speak out would -mean Anna and the family, and that same demand once more—that Katherine -should choose. One word and she knew that he would be pleading with all -his force: “Marry me now! Come off with me! Slip out of the house and -have it over.” - -But she could not—she was not ready. Give them all up, cut her life in -half, fling them all away? No, still she clung desperately to the belief -that she would keep them both, the family and Philip, the old life and -the new. She heard Millie urging her, she saw Philip quietly determined -to say nothing now until she led the way—but she could not do it, she -could not, _could_ not do it! - -So they sat there, holding hands, his shoulder against hers, until at -last it was time for him to go. After he had left her, whilst she was -dressing for dinner, she had a moment of panic and almost ran out of the -house, just as she was, to find him. But the Trenchard blood reasserted -itself; she went down to dinner calm and apparently at ease. - -That night, when they had all gone up to their rooms, she stood for a -moment waiting outside her bedroom door, then, as though some sudden -resolve had come to her, turned and walked to her mother’s door. She -knocked, entered and found her mother standing in front of her -looking-glass. She had slipped off her evening dress, there with her -short white sleeves, from which her stout, firm, bare arms stood out -strong and reliant, with her thick neck, her sturdy legs, she seemed, in -spite of her grey hair, in the very plenitude of her strength. Her mild -eyes, large and calm, her high white forehead, the whole poise of her -broad, resolute back seemed to Katherine to have something defiant and -challenging in it. Her mouth was full of hair-pins, but she nodded and -smiled to her daughter. - -“May I come in, Mother,” said Katherine, “I want to speak to you.” - -Katherine thought of that earlier occasion in that same room when she -had first spoken of her engagement. How far apart since then they had -grown! It seemed to her to-night, as she looked at that broad white -back, that she was looking at a stranger.... Yes, but an extraordinary -stranger, a really marvellous woman. How curious that Katherine should -have been living during all those years of intimate affection with her -mother and have thought of her never—no, never at all. She had taken -her, her love, her little habits, her slow voice, her relentless -determination, her ‘managing’—all these things and many more—as though -they had been inevitably outside argument, statement or gratitude. But -now, simply because of the division that there was between them, she saw -her as a marvellous woman, the strangest mingling of sweetness and -bitterness, of tenderness and hardness, of unselfishness and relentless -egotism. She saw this, suddenly, standing there in the doorway, and the -imminent flash of it struck her for an instant with great fear. Then she -saw Philip and gained her courage. - -“I want to speak to you, Mother,” she repeated, moving into the middle -of the room. - -“Well, dear ...” said Mrs. Trenchard, through the hair-pins. She did not -let down her hair, but after another glance into the mirror, moved away, -found a pink woolly dressing-gown, which she put on. Then sat down on -the old sofa, taking up, as she always did, a little piece of work—this -time it was some long red worsted that she was knitting. It curled away -from her, like a scarlet snake, under the flickering light of the -candles on her dressing-table, disappearing into darkness. - -Katherine stood in front of her mother, with her hands behind her, as -she had done when she was a very little girl. - -“Well, dear, what is it?” said Mrs. Trenchard again. - -“Mother—I don’t want you to have Philip down at Garth.” - -“Why not, dear? I thought you would like it.” - -“He isn’t happy there.” - -“Well, he’s only got to say so.... He needn’t come.” - -“If he doesn’t—he’s afraid.” - -“Afraid of what?” - -“Afraid of losing me.” Katherine, as she said this, made a little -forward movement with her hand as though she were asking for help, but -Mrs. Trenchard’s eyes were wide and cold. - -“Afraid of losing you?... My dear, he can’t trust you very much!” - -“No, no, it isn’t that!... He knows that you, the others don’t like him. -He hates Garth—at least he hates it if he’s always got to live there. -If he’s alone here in London he thinks that you’ll persuade me never to -leave you, that you’ll get the tighter hold of me, that—Oh! I can’t -explain it all!” she broke off quite desperately. “But it isn’t good for -him to be there, he’s unhappy, he’s depressed. Mother, _why_ do you hate -him?” she cried, suddenly challenging the whole room, with its old -familiar pictures, its books and furniture to answer her. - -“I think,” said Mrs. Trenchard, very quietly, counting her stitches and -nodding her head at her stocking, “that you’re taking all this in a very -exaggerated fashion—and you never used to be exaggerated, Katie, my -dear—no, you never used to be. I often used to say what a comfort and -help I always found you, because you saw things as they were—not like -Millie and Henry, who would get excited sometimes over very little. But -your engagement’s changed you, Katie dear—it really has—more than I -should have expected.” - -Katherine, during this speech, had summoned her control. She spoke now -with a voice low and quiet—ridiculously like her mother’s an observer -might have thought. - -“Mother, I don’t want to be exaggerated—I don’t indeed. But, all these -last six months, we’ve never said to one another what we’ve thought, -have never spoken openly about anything—and now we must. It _can’t_ go -on like this.” - -“Like what, Katie dear?” - -“Never knowing what we’re really thinking. We’ve become a dreadful -family—even father’s noticed it.” - -“Certainly,” said Mrs. Trenchard slowly. “We were all happier before -Philip came.” - -Katherine’s cheeks flushed. “That’s unkind, Mother!” she cried. Her -voice grew harder. “Please don’t say anything about Philip unless you -must. It makes everything very difficult. I know that you don’t like -him. You see him strangely, you put him in the wrong whatever he does. -But, Mother,” her voice softened again. “It isn’t that. We can’t alter -that. Phil will never be at his best at Garth—not as things are now. -But if we were married. Oh! you would see how fine things would be!” Her -voice was eager, excited now. “He would be happy and quite, quite -different with everyone. I know him. He depends so much—too much—on -what people think of him. He knows that you don’t like him, and that -makes him embarrassed and cross—at his worst. But he’s splendid, -really, he is, indeed, and you’d see it if we were married and this -horrid engagement were over. He’s fine in every way, but he’s different -from us—he’s seen so much more, knows life that we can’t know, has -other standards and judgments. Everyone can’t be like us, Mother. There -_must_ be people who want different things and think different things. -Why should he be made into something like us, forced to think as we -do?... Mother, let us be married soon, at once, perhaps, and then -everything will be right—” She stopped, breathless then, in her -eagerness, bent down and kissed her mother’s cheek. - -But Mrs. Trenchard’s cheek was very cold. - -“Your father said a year,” she answered, counting her stitches, “four, -five, six—Yes, a year. And you agreed to that, you know.” - -Katherine turned, with a sharp movement, away, clenching her hands. At -that moment she hated her mother, hated with a hot, fiery impulse that -urged her to leave the room, the house, the family at that very instant, -flinging out, banging the door, and so settle the whole affair for ever. - -Mrs. Trenchard made no sound. Her needles clicked. Then she said, as -though she had been looking things over: - -“Do you think it’s good of you, Katherine, considering how much all -these years we’ve all been to one another, to persist in marrying a man -whom, after really doing our best, we all of us—yes, all of -us—dislike? You’re of age, my dear—you can do as you please. It was -your father who consented to this engagement, I was not asked. And now, -after all these months, it is hardly a success, is it? You are losing us -all—and I believe we still mean something to you. And Philip. How can -you know about him, my dear? You are in love now, but that—that first -illusion goes very quickly after marriage. And then—when it has -gone—do you think that he will be a good companion for you, so -different from us all, with such strange ideas picked up in foreign -countries? You don’t know what he may have done before he met you.... I -don’t appeal to your love for us, as once I might have done, but to your -common-sense—your common-sense. Is it worth while to lose us, whom you -know, in exchange for a man of whom you can know nothing at all?... Just -give me those scissors off the dressing-table. The little ones, dear.” - -Katherine turned at the dressing-table. “But,” she cried, her voice full -of passionate entreaty, “_why_ must I give you up because I marry him? -Why can’t I have you—all of you—and him as well? _Why_ must I choose?” -Then she added defiantly: “Millie doesn’t dislike him—nor Aunt Betty.” - -“Millie’s very young,” answered her mother. “Thank you, my dear, and -_as_ you _are_ there, just that thimble. Thank you ... and your Aunt -Betty likes everyone.” - -“And then,” Katherine went on, “why do you see it from everyone’s point -of view except mine? It’s my life, my future. You’re settled—all of -you, you, father, Aunt Aggie, Aunt Betty—but with Millie and Henry and -I everything’s to come. And yet you expect us to do all the things, -think all the things that you’ve done and thought. We’re different, -we’re another generation. If we weren’t behind everyone else there -wouldn’t be anything to talk about at all. All parents now,” Katherine -ended, with an air of profound knowledge, “think of their children. Life -isn’t what it was fifty years ago.” - -Mrs. Trenchard smiled a grim little smile. “These are the things, my -dear, I suppose, that Philip’s been telling you. You must remember that -he’s been living for years in a country where one can apparently do -anything one pleases without being thought wicked, and where you’re put -in prison a great deal, but only for rather innocent crimes. I don’t -pretend to understand all that. We may be—perhaps we are—an -old-fashioned family, but the fact remains that we were all happy enough -a year ago.” - -She picked up the long trailing serpent, then concluded: “But you’re -free, Katie dear. Perfectly free.” - -“If I were to go,” said Katie, staring at her mother’s face, so like -that of an uneloquent baby, “if I were to go off now. If we were to be -married at once—would you—would you—turn us out—have no more to do -with us?” - -She waited as though her whole life hung on her mother’s answer. - -“I really don’t know what’s happened to you, Katie,” Mrs. Trenchard -answered very quietly. “You’re like a young woman in a play—and you -used to be so sensible. Just give me those scissors again, dear. -Certainly if you were to marry Philip to-morrow, without waiting until -the end of the year, as you promised, I should feel—we should all -feel—that you had given us up. It would be difficult not to feel that.” - -“And if we wait until the end of the year and then marry and don’t live -in Glebeshire but somewhere else—will you give us up _then_?” - -“My dear, isn’t it quite simple? We’ve given Philip every opportunity of -knowing us—we’re now just going to give him another. If he loves you he -will not want to take you away from all of us who love you also. He’ll -do his best to like us—to settle—” - -“To settle!” Katherine cried. “Don’t you see that that’s what he’s tried -to do—and he can’t—he can’t! It’s killing him—and you want him to be -killed!... You’d like him to leave me, and if he won’t do that you’ll -break his will, keep him under you, ruin his spirit.... Mother, let him -alone—If we marry, after six months, let us lead our own lives. You’ll -see I shall be as much yours as ever, more than ever. It will be all -right. It must be!” - -Mrs. Trenchard said then her final word. - -“If you leave us for Philip that is your affair. I do my best to keep -you both. You’ve talked much, Katie dear, about our dislike of -Philip—what of his dislike of us? Is that nothing? Doesn’t he show it -every moment of the day? Unless he hates us less you’ll have to choose. -You’ll have to choose—let him come down to Garth then—we’ll do -everything for him.” - -Katherine would have answered, but a sudden catch in her mother’s voice, -a sudden, involuntary closing of the eyes, made her dart forward. - -“Mother, you’re tired.” - -“Yes, my dear, very.” - -They sat down on the old sofa together. Mrs. Trenchard, her arms folded, -leant back against her daughter’s shoulder. - -“Just a moment, Katie dear,” she murmured, “before I undress.” - -Suddenly she was asleep. - -Katherine sat stiffly, staring before her into the room. Her arm was -round her mother, and with the pressure of her hand she felt the soft -firmness of the shoulder beneath the dressing-gown. Often in the old -days her mother had thus leant against her. The brushing of her hair -against Katherine’s cheek brought back to the girl thronging memories of -happy, tranquil hours. Those memories flung before her, like -reproaching, haunting ghosts, her present unhappiness. Her love for her -mother filled her heart; her body thrilled with the sense of it. And so, -there in the clumsy, familiar room, the loneliest hour of all life came -to her. - -She was separated from them all. She seemed to know that she was holding -her mother thus for the last time.... Then as her hands tightened, in -very protest, about the slumbering body, she was conscious of the -presence, behind her, just then where she could not see, of the -taunting, laughing figure. She could catch the eyes, the scornful lips, -the thin, defiant attitude. - -“I’ll take him back! I’ll take him back!” the laughing figure cried. - -But Katherine had her bravery. She summoned it all. - -“I’ll beat you!” she answered, her arms tight around her mother. “I’ve -made my choice. He’s mine now whatever you try!” - - - - - CHAPTER II - THE MIRROR - -Philip had never had any conceit of himself—that is, he could not -remember the time when he had been satisfied with what he had done, or -pleased with the figure that he presented. The selfish actions in his -life had always arisen from unselfish motives, because he had been -afraid of hurting or vexing other people, because he thought other -people finer than himself. Even when, as in the case of Seymour, he -burst out in indignation at something that he felt to be pretentious and -false, he, afterwards, on thinking it over, wondered whether the man -hadn’t after all been right ‘from his point of view.’ It was this -ability to see the other person’s point of view that had been, and would -always be, the curse of his life. - -Such men as Philip are not among the fine creatures of the world. Very -rightly they are despised for their weakness, their lack of resistance, -their inability to stand up for themselves. It is possible, -nevertheless, that in heaven they will find that they, too, have their -fine side. And this possibility of an ultimate divine comprehension -irritates, very naturally, their fellow human beings who resent any -defence of weakness. Philip himself would have been the first to resent -it. He never consoled himself with thought of heaven, but took, now and -then, a half-humorous, half-despairing glance at himself, swore, as he -had in those long-ago days sworn about his mother, ‘how this shall never -happen again’, and then once more was defeated by his imagination. - -In this matter of the Trenchards he saw only too plainly, everyone’s -point of view; even with Aunt Aggie he saw that she was an old -disappointed woman who disliked change and loved power so long as she -need not struggle for it. Mrs. Trenchard he did not understand, because -he was afraid of her. His fear of her had grown and grown and grown, and -in that fear was fascination, hatred, and admiration. He felt now quite -definitely that he was beaten by her. He had felt that, after she had -taken no notice whatever of his public scene with Aunt Aggie. She would -now, he believed, take no notice of anything. He knew also, now, of her -hold over Katherine. He must stay with Katherine because he loved her. -Therefore he must submit to Mrs. Trenchard ... it was all quite -simple.—Meanwhile to submit to Mrs. Trenchard meant, he knew, to such a -character as his, extinction. He knew. Oh!... better than anyone else in -the world—the kind of creature that, under her influence, he would -become. He saw the others under her influence, the men and women of the -village, the very chickens and pigs in the neighbouring farms. He knew -what he had been under his mother, he knew what he had been under Anna, -he knew what now he would be under Mrs. Trenchard. Well, extinction was -a simple thing enough if you made up your mind to it—why struggle any -further? - -But day and night, increasingly, as the weeks passed, he was being urged -to escape. All this summer, Anna, no longer a suggestion, no longer a -memory, but now a vital, bodily presence, was urging him. Her power over -him was not in the least because he was still in love with her—he loved -only Katherine in all the world—but because of the damnable -common-sense of what she said. What she said was this: - -“Here you are amongst all these funny people. You are too much in the -middle of them to see it plainly for yourself, but I’m a ghost and can -see everything quite clearly; I know you—better than you know yourself. -This Mrs. Trenchard is determined never to let her daughter go. You say -that you love this young woman, although what you can see in her stupid -English solidity I can’t imagine. However, you were always a fool.... -All the same, if you love her it’s for _her_ sake that you must escape. -You know the kind of creature you’re going to be if you stay. What does -she want with such a man? When she wakes up, about a week after -marriage, and finds you under the thumb of her mother, what will happen -to her love? She may continue to love you—English women are so -stupid—but she’ll certainly despise you. Come back to Russia. It isn’t -that I want you, or will take you back into my life, but she’ll find out -what you’re worth then. If she really loves you she’ll have to come -after you. _Then_ you’ll have broken with the family and will be free. -Run away, I tell you. It’s the only thing to do.” - -All this he heard during a terribly heavy three weeks with relatives in -the North, during a hot and glittering July in London when the world -seemed to gyrate with the flashing cabs, the seething crowds, the glass -and flowers and scents of a London season. Katherine seemed dreadfully -far away from him. He was aware very vividly how bad it was for a -healthy young man of his age to have no definite occupation. The men -whom he knew in town seemed to him both uninteresting and preoccupied. A -day in England seemed of so vast a length. In Russia time had been of no -importance at all, and one day had vanished into another without any -sound or sign. Here every clock in the town seemed to scream to him that -he must take care to make the most of every second. This practical -English world, moreover, could offer no friendly solution for the -troubles that beset him. - -He knew very well that if he asked any man at the club for advice he -would be frankly dismissed for a fool. “What! You like the girl but -can’t bear the Mother-in-law! My dear boy, any music hall will tell you -how common that is. Wait till you’re married, then you can clear off all -right—let the old woman scream as much as you like. What! the girl -wants to stay with the mother? Well, again, wait till you’re married. -The girl will follow you fast enough then!” - -How could he expect that any ordinary healthy Englishman would -understand the soft, billowy, strangling web that the Trenchard family -had, by this time, wound about him? Yes, another six months would -complete the business.... - -One hope remained to him—that when they knew of his immoral life in -Moscow they would definitely insist on Katherine’s leaving him—and, if -it came to that, she would stand by him. He knew that she would stand by -him. He would himself long ago have told Trenchard had he not been sure -that someone else would do that for him, and that then the sense of his -own subterfuge and concealment would add to their horror and disgust. - -The stronger their disgust the better for him. - -The day of that disclosure seemed now his only hope. Let them fling him -off and he knew what Katherine would do!... - -Upon a torrid afternoon, two days after the Trenchard-Faunder wedding, -an irresistible desire to see Katherine drove him to the Westminster -house. He rang the bell, and was told by Rocket, who always treated him -with an air of polite distrust, that the ladies were out, but might be -in at any time. - -“I will wait,” said Philip. - -“Very good, sir,” said Rocket reluctantly, and showed him into the -drawing-room, cool and damp like a green cave. To Rocket’s own -restrained surprise, old Mr. Trenchard was there sitting quite alone, -with a shawl covering his knees, in a large arm-chair near the empty -fireplace. - -The old gentleman showed no interest whatever in the opening of the -door, and continued to stare in front of him through his gold-rimmed -eye-glasses, his hands pressed fiercely into his knees. Rocket hesitated -a moment, then withdrew, closing the door behind him. - -Philip advanced slowly into the room. One of his difficulties with old -Mr. Trenchard had always been that he was not sure whether he were truly -deaf or no. On certain occasions there had been no question old Mr. -Trenchard was not at all deaf, and then again on others deaf as a crab! -He had never shown any marked signs of being aware of Philip’s -existence. There were many weeks that he spent in his own room, and he -could not be said to show a very active consciousness of anyone except -Katherine, whom he adored, and Aunt Aggie, whom he hated. - -But, altogether, he was to Philip a terrible old man. Like a silver-grey -shadow, beautiful perhaps, with the silver buckles on his shoes, his -delicate hands and his snow-white hair, but emphatically terrible to -Philip, who throve and blossomed under warm human intercourse, and -shrivelled into nothing at all under a silent and ghostly disapproval. - -But to-day Philip was desperate and defiant. This old man would never -die any more than this old drawing-room, reflected in the green mirror, -would ever change. - -“I’d like to smash that mirror,” thought Philip, “smash it into pieces. -That would change the room if anything would. Why, I believe the whole -family would tumble like a pack of cards if I smashed that mirror. I -believe the old man himself would vanish into thin air.” - -“Good afternoon, sir,” Philip said—and then thought to himself: “Why -should I be afraid of the old image? He can’t eat me!” - -He walked over, close to him, and shouted: - -“Good afternoon, sir.” - -The old man never stirred, not an eyelid quivered, but he replied in his -clear, silvery voice, “Good afternoon to you.” - -He might indeed have been an Idol in his old particular temple—the old -green room waited around him with the patient austerity that a shrine -pays to its deity. The lamp on a distant table flung a mild and decent -glow. - -“I’m damned if I’m going to be afraid of him,” thought Philip, and, -taking a chair, he dragged it very close to the other’s throne. Sitting -there, near to him, it seemed to him that the light, mild though it was, -really did go right through the old fellow, his cheeks, like the finest -egg-shell china, seemed to catch the glow, store it for an instant in -some fine inner receptacle and then pass it out on the other side. It -was only the eyes that were not fine. They were true Trenchard eyes, and -now, in old age, they were dull and almost dead. - -They, ever so faintly, hinted that the beauty, fine as the present -glass, was of the surface only, and had, behind it, no soul. - -“It’s a very hot day,” said Philip, in a voice that was intended for a -shout if the old man were really deaf and pleasant cheerfulness if he -were not, “really very hot indeed. But this room’s so very cool. -Delightful.” - -Mr. Trenchard did then very slowly raise his head and look at Philip -through his glasses. Then very slowly lowered his eyes again. - -“My daughter will be here very shortly to receive you,” he said. - -“I’d like to talk to _you_,” Philip said, still very cheerfully. “We’ve -not had many talks together, have we? and that really isn’t right, -considering that I’m engaged to your grand-daughter.” - -The old man picked up a magazine that lay on the little table that was -in front of him. “Do you ever see Blackwood?” he said, as though he were -very politely making conversation for a complete stranger. “It’s a -magazine for which I have a great liking. It seems to me to keep up its -character wonderfully—most agreeable reading—most agreeable reading.” - -It was then that Philip, looking up, caught a reflection of Mr. -Trenchard’s face in the Mirror. It may have been imagination or it may -have been the effect of shadow, or again it may have been nothing but -truth—in any case it seemed to Philip that the old man’s expression was -an amazing mixture of pathos and wickedness—a quite intolerable -expression. Philip made a movement with his hands as though he were -brushing away a confusion of cobwebs, then burst out: “Look here, I -don’t know whether you’re deaf or not—if you are it won’t matter, and -if you aren’t we’ll have a straight talk at last. You can’t move until -someone comes in to move you, and that may be a long while yet. You -aren’t strong enough to knock me down, so that I’m afraid you’ll just -have to stay here for a while and listen.... Of course you know by this -time who I am. It’s no use your pretending.” - -Philip paused and looked, but the old man had not stirred at all. His -hands were still pressed into his knees, his eyes staring through his -glasses, and, as his delicate breathing rose and fell, one black button -shone in the lamplight and faded again. This immobility seemed to stir -more profoundly Philip’s anger. - -“I’m going to marry your grand-daughter Katherine, and of course you -hate it and me too. You’re just as selfish as all the others, and more -too, I daresay. And you think you can frighten me by just doing nothing -except showing you dislike me. But you won’t frighten me—no, never—so -you needn’t expect it. I’m going to marry Katherine and take her right -away from you all, so you may as well make up your mind to it.” - -Philip, flushed in the face and half expecting that the walls of the -house would fall in upon him, paused—but there was no change at all in -Mr. Trenchard’s attitude, unless possibly one shining hand was driven a -little more deeply into the knee. There was perhaps some unexpected -pathos in the intensity of those pressing fingers, or, perhaps, Philip’s -desperate challenge was, already, forsaking him. At any rate he went on. - -“Why can’t you like me? I’m ready enough to like you. I’m not a bad kind -of man, and I’ll be very good to Katherine, no one could ever be better -to anyone than I’ll be to her. But why can’t we lead our own life? -You’re an old man—you must have seen a lot in your time—you must know -how times alter and one way of thinking gives way to another. You can’t -keep a family together by just refusing to listen to anything or -anybody. I know that you love Katherine, and if you love her really, -surely you’ll want her to lead her own life. Your life’s nearly -over—why should you spoil hers for her?” - -He paused again, but now he could not tell whether the eyes were closed -or no. Was the old man sleeping? or was he fiercely indignant? or was he -satirical and smiling? or was he suddenly going to cry aloud for Rocket? - -The uncertainty and the silence of the room worked terribly upon -Philip’s nerves. He had begun courageously, but the sound of his voice -in all that damp stillness was most unpleasant. Moreover, he was a poor -kind of fellow, because he always, even in the heat of anger, thought a -friend better than an enemy. He was too soft to carry things through. - -“He really does look very old,” he thought now, looking at the thin -legs, the bones in the neck, the lines on the forehead of the poor -gentleman, “and after all it can’t be pleasant to lose Katherine.” - -“If you’d only,” he went on in a milder voice, “give me a chance. -Katherine’s much too fond of all of you to give you up simply because -she’s married. She isn’t that sort at all. You knew that she’d marry -some day. All the trouble has come because you don’t like me. But have -you ever tried to? I’m the sort of man that you’ve got to like if you’re -to see the best of me. I know that’s my fault, but everyone has to have -allowances made for them.” - -Philip paused. There was a most deadly stillness in the room. Philip -felt that even the calf-bound Thackeray and the calf-bound Waverley -novels behind the glass screens in the large book-case near the door -were listening with all their covers. - -Not a movement came from the old man. Philip felt as though he were -addressing the whole house— - -He went on. “When you were young you wanted to go on with your -generation just as we do now. You believed that there was a splendid -time coming, and that none of the times that had ever been would be so -fine as the new one. _You_ didn’t want to think the same as your -grandfather and be tied to the same things. Can’t you remember? _Can’t_ -you remember? Don’t you _see_ that it’s just the same for us?” - -Still no movement, no sound, no quiver of a shadow in the Mirror. - -“I’ll be good to her, I swear to you, I don’t want to do anyone any -harm. And after all, what have I done? I was rude one Sunday night, -Henry drank too much once, I don’t always go to church, I don’t like the -same books—but what’s all that? isn’t everyone different, and isn’t it -a good thing that they are?” - -He bent forward—“I know that you can do a lot with them all. Just -persuade them to help, and be agreeable about it. That’s all that’s -wanted—just for everyone to be agreeable. It’s such a simple thing, -really.” - -He had touched Mr. Trenchard’s knee. With that touch the whole room -seemed to leap into hostile activity. He had, quite definitely, the -impression of having with one step plunged into a country that bristled -with foes behind every bush and tree. The warmth of the old man’s knees -seemed to fling him off and cast him out. - -Old Mr. Trenchard raised his head with a fierce, furious gesture like -the action of a snake striking. - -In a voice that was not silvery nor clear, but shaking and thick with -emotion, he said: - -“I warn you, young man—if you dare to take my grand-daughter -away—you’ll kill me!” - -Before Philip could do more than start back with a gesture of dismay, -the door had opened and Mrs. Trenchard and Aunt Aggie had entered. - - * * * * * - -Meanwhile there was Henry. - -Important events had occurred in Henry’s life since that Sunday when he -had told Millie about Philip’s terrible past and had shared in that -disastrous supper. He was to go to Cambridge. - -This important decision had apparently followed on Aunt Aggie’s -disclosure of his evil courses, therefore it may be considered that -Philip was, in this as in the other recent events in the Trenchard -history, responsible. Quite suddenly George Trenchard had lifted up his -head and said: “Henry, you’re to go to Cambridge next October. I think -that Jesus College shall bear the burden of your company. I believe that -there are examinations of a kind that you must pass before they will -admit you. I have written for papers.” - -This declaration should, of course, have been enough to fling Henry into -a wild ecstasy. Before the arrival of Philip it would undoubtedly have -done so. Now, however, he seemed to himself to have progressed already -so far beyond Jesus College, Cambridge. To have troubles and experiences -so deep and weighty as compared with anything that anyone at Cambridge -could possibly have known, and that to propose that he should go there -was very little less than an insult.... And for this he blamed Philip. - -Nevertheless the papers arrived. He was, in reality, no fool, and the -Cambridge ‘Little Go’ is not the most difficult examination under the -sun. At the end of May he went up to Cambridge. If one may judge by -certain picturesque romances concerned with University life and recently -popular amongst us, one is to understand that that first vision of a -University thrills with all the passion of one’s first pipe, one’s first -beer and one’s first bedmaker or scout, as the case may be. The weather -was chill and damp. He was placed in a tiny room, where he knocked his -head against the fine old rafters and listened to mice behind the -wainscot. His food was horrible, his bedmaker a repulsive old woman, and -the streets were filled with young men, who knew not Henry and pushed -him into the gutter. He hated everyone whom he saw at the examination, -from the large, red-faced gentleman who watched him as he wrote, down to -the thin and uncleanly youth who bit his nails at the seat next to his -own. He walked down Petty Cury and hated it; he strolled tip the King’s -Parade and hated that too. He went to King’s College Chapel and heard a -dull anthem, was spoken to by an enormous porter for walking on the -grass and fell over the raised step in the gateway. He was conceited and -lonely and hungry. He despised all the world, and would have given his -eyes for a friend. He looked forward to his three years in this city -(“The best time of your life, my boy. What I would give to have those -dear old days over again”) with inexpressible loathing. - -He knew, however, three hours of happiness and exultation. This joy came -to him during the English Essay—the last paper of the examination. -There were four subjects from which he might choose, and he selected -something that had to do with ‘The Connection between English History -and English Literature.’ Of facts he had really the vaguest notion. He -seemed to know, through hearsay rather than personal examination, that -Oliver Cromwell was something responsible for ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’, -that that dissolute monarch Charles II. had to do with the brilliance -and audacity of Mr. Congreve and Mr. Wycherley, that Queen Anne in some -way produced Pope and Robespierre, Wordsworth, and Queen Victoria, -Charlotte Mary Yonge (he had cared very deeply for ‘The Daisy Chain’), -and our Indian Empire Mr. Rudyard Kipling. He knew it all as vaguely as -this, but he wrote—he wrote divinely, gloriously ecstatically, so that -the three hours were but as one moment and the grim nudity of the -examination-room as the marbled palaces of his own fantastic dreams. -Such ecstasy had he known when he began that story about the man who -climbed the ricketty stairs. Such ecstasy had been born on that day when -he had read the first page of the novel about Forests—such ecstasy had, -he knew in spite of itself, received true nourishment from that enemy of -their house, Philip. - -His spirits fell when he came to himself, saw how many other gentlemen -had also written essays and with what indifference and languor the -red-faced gentleman hustled his pages in amongst all the others. -Nevertheless, he did come out of that examination-room with some -conviction as to the course that his future life would take, and with a -kindness, almost a tenderness, towards this grey town that was going to -allow him, even to command him, to write essays for the next three -years. With Henry one mood succeeded another as rapidly as, in his -country, wet weather succeeds fine. - -He returned to Garth in an outrageous temper. His main feeling now was -that Philip had spoiled Cambridge for him. Philip and his immoral life -‘got in’ between all that he saw and dropped a misty veil, so that he -could think of nothing in the way that tradition had taught him. He had -always had a great respect for tradition. - -Then as the weeks passed by he was made increasingly unhappy by the -strange condition in which he found the family. He was, at heart, the -crudest sentimentalist, and his sentimentalism had been fed by nothing -so richly as by the cherished conviction that the George Trenchards were -the most united family in England. He had always believed this; and had -never, until now, considered the possibility of any division. But what -now did he find? His mother stern, remote, silent, Millie irritable, -uneasy and critical, Aunt Aggie always out of temper, Aunt Betty -bewildered and tactless, even his father disturbed and unlike himself. -And Katie?... He could not have believed that six months would change -anyone so utterly. - -Instead of the reliable, affectionate and stolid sister who had shared -with him all her intimacies, her plans, her regrets, her anticipations, -he beheld now a stranger who gave him no intimacies at all, avoided him -and hid from him her undoubted unhappiness. It was true of him now as it -had ever been that ‘he would give his life to make Katherine happy,’ but -how was he to do anything for her when she would tell him nothing, when -she treated him like a stranger, and then blamed him for his -hostilities. - -If it had been clear that now, after these months of her engagement, she -no longer loved Philip, the matter would have been simple. He would have -proceeded at once to his father and told him all that he knew about -Philip’s Moscow life. But she _did_ love Philip—more, yes, far more, -than ever—nothing could be clearer than that. This love of Katherine’s -burned, unceasingly, in Henry’s brain. With no other human being could -he have felt, so urgently, the flame of it but Katherine, whom he had -known as he had known himself, so sure, so undramatic, so happily -sexless, as she had always seemed to him, that it should be she whom -this passion had transformed! From that moment when he had seen her -embrace of Philip, his imagination had harried him as a dog harries a -rabbit, over the whole scale of the world.... Love, too, that he had -believed was calm, domestic, friendly, reassuring, was in truth unhappy, -rebellious, devastating. In the very hearty of her unhappiness seemed to -be the fire of her love. This removed her from him as though he had been -flung by it into a distant world. And, on every side, he was attacked by -this same thing. There were the women whom he had seen that night with -Philip, there was the woman who had given Philip a son in Russia, there -was here a life, dancing before him, now near him, now far away from -him, intriguing him, shaming him, stirring him, revolting him, removing -him from all his family, isolating him and yet besetting him with the -company of wild, fantastic figures. - -He walked the Glebeshire roads, spoke to no one, hated himself, loathed -Philip, was lashed by his imagination, aroused at last to stinging -vitality, until he did not know whither to turn for safety. - - * * * * * - -He came up to London for the Faunder-Trenchard wedding. Late in the -afternoon that had seen Philip’s conversation with old Mr. Trenchard -Henry came into the drawing-room to discover that tea was over and no -one was there. He looked into the tea-pot and saw that there was nothing -there to cheer him. For a moment he thought of Russia, in which country -there were apparently perpetual samovars boiling upon ever-ready tables. -This made him think of Philip—then, turning at some sudden sound, there -was Aunt Aggie in the doorway. - -Aunt Aggie looked cold in spite of the warm weather, and she held her -knitting-needles in her hand defiantly, as though she were carrying them -to reassure a world that had unjustly accused her of riotous living. - -“It’s simply rotten,” said Henry, crossly. “One comes in expecting tea -and it’s all over. Why can’t they have tea at the ordinary time?” - -“That’s it,” said Aunt Aggie, settling herself comfortably into the -large arm-chair near the fireplace. “Thinking of yourself, Henry, of -course. Learn to be unselfish or you’ll never be happy in _this_ world. -I remember when I was a girl—” - -“Look here!” Henry interrupted. “Has Philip been here this afternoon?” - -“Mr. Mark? Yes, he has.” - -“Did he come to tea?” - -“Yes.” - -She dug her needles viciously into an innocent ball of wool. - -“Yes,” said Henry fiercely, “that’s why they had it early, I -suppose—and why I don’t get any—_of_ course.” - -“All I know is,” continued Aunt Aggie, “that he’s put your grandfather -into the most dreadful state. He was alone in here with him it seems, -and I’m sure I don’t know what he’s said to him, but it upset him -dreadfully. I’ve not been well myself to-day, and to have your -grandfather—” - -But Henry again interrupted. - -“What did he want coming to-day at all for? He might have waited.” - -Aunt Aggie, however, did not like to be interrupted when she was -discussing her health, so she said now sharply: “Just look at your -hands, Henry—Why _can’t_ you keep them clean. I should have thought -going up to Cambridge—” - -“Oh! I’m all right,” he answered, impatiently. “Anyway, I wonder what he -told grandfather.” - -“Why, what _could_ he have told him?” said Aunt Aggie, eagerly, looking -up. - -“Oh, I don’t know—nothing—Only ... Oh, Rocket, ask them to make some -fresh tea. Let me have it in here.” - -“Certainly, Mr. Henry,” said Rocket, removing the tea-pot with an air of -strong disapproval. - -“Really, Henry!” Aunt Aggie exclaimed. “And simply for yourself! Why, -even though I’ve had the most trying headache all day, I’d never venture -to give so much trouble simply for myself.” - -“Oh, I daresay you’ll have some when it comes,” Henry answered, -carelessly—then, pursuing his thoughts, he continued: “Well, he won’t -be coming back to Garth with us—that’s one comfort.” - -“Oh, but he is!” cried Aunt Aggie, excitedly. “He is! Your mother’s -_asked_ him to come back with us, and he’s accepted. I simply don’t -understand it. Your mother dislikes him as much as the rest of us do, -and why she should _ask_ him! It can’t be for poor Katie’s sake. She’s -miserable enough when he’s at Garth. I’m sure if things go on like this -much longer I shall go and take a little house by myself and live alone. -I’d really rather than all this unpleasantness.” - -This threat did not apparently alarm Henry very greatly, for, bursting -out suddenly, he cried: “It’s beastly! perfectly beastly! There we’ve -all got to sit watching him make Katie miserable. I won’t stand it! I -_won’t_ stand it!” - -“Why you!” said Aunt Aggie, scornfully. “How can you prevent it! You’re -only a boy!” - -This epithet stung Henry to madness. Ah, if Aunt Aggie only knew all, -she’d see that he was very far from being ‘only a boy’—if she only knew -the burden of secret responsibility that he’d been bearing during all -these weeks. He’d keep secret no longer—it was time that everyone -should know the kind of man to whom Katherine was being sacrificed. He -turned round to his aunt, trembling with anger and excitement. - -“You talk like that!” he cried, “but you don’t know what I know!” - -“What don’t I know?” she asked eagerly. - -“About Philip—this man Mark—He’s wicked, he’s awful, -he’s—abominable!” - -“Well,” said Aunt Aggie, dropping her needles. “What’s he done?” - -“Done!” Henry exclaimed, sinking his voice into a horrified and -confidential whisper. “He’s been a dreadful man. Before, in Russia, -there’s nothing he didn’t do. I know, because there’s a friend of mine -who knew him very well out there. He lived a terribly immoral life. He -was notorious. He lived with a woman for years who wasn’t his wife, and -they had a baby. There’s nothing he didn’t do—and he never told father -a word.” Henry paused for breath. - -Aunt Aggie’s cheeks flushed crimson, as they always did when anyone -spoke, before her, of sexual matters. - -At last she said, as though to herself: “I always knew it—I always knew -it. You could see it in his face. I warned them, but they wouldn’t -listen.” - -Henry meanwhile had recovered himself. He stood there looking into the -Mirror. It was a tragic moment. He had done, after all, what, all these -months, he had determined to prevent himself from doing. He saw now, in -a flash of accusing anger, what would most certainly follow. Aunt Aggie -would tell everyone. Philip would be dismissed—Katherine’s heart would -be broken. - -He saw nothing but Katherine, Katherine whom he loved with all the -ardour of his strange undisciplined quixotic soul. He saw Katherine -turning to him, reproaching him, then, hiding her grief, pursuing her -old life, unhappy for ever and ever. (At this stage in his development, -he saw everything in terms of ‘for ever and for ever’.) It never -occurred to him that if Philip were expelled out of the Trenchard Eden -Katherine might accompany him. No, she would remain, a heart-broken -monument to Henry’s lack of character. - -He scowled at his aunt, who sat there thrilled and indignant and happy. - -“I say!” he burst out. “Of course you mustn’t tell anybody!” - -Aunt Aggie nodded her head and her needles clicked. - -“It must remain with wiser and older heads than yours, Henry, as to what -ought to be done ...” then to herself again: “Ah, they’ll wish they’d -listened to me now.” - -“But I say,” repeated Henry, red in the face, standing in front of her, -“you really mustn’t. I told it you as a secret.” - -“A secret! When everyone in London knows! A nice thing they’ll all -think—letting Katherine marry a man with such a reputation!” - -“No, but look here—_you_ wouldn’t have known anything if I hadn’t told -you—and you mustn’t do anything—you mustn’t really. Katie loves -him—more than ever—and if she were to lose him—” - -“Much better for her to lose him,” said Aunt Aggie firmly, “than for her -to be miserable for life—much better. Besides, think of the abominable -way the man’s deceived us! Why, he’s no better than a common thief! -He—” - -“Perhaps he hasn’t deceived her,” interrupted Henry. “Perhaps he’s told -her—” - -“Told her!” cried his aunt. “And do you really suppose that Katherine -would stay for one moment with a man whose life—My dear Henry, how -little you know your sister. She certainly has changed lately under that -dreadful man’s influence, but she’s not changed so fundamentally as to -forget all principles of right and wrong, all delicate feeling.” - -“I don’t know,” said Henry slowly, “I don’t believe we do know Katie a -bit. Girls are so queer. You think they don’t know a thing about -anything, and really they know more than you do.... Anyway,” he went on -eagerly, “you mustn’t say a word. You mustn’t really. You must give me -your promise.” - -But before Aunt Aggie could do more than shake her head there was an -interruption. The door opened and Philip entered. Aunt Aggie at once -rose from her chair, and, with a rustle and a quiver, without looking at -the young man, without speaking left the room. - -Henry remained, staring at Philip, confused and bewildered, furious with -himself, furious with Aunt Aggie, furious with Philip. Yes, now he had -ruined Katherine’s life—he and Philip between them. That he should not -consider it possible that Katherine should have her life in her own -hands to make or mar was characteristic of the Trenchard point of view. - -Philip, conscious of Aunt Aggie’s exit, said: “I was just going—I came -back to fetch a book that I left here—one that Katherine lent me.” - -Henry made his usual lurching movement, as though he would like to move -across the room and behave naturally, but was afraid to trust himself. - -“That it?” he asked, pointing gloomily to a novel on the table near him. - -“That’s it,” said Philip. - -“Hullo!” cried Henry, looking at it more closely. “That’s mine!” It was -indeed the novel that had to do with forests and the sea and the liberty -of the human soul, the novel that had been to Henry the first true -gospel of his life and that had bred in him all the troubles, distrusts -and fears that a true gospel is sure to breed. Henry, when the original -book had been delivered back to Mudie’s had with ceremony and worship -bought a copy for himself. This was his copy. - -“It’s my book,” Henry repeated, picking it up and holding it defiantly. - -“I’m very sorry,” said Philip stiffly. “Of course I didn’t know. -Katherine spoke as though it were hers.” - -“Oh, you can take it,” Henry said, frowning and throwing it back on the -table. - -Philip looked at him, then suddenly, laughing, walked over to him, -“What’s the matter, Henry?” he said catching his arm. “I’ll have it out -with the lot of you, I swear I will. You, none of you, say anything—you -all just look as though you didn’t know me. You yourself, these last -months, have looked as though you’d like to stick a dagger into my back. -Now, really, upon my word, I don’t know what I’ve done. I’m engaged to -Katherine, but I’ve behaved as decently about it as I can. I’m not going -to take her away from you all if I can help it. I’ve made up my mind to -that, now that I see how much she cares for you all. I’ve done my best -... I really have. Now, what is it?” - -Henry was, in spite of himself, touched by this appeal. He glanced at -Philip’s face and thought, again in spite of himself, what a nice one it -was. A horrible suspicion came to him that he liked Philip, had always -liked him, and this abominable whisper, revealing treachery to all his -principles, to all his traditions, to all his moral code, above all to -Katherine, infuriated him. He tore his arm away. - -“If you want to know,” he cried, “it’s because I think you’re a beast, -because you’re not fit to touch Katie—because—because—I know all -about you!” - -Philip stood there; for a moment a smile trembled to his lips, then was -dismissed. - -“What do you mean?” he said, sternly. - -“Mean?” cried Henry, allowing himself to be carried along on a tide of -indignation that seemed, in some way, in spite of itself, to be quite -genuine. “Mean? I mean that I’ve known for weeks and weeks the kind of -man _you_ are! I know what you did in Moscow for years and years, -although you may look so quiet. Do you think you’re the sort of man to -marry Katherine? Why, you aren’t fit to touch her hand.” - -“Would you mind,” said Philip quietly, “just telling me exactly to what -you are referring?” - -“Why,” said Henry, dropping his voice and beginning to mumble, “you -had—you had a mistress—in Moscow for years, and everyone knew it—and -you had a baby—and it died. Everyone knows it.” - -“Well,” said Philip quietly, “and what then?” - -“Oh, you’re going to deny it, I suppose,” said Henry, “but I tell you—” - -“No,” said Philip, “I’m not going to think of denying it. I don’t know -where you got your information from, but it’s perfectly true. At the -same time I can’t see that it’s your particular business or, indeed, -anyone’s. The affair’s absolutely done with—old history.” - -“No, I suppose,” cried Henry, “it doesn’t seem to be anything to you. -You don’t know what a decent family thinks of such things. It’s nothing -to you, of course. But we happen to care for Katherine more than—more -than—you seem to know. And—and she’s everything to us. And we’re not -going to let her—to let her marry someone who’s notoriously a—a bad -man. No, we’re not. It may seem odd to you, but we’re _not_.” - -Philip was standing now beneath the Mirror, in front of the fireplace, -his hands behind his back. - -“My dear Henry,” he said, “it’s extremely pleasant to me to hear that -you’re so fond of Katherine—but has it ever occurred to any of you that -she may possibly have a life of her own, that she isn’t going to be -dependent on all of you for ever?... And as for you, Henry, my boy, -you’re a nice character, with charming possibilities in it, but I’m -afraid that it can’t be denied that you’re a bit of a prig—and I don’t -know that Cambridge is exactly the place to improve that defect.” - -Philip could have said nothing more insulting. Henry’s face grew white -and his hands trembled. - -His voice shaking, he answered: “You can say what you like. All I can -tell you is that if you don’t give up Katherine I’ll tell Father at once -the sort of man you are—tell them all. And then you’ll have to go.” - -At Philip’s heart there was triumph. At last the crisis was threatened -for which he had, all this time, been longing. He did not for an instant -doubt what Katherine would do. Ah! if they drove him away she was his, -his for ever! and, please God, they would never see Glebeshire again! - -He was triumphant, but he did not give Henry his mood. - -“You can do what you please, my son,” he answered, scornfully. “Tell ’em -all. But brush your hair next time you come down to the drawing-room for -tea. Even in Russia we do that. You don’t know how wild it looks.... -Now, just hand me that book and I’ll clear out. Meanwhile don’t be so -childish. You’re going to Cambridge, and really _must_ grow up. Take my -advice. Brush your hair, put on a clean collar, and don’t be a prig.” - -Henry, white with passion, saw nothing but Philip’s face. Philip the -enemy and scorn of the house, Philip the ravisher of Katherine, Philip -author of all evil and instigator of all wickedness. - -He picked up the book and flung it at Philip’s head. - -“There’s your book!” he screamed. “Take it!... You—you cad!” - -The book crashed into the centre of the mirror. - -There was a tinkle of falling glass, and instantly the whole room seemed -to tumble into pieces, the old walls, the old prints and water-colours, -the green carpet, the solemn book-cases, the large arm-chairs—and with -the room, the house, and with the house Westminster, Garth, Glebeshire, -Trenchard and Trenchard tradition—all represented now by splinters and -fragments of glass, by broken reflections of squares and stars of green -light, old faded colours, deep retreating shadows. - -“Oh!” cried Henry! “Oh!” - -“Thank Heaven!” laughed Philip triumphantly. “One of you’ve done -something at last!” - - - - - CHAPTER III - ANNA AND MRS. TRENCHARD - -That return to Garth was, for everyone concerned, a miserable affair. It -happened that the fine summer weather broke into torrents of rain. As -they drove up to the old house they could hear the dripping of water -from every nook and corner. As Henry lay awake that first night the hiss -and spatter of the rain against his window seemed to have a personal -grudge against him. “Ah—you fool—s-s-s—you s-s-s-illy a-s-s-s. _Put_ -your _pride_ in your _pocket_—s-s-s-illy a-s-s.” - -When he slept he dreamt that a deluge had descended upon the earth, that -all were drowned save he, and that he was supported against the flood -only by the floor of the house that swayed and swayed. Suddenly with a -crash in it fell—he awoke to find that he had tumbled out of bed on to -the carpet. - -For days a steaming, clammy mist, with a weight and a melancholy -peculiar to Glebeshire, hung over the world. - -They lived in hot steam, their hair was damp and their hands chill. It -was poor days for the beginning of August. Rebekah was in a bad temper; -no one knew what it was that had displeased her, but she had a wicked -nephew who wrote, at certain times, to plead for money, and always for -many days after receiving a letter from him she was displeased with -everyone. She walked now like a tragedy queen in her tall white cap and -stiff white apron; only Mrs. Trenchard could be expected to deal with -her, and Mrs. Trenchard had other things that occupied her mind. - -Henry’s eye was now forever on his mother. He waited for the moment when -Aunt Aggie would speak, that quite inevitable moment. - -He thought that he had never truly seen his mother before. In old days, -in that strange, dim world before Philip’s arrival, she had seemed to -him someone to be cherished, to be protected, someone growing a little -old, a little cheerless, a little lonely. Now she was full of vigour and -dominion. When she said to him: “Did you put on that clean -under-clothing this morning, Henry?” instead of sulking and answering -her question with an obvious disgust, he assured her earnestly that he -had done so. He admired now her strong figure, her pouring of tea at -breakfast, her sharp rebukes to the gardener, and her chiding of Uncle -Tim when he entered the drawing-room wearing muddy boots. Yes, he -admired his mother. So he trembled at the thought of her cold, ironic -anger when she heard of Philip’s past. - -On the day after their arrival at Garth he told Millie what he had done. -He had long ago realised that, since her return from Paris, Millie had -been a quite unaccountable creature. It was not only her French -education. He attributed this change also to the dire influence of -Philip. He noticed with disgust that she behaved now as though she were -a woman of the world, implying, at the same time, that he was still an -uncleanly and ignorant schoolboy. He knew that she would be indignant -and scornful at his indiscretion, nevertheless he was driven by -loneliness to confide in her. - -They walked together to the village that they might fetch the afternoon -post, otherwise unrescued until the following morning. - -Millie was in a bad temper. - -“I never knew anyone walk in the mud as you do, Henry. Your boots are -filthy in a minute. You walk into every puddle you can see. You always -did.” - -The trees hung ghostly out of the mist like mocking scarecrows. Every -once and again moisture from somewhere trickled down between Henry’s -neck and collar. - -“Look here, Millie,” he said gloomily, “I want your advice.” - -“You’ve done something silly again, I suppose,” she answered loftily. - -Glancing shyly at her, he thought that she was looking very pretty. -Strange, the number of new things that he was noticing now about the -family. But she _was_ pretty—a great deal prettier than Katherine; in -fact, the only pretty one of the family. He liked her soft hair, so -charming under her large flopping garden-hat, her little nose, her eyes -black and sparkling, the colour of her cheeks, her tall and slim body -that carried her old cotton dress so gracefully. Everything about her -was right and beautiful in a way that no other members of the family -could achieve. Katherine was always a little clumsy, although since her -engagement to Philip she had taken more care.... There was something -light and lovely about Millie that no care would produce if you had not -got it. He was proud of her, and would have liked that she should be -nice to him. - -“Yes,” he said, “I’ve been an awful fool.... I’ve told Aunt Aggie about -Philip.” - -Millie stopped and stood, staring at him. - -“You’ve told Aunt Aggie?” she cried furiously. - -“Yes,” he repeated, blushing, as he always did when he was scolded. - -“Oh! you _silly_ ass!” She was so deeply exasperated that she could -scarcely speak. - -“You SILLY ass! I might have guessed it—And yet all the time I’d hoped -that at least.... And Aunt Aggie of all people!... and now Katherine and -mother! - -“Oh, you chattering, blundering idiot!” - -She walked forward at a furious pace; he plunged after her. - -“That’s all right,” he said, “when you’ve done cursing you’ll be cooler. -I _know_ I’m an ass, but Aunt Aggie irritated me and got it all out of -me. Aunt Aggie’s the devil!” - -“Of course she is, and _of course_ you’ll choose her out of everyone, -when she _hates_ Philip and would wring his neck to-morrow if her hands -were strong enough.” - -“Well, I hate him too,” said Henry. - -“Oh, no you don’t,” answered Millie, “you think you do. You’re proud of -thinking you hate him, and you lose your temper because he laughs at -you, and then you throw books at his head, but you don’t really hate -him.” - -“How do you know I throw books at his head?” - -“Oh, you don’t suppose we, any of us, believed that story about you and -Philip having a kind of game in the drawing-room just for fun.... Father -was furious about it, and said the mirror was unreplaceable, and the -sooner you went to Cambridge and stopped there the better—and I think -so too. Oh! you’ve just spoilt everything!” - -“It’s only about Katie I’m thinking,” he answered doggedly. “It may, -after all, be true what Aunt Aggie said, that it will be much better for -her in the end for the thing to be broken off, even though it hurts her -now.” - -“Better for her!” cried Millie scornfully. “Don’t you know that, however -deeply she loved Philip when it all began, it’s nothing to the way that -she loves him now?... Of course now there’ll be a scene. Philip will be -turned off for ever and—” She broke off, then said, staring at Henry: -“Supposing, after all, Katie were to go with him!” - -Henry shook his head. “She’d never do that, however much Philip is to -her. Why, it would mean giving up Garth and us for ever! Mother would -never forgive her! After all, she’s only known Philip six months, and I -heard her say the other day in London she loves Garth more than ever. -And even if Mother _did_ forgive her, in the end she’d never be able to -come back here as one of us again. You and I will love her whatever she -does, but Mother and Father and the aunts ... I believe it would simply -kill them—” - -“I’m not so sure,” said Millie slowly, “that Mother thinks that. I -believe she’s half afraid of Philip running off and then Katie following -him. That’s why she’s been so nice to him lately, although she can’t -bear him. Of course if she knew all this that we know he’d _have_ to -go—she wouldn’t have him in the house five minutes, and Father would do -what Mother told him of course. And now that you’ve been an idiot enough -to tell Aunt Aggie, it’s all up.... The only hope is that Katie will -chuck it all and follow him!” - -“What!” cried Henry aghast. “You’d like her to!” - -“Why, of course,” said Millie, “there isn’t anything compared with the -sort of thing Katie feels for Philip—Home and the family? Why, they’ve -all _got_ to go in these days! That’s what people like the aunts and -fathers and the rest of the old fogeys round here don’t see. But they’ll -_have_ to see soon.... But mother’s cleverer than they are. At least she -is about Katie, because she loves her so much.” - -“My word!” said Henry, in the husky voice that always came when he -admired anybody. “You’ve changed an awful lot lately, Millie.” - -“Yes, I suppose I have,” she answered, complacently. - -They talked very little after that, for the reason that in the village -Henry bought Millie some bulls-eyes, because he felt in a confused kind -of way that he admired her more than he had ever done. - -Millie had also another reason for silence; she was thinking very hard. -During those few days in London she had lived in a world of thrilling -expectation. She hoped that every moment would announce the elopement of -Katherine and Philip. After her conversation with her sister, it had -seemed to her that this elopement was inevitable. On every occasion of -the opening of a door in the London house her heart had leapt in her -breast. She had watched the lovers with eyes that were absorbed. Ah! if -only they would take her more thoroughly into their confidence, would -put themselves into her hands. She’d manage for them—she’d arrange -everything most beautifully. This was the most romantic hour of her -life.... - -But now, after Henry’s revelation, Millie’s thoughts were turned upon -her mother. Of course her mother would expel Philip—then there was a -danger that Philip would return to that living, fascinating creature in -Russia, the mysterious, smiling Anna. Millie had created that figure for -herself now, had thought and wondered and dreamed of her so often that -she saw her bright and vivid and desperately dangerous, thin and dark -and beautiful against a background of eternal snow. - -There they were—her mother and Anna and Katherine, with Philip, poor -Philip, in between them all. It was truly a wonderful time for Millie, -who regarded all this as a prologue to her own later dazzling history. -She did not know that, after all, she blamed Henry very desperately for -his foolishness. The thrilling crisis was but brought the nearer. - -Meanwhile the first thing that she did was to inform Katherine of -Henry’s treachery. - -Katherine received the news very quietly. - -“And now,” said Millie eagerly, “what will you do, Katie darling?” - -“Wait and see what Mother does,” said Katie. - -“She’ll be simply horrified,” said Millie. “If she sends Philip away and -forbids you ever to see him again, what will you do?” - -But Katherine would not answer that. - -“Let’s wait, Millie dear,” she said gently. - -“But you wouldn’t let him _go_?” Millie pursued, “not back to Russia and -that awful woman.” - -“I trust Philip,” Katherine said. - -“You can never trust a man,” Millie said gravely. “I know. One of our -girls in Paris was let in terribly. She—” - -Katherine interrupted her. - -“Philip isn’t like anyone else,” she said. - -And Millie was dismissed. - -But when Katherine was alone she sat down and wrote a letter. This was -it: - - MY DARLING RACHEL, - - Do you remember that a long time ago, one day when I came to see - you in London, you said that if I were ever in trouble I was to - tell you and you’d understand _anything_? Well, I’m in trouble - now—bad trouble. Things are growing worse and worse, and it - seems now that whichever way I act, something’s got to be - hopelessly spoiled. To any ordinary outsider it would mean such - a small business, but really it’s the _whole_ of my life and of - other people’s too. You’re _not_ an outsider, and so I know that - you’ll understand. I can’t tell you more now—I don’t know what - will happen, how I’ll act, or anything. But I shall know soon, - and then I shall want your help, dreadfully. I’m sure you’ll - help me when I ask you to. - - You do like Philip better now, don’t you? I know that you didn’t - at first, but that was because you didn’t really know him. _I_ - didn’t really know him either then, but I know him now, and I - love him twice as much as ever I did. - - This will seem a silly letter to you, but I want to feel that - I’ve got someone behind me. Millie’s a dear, but she isn’t old - enough to understand. Don’t be frightened by this. If anything - happens I’ll write at once. - - Your loving - K. - -Meanwhile the family life proceeded, outwardly, on its normal way. -August was always a month of incident—picnics to Rafiel and St. Lowe -and Damen Head, sometimes long expeditions to Borhaze or Pelynt, -sometimes afternoons in Pendennis or Rothin Woods. There were -expeditions in which relations from Polchester or Clinton, or friends -from Liskane and Polewint shared, and, in the cover of them, the family -supported quite successfully the Trenchard tradition of good manners, -unruffled composure, and abundant leisure. As members of a clan so -ancient and self-reliant that no enemy, however strong, however -confident, could touch them, they sat about their luncheon baskets on -the burning sand, whilst the fat pony cropped in the dark hedges above -the beach and the gulls wheeled and hovered close at hand. - -This was well enough, but the long summer evenings betrayed them. In -earlier days, when relationships were so sure and so pleasant that the -world swept by in a happy silence, those summer evenings had been lazy, -intimate prologues to long nights of undisturbed sleep. They would sit -in the drawing-room, the windows open to the garden scents and the salt -twang of the sea, moths would flutter round the lamps, Millie would play -and sing a little at a piano that was never quite in tune. Aunt Betty -would struggle happily with her “Demon Patience,” George Trenchard would -laugh at them for half-an-hour, and then slip away to his study. Mrs. -Trenchard and Aunt Aggie would knit and discuss the village, Henry would -lie back in an arm-chair, his nose deep in a book, Katherine would be at -anybody’s service—the minutes would fly, then would come Rebekah with -hot milk for some and toast-and-water for others, there would be -prayers, and then “good-night, ma’am”. “Good-night, sir”, from the three -maids, the cook and Rebekah, then candles lighted in the hall, then -climbing slowly up the stairs, with clumsy jokes from Henry and last -words from Mrs. Trenchard, such as “Don’t forget the Williams’ coming -over to-morrow, Katie dear,” or “Some of that quinine for your cold, -Aggie, _I_ suggest,” or “I’ve put the new collars on your bed, Henry,” -then the closing of doors, then a happy silence, utterly secure. That -had been the old way. - -Outwardly the August nights of this year resembled the old ones—but the -heart of them beat with panic and dismay. Philip had thought at first -that it was perhaps his presence that caused the uneasiness, and one -evening he complained of a headache and went up to his room after -dinner. But he learnt from Katherine that his absence had merely -emphasised everything. They must be all there—it would never do to show -that there was anything the matter. Millie played the piano, Aunt Betty -attempted her “Patience” with her usual little “Tut-tut’s” and “Dear -me’s.” Mrs. Trenchard and Aunt Aggie sewed or knitted, but now the -minutes dragged in endless procession across the floor, suddenly someone -would raise a head and listen, Henry, pretending to read a book, would -stare desperately in front of him, then noticing that Aunt Aggie watched -him, would blush and hold his book before his face; with relief, as -though they had escaped some threatening danger, they would greet the -milk, the ‘toast-and-water’, the maids and the family prayers. - -There was now no lingering on the staircase. - -There are many families, of course, to whom the rebellion or disgrace of -one of its members would mean but little, so slightly had been felt -before the dependence of one soul upon another. But with the Trenchards -that dependence had been _everything_, the outside world had been a -fantastic show, unreal and unneeded: as the pieces of a pictured puzzle -fit one into another, so had the Trenchards been interwoven and -dependent ... only in England, perhaps, had such a blind and superior -insularity been possible ... and it may be that this was to be, in all -the records of history, the last of such a kind—“_Nil nisi bonum_”.... - -To Philip these summer days were darkened by his consciousness of Mrs. -Trenchard. When he looked back over the months since he had known her, -he could remember no very dramatic conversation that he had had with -her, nothing tangible anywhere. She had been always pleasant and -agreeable to him, and, at times, he had tried to tell himself that, -after all, he might ultimately be happy ‘eaten up by her,’ as Jonah was -by the whale. Then, with a little shiver, he knew the truth—that -increasingly, as the days passed, he both hated and feared her. She had -caught his will in her strong hands and was crushing it into pulp. - -He made one last effort to assert himself, even as he had tried his -strength against Katherine, against Henry, against Aunt Aggie, against -old Mr. Trenchard. This little conversation that he had in the Garth -garden with Mrs. Trenchard upon one of those lovely summer evenings was -of the simplest and most undramatic fashion. Nevertheless it marked the -end of his struggle; he always afterwards looked back upon those ten -minutes as the most frightening experience of his life. Mrs. Trenchard, -in a large loose hat and gauntleted gardening gloves, made a fine -cheerful, reposeful figure as she walked slowly up and down the long -lawn; she asked Philip to walk with her; the sun flung her broad flat -shadow like a stain upon the bright grass. - -They had talked a little, and then he had suddenly, with a tug of alarm -at his heart, determined that he would break his chains. He looked up at -her placid eyes. - -“I think,” he said—his voice was not quite steady—“that Katherine and -I will live somewhere in the North after our marriage. Quite frankly I -don’t think Glebeshire suits me.” - -“And Katie,” said Mrs. Trenchard, smiling. - -“Katie ... she—she’ll like the North when she’s tried it for a little.” - -“You’ll rob us of her?” - -“Not altogether, of course.” - -“She’ll be very miserable away from Glebeshire ... very miserable. I’ve -seen such a nice little house—Colve Hall—only two miles from here—on -the Rafiel road. I don’t think you must take Katie from Glebeshire, -Philip.” - -That was a challenge. Their eyes met. His dropped. - -“I think it will be better for her to be away after we are married.” - -“Why? Do you hate us all?” - -He coloured. “I’m not myself with you. I don’t know what to do with your -kind of life. I’ve tried—I have indeed—I’m not happy here.” - -“Aren’t you selfish? If you rob Katie of everything—will you be happy -then?” - -Yes, that was it. He could see their future life, Katherine, longing, -longing to return, excited, homesick! - -Although he did not look up, he knew that she was smiling at him. - -“You are very young, Philip,” she said. “You want life to be perfect. It -can’t be that. You must adapt yourself. I think that you will both be -happier here in Glebeshire—near us.” - -He would have broken out, crying that Katherine was his, not theirs, -that he wanted her for himself, that they must be free.... Of what use? -That impassivity took his courage and flattened it all out as though he -were a child of ten, still ruled by his mother. - -“Shall we go in?” said Mrs. Trenchard. “It’s a little cold.” - -It was after this conversation that he began to place his hope upon the -day when his Moscow misdeeds would be declared—that seemed now his only -road to freedom. - - * * * * * - -Upon one lovely summer evening they sat there and had, some of them, the -same thought. - -Millie, slim and white, standing before the long open window, stared -into the purple night, splashed with stars and mysterious with tier-like -clouds. She was thinking of Anna, of all that life that Philip had, of -what a world it must be where there are no laws, no conventions, no -restraints. That woman now had some other lover, she thought no more, -perhaps, of Philip—and no one held her the worse. She could do what she -would—how full her life must be, how adventurous, packed with colour, -excitement, battle and victory. And, after all, it might be, to that -woman, that this adventure meant so little that she did not realise it -_as_ an adventure. Millie’s heart rose and fell; her heart hurt her so -that she pressed her hand against her frock. She wanted her own life to -begin—at once, at once. Other girls had found the beginning of it -during those days in Paris, but some English restraint and pride—she -was intensely proud—had held her back. But now she was on fire with -impatience, with longing, with, courage.... As she stared into the night -she seemed to see the whole world open, like a shining silver plate, -held by some dark figure for her acceptance. She stretched out her -hands. - -“Take care you don’t catch cold by that open window, Millie dear,” said -her mother. - -Henry also was thinking of Anna. From where he sat he could, behind his -book, raising his eyes a little, see Philip. Philip was sitting, very -straight and solid, with his short thick legs crossed in front of him, -reading a book. He never moved. He made no sound. Henry had, since the -day when he had broken the mirror, avoided Philip entirely. He did not -want to consider the man at all; of course he hated the man because it -was he who had made them all miserable, and yet, had the fellow never -loved Katherine, had he remained outside the family, Henry knew now that -he could have loved him. - -This discovery he had made exactly at the moment when that book had -fallen crashing into the mirror—it had been so silly, so humiliating a -discovery that he had banished it from his mind, had refused to look -into it at all. - -But that did not mean that he did not contemplate Philip’s amazing life. -He contemplated it more intensely every day. The woman had all the -mystery of invisibility, and yet Henry thought that he would know her if -he saw her. He coloured her according to his fancy, a laughing, tender -figure who would recognize him, did she meet him, as the one man in the -world for whom she had been searching. - -He imagined to himself ridiculous conversations that he should have with -her. He would propose to marry her, would declare, with a splendid -nobility, that he knew of her earlier life, but that “that meant nothing -to him.” He would even give up his country for her, would live in -Russia, would ... Then he caught Philip’s eye, blushed, bent to pull up -his sock, said, in a husky, unconcerned voice: - -“Do play something, Millie. Something of Mendelssohn.” - -Philip also was thinking of Anna. Through the pages of his stupid novel, -as though they had been of glass, he saw her as she had last appeared to -him on the platform of the Moscow station. She had been wearing a little -round black fur hat and a long black fur coat, her cheeks were pale, her -eyes mocking, but somewhere, as though in spite of herself, there had -been tenderness. She had laughed at him, but she had, for only a moment -perhaps, wished that he were not going. It was that tenderness that held -him now. The evening, through which he was now passing, had been -terrible—one of the worst that he had ever spent—and he had wondered -whether he really would be able to discipline himself to that course on -which he had determined, to marry Katherine under the Trenchard shadow, -to deliver himself to Mrs. Trenchard, even as the lobster is delivered -to the cook. And so, with this desperation, had come, with increasing -force, that memory of Anna’s tenderness. - -He did not want to live with her again, to renew that old life—his love -for Katherine had, most truly, blotted out all the fire and colour of -that earlier passion, but he wanted—yes, he wanted most passionately, -to save his own soul. - -Might it not, after all, be true, as that ghostly figure had urged to -him, that it would be better for him to escape and so carry Katherine -after him—but what if she did not come? - -He heard Mrs. Trenchard’s voice as she spoke to Millie, and, at that -sound, he resigned himself ... but the figure still smiled at him behind -that glassy barrier. - -Katherine also thought of Anna. She was sitting just behind Aunt Betty -watching, over the old lady’s shoulder, the ‘Patience’. - -“There,” said Aunt Betty, “there’s the ten, the nine, the eight. Oh! if -I only had the seven!” - -“You can get it,” said Katherine, “if you move that six and five.” - -“How stupid I am!” said Aunt Betty, “thank you, my dear, I didn’t see.” - -Katherine saw dancing in and out between the little cards a tiny figure -that was yet tall and strong, moving there a teasing, taunting puppet, -standing also, a motionless figure, away there, by the wall, watching, -with a cynical smile, the room. Beneath the thin hands of the old lady -the cards fluttered, shifted, lay with their painted colours on the -shining table, and, in accompaniment with their movement, Katherine’s -thoughts also danced, in and out, round and round, chasing the same old -hopeless riddle. Sometimes she glanced across at her mother. Perhaps -already Aunt Aggie had told her.... No, she had not. Her mother’s calm -showed that she, as yet, knew nothing. Katherine, like the others, did -not doubt what her mother would do. She would demand that the engagement -should be broken off; they would all, ranged behind her broad back, -present their ultimatum—And then what would Katherine do?... Simply, -sitting there, with her fingers fiercely interlaced, her hands pressed -against her knee, she did not know. She was exhausted with the struggle -that had continued now for so many weeks, and behind her exhaustion, -waiting there, triumphant in the expectation of her success, was her -rival. - -Then, suddenly, as they waited there came to them all the idea that the -hall door had been opened and gently closed. They all, Mrs. Trenchard, -Aunt Aggie, Millie, Henry, Katherine, started, looked up. - -“Did someone come in?” said Mrs. Trenchard, in her mild voice. “I -thought I heard the hall door—Just go and see, Henry.” - -“I’ll go,” said Katherine quickly. - -They all waited, their heads raised. Katherine crossed the room, went -into the hall that glimmered faintly under a dim lamp, paused a moment, -then turned back the heavy handle of the door. The door swung back, and -the lovely summer night swept into the house. The stars were a pattern -of quivering light between the branches of the heavy trees that trembled -ever so gently with the thrilling sense of their happiness. The roses, -the rich soil soaked with dew, and the distant murmur of the stream that -ran below the garden wall entered the house. - -Katherine waited, in the open door, looking forward. Then she came in, -shutting the door softly behind her. - -Had someone entered? Was someone there with her, in the half-light, -whispering to her: “I’m in the house now—and I shall stay, so long as I -please—unless you can turn me out.” - -She went back into the drawing-room. - -“There was no one,” she said. “Perhaps it was Rebekah.” - -“There’s rather a draught, dear,” said Aunt Aggie, “my neuralgia ... -thank you, my dear.” - -“I’ve done it!” cried Aunt Betty, flushed with pleasure. “It’s come out! -If you hadn’t shown me that seven, Katie, it never would have come!” - - * * * * * - -Upon the very next afternoon Aunt Aggie made up her mind. After luncheon -she went, alone, for a walk; she climbed the fields above the house, -threaded little lanes sunk between high hedges, crossed an open common, -dropped into another lane, was lost for awhile, finally emerged on the -hill above that tiny Cove known as Smuggler’s Button. Smuggler’s Button -is the tiniest cove in Glebeshire, the sand of it is the whitest, and it -has in the very middle a high jagged rock known as the Pin. Aunt Aggie, -holding an umbrella, a black bonnet on her head and an old shabby -rain-coat flapping behind her, sat on the Pin. It was a long way for her -to have come—five miles from Garth—and the day was windy, with high -white clouds that raced above her head like angry birds ready to devour -her. Aunt Aggie sat there and looked at the sea, which approached her in -little bowing and beckoning white waves, as though she were a shrivelled -and pouting Queen Victoria holding a drawing-room. Once and again her -head trembled, as though it were fastened insecurely to her body, and -her little fat, swollen cheeks shook like jelly. Sometimes she raised a -finger, encased in a black glove, and waved it in the air, as though she -were admonishing the universe. - -She clutched vigorously in one hand her umbrella. - -She gazed at the sea with passion. This love for the sea had been a -dominant power in her ever since she could remember, and had come she -knew not whence. It had been, in earlier days, one of the deep, unspoken -bonds between herself and Katherine, and it had been one of her most -active criticisms of Millie that ‘the girl cared nothing about the sea -whatever’. But she, Aunt Aggie, could not say why she loved it. She was -no poet, and she knew not the meaning of the word ‘Enthusiasm’. She was -ashamed a little of her passion, and, when she had walked five miles to -Smuggler’s Button or seven miles to Lingard Sand ‘just to look at it’, -she would walk stiffly home again, would give no answer to those who -asked questions, and, if driven into a corner would say she had been -‘just for a walk.’ But she loved it in all its moods, grave, gay and -terrible, loved it even when it was like a grey cotton garment designed -for the poor or when it slipped into empty space under a blind and -soaking mist. She loved the rhythm of it, the indifference of it, above -all, the strength of it. Here at last, thank God, was something that she -could admire more than herself. - -She had, nevertheless, always at the back of her mind the thought that -it would be bad for it if it knew how much she thought of it; she was -always ready to be disappointed in it, although she knew that it would -never disappoint her—she was grim and unbending in her attitude to it -lest, in a moment of ecstasy, she should make cheap of her one devotion. -To-day she did not actively consider it. She sat on the rock and made up -her mind that she would take steps ‘that very day.’ Harriet, her -sister-in-law, had, during these last months, often surprised her, but -there would be no question of her action in this climax of the whole -unfortunate business. - -“The young man,” as she always called Philip, would never show his face -in Trenchard circles again. Harriet might forgive, because of her love -for Katherine, his impertinence, his conceit, his irreligion, his -leading Henry into profligacy and drunkenness, she _would_ not—_could_ -not—forgive his flagrant and open immorality, an immorality that had -extended over many years. As she thought of this vicious life she gave a -little shiver—a shiver of indignation, of resolution, of superiority, -and of loneliness. The world—the gay, vital, alluring world, had left -her high and dry upon that rock on which she was sitting, and, rebuke -and disapprove of it as she might, it cared little for her words. - -It was, perhaps, for this reason that she felt strangely little pleasure -in her approaching triumph. She had hated “the young man” since her -first meeting with him, and at last, after many months of patient -waiting, the means had been placed in her hands for his destruction.... -Well, she did not know that she cared to-day very greatly about it. She -was old, she was tired, she had neuralgia in one side of her face, there -was a coming headache in the air. Why was it that she, who had always -held so steadily for right, whose life had been one long struggle after -unselfishness, who had served others from early morning until late at -night, should now find no reward, but only emptiness and old age and -frustration? She had not now even the pleasure of her bitternesses. They -were dust and ashes in her mouth. - -She resolved that at once, upon that very afternoon, she would tell -Harriet about Philip—and then suddenly, for no reason, with a strange -surprise to herself, she did a thing that was quite foreign to her; she -began to cry, a desolate trickling of tears that tasted salt in her -mouth, that were shed, apparently, by some quite other person. - -It seemed to her as she turned slowly and went home that that same Woman -who had encountered life, had taken it all and tasted every danger, now, -watching her, laughed at her for her wasted, barren days.... - -By the time, however, that she reached Garth she had recovered her -spirits; it was the sea that had made her melancholy. She walked into -the house with the firm step of anticipated triumph. She went up to her -bedroom, took off her bonnet, washed her face and hands, peeped out on -to the drive as though she expected to see someone watching there, then -came down into the drawing-room. - -She had intended to speak to her sister-in-law in private. It happened, -however, that, on going to the tea-table, she discovered that the tea -had been standing for a considerable period, and nobody apparently -intended to order any more—at the same time a twinge in her left jaw -told her that it had been foolish of her to sit on that rock so long. - -Then Philip, who had the unfortunate habit of trying to be friendly at -the precisely wrong moment, said, cheerfully: - -“Been for a walk all alone, Aunt Aggie?” - -She always hated that he should call her Aunt Aggie. To-day it seemed a -most aggravated insult. - -“Yes,” she said. “You’ve had tea very early.” - -“George wanted it,” said Mrs. Trenchard, who was writing at a little -table near a window that opened into the sunlit garden. “One never can -tell with you, Aggie, what time you’ll like it—never can tell, surely.” - -There! as though that weren’t directly charging her with being a trouble -to the household. Because _they’d_ happened to have it early! - -“I call it very unfair—” she began nibbling a piece of bread and -butter. - -But the unfortunate Philip gaily continued: “When we are married, Aunt -Aggie, and you come to stay with us, you shall have tea just when you -like.” - -He was laughing at her, he patronised her! He dared—! She trembled with -anger. - -“I shall never come and stay with you,” she said. - -“Aunt Aggie!” cried Katherine, who was sitting near her mother by the -window. - -“No, never!” Aunt Aggie answered, her little eyes flashing and her -cheeks shaking. “And if I had my way you should never be married!” - -They all knew then that at last the moment had come. Henry started to -his feet as though he would escape, Katherine turned towards her mother, -Philip fixed his eyes gravely upon his enemy—only Mrs. Trenchard did -not pause in her writing. Aunt Aggie knew then that she was committed. -She did not care, she was glad if only she could hurt Philip, that -hateful and intolerable young man. - -Her hands trembled, her rings making a tiny clatter against the china; -she saw only her sister-in-law and Philip. - -Philip quietly said: - -“Why do you hope that Katherine and I will never marry, Aunt Aggie?” - -“Because I love Katherine—because I—we want her to make a happy -marriage. Because if she—knew what I know she would not marry you.” - -“My dear Aggie!” said Mrs. Trenchard, softly, from the -writing-table—but she stayed her pen and waited, with her head turned a -little, as though she would watch Katherine’s face without appearing to -do so. - -“And what do you know,” pursued Philip quietly, “that would prevent -Katherine from marrying me?” - -“I know,” she answered fiercely, the little gold cross that hung round -her throat jumping against the agitation of her breast, “that you—that -you are not the man to marry my niece. You have concealed things from -her father which, if he had known, would have caused him to forbid you -the house.” - -“Oh! I say!” cried Henry, suddenly jumping to his feet. - -“Well,” pursued Philip, “what are these things?” - -She paused for a moment, wondering whether Henry had had sufficient -authority for his statements. Philip of course would deny -everything—but she had now proceeded too far to withdraw. - -“I understand,” she said, “that you lived in Russia with a woman to whom -you were not married—lived for some years, and had a child. This is, I -am ashamed to say, common talk. I need scarcely add that I had not -intended to bring this disgraceful matter up in this public fashion. But -perhaps after all it is better. You have only yourself to blame, Mr. -Mark,” she continued, “for your policy of secrecy. To allow us all to -remain in ignorance of these things, to allow Katherine—but perhaps,” -she asked, “you intend to deny everything? In that case—” - -“I deny nothing,” he answered. “This seems to me a very silly manner of -discussing such a business.” He addressed his words then to Mrs. -Trenchard. “I said nothing about these things,” he continued, “because, -quite honestly, I could not see that it was anyone’s affair but my own -and Katherine’s. I told Katherine everything directly after we were -engaged.” - -At that Aunt Aggie turned upon her niece. - -“You knew, Katherine? You knew—all these disgraceful—these—” Her -voice broke. “You knew and you continued your engagement?” - -“Certainly,” answered Katherine quietly. “Whatever life Philip led -before he knew me, was no business of mine. It was good of him to tell -me as he did, but it was not my affair. And really, Aunt Aggie,” she -continued, “that you could think it right to speak like this before us -all—to interfere—” - -Her voice was cold with anger. They had none of them ever before known -this Katherine. - -Aunt Aggie appealed to her sister-in-law. - -“Harriet, if I’ve been wrong in mentioning this now, I’m sorry. -Katherine seems to have lost her senses. I would not wish to condemn -anyone, but to sit still and watch whilst my niece, whom I have loved, -is given to a profligate—” - -Katherine stood, with the sunlight behind her; she looked at her aunt, -then moved across the room to Philip and put her hand on his shoulder. - -They all waited then for Mrs. Trenchard; they did not doubt what she -would say. Katherine, strangely, at that moment felt that she loved her -mother as she had never loved her before. In the very fury of the -indignation that would be directed against Philip would be the force of -her love for her daughter. - -This pause, as they all waited for Mrs. Trenchard to speak, was weighted -with the indignation that they expected from her. - -But Mrs. Trenchard laughed: “My dear Aggie: what a scene! really too -stupid. As you have mentioned this, I may say that I have known—these -things—about Philip for a long time. But I said nothing because—well, -because it is really not my business what life Philip led before he met -us. Perhaps I know more about young men and their lives, Aggie, than you -do.” - -“You knew!” Henry gasped. - -“You’ve known!” Aggie cried. - -Katherine had, at the sound of her mother’s voice, given her one flash -of amazement: then she had turned to Philip, while she felt a cold -shudder at her heart as though she were some prisoner suddenly clapt -into a cage and the doors bolted. - -“Yes,” said Mrs. Trenchard, “Mr. Seymour came a long time ago and told -me things that he thought I ought to know. I said to Mr. Seymour that he -must not do such things, and that if I ever spoke of it to Philip I -should give him his name. I disapprove of such things. Yes, it was Mr. -Seymour—I think he never liked you, Philip, because you contradicted -him about Russia. He’s a nice, clever boy, but I daresay he’s wrong in -his facts....” Then, as they still waited in silence, “I really think -that’s all, Aggie. You must forgive me, dear, but I don’t think it was -quite your business. Katherine is over age, you know, and in any case it -isn’t quite nice in the drawing-room—and really only because your tea -was cold, Aggie dear.” - -“You’ve known ... you’ll do nothing, Harriet?” Aggie gasped. - -Mrs. Trenchard looked at them before she turned back to her -writing-table. - -“You can ring for some fresh tea if you like,” she said. - -But for a moment her eyes had caught Philip’s eyes. They exchanged the -strangest look. Hers of triumph, sarcastic, ironic, amazingly -triumphant, his of a dull, hopeless abandonment and submission. - -Her attack at last, after long months of struggle, had succeeded. He was -beaten. She continued her letter. - - - - - CHAPTER IV - THE WILD NIGHT - -Ten minutes later Katherine and Philip were alone in the garden. There -were signs that the gorgeous summer afternoon was to be caught into -thunder. Beyond the garden-wall a black cloud crept toward the trees, -and the sunlight that flooded the lawn seemed garish now, as though it -had been painted in shrill colours on to the green; the air was -intensely hot; the walls of the house glittered like metal. - -They stood under the great oak bobbing in front of them. - -“Well,” said Philip at last, “that’s the end, Katie dear—your mother’s -a wonderful woman.” - -Katherine was silent. He went on: - -“That was my last hope. I suppose I’d been counting on it more than I -ought. You’d have come with me, I know, if they’d turned me out? Not a -bit of it. Your mother’s a wonderful woman, I repeat.” He paused, looked -into her eyes, seemed to be startled by the pain in them. “My dear, -don’t mind. She only wants to keep you because she can’t get on without -you—and I shall settle down all right in a bit. What a fuss, after all, -we’ve been making.” - -Katherine said: “Tell me, Phil, have there been times, lately, in the -last week, when you’ve thought of running away, going back to Russia? -Tell me honestly.” - -“Yes,” he answered, “there have—many times. But I always waited to see -how things turned out. And then to-day when the moment _did_ come at -last, I saw quite clearly that I couldn’t leave you _ever_—that -anything was better than being without you—_anything_—So that’s -settled.” - -“And you’ve thought,” Katherine pursued steadily, “of what it will be -after we’re married. Mother always wanting me. Your having to be in a -place that you hate. And even if we went to live somewhere else, of -Mother always keeping her hand on us, never letting go, never allowing -you to be free, knowing about Anna—their _all_ knowing—you’ve faced it -all?” - -“I’ve faced it all,” he answered, trying to laugh. “I can’t leave you, -Katie, and that’s the truth. And if I’ve got to have your mother and the -family as well, why, then, I’ve got to have them.... But, oh! my dear, -how your mother despises me! Well, I suppose I _am_ a weak young man! -And I shall forget Russia in time.... _I’ve got to!_” he ended, almost -under his breath. - -She looked at him queerly. - -“All right,” she said, “I know now what we’ve got to do.” - -“What do you mean?” he asked. - -“Wait. I must go and speak to Uncle Tim. I shall be an hour. Be ready -for me out here under this tree in an hour’s time. It will be seven -o’clock.” - -“What do you mean?” he asked her again, but she had gone. - -She had picked up an old garden hat in the hall, and now very swiftly -hurried up the village road. She walked, the dust rising about her and -the black cloud gaining in size and strength behind her. Uncle Tim’s -house stood by itself at the farther end of the village. She looked -neither to right nor left, did not answer the greeting of the villagers, -passed quickly through the little garden, over the public path and rang -the rusty, creaking bell. An old woman, who had been Uncle Tim’s -housekeeper for an infinite number of years, opened the door. - -“Ah, Miss Kathie,” she said, smiling. “Do ee come in. ’E’s gardenin’, -poor soul. All of a sweat. Terrible ’ot ’tis, tu. Makin’ up thunder I’m -thinkin’.” - -Katherine went into the untidy, dusty hall, then into her uncle’s study. -This had, ever since her childhood, been the same, a litter of bats, -fishing-rods, specimens of plants and flowers drying on blotting paper, -books lying in piles on the floor, and a pair of trousers hanging by a -nail on to the back of the door. - -She waited, seeing none of these familiar things. She did not, at first, -see her uncle when he came in from the garden, perspiration dripping -down his face, his old cricket shirt open at the neck, his grey flannel -trousers grimed with dust. - -“Hullo, Katie!” he cried, “what do _you_ want? And if it’s an invitation -to dinner tell ’em I can’t come.” Then, taking another look at her, he -said gravely, “What’s up, my dear?” - -She sat down in an old arm-chair which boasted a large hole and only -three legs; he drew up a chair close to her, then suddenly, as though he -saw that she needed comfort, put his arms round her. - -“What’s the matter, my dear?” he repeated. - -“Uncle Tim,” she said, speaking rapidly but quietly and firmly, “you’ve -got to help me. You’ve always said that you would if I wanted you.” - -“Why, of course,” he answered simply. “What’s happened?” - -“Everything. Things, as you know, have been getting worse and worse at -home ever since—well, ever since Phil and I were engaged.” - -“Yes, I know,” he said. - -“It hasn’t been Phil’s fault,” she broke out with sudden fierceness. -“He’s done everything. It’s been my fault. I’ve been blind and stupid -from the beginning. I don’t want to be long, Uncle Tim, because there’s -not much time, but I must explain everything so that you shall -understand me and not think it wrong. We’ve got nearly two hours.” - -“Two hours?” he repeated, bewildered. - -“From the beginning Mother hated Phil. I always saw it of course, but I -used to think that it would pass when she knew Phil better—that no one -could help knowing him without loving him—and that was silly, of -course. But I waited, and always hoped that things would be better. Then -in the spring down here there was one awful Sunday, when Aunt Aggie at -supper made a scene and accused Philip of leading Henry astray or -something equally ridiculous. After that Philip wanted me to run away -with him, and I—I don’t know—but I felt that he ought to insist on it, -to make me go. He didn’t insist, and then I saw suddenly that he wasn’t -strong enough to insist on anything, and that instead of being the great -character that I’d once thought him, he was really weak and under -anyone’s influence. Well, that made me love him in a different way, but -more—much more—than I ever had before. I saw that he wanted looking -after and protecting. I suppose you’ll think that foolish of me,” she -said fiercely. - -“Not at all, my dear,” said Uncle Tim, “go on.” - -“Well, there was something else,” Katherine went on. “One day some time -before, when we first came to Garth, he told me that when he was in -Russia he had loved another woman. They had a child, a boy, who died. He -was afraid to tell me, because he thought that I’d think terribly of -him. - -“But what did it matter, when he’d given her up and left her? Only this -mattered—that I couldn’t forget her. I wasn’t jealous, but I was -curious—terribly. I asked him questions, I wanted to see her as she -was—it was so strange to me that there should be that woman, still -living somewhere, who knew more, much more, about Phil than I did. Then -the more questions I asked him about her the more he thought of her and -of Russia, so that at last he asked me not to speak of her. But then she -seemed to come between us, because we both thought of her, and I used to -wonder whether he wanted to go back to her, and _he_ wondered whether, -after all, I was jealous about her. Then things got worse with everyone. -I felt as though everyone was against us. After the Faunder wedding -Henry and Phil had a quarrel, and Henry behaved like a baby. - -“I’ve had a dreadful time lately. I’ve imagined _anything_. I’ve been -expecting Phil to run away. Millie said he would—Mother’s been so -strange. She hated Phil, but she asked him to Garth, and seemed to want -to have him with her. She’s grown so different that I simply haven’t -_known_ her lately. And Phil too—it’s had a dreadful effect on him. He -seems to have lost all his happiness—he hates Garth and everything in -it, but he’s wanted to be near me, and so he’s come. So there we’ve all -been.” She paused for a moment, then went on quickly. “Just now—this -afternoon—it all came to a climax. Aunt Aggie had found out from Henry -about the Russian woman. She lost her temper at tea, and told Mother -before us all. Phil has been expecting this to happen for weeks, and had -been almost hoping for it, because then he thought that Mother and -Father would say that he must give me up, and that then I would refuse -to leave him. In that way he’d escape. - -“But it seemed”—here Katherine, dropping her voice, spoke more -slowly—“that Mother had known all the time. That horrid Mr. Seymour in -London had told her. She’d known for _months_, and had never said -anything—Mother, who would have been _horrified_ a year ago. But -no—She said _nothing_. She only told Aunt Aggie that she oughtn’t to -make scenes in the drawing-room, and that it wasn’t her business. - -“Philip saw then that his last chance was gone, that she meant _never_ -to let me go, and that if she must have him as well she’d _have_ him. -He’s sure now that I’ll never give Mother up unless she makes me choose -between him and her—and so he’s just resigned himself.” - -Uncle Tim would have spoken, but she stopped him. - -“And there’s more than that. Perhaps it’s foolish of me, but I’ve felt -as though that woman—that Russian woman—had been coming nearer and -nearer and nearer. There was an evening the other night when I felt that -she’d come right inside the house. I went into the hall and listened. -That must seem ridiculous to anyone outside the family, but it may be -that thinking of anyone continually _does_ bring them—_does_ do -something.... At least for me now she’s here, and she’s going to try and -take Phil back again. Mother wants her, it’s Mother, perhaps, who has -made her come. Mother can make Phil miserable in a thousand ways by -reminding him of her, by suggesting, by ...” With a great cry Katherine -broke off: “Oh, Mother, Mother, I did love you so!” and bursting into a -passion of tears, clung to her uncle as though she were still a little -child. - -Then how he soothed her! stroking her hair, telling her that he loved -her, that he would help her, that he would do anything for her. He held -her in his arms, murmuring to her as he had done so many years ago: - -“There, Katie, Katie ... it’s all right, it’s all right. Nobody will -touch you. It’s all right, it’s all right.” - -At last, with a sudden movement, as though she had realised that there -was little time to waste, she broke from him and stood up, wiping her -eyes with her handkerchief; then, with that strange note of fierceness, -so foreign to the old mild Katherine, she said: - -“But now I see—I see everything. What Millie said is true—I can’t have -it both ways, I’ve got to choose. Mother doesn’t care for anything so -much as for beating Philip, for humiliating him, for making him do -everything that she says. That other woman too—she’d like to see him -humiliated, laughed at—I _know_ that she’s like that, cruel and hard. - -“And he’s only got me in all the world. I can beat that other woman only -by showing her that I’m stronger than she is. I thought once that it was -Phil who would take me and look after me, but now it is _I_ that must -look after him. - -“If we stay, if we do as Mother wishes, we shall never escape. I love -everything here, I love them all, I can’t leave them unless I do it now, -_now_! Even to-morrow I shall be weak again. Mother’s stronger than we -are. She’s stronger, I do believe, than anyone. Uncle Tim, we must go -to-night!” - -“To-night!” he repeated, staring at her. - -“Now, at once, in an hour’s time. We can drive to Rasselas. There’s the -London Express at eight o’clock. It’s in London by midnight. I can wire -to Rachel. She’ll have me. We can be married, by special licence, -to-morrow!” - -He did not seem astonished by her impetuosity. He got up slowly from his -chair, knocked over with his elbow the blotting-paper upon which were -the dried flowers, swore, bent down and picked them up slowly one by -one, rose at last and, very red in the face with his exertions, looked -at her. Then he smiled gently, stroking his fingers through his beard. - -“My dear, how you’ve changed!” he said. - -“You understand, Uncle Tim,” she urged. “I couldn’t tell Millie. They’d -make it bad for her afterwards, and it would hurt Mother too. I don’t -want Mother to be left alone. It’s the only thing to do. I saw it all in -a flash this evening when Mother was speaking. Even to-morrow may be too -late, when I see the garden again and the village and when they’re all -kind to me. And perhaps after all it will be all right. Only I must show -them that Phil comes first, that if I must choose, I choose Phil.” - -She paused, breathlessly. He was grave again when he spoke: - -“You know, my dear, what you are doing, don’t you? I won’t say whether I -think you right or wrong. It’s for you to decide, and only you. But just -think. It’s a tremendous thing. It’s more than just marrying Philip. -It’s giving up, perhaps, everything here—giving up Garth and Glebeshire -and the house. Giving up your Mother may be for ever. I know your -Mother. It is possible that she will never forgive you.” - -Katherine’s under lip quivered. She nodded her head. - -“And it’s hurting her,” he went on, “hurting her more than ever anything -has done. It’s her own fault in a way. I warned her long ago. But never -mind that. You must realise what you’re doing.” - -“I do realise it,” Katherine answered firmly. “It needn’t hurt her -really, if her love for me is stronger than her hatred of Philip. I’ve -thought it all out. If she loves me she’ll see that my love for her -isn’t changed at all,—that it’s there just as it always was; that it’s -only that she has _made_ me choose, either Phil’s happiness or -unhappiness. I can only choose one way. He’s ready to give up -everything, surrender all the splendid things he was going to do, give -up half of me, perhaps more, to the family—perhaps more. He hates the -life here, but he’ll live it, under Mother and grandfather and the rest, -for my sake. It isn’t fair that he should. Mother, if she loves me, will -see that. But I don’t believe,” here Katherine’s voice trembled again, -“that she cares for _anything_ so much as beating Philip. He’s the first -person in the world who ever opposed her.... She knows that I’ll love -her always, always, but Phil’s life shan’t be spoilt. Nothing matters -beside that.” - -She stopped, her breast heaving, her eyes flashing; he looked at her and -was amazed, as in his queer, isolated life he had never been before, at -what love can do to the soul. - -“Life’s for the young,” he said, “you’re right, Katherine. Your Mother -will never forgive me, but I’ll help you.” - -“No,” Katherine said, “_you’re_ not to be involved, Uncle Tim. Mother -mustn’t lose _anyone_ afterwards. You’re to know nothing about it. I -shall leave a note with someone to be taken up to the house at half-past -nine. I’ve told you because I wanted you to know, but you’re not to have -anything to do with it. But you’ll love me just the same, won’t you? -_You_ won’t be any different, will you? I had to know that. With you and -Millie and Aunt Betty and Father caring for me afterwards, it won’t be -quite like breaking with the family. Only, Uncle Tim, I want you to do -for me what you can with Mother. I’ve explained everything to you, so -that you can tell her—show her.” - -“I’ll do my best,” he said. Then he caught her and hugged her. - -“Good luck,” he said—and she was gone. - -Although she had been less than her hour with her uncle, she knew that -she had no time to spare. She was haunted, as she hurried back again -down the village road by alarms, regrets, agonising reproaches that she -refused to admit. She fortified her consciousness against everything -save the immediate business to which she had bound herself, but every -tree upon the road, every hideous cottage, every stone and flower -besieged her with memories. “You are leaving us for ever. Why? For -Panic?... For Panic?” ... She could hear the voices that would follow -the retreat. “But why did she run away like that? It wasn’t even as -though their engagement had been forbidden. To be married all in a hurry -and in secret—I don’t like the look of it.... She was always such a -quiet, sensible girl.” - -And she knew—it had not needed Uncle Tim’s words to show her—that this -act of hers was uprooting her for ever from everything that had made -life for her. She would never go back. More deeply than that, she would -never belong again, she, who only six months ago had been the bond that -had held them all together.... - -And behind these thoughts were two figures so strangely, so impossibly -like one another—the first that woman, suddenly old, leaning back on to -Katherine’s breast, fast asleep, tired out, her mother—the second that -woman who, only that afternoon, had turned and given both Katherine and -Philip that look of triumph.... “I’ve got you both—You see that I shall -never let you go. You cannot, cannot, cannot, escape.” That also was her -mother. - -She stopped at the village inn, ‘The Three Pilchards’, saw Dick -Penhaligan, the landlord, and an old friend of hers. - -“Dick, in half-an-hour I want a jingle. I’ve got to go to Rasselas to -meet the eight train. I’ll drive myself.” - -“All right, Miss Katherine,” he said, looking at her with affection. -“’Twill be a wild night, I’m thinkin’. Workin’ up wild.” - -“Twenty minutes, Dick,” she nodded to him, and was off again. She -crossed the road, opened the little wicket gate that broke into the -shrubbery, found her way on to the lawn, and there, under the oak, was -Philip, waiting for her. As she came up to him she felt the first spurt -of rain upon her cheek. The long lighted windows of the house were -watching them; she drew under the shadow of the tree. - -“Phil,” she whispered, her hand on his arm, “there isn’t a moment to -lose. I’ve arranged everything. We must catch the eight o’clock train at -Rasselas. We shall be in London by twelve. I shall go to Rachel -Seddon’s. We can be married by Special Licence to-morrow.” - -She had thought of it so resolutely that she did not realise that it was -new to him. He gasped, stepping back from her. - -“My _dear_ Katie! What _are_ you talking about?” - -“Oh, there isn’t any _time_,” she went on impatiently. “If you don’t -come I go alone. It will be the same thing in the end. I saw it all this -afternoon. Things _can’t_ go on. I understood Mother. I know what she’s -determined to do. We must escape or it will be too late. Even to-morrow -it may be. I won’t trust myself if I stay; I’m afraid even to see Mother -again, but I _know_ I’m right. We have only a quarter of an hour. That -suit will do, and of course you mustn’t have a bag or anything. There’s -that cousin of yours in the Adelphi somewhere. You can go to him. We -must be at the ‘Three Pilchards’ in a quarter of an hour, and go -separately, of course, or someone may stop us....” - -But he drew back. “No, no, no,” he said. “Katie, you’re mad! Do you -think I’m going to let you do a thing like this? What do you suppose I’m -made of? Why, if we were to go off now they’d never forgive you, they’d -throw you off—” - -“Why, of course,” she broke in impatiently, “that’s exactly why we’ve -got to do it. You proposed it to me yourself once, and I refused because -I didn’t understand what our staying here meant. But I do now—it’s all -_settled_, I tell you, Phil, and there’s only ten minutes. It’s the last -chance. If we miss that train we shall never escape from Mother, from -Anna, from anyone. Oh! I know it! I know it!” - -She scarcely realised her words; she was tugging at his sleeve, trying -to drag him with her. - -But he shook her off. “No, Katie, I tell you I’m not such a cad. I know -what all this means to you, the place, the people, everything. It’s true -that I asked you once to go off, but I didn’t love you then as I do now. -I was thinking more of myself then—but now I’m ready for anything here. -You know that I am. I don’t care if only they let me stay with you.” - -“But they won’t,” Katherine urged. “You know what they’ll do. They’ll -marry us, they’ll make you take a house near at hand, and if you refuse -they’ll persuade you that you’re making me miserable. Oh! Phil! don’t -you see—if I were sure of myself I’d never run off like this, but it’s -from myself that I’m running. That’s the whole point of everything. I -can’t trust myself with Mother. She has as much influence over me as -ever she had. I felt it to-day more than I’ve ever felt it. There she is -over both of us. You know that you’re weaker with her than I am. It -isn’t that she does anything much except sit quiet, but I love her, and -it’s through that she gets at both of us. No, Phil, we’ve got to go—and -_now_. If not now, then never. I shan’t be strong enough to-morrow. -Don’t you _see_ what she can do in the future, now that she knows about -Anna....” Then, almost in a whisper, she brought out: “Don’t you see -what _Anna_ can do?” - -“No,” he said, “I won’t go. It’s not fair. It’s not—” - -“Well,” she answered him, “it doesn’t matter what you do, whether you go -or not. I shall go. And what are you to do then?” - -She had vanished across the lawn, leaving him standing there. Behind all -his perplexity and a certain shame at his inaction, a fire of exultation -inflamed him, making him heedless of the rain or the low muttering -thunder far away. She loved him! She was freeing him! His glory in her -strength, her courage, flew like a burning arrow to his heart, killing -the old man in him, striking him to the ground, that old lumbering body -giving way before a new creature to whom the whole world was a plain of -victory. He stood there trembling with his love for her.... - -Then he realised that, whatever he did, there was no time to be lost. -And after all what was he to do? Did he enter and alarm the family, tell -them that Katherine was flying to London, what would he gain but her -scorn? How much would he lose to save nothing? Even as he argued with -himself some stronger power was dragging him to the house. He was in his -room; he had his coat and hat from the hall; he saw no one; he was in -the dark garden again, stepping softly through the wicket-gate on to the -high road—Then the wind of the approaching storm met him with a scurry -of rain that slashed his face. He did not know that now, for the first -moment since his leaving Russia, Anna was less to him than nothing. He -did not know that he was leaving behind him in that dark rain-swept -garden an indignant, a defeated ghost.... - - * * * * * - -Meanwhile Katherine had gone, rapidly, without pause, to her bedroom. -She was conscious of nothing until she reached it, and then she stood in -the middle of the floor, struck by a sudden, poignant agony of reproach -that took, for the moment, all life from her. Her knees were trembling, -her heart pounding in her breast, her eyes veiled by some mist that yet -allowed her to see with a fiery clarity every detail of the room. They -rose and besieged her, the chairs, the photographs, the carpet, the bed, -the wash-hand-stand, the pictures, the window with the old, old view of -the wall, the church-tower, the crooked apple-tree clustered in a -corner, the bed of roses, the flash of the nook beyond the lawn. She -covered her eyes with her hand. Everything was still there, crying to -her “Don’t leave us! Is our old devotion nothing, our faithful service? -Are you, whom we have trusted, false like the rest?” - -She swayed then; tears that would never fall burnt her eyes. The first -rain lashed her window, and from the trees around the church some flurry -of rooks rose, protesting against the coming storm. She drove it all -down with a strong hand. She _would_ not listen.... - -Then, as she found her coat and hat, a figure rose before her, the one -figure that, just then, could most easily defeat her. Her Mother she -_would_ not see, Millie, Henry, the Aunts could not then touch her. It -was her Father. - -They were breaking their word to him, they who were standing now upon -their honour. His laughing, friendly spirit, that had never touched her -very closely, now seemed to cling to her more nearly than them all. He -had kept outside all their family trouble, as he had kept outside all -trouble since his birth. He had laughed at them, patted them on the -shoulder, determined that if he did not look too closely at things they -must be well, refused to see the rifts and divisions and unhappiness. -Nevertheless he must have seen something; he had sent Henry to -Cambridge, had looked at Millie and Katherine sometimes with a gravity -that was not his old manner. - -Seeing him suddenly now, it was as though he knew what she was about to -do, and was appealing to her with a new gravity: “Katie, my dear, I may -have seemed not to have cared, to have noticed nothing, but now—don’t -give us up. Wait. Things will be happier. Wait. Trust us.” - -She beat him down; stayed for another moment beside the window, her -hands pressed close against her eyes. - -Then she went to her little writing-table, and scribbled very rapidly -this note: - - DARLING MOTHER, - - I have gone with Philip by the eight train to London. We shall - be married as soon as possible. I shall stay with Rachel until - then. You know that things could not go on as they were. - - Will you understand, dear Mother, that if I did not love you so - deeply I would not have done this? But because you would not let - Phil go I have had to choose. If only you will understand that I - do not love you less for this, but that it is for Phil’s sake - that I do it, you will love me as before. And you know that I - will love you always. - - Your devoted daughter, - KATHERINE. - -She laid this against the looking-glass on her dressing-table, glanced -once more at the room, then went. - -Upon the stairs she met Henry. - -“Hullo!” he cried, “going out? There’s a lot of rain coming.” - -“I know,” she answered quietly. “I have to see Penhaligan. It’s -important.” - -He looked at her little black hat; her black coat. These were not the -things that one put on for a hurried excursion into the village. - -“You’ll be late for dinner,” he said. - -“No, I shan’t,” she answered, “I must hurry.” She brushed past him; she -had an impulse to put her arms round his neck and kiss him, but she did -not look back. - -She went through the hall; he turned on the stairs and watched her, then -went slowly to his room. - -When she came out on to the high road the wind had fallen and the rain -was coming in slow heavy drops. The sky was all black, except that at -its very heart there burnt a brilliant star; just above the horizon -there was a bar of sharp-edged gold. When she came to the ‘Three -Pilchards’ the world was lit with a strange half-light so that, although -one could see all things distinctly, there was yet the suggestion that -nothing was what it seemed. The ‘jingle’ was there, and Philip standing -in conversation with Dick Penhaligan. - -“Nasty night ’twill be, Miss Katherine. Whisht sort o’ weather. -Shouldn’t like for ’ee to get properly wet. Open jingle tu.” - -“That’s all right, Dick,” she answered. “We’ve got to meet the train. -I’ve been wet before now, you know.” - -She jumped into the trap and took the reins. Philip followed her. If Mr. -Penhaligan thought there was anything strange in the proceeding he did -not say so. He watched them out of the yard, gave a look at the sky, -then went whistling into the house. - -They did not speak until they had left the village behind them, then, as -they came up to Pelynt Cross, the whole beauty of the sweep of stormy -sky burst upon them. The storm seemed to be gathering itself together -before it made its spring, bunched up heavy and black on the horizon, -whilst the bar of gold seemed to waver and hesitate beneath the weight -of it. Above their heads the van of the storm, twisted and furious, -leaned forward, as though with avaricious fingers, to take the whole -world into its grasp. - -At its heart still shone that strange glittering star. Beneath the sky -the grey expanse of the moon quivered with anticipation like a quaking -bog; some high grass, bright against the sky, gave little windy tugs, as -though it would release itself and escape before the fury beat it down. -Once and again, very far away, the rumble of the thunder rose and fell, -the heavy raindrops were still slow and measured, as though they told -the seconds left to the world before it was devastated. - -Up there, on the moor, Philip put his arm round Katherine. His heart was -beating with tumultuous love for her, so that he choked and his face was -on fire; his hand trembled against her dress. This was surely the most -wonderful thing that had ever happened to him. He had seemed so utterly -lost, and, although he had known that she loved him, he had resigned -himself to the belief that her love stayed short of sacrifice. He had -said to himself that he was not enough of a fellow for it to be -otherwise. And now he did not care for any of them! No one, he realised, -had ever, in all his life, made any great sacrifice for him—even Anna -had let him go when he made life tiresome for her. - -Surging up in him now was the fine vigour of reassurance that -Katherine’s love gave to him. It was during that drive to Rasselas -station that he began, for the first time, to believe in himself. He did -not speak, but held Katherine with his arm close to him, and once, for a -moment, he put his cheek against hers. - -But she was not, then, thinking of Philip, she was scarcely aware that -he was with her. Her whole will and purpose was concentrated on reaching -the station in time. She thought: “If we missed that train we’re -finished. We’ll have to come back. They’ll have found my note. Mother -won’t be angry outwardly, but she’ll hate Phil twice as much as ever, -and she’ll never loose her hold again. She’ll show him how ashamed he -should be, and she’ll show me how deeply I’ve hurt her. We shall neither -of us have the courage to try a ‘second time’.” - -How was it that she saw all this so clearly? Never before these last -months had she thought of anything save what was straight in front of -her.... The world was suddenly unrolled before her like a map of a -strange country. - -Meanwhile, although she did not know it, she was wildly excited. Her -imagination, liberated after those long years of captivity, flamed now -before her eyes. She felt the storm behind her, and she thought that at -the head of it, urging it forward, was that figure who had pursued her, -so remorselessly, ever since that day at Rafiel when Philip had -confessed to her. - -Anna would keep them if she could, she would drag them back, miserable -fugitives, to face the family—and then how she would punish Philip! - -“Oh, go on! Go on!” Katherine cried, whipping the pony; they began to -climb a long hill. Suddenly the thunder broke overhead, crashing amongst -the trees of a dark little wood on their right. Then the rain came down -in slanting, stinging sheets. With that clap of thunder the storm caught -them, whirled up to them, beat them in the face, buffeted in their eyes -and ears, shot lightning across their path, and then plunged them on -into yet more impenetrable darkness. The world was abysmal, was on fire, -was rocking, was springing with a thousand gestures to stop them on -their way. Katherine fancied that in front of her path figures rose and -fell, the very hedges riding in a circle round about her. - -“Oh! go on! Go on!” she whispered, swaying in her seat, then feeling -Philip’s arm about her. They rose, as though borne on a wave of wild -weather, to the top of the hill. They had now only the straight road; -they could see the station lights. Then the thunder, as though enraged -at their persistence, broke into a shattering clatter—the soil, the -hedges, the fields, the sky crumbled into rain; a great lash of storm -whipped them in the face, and the pony, frightened by the thunder, broke -from Katherine’s hand, ran wildly through the dark, crashed with a -shuddering jar into the hedge. Their lamps fell; the ‘jingle’, after a -moment’s hesitation, slipped over and gently dropped them on to the -rain-soaked ground. - -Katherine was on her feet in an instant. She saw that by a happy miracle -one of the lamps still burned. She went to the pony, and found that, -although he was trembling, he was unhurt. Philip was trying to turn the -‘jingle’ upright again. - -“Quick!” she cried. “Hang the lamp on the cart. We must run for it—the -shaft’s broken or something. There’s no time at all if we’re to catch -that train. Run! Run! Phil! There’s sure to be someone coming in by the -train who’ll see the ‘jingle’.” - -They ran; they were lifted by the wind, beaten by the rain, deafened by -the thunder, and Katherine as she ran knew that by her side was her -enemy: - -“You shan’t go! You shan’t go! I’ve got you still!” - -She could hear, through the storm, some voice crying, “Phil! Phil! Come -back! Come back!” - -Her heart was breaking, her eyes saw flame, her knees trembled, she -stumbled, staggered, slipped. They had reached the white gates, had -passed the level crossing, were up the station steps. - -“It’s in! It’s in!” gasped Philip. “Only a second!” - -She was aware of astonished eyes, of the stout station-master, of -someone who shouted, of a last and strangely distant peal of thunder, of -an open door, of tumbling forward, of a whistle and a jerk, and then a -slow Glebeshire voice: - -“Kind o’ near shave that was, Miss, I’m thinkin’.” - -And through it all her voice was crying exultantly: “I’ve beaten -you—you’ve done your worst, but I’ve beaten you. He’s mine now for -ever”—and her eyes were fastened on a baffled, stormy figure left on -the dark road, abandoned, and, at last, at last, defeated.... - - - - - CHAPTER V - THE TRENCHARDS - -Henry waited, for a moment, on the stairs. He heard the door close -behind Katherine, heard the approaching storm invade the house, heard -the cuckoo-clock in the passage above him proclaim seven o’clock, then -went slowly up to his room. Why had Katherine gone out to see Penhaligan -in those clothes, in such weather, at such an hour?... Very strange.... -And her face too. She was excited, she had almost kissed him.... Her -eyes.... - -He entered his familiar room, looked with disgust at his dinner-jacket -and trousers lying upon the bed (he hated dressing for dinner), and then -wandered up and down, dragging a book from the book-case and pushing it -impatiently back again, stumbling over his evening slippers, pulling his -coat off and allowing it to fall, unregarded, on to the floor. - -Katherine!... Katherine?... What was ‘up’ with Katherine? - -He had, in any case, been greatly upset by the events of the day. The -crisis for which he had so long been waiting had at length arrived, and, -behold, it had been no crisis at all. Superficially it had been nothing -... in its reality it had shaken, finally, destructively, the -foundations of everything upon which his life had been built. He -remembered, very clearly, the family’s comments upon the case of a young -man known to them all, who, engaged to a girl in Polchester, had -confessed, just before the marriage, that he had had a mistress for -several years in London, who was however now happily married to a -gentleman of means and had no further claim on him. The engagement had -been broken off, with the approval of all the best families in -Glebeshire. Henry remembered that his mother had said that it was not -only the immorality of the young man but also his continued secrecy -concerning the affair that was so abominable, that, of course, “young -men must be young men, but you couldn’t expect a nice girl”—and so on. - -He remembered all this very clearly, and he had decided at the time that -if he ever had a mistress he would take very good care that no one knew -about her. That had been a year ago ... and now! He was bewildered, -almost breathless with a kind of dismayed terror as to what the world -might possibly be coming to. His mother! of whom at least one thing had -surely been unalterable—that she, herself, would never change. And now -she had taken this thing without horror, without anger, almost with -complacency. - -She had known of it for months! - -It was as though he had cherished a pet with the happy conviction that -it was a kitten and had suddenly discovered it to be a cub. And out of -this confusion of a wrecked and devastated world there emerged the -conviction “that there was something more behind all this”, that “his -mother had some plan.” He did not see at all what her plan could -possibly be, but she appeared before him now as a sinister and menacing -figure, someone who had been close to him for so many years, but whose -true immensity he had never even remotely perceived. - -He, Henry, had, from other points of view, risen out of the affair with -considerable good fortune. He had not, as far as he could perceive, -earned Katherine’s undying hatred; he had not even made a fool of -himself, as might naturally be expected. It was plain enough now that -Philip was to be with them for ever and ever, and that therefore Henry -must make the best of him. Now indeed that it had come to this, Henry -was not at all sure that he might not like Philip very much indeed. That -night at the ‘Empire’ had been the beginning of life for Henry, and the -indifference of his mother to Philip’s past and the knowledge that -Katherine had long been aware of it made him not a little ashamed of his -indignation and tempers. Nevertheless Philip _had_ that effect upon him, -and would have it many times again no doubt. For a clear and steady -moment Henry, looking at himself in his looking-glass, wondered whether -he were not truly the most terrible of asses. - -However, all this was of the past. It was with a sense of advancing to -meet a new world that he went down to dinner. - -In the drawing-room he found his mother alone. She was wearing an -evening dress of black silk, and Henry, whose suspicion of the world -made him observant, noticed that she was wearing a brooch of old silver -set with pearls. This was a family brooch, and Henry knew that his -mother wore it only ‘on occasions’; his mother’s idea of what made an -‘occasion’ was not always that of the outside world. He wondered what -the occasion might be to-night. - -He had, for long, been unconsciously in the habit of dividing his mother -into two persons, the figure of domination and power who kept the -household in awe and was mysterious in her dignity and aloof reserve, -and the figure of maternal homeliness who spoke to one about -underclothes, was subject to human agitations and pleasures; of the -first he was afraid, and would be afraid until he died. The second he -loved. His mother to-night was the first of these. She looked, in his -eyes, amazingly young. Her fair grey hair, her broad shoulders, her -straight back, these things showed Henry’s mother to be younger than -ever Henry would be. The pearl brooch gleamed against the black silk -that covered her strong bosom; her head was carried high; her eyes -feared no man nor woman alive. - -Therefore Henry, as was his manner on such an occasion, did his best to -slip quietly into a chair and hide his diminished personality in a book. -This, however, was not permitted him. - -“Henry,” his mother said softly, “why did you not tell me earlier the -things that you had heard about Philip?” - -Henry blushed so intensely that there was a thin white line just below -the roots of his hair. - -“I didn’t want to make Katie unhappy,” he muttered. - -“I should have thought your duty to your parents came before your duty -to Katherine,” his mother replied. - -“It wasn’t you who was going to marry Philip,” he answered, not looking -at his mother. - -“Nevertheless it’s possible that older heads—yes, older heads—” - -“Oh! well! it’s all right,” he burst out, “I’m sick of the thing, and -you and father don’t seem to mind anything about it—” - -“I haven’t told your father,” she interrupted. - -“Haven’t told Father?” Henry repeated. - -“No. Father doesn’t think of such things. If everything goes well, as I -am sure that everything will, Father will want to know nothing further. -I have every confidence in Philip.” - -“Why!” Henry burst out, “I always thought you hated Philip, Mother. I -simply don’t understand.” - -“There are quite a number of things you don’t understand, Henry dear,” -his mother answered. “Yes, quite a number. Philip was perhaps not at -home with us at first—but I’m sure that in time he will become quite -one of the family—almost as though he had been born a Trenchard. I have -great hopes.... Your tie is as usual, Henry, dear, above your collar. -Let me put it down for you.” - -Henry waited whilst his mother’s cool, solid fingers rubbed against his -neck and sent a little shiver down his spine as though they would remind -him that he was a Trenchard too and had better not try to forget it. But -the great, overwhelming impression that now dominated him was of his -mother’s happiness. He knew very well when his mother was happy. There -was a note in her voice as sure and melodious as the rhythm of a stream -that runs, somewhere hidden, between the rocks. He had known, on many -days, that deep joy of his mother’s—often it had been for no reason -that he could discover. - -To-night she was triumphant; her triumph sang through every note of her -voice. - - * * * * * - -The others come in. George Trenchard entered, rubbing his hands and -laughing. He seemed, every week, redder in the face and stouter all -over; in physical reality he added but little to his girth. It was the -stoutness of moral self-satisfaction and cheerful complaisance. His -doctrine of pleasant aloofness from contact with other human beings had -acted so admirably; he would like to have recommended it to everyone had -not such recommendation been too great a trouble. - -He was never, after this evening, to be aloof again, but he did not know -that. - -“Well, well,” he cried. “Punctual for once, Henry. Very nice, indeed. -Dear me, Mother, why this gaudiness? People coming to dinner?” - -She looked down at her brooch. - -“No, dear.... No one. I just thought I’d put it on. I haven’t worn it -for quite a time. Not for a year at least.” - -“Very pretty, very pretty,” he cried. “Dear me, what a day I’ve had! So -busy, scarcely able to breathe!” - -“What have you been doing, Father?” asked Henry. - -“One thing and another. One thing and another,” said George airily. “Day -simply flown.” - -He stood there in front of the fire, his legs spread, his huge chest -flung out, his face flaming like the sun. - -“Yes, it’s been a very pleasant day,” said Mrs. Trenchard, “very -pleasant.” - -“Where’s Katie?” asked her father. “She’s generally down before anyone.” - -Henry, who, in the contemplation of his mother, had forgotten, for the -moment, his sister’s strange behaviour, said: - -“Oh! she’ll be late, I expect. I saw her go out about seven. Had to see -Penhaligan about something important, she told me. Went out into all -that storm.” - -As he spoke eight o’clock struck. - -Mrs. Trenchard looked up. - -“Went out to see Penhaligan?” she asked. - -“Yes, Mother. She didn’t tell me why.” - -Aunt Betty came in. Her little body, her cheerful smile, her air as of -one who was ready to be pleased with anything, might lead a careless -observer into the error of supposing that she was a quite ordinary old -maid with a fancy for knitting, the Church of England, and hot water -with her meals. He would be wrong in his judgment; her sharp little -eyes, the corners of her mouth betrayed a sense of humour that, although -it had never been encouraged by the family, provided much wise -penetration and knowledge. Any casual acquaintance in half an hour’s -talk would have discovered in Aunt Betty wisdom and judgment to which -her own family would, until the day of its decent and honourable death, -be entirely blind. - -Just now she had lost her spectacles. - -“My spectacles,” she said. “Hum-hum—Very odd. I had them just before -tea. I was working over in that corner—I never moved from there except -once when—when—Oh! there they are! No, they are not. And I played -‘Patience’ there, too, in the same corner. Very odd.” - -“Perhaps, dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard, “you left them in your bedroom.” - -“No, Harriet, I looked there. Hum-hum-hum. Very odd it is, because—” - -Millie came in and then Aunt Aggie. - -“Is Father coming down to-night?” said George. - -“Yes,” said Mrs. Trenchard. “He said that he felt better. Thought it -would be nice to come down. Yes, that it would be rather nice.... Aggie, -dear, that’s your sewing, isn’t it? You left it here this morning. -Rocket put it between the pages of my novel to mark the place. I knew it -was yours—” - -“Yes, it’s mine,” said Aunt Aggie, shortly. - -Meanwhile Henry, looking at the door, waited for Katherine. A strange -premonition was growing in him that all was not well. Katherine and -Philip, they had not appeared—Katherine and Philip.... As he thought of -it, it occurred to him that he had not heard Philip moving as he -dressed. Philip’s room was next to Henry’s, and the division was thin; -you could always hear coughs, steps, the pouring of water, the opening -and shutting of drawers. - -There had been no sounds to-night. Henry’s heart began to beat very -fast. He listened to the wind that, now that the storm had swung away, -was creeping around the house, trying the doors and windows, rattling -something here, tugging at something there, all the pipes gurgled and -spluttered with the waters of the storm. - -“Ah! there they are!” cried Aunt Betty. - -Henry started, thinking that she must herald the entry of Katherine and -Philip; but no, it was only the gold-rimmed spectacles lying -miraculously beneath the sofa. - -“Now, _how_,” cried Aunt Betty, “did they get there? Very odd, because I -remember distinctly that I never moved from my corner.” - -“Well,” said George Trenchard, who, now that his back was warmed by the -fire, wanted his front warmed too, “how much longer are we to wait for -dinner? Katie and Philip. Playing about upstairs, I suppose.” - -Quarter-past eight struck, and Rocket, opening the door, announced that -dinner was ready. - -“Suppose you just go up and see what Katie’s doing, Millie dear,” said -Mrs. Trenchard. - -Millie left them and ran quickly upstairs. She pushed back Katie’s door, -then, stepping inside, the darkness and silence and a strange murmurous -chill caught her, as though someone had leapt, out of the dusk, at her -throat. She knew then instantly what had occurred. She only said once, -very softly, “Katie!” then gently closed the door behind her, as though -she did not want anyone else to see the room. - -She stayed there; there, beside the door, for quite a long time. The -room was very dark, but the looking-glass glimmered like a white, -flickering shadow blown by the wet wind that came in through the open -window. Something flapped monotonously. - -Millie, standing quite motionless by the door, thought to herself -“Katherine and Philip! They’ve done it!... at last, they’ve done it!” At -first, because she was very young and still believed in freedom and -adventure as the things best worth having in life, she felt nothing but -a glad, triumphant excitement; an excitement springing not only from her -pleasure in any brave movement, but also from her reassurance in her -beloved sister, her knowledge that after all Katherine _did_ believe in -Love beyond every other power, was ready to venture all for it. Her own -impulse was to run after them, as fast as she could, and declare her -fidelity to them. - -At last she moved away from the door to the dressing-table and lit a -candle. Its soft white flame for a moment blinded her. She had an -instant of hesitation; perhaps after all she had flown too rapidly to -her desired conclusions, the two of them were waiting now in the -drawing-room for her.... Then she saw Katherine’s note propped against -the looking-glass. - -She took it up, saw that it was addressed to her mother, and realised, -for the first time, what this would mean to them all. She saw then—THE -OLD ONES—Grandfather, Mother, Father, Aunt Sarah, Aunt Aggie, Aunt -Betty. She was sorry for them, but she knew, as she stood there, that -she did not care, really, whether they were hurt or no. She felt her own -freedom descend upon her, there in Katie’s room, like a golden, flaming -cloud. This was the moment for which, all her life, she had been -waiting. The Old Ones had tried to keep them and tie them down, but the -day of the Old Ones was past, their power was broken. It was the New -Generation that mattered—Katherine and Philip, Millie and Henry, and -all their kind; it was _their_ world and _their_ dominion— - -She suddenly, alone there, with the note in her hand, danced a little -dance, the candle-flame flickering in the breeze and Katherine’s white, -neat bed so cold and tidy. - -She was not hard, she was not cruel—her own time would come when she -would cry for sympathy and would not find it, and must set her teeth -because her day was past ... now was her day—She seized it fiercely. - -Very quietly she went downstairs.... - -She opened the drawing-room door: as she entered all their eyes met her -and she knew at once, as she saw Henry’s, that he was expecting her -announcement. - -She looked across at her mother. - -“Katherine’s room’s empty,” she said. “There’s no one there at all.” She -hesitated a moment, then added: “There was this note for you, Mother, on -her dressing-table.” - -She went across the room and gave it to her mother. Her mother took it; -no one spoke. - -Mrs. Trenchard read it; for a dreadful moment she thought that she was -going to give way before them all, was going to cry out, to scream, to -rush wildly into the road to stop the fugitives, or slap Aunt Aggie’s -face. For a dreadful moment the battle of her whole life to obtain the -mastery of herself was almost defeated—then, blindly, obeying some -impulse with which she could not reason, of which she was scarcely -conscious, some strong call from a far country, she won a triumphant -victory. - -“It’s from Katherine!” she said. “The child’s mad. She’s gone up to -London.” - -“London!” George Trenchard cried. - -“London!” cried Aunt Aggie. - -“Yes. With Philip. They have caught the eight train. They are to be -married to-morrow. ‘Because I would not let Philip go,’ she says. But -she’s mad—” - -For an instant she gripped the mantelpiece behind her. She could hear -them, only from a distance, as though their voices were muffled by the -roar of sea or wind, their exclamations. - -Her husband was, of course, useless. She despised him. He cried: - -“They must be stopped! They must be stopped. This is impossible! That -fellow Mark—one might have guessed! They must be stopped. At once! At -once!” - -“They can’t be.” She heard her voice far away with the others. “They -can’t be stopped. The train left at eight o’clock, nearly half an hour -ago. There’s nothing to be done.” - -“But, of course,” cried George, “there’s _something_ to be done. They -must be stopped at once. I’ll go up by the next train.” - -“There’s no train until six to-morrow morning—and what good would you -do? They’re engaged. You gave your permission. Katherine’s of age. It is -her own affair.” - -They all cried out together. Their voices sounded to Mrs. Trenchard like -the screams of children. - -Through the confusion there came the sound of an opening door. They all -turned, and saw that it was old Mr. Trenchard, assisted by Rocket. - -“Why don’t you come in to dinner?” he said, in his clear, thin voice. “I -went straight into the dining-room because I was late, and here you all -are, and it’s nearly half-past eight.” - -The same thought instantly struck them all. Grandfather must know -nothing about it; a very slight shock, they were all aware, would _kill_ -Grandfather, and there could not possibly be any shock to him like this -amazing revolt of Katherine’s. Therefore he must know nothing. Like -bathers asserting themselves after the first quiver of an icy plunge, -they fought their way to the surface. - -Until Grandfather was safely once more alone in his room the situation -must be suspended. After all, there was _nothing_ to be done! He, -because he was feeling well that evening, was intent upon his dinner. - -“What! Waiting for Katherine?” he said. - -“Katherine isn’t coming down to dinner, Father,” Mrs. Trenchard said. - -“What, my dear?” - -“Katherine isn’t coming down to dinner.” - -“Not ill, I hope.” - -“No—a little tired.” - -George Trenchard was the only one who did not support his part. When the -old man had passed through the door, George caught his wife’s arm. - -“But, I say,” he whispered, “something—” - -She turned for an instant, looking at him with scorn. - -“Nothing!” she said. “It’s too late.” - -They went in to dinner. - -It was fortunate that Grandfather was hungry; he did not, it seems, -notice Philip’s absence. - -“Very nice to see you down, Father,” Mrs. Trenchard said pleasantly. -“Very nice for us all.” - -“Thank ye, my dear. Very agreeable—very agreeable. Quite myself this -evening. That rheumatism passed away, so I said to Rocket, ‘Well, ’pon -my word, Rocket, I think I’ll come down to-night’ Livelier for us all to -be together. Hope Katie isn’t ill, though?” - -“No—no—nothing at all.” - -“I saw her this morning. She seemed quite well.” - -“A little headache, Father dear. She thought she was better by herself.” - -“Dear Katie—never do to have her ill. Well, George. What’s the matter -with ’ee? Looking quite hipped. Dig your father in the ribs, Millie, my -dear, and cheer him up a bit.” - -So seldom was old Mr. Trenchard in his merry mood, and so difficult of -him to be in it now. So often he was consumed with his own thoughts, his -death, perhaps, the present degradation of the world, the tyranny of -aches and pains, impatience with the monotonous unvariety of relations, -past Trenchard glories, old scenes and days and hours ... he, thus -caught up into his own life, would be blind to them all. But to-night, -pleased with his food because he was hungry, and because his body was -not paining him anywhere just now, he was interested in them. His bright -little eyes darted all about the table. - -There came at last the question that they dreaded: - -“Why, where’s the young man? Katie’s young man?” - -A moment’s silence, and then Mrs. Trenchard said quietly, and with her -eyes upon the new ‘girl,’ introduced into the house only last week and -fresh to the mysteries of a dinner-table: - -“He’s dining with Timothy to-night, Father.” - -Rocket could be heard whispering to Lucy, the ‘girl’: - -“Potatoes first—then the sauce.” - -Of them all, it was George Trenchard who covered with least success the -yawning chasm, even Aunt Betty, although her hands shook as she crumbled -her bread, had not surrendered her control. - -But for George this was the first blow, in all his life, to reach his -heart. Nothing really had ever touched him before. And he could not -understand it—he simply could not understand it. It had been as sudden -as an earthquake, and then, after all, there had been nothing to be -done. That was the awful thing. There had been nothing to be done.... It -was also so mysterious. Nothing had ever been mysterious to him before. -He had been dimly aware that during these last months all had not been -well, but he had pursued his old safe plan, namely, that if you didn’t -mention things and just smiled upon life without inviting it to approach -you closely, all would, in the end, be well. - -But now he could no longer hold aloof—he was in the middle of -something, as surely as though he had been plunged into a deep tab of -tossing, foaming water. Katherine ... Katie ... dear, devoted Katie ... -who had always loved him and done as he wished; Katie, nearest of all -human beings to his heart, and nearest because he had always known that -she cared for him more than for any other human being. And now it was -obvious that that was not so, it was obvious that she cared more for -that young man, that abominable young man.... O, damn it! damn it! _damn -it!_ Katherine was gone, and for no reason, for nothing at all except -pride and impatience. Already, as he sat there, he was wondering how -soon, by any means whatever, he could establish pleasant relations with -her, and so make his life comfortable once more. But, beyond Katherine, -there was his wife. What was he to do about Harriet? For so many years -now he had decided that the only way to deal comfortably with Harriet -was not to deal with her, and this had seemed to work so well ... but -now ... now ... he _must_ deal with her. He saw that she was in terrible -distress; he knew her well enough to be sure of that. He would have -liked to have helped and comforted her; it really distressed him to see -anyone in pain, but he discovered now, with a sharp surprise, that she -was a complete stranger, that he did not know any more about the real -Harriet Trenchard than he did about Lucy, the maid-servant. There was -approaching him that awful moment when he would be compelled to draw -close to her ... he was truly terrified of this. - -It was a terrible dinner for all of them; once Lucy dropped a knife, and -they started, all of them, as though a bomb had screamed through the -ceiling. And perhaps, to the older ones, there was nothing in it more -alarming than the eyes, the startled, absorbed and challenging eyes, of -Millie and Henry.... - -Slowly, as the dinner progressed, old Mr. Trenchard discovered that -something was the matter. He discovered it as surely by the nervous -laughter and chatter of Aunt Betty as by the disconcerted discomfort of -his son George. His merriment fell away from him; he loved ‘Angels on -Horseback’—to-night there were ‘Angels on Horseback’, and he ate them -with a peevish irritation. Whatever was the matter now? He felt lost -without Sarah; _she_ knew when and why things were the matter more -quickly than anyone, aware of her deafness, would consider possible. But -before he was assisted from the table he was sure that the ‘something’ -was connected with his dear Katherine.... The men did not stay behind -to-night. In the hall they were grouped together, on the way to the -drawing-room, waiting for the old man’s slow progress. - -He paused suddenly beside the staircase. - -“George,” he said, “George, just run up and see how Katie is. Give her -my love, will ’ee?” - -George turned, his face white. Mrs. Trenchard said: - -“She’s probably asleep, Father. With her headache—it would be a pity to -wake her.” - -At that moment the hall door pushed slowly open, and there, the wind -eddying behind him, his ulster up over his neck, his hair and beard wet -with the rain, stood Uncle Timothy. - -“Hullo!” he cried, seeing them all grouped together. But old Mr. -Trenchard called to him in a voice that trembled now with some troubled -anticipation: - -“Why, your dinner’s soon done? Where’s the young man?” - -Uncle Timothy stared at them; he looked round at them, then, at a loss -for the first time in his life, stammered: “Why, don’t you know...?” - -The old man turned, his stick shaking in his hand: “Where’s Katherine? -Katie.... What’s happened to Katie? What’s this mean?” - -Mrs. Trenchard looked at him, then said: - -“It’s all right, Father—really. It’s quite all right.” - -“It’s not all right.” Fright like the terror of a child alone in the -dark was in his eyes. “What have you done with her?” - -Her voice cold, without moving, she answered: - -“Katherine went up by the eight o’clock train to London with Philip. She -has gone to Rachel Seddon.” - -“With Philip?... What do you say? I can’t hear you.” - -“Yes. She is to stay with Rachel Seddon.” - -“But why? What have you done? Why did you tell me lies?” - -“We have done nothing. We did not know that she was going.” - -“You didn’t know?... then she’s left us?” - -Mrs. Trenchard said nothing. - -He cried: “I told him—what it would be—if he took her ... Katie!” - -Then, his stick dropping with a rattle on to the stone floor, he fell -back. Rocket caught him. - -There was a movement forward, but Mrs. Trenchard, saying swiftly, -“George ... Rocket,” had swept them all outside the figure—the figure -of an old, broken, tumbled-to-pieces man, held now by his son and -Rocket, huddled, with his white, waxen hand trailing across George -Trenchard’s strong arm. - -Harriet Trenchard said to her brother: - -“You knew!” then turned up the stairs. - -In the drawing-room Aunt Aggie, Aunt Betty, Millie and Henry faced Uncle -Timothy. - -“Well!” said Aunt Aggie, “so you know all about it.... You’ve killed -Father!” she ended with a grim, malignant triumph. - -He answered fiercely: “Yes, I knew. That’s why I came. She said that she -would send up a note from the village. I thought that you wouldn’t have -heard it yet. I came up to explain.” - -They all burst upon him then with questions: - -“What?” “Did you see her?” “What did she say?” “Where was she?” - -“Of course I saw her. She came to me before she went off.” - -“She came and you didn’t stop her!” This from Aunt Aggie. He turned then -and addressed himself solely to her. - -“No. I didn’t stop her. I gave her my blessing.” - -Aunt Aggie would have spoken, but he went on: “Yes, and it’s you—you -and Harriet and the others—who are responsible. I warned Harriet months -ago, but she wouldn’t listen. What did you expect? Do you think the -world’s always going on made for you and you alone? The more life’s -behind you the more important you think you are, whereas it doesn’t -matter a damn to anybody what you’ve done compared with what others are -going to do. You thought you could tie Katherine and Philip down, take -away their freedom? Well, you couldn’t, that’s all.” - -“Yes,” cried Aunt Aggie, who was shaking with anger, “it’s such -doctrines as yours, Timothy, that lead to Katherine and others doing the -dreadful things they do. It’s all freedom now and such words, and young -men like Mr. Mark, who don’t fear God and have no morals and make -reprobates of themselves and all around them, can do what they please, I -suppose. You talk about common-sense, but what about God? What about the -Commandments and duty to your parents? They may think what they like -abroad, but, Heaven be praised, there are some of us still in England -who know our duty.” - -He had recovered his control before she ended her speech. He smiled at -her. - -“The time will come,” he answered, “and I daresay it isn’t so distant as -you think, when you and you fellow-patriots, Aggie, will learn that -England isn’t all alone, on her fine moral pedestal, any longer. There -won’t be any pedestal, and you and your friends will have to wake up and -realise that the world’s pushed a bit closer together now-a-days, that -you’ve got to use your eyes a bit, or you’ll get jostled out of -existence. The world’s going to be for the young and the independent and -the unprejudiced, not the old and narrow-minded. - -“Philip Mark’s woken you all up, and thank God he has!” - -“Heaven forgive you,” Aunt Aggie answered, “for taking His name. You’ve -got terrible things to answer to Him for, Timothy, when the time comes.” - -“I’m not afraid, Aggie,” he said. - -But it was Millie who spoke the final word. - -“Oh, _what_ are you all talking about!” she broke in. “What does it -matter _who’s_ good or bad or right or wrong. It’s Katie’s _happiness_ -that matters, nothing else. Of _course_, she’s gone. She ought to have -gone months ago. You all wanted to make her and Phil live _your_ life -just as you wished it, and Phil, because he loved Katie so much, was -ready to, but _why_ should they? You say you all loved her, but I think -it was just selfishness. I’ve been as bad as the rest of you. I’ve been -thinking of myself more than Katie, but at heart now I’m glad, and I -hope they’ll be happy, happy for ever.” - -“And your Mother?” said Aunt Aggie. “Did Katherine owe her nothing?” - -“Yes,” answered Millie, stoutly, “but she didn’t owe her all her life. -Mother’s still got her if she wants her. Katie will never change—she -isn’t that kind. It’s mother’s pride that’s hurt, not her love.” - -Aunt Betty, who had been quite silent, said: - -“I do indeed hope that she will be very happy ... but life will never be -the same again. We mustn’t be selfish, of course, but we shall miss -her—terribly.” - -At a later hour George Trenchard, in pyjamas and a dressing gown, -knocked on his wife’s door. She opened it, and he found her fully -clothed; she had, it seemed to him, been reading. - -He looked at her; he felt very wretched and uncomfortable. - -“Father’s asleep,” he said. - -“I’m glad of that,” she answered. - -“I think he’ll be none the worse in the morning.” - -“I hope not. Dr. Pierson seemed reassured.” - -There was a pause; in spite of his bedroom slippers, his feet were cold. - -“Harriet.” - -“Yes, George.” - -“I only wanted to say—well, I don’t know—only that—I’m sorry if -this—this business of Katherine’s—has been a great blow to you.” - -Her mind returned to that day, now so long ago, when, after her visit to -the Stores, she had gone to his study. Their position now was reversed. -But she was tired; she did not care. George did not exist for her. - -“It has surprised me, of course,” she answered, in her even, level -voice. “I thought Katherine cared more for us all than she has shown -that she does. I certainly thought so. Perhaps my pride is hurt.” - -By making this statement—not especially to George, but to the world in -general—she could say to herself: “You see how honest you are. You are -hiding nothing.” - -He meanwhile hated his position, but was driven on by a vague sense that -she needed comfort, and that he ought to give it her. - -“See here, Harriet,” he said, awkwardly, “perhaps it needn’t be so bad. -Nothing very terrible’s happened, I mean. After all, they were going to -marry anyway. They’ve only done it a bit sooner. They might have told -us, it’s true—they ought to have told us—but, after all, young people -will be young people, won’t they? We can’t be very angry with them. And -young Mark isn’t quite an Englishman, you know. Been abroad so long.” - -As he spoke he dwindled and dwindled before her until his huge, healthy -body seemed like a little speck, a fly, crawling upon the distant wall. - -“Nothing very terrible’s happened” ... “_Nothing very terrible’s -happened_” ... “NOTHING VERY TERRIBLE’S HAPPENED.” - -George, who, during these many years had been very little in her life, -disappeared, as he made that speech, utterly and entirely out of it. He -was never to figure in it again, but he did not know that. - -He suddenly sat down beside her on the old sofa and put his arm round -her. She did not move. - -They sat there in utter silence. At last desperately, as though he were -committing the crime of his life, he kissed her. She patted his hand. - -“You look tired,” he said, feeling an immense relief, now that he had -done his duty. “You go to bed.” - -“Good night, George dear,” she said. - -He raised his big body from the sofa, smiled at her and padded away.... - - * * * * * - -When he had gone and she was alone, for a terrible time she fought her -defeat. She knew now quite clearly that her ruling passion during all -these months had not been, as she had supposed, her love of Katherine, -but her hatred of Philip. - -From the first moment of seeing him she had known him for her enemy. He -had been, although at the time she had not realised it, the very figure -whose appearance, all her life, she had dreaded; that figure, from -outside, of whose coming Timothy had long ago prophesied. How she had -hated him! From the very first she had made her plans, influencing the -others against him, watching how she might herself most securely -influence him against himself, breaking in his will, using Katherine -against him; finally, when Seymour had told her the scandal, how she had -treasured it up for the moment when he, because of his love for -Katherine, should be completely delivered over to her! - -And the moment had come. She had had her triumph! She had seen his -despair in his eyes! She had got him, she thought, securely for ever and -ever. - -Then how she had known what she would do in the future, the slave that -she would make of him, the ways that she would trouble him with -Katherine, with that Russian woman, with Aggie, with all of them! - -Ah! it had been so perfect! and—at the very moment of her triumph—he -had escaped! - -That love for Katherine that had been a true motive in her earlier life, -a true motive even until six months ago, was now converted into a cold, -implacable resentment, because it was Katherine who had opened the door -of Philip’s cage. Strange the complexities of the human heart! That very -day, as she won her triumph she had loved her daughter. She had thought: -“Now that I have beaten him I can take you back to my heart. We can be, -my dear, as we used to be”—but now, had Katherine entered the room, she -would have been spurned, dismissed for ever. - -In the lust of love there is embedded, as the pearl is embedded in its -shell, a lust of hate. Very closely they are pressed together. Mrs. -Trenchard was beaten—beaten by her daughter, by a new generation, by a -new world, by a new age—beaten in the very moment of her victory. - -She would never forgive. - -What was left to her? - -Her heart was suddenly empty of love, of hatred, of triumph, of defeat. -She was tired and lonely. Somewhere, dimly, from the passage, the -cuckoo-clock proclaimed the hour. - -The house! That at least was left to her. These rooms, these roofs, the -garden, the village, the fields, the hedges the roads to the sea. The -Place had not deceived her, had not shared in the victory over her; it -had, rather, shared in her defeat. - -It seemed, as she stood there, to come up to her, to welcome her, to -console her. - -She put a shawl over her shoulders, went softly through the dark -passages, down into the drawing-room. - -There, feeling her way, she found candles and lit them. She went to her -cabinet, opened drawers, produced papers, plans, rows of figures. Here -was a plan of a new barn behind the house, here the addition of a -conservatory to the drawing-room. Before her was a map of South -Glebeshire, with the roads, the fields, the farms. She began to work, -adding figures, following the plans, writing.... - -The light of the summer morning found her working there in the thin -candle-light. - - - - - CHAPTER VI - THE CEREMONY - -At about half-past four upon the afternoon of November 8th, 1903, the -drawing-room of No. 5 Rundle Square Westminster, was empty. November 8th -was, of course, Grandfather Trenchard’s birthday; a year ago on that day -Philip Mark had made his first entrance into the Trenchard fastnesses. -This Eighth of November, 1903, did not, in the manner of weather, repeat -the Eighth of November, 1902. There had been, a year ago, the thickest -of fogs, now there was a clear, mildly blue November evening, with the -lamps like faint blurs of light against a sky in which tiny stars -sparkled on a background that was almost white. It was cold enough to be -jolly, and there was a thin wafer-like frost over the pools and gutters. - -A large fire roared in the fireplace; the room seemed strangely altered -since that day when Henry had read his novel and thought of his forests. -In what lay the alteration? The old green carpet was still there; in -front of the fireplace was a deep red Turkey rug—but it was not the rug -that changed the room. The deep glass-fronted book-cases were still -there, with the chilly and stately classics inside them; on the round -table there were two novels with gaudy red and blue covers. One novel -was entitled “The Lovely Mrs. Tempest”, the other “The Mystery of -Dovecote Mill”—but it was not the novels that changed the room. The -portraits of deceased Trenchards, weighted with heavy gold, still hung -upon the walls; there was also, near the fireplace, a gay water-colour -of some place on the Riviera, with a bright parasol in the foreground -and the bluest of all blue seas in the background—but it was not the -water-colour that changed the room. - -No, the change lay here—the Mirror was gone. - -After Henry had broken it, there was much discussion as to whether it -should be mended. Of course it would be mended—but when?—Well, soon. -Meanwhile it had better be out of the way somewhere ... it had remained -out of the way. Until it should be restored, Sir George Trenchard, -K.C.B., 1834-1896, a stout gentleman with side whiskers, hung in its -place. - -Meanwhile it would never be restored. People would forget it; people -wanted to forget it ... the Mirror’s day was over. - -It was, of course, impossible for Sir George Trenchard to reflect the -room in his countenance or in his splendid suit of clothes, and the -result of this was that the old room that had gathered itself so -comfortably, with its faded and mossy green, into the shining embrace of -the Mirror, had now nowhere for its repose; it seemed now an ordinary -room, and the spots of colour—the Turkey rug, the novels, the -water-colour, broke up the walls and the carpet, flung light here and -light there, shattered that earlier composed remoteness, proclaimed the -room a comfortable place that had lost its tradition. - -The Room was broken up—the Mirror was in the cellar. - -Henry came in. He had had permission to abandon—for one night—his -labours at Cambridge to assist in the celebration of his grandfather’s -birthday, the last, perhaps, that there would be, because the old man -now was very broken and ill. He had never recovered from the blow of -Katherine’s desertion. - -The first thing that Henry had done on his arrival in London had been to -pay a visit to Mrs. Philip Mark. Katherine and Philip lived in a little -flat in Knightsbridge—Park Place—and a delightful little flat it was. -This was not the first visit that Henry had paid there; George -Trenchard, Millie, Aunt Betty had also been there—there had been -several merry tea-parties. - -The marriage had been a great success; the only thing that marred it for -Katherine was her division from her mother. Mrs. Trenchard was -relentless. She would not see Katherine, she would not read her letters, -she would not allow her name to be mentioned in her presence. Secretly, -one by one, the others had crept off to the Knightsbridge flat.... They -gave no sign of their desertion. Did she know? She also gave no sign. - -But Katherine would not abandon hope. The time must come when her mother -needed her. She did not ask questions of the others, but she saw her -mother lonely, aged, miserable; she saw this from no conceit of herself, -but simply because she knew that she had, for so many years, been the -centre of her mother’s life. Her heart ached; she lay awake, crying, at -night, and Philip would strive to console her but could not. -Nevertheless, through all her tears, she did not regret what she had -done. She would do it again did the problem again arise. Philip was a -new man, strong, happy, reliant, wise ... she had laid the ghosts for -him. He was hers, as though he had been her child. - -Henry, upon this afternoon, was clearly under the influence of great -excitement. He entered the drawing-room as though he were eager to -deliver important news, and then, seeing that no one was there, he -uttered a little exclamation and flung himself into a chair. Anyone -might see that a few weeks of Cambridge life had worked a very happy -change in Henry; much of his crudity was gone. One need not now be -afraid of what he would do next, and because he was himself aware of -this development much of his awkwardness had left him. - -His clothes were neat; his hair was brushed. He might still yield at any -moment to his old impetuosities, his despairs and his unjustified -triumphs, but there would now be some further purpose beyond them; he -would know now that there were more important things in life than his -moods. - -He looked at the place where the Mirror had been and blushed; then he -frowned. Yes, he had lost his temper badly that day, but Philip had had -such an abominable way of showing him how young he was, how little of -life he knew. All the same, Philip wasn’t a bad sort,—and he _did_ love -Katie—‘like anything!’ - -Henry himself thrilled with the consciousness of the things that he -intended to do in life. He had attended a debate at the Cambridge Union, -and himself, driven by what desperate impulse he did not know, had -spoken a few words. From that moment he had realised what life held in -store for him. He had discovered other eager spirits; they met at night -and drank cocoa together. They intended nothing less than the redemption -of the world; their Utopian City shone upon no distant hill. They called -themselves the Crusaders, and some time before the end of the term the -first number of a periodical written by them was to startle the world. -Henry was the Editor. His first Editorial was entitled: “Freedom: What -it is”. - -And only a year ago he had sat in this very room reading that novel and -wondering whether life would ever open before him. It had opened—it was -opening before them all. He did not know that it had been opening thus -for many thousands of years. He knew nothing of the past; he knew -nothing of the future; but he saw his City rising, so pure and of -marvellous promise, before his eyes.... - -As he looked back over the past year and surveyed the family, it was to -him as though an earthquake had blown them all sky-high. A year ago they -had been united, as though no power could ever divide them. Well, the -division had come. There was now not one member of the family who had -not his, or her, secret ambitions and desires. Aunt Aggie intended to -live in a little flat by herself. She found “the younger ones -impossible.” George Trenchard bought land at Garth. Mrs. Trenchard -intended to pull down some of the Garth house and build a new wing. - -She was immersed all day in plans and maps and figures; even her -father-in-law’s illness had not interfered with her determination. - -Millie had made friends with a number of independent London ladies, who -thought Women’s Suffrage far beyond either cleanliness or Godliness. She -talked to Henry about her companions, who hoped for a new City in no -very distant future, very much as Henry’s friends at Cambridge did. -Only, the two Cities were very different. Even Katherine and Philip were -concerned in some Society for teaching poor women how to manage their -children, and Philip was also interested in a new Art, in which young -painters produced medical charts showing the internal arrangements of -the stomach, and called them “Spring on the Heath” or “Rome—Midday.” - -And through all the middle-class families in England these things were -occurring. “Something is coming....” “Something is coming....” “Look -out....” “Look out....” - -This was in 1903. Henry, Millie, Katherine had still eleven years to -wait for their revolution, but in at least one corner of happy England -the work of preparation had been begun. - -The door opened, and Henry’s reveries were interrupted by the entrance -of Millie. He started, and then jumped up on seeing her; for a moment, -under the power of his thoughts, he had forgotten his news; now he -stammered with the importance of it. - -“Millie!” he cried. - -“Hullo, Henry,” she said, smiling. “We expected you hours ago.” - -He dropped his voice. “I’ve been round to see Katie. Look here, Millie, -it’s most important. She’s coming here to see Mother.” - -Millie glanced behind. They carried on then the rest of their -conversation in whispers. - -“To see Mother?” - -“Yes. She can’t bear waiting any longer. She felt that she _must_ be -here on Grandfather’s birthday.” - -“But—but—” - -“Yes, I know. But she thinks that if she sees Mother alone and she can -show her that nothing’s changed—” - -“But _everything’s_ changed. She doesn’t _know_ how different Mother -is.” - -“No, but she thinks if they both _see_ one another—at any rate she’s -going to try.” - -“Now?” - -“Yes. In a few minutes. I’ll go up and just tell Mother that there’s a -caller in the drawing-room. Then leave them alone together—” - -Millie sighed. “It would be too lovely for anything if it really -happened. But it won’t—it can’t. Mother’s extraordinary. I don’t -believe she ever loved Katie at all, at least only as an idea. She’ll -_never_ forgive her—_never_—and she’ll always hate Philip.” - -“How’s Grandfather?” - -“Very bad. He says he _will_ come down to-night, although it’ll probably -kill him. However, now they’ve arranged that his presents shall be in -the little drawing-room upstairs. Then he won’t have so far to go. He’s -awfully bad, really, and he’s as hard about Katie as Mother is. He won’t -have her name mentioned. It’s simply, _I_ believe, that it’s terrible to -him to think that she could love Philip better than him!” - -“And how’s everyone else?” - -“Oh, well, it’s all right, I suppose. But it isn’t very nice. I’m going -off to live with Miss Emberley as soon as they’ll let me. Aunt Aggie’s -been _awful_. And then one day she went suddenly to see Katie, and -Mother found out somehow. Mother never said anything, but Aunt Aggie’s -going to take a flat by herself somewhere. And since that she’s been -nicer than I’ve ever known her. Quite soft and good-tempered.” - -“Does Mother know that we all go to see Katie?” - -“Sometimes I think she does—sometimes that she doesn’t. She never says -a word. She seems to think of nothing but improving the place now. She -must be very lonely, but she doesn’t show anyone anything. All the same -it’s impossible without Katie—I—” - -At that moment the bell of the hall-door rang. They stood silently there -listening. - -For a moment they stared at one another, like conspirators caught in the -act of their conspiracy. The colour flooded their cheeks; their hearts -beat furiously. Here and now was Drama. - -They heard Rocket’s footstep, the opening door, Katherine’s voice. They -fled from the room before they could be seen. - -Katherine, when she stood alone in the room in whose life and intimacy -she had shared for so many years, stared about her as though she had -been a stranger. There was a change; in the first place there was now -her own room, made for her and for Philip, that absorbed her mind; in -comparison with it this room, that had always appeared to her -comfortable, consoling, protective, was now old-fashioned and a little -shabby. There were too many things scattered about, old things, neither -beautiful nor useful. Then the place itself did not seem to care for her -as it had once done. She was a visitor now, and the house knew it. Their -mutual intimacy had ceased. - -But she could not waste many thoughts upon the room. This approaching -interview with her mother seemed to her the supreme moment of her life. -There had been other supreme moments during the past year, and she did -not realise that she was now better able to deal with them than she had -once been. Nevertheless her mother _must_ forgive her. She would not -leave the house until she had been forgiven. She was hopeful. The -success of her marriage had given her much self-confidence. The way that -the family had, one after another, come to see her (yes, even Aunt -Aggie) had immensely reassured her. Her mother was proud; she needed -that submission should be made to her. - -Katherine was here to make it. Her heart beat thickly with love and the -anticipated reconciliation. - -She went, as she had done so many, many times, to the Mirror over the -fireplace to tidy herself. Why! the Mirror was not there! Of course -not—that was why the room seemed so changed. She looked around her, -smiled a little. A fine girl, anyone seeing her there would have thought -her. Marriage had given her an assurance, a self-reliance. She had -shrunk back before because she had been afraid of what life would be. -Now, when it seemed to her that she had penetrated into the very darkest -fastnesses of its secrets, when she felt that nothing in the future -could surprise her ever again, she shrank back no longer. - -Her clothes were better than in the old days, but even now they did not -fit her very perfectly. She was still, in her heart, exactly the same -rather grave, rather slow, very loving Katherine. She would be stout in -later years; there were already little dimples in her cheeks. Her eyes -were soft and mild, as they had ever been. - -The door opened, and Mrs. Trenchard entered. - -She had expected some caller, and she came forward a few steps with the -smile of the hostess upon her lips. Then she saw her daughter, and -stopped. - -Katherine had risen, and stood facing her mother. With a swift -consternation, as though someone had shouted some terrifying news into -her ear, she realised that her mother was a stranger to her. She had -imagined many, many times what this interview would be. She had often -considered the things that she would say and the very words in which she -would arrange her sentences. But always in her thoughts she had had a -certain picture of her mother before her. She had seen an old woman, old -as she had been on that night when she had slept in Katherine’s arms, -old as she had been at that moment when Katherine had first told her of -her engagement to Philip. And now she thought this old woman would face -her, maintaining her pride but nevertheless ready, after the separation -of these weeks, to break down before the vision of Katherine’s own -submission. - -Katherine had always thought: “Dear Mother. We _must_ have one another. -She’ll feel that now. She’ll see that I’m exactly the same....” - -How different from her dreams was this figure. Her mother seemed to-day -younger than Katherine had ever known her. She stood there, tall, stern, -straight, the solidity of her body impenetrable, inaccessible to all -tenderness, scornful of all embraces. She was young, yes, and stronger. - -At the first sight of Katherine she had moved back as though she would -leave the room. Then she stayed by the door. She was perfectly composed. - -“Why have you come?” she said. - -At the cold indifference of that voice Katherine felt a little pulse of -anger beat, far away, in the very heart of her tenderness. - -She moved forward with a little gesture. - -“Mother, I had to come. It’s Grandfather’s birthday. I couldn’t believe -that after all these weeks you wouldn’t be willing to see me.” - -She stopped. Her mother said nothing. - -Katherine came nearer. “I’m sorry—terribly sorry—if I did what hurt -you. I felt at the time that it was the only thing to do. Phil was so -miserable, and I know that it was all for my sake. It wasn’t fair to let -him go on like that when I could prevent it. You didn’t understand him. -He didn’t understand you. But never, for a single instant, did my love -for you change. It never has. It never will. Mother dear, you believe -that—you _must_ believe that.” - -Did Mrs. Trenchard have then for a moment a vision of the things that -she might still do with life? With her eyes, during these weeks, she had -seen not Katherine but her own determination to vindicate her stability, -the stability of all her standards, against every attack. They said that -the world was changing. She at least could show them that she would not -change. Even though, in her own house, that revolution had occurred -about which she had been warned, she would show them that she remained, -through it all, stable, unconquered. - -Katherine had gone over to the enemy. Well, she would fasten her life to -some other anchor then. It should be as though Katherine and Katherine’s -love had never existed. There was offered her now her last chance. One -word and she would be part of the new world. One word.... - -She may for an instant have had her vision. The moment passed. She saw -only her own determined invincibility. - -“You had your choice, Katherine,” she said. “You made it. You broke your -word to us. You left us without justification. You have killed your -Grandfather. You have shown that our love and care for you during all -these years has gone for nothing at all.” - -Katherine flushed. “I have not shown that—I....” She looked as though -she would cry. Her lips trembled. She struggled to compose her -voice—then at last went on firmly: - -“Mother—perhaps I was wrong. I didn’t know what I did. It wasn’t for -myself—it was for Philip. It isn’t true that I didn’t think of you all. -Mother, let me see Grandfather—only for a moment. He will forgive me. I -know—I know.” - -“He has forbidden us to mention your name to him.” - -“But if he sees me—” - -“He is resolved never to see you again.” - -“But what did I do? If I speak to him, if I kiss him—I must go to him. -It’s his birthday. I’ve got a present—” - -“He is too ill to see you.” This perhaps had moved her, because she went -on swiftly: “Katherine, what is the use of this? It hurts both of us. It -can do no good. You acted as you thought right. It seemed to show me -that you had no care for me after all these years. It shook all my -confidence. That can never be between us again, and I could not, I -think, in any way follow your new life. I could never forget, and you -have now friends and interests that must exclude me. If we meet what can -we have now in common? If I had loved you less, perhaps it would be -possible, but as it is—no.” - -Katherine had dried her tears. - -They looked at one another. Katherine bowed her head. She had still to -bite her lips that she might not cry, but she looked very proud. - -“Perhaps,” she said, very softly, “that one day you will want—you will -feel—At least I shall not change. I will come whenever you want me. I -will always care the same. One day I will come back, Mother dear.” - -Her mother said only: - -“It is better that we should not meet.” - -Katherine walked to the door. As she passed her mother she looked at -her. Her eyes made one last prayer—then they were veiled. - -She left the house. - - * * * * * - -A quarter of an hour later Henry came into the room, and found his -Mother seated at her desk, plans and papers in front of her. He could -hear her saying to herself: - -“Fifteen—by fourteen.... The rockery _there_—Five steps, then the -door.... Fifteen pounds four shillings and sixpence....” - -Katherine was not there. He knew that she had been rejected. His mother -showed no signs of discomposure. Their interview must have been very -short. - -He went to the window and stood there, looking out. In a moment Rocket -would come and draw the blinds. Rundle Square swam in the last golden -light. - -Tiny flakes of colour spun across the pale blue that was almost white. -They seemed to whirl before Henry’s eyes. - -He was sorry, terribly sorry, that Katherine had failed, but he was -filled to-day with a triumphant sense of the glory and promise of life. -He had been liberated, and Katherine had been liberated. Freedom, with -its assurances for all the world, flamed across the darkening skies. -Life seemed endless: its beckoning drama called to him. The anticipation -of the glory of life caught him by the throat so that he could scarcely -breathe.... - -At that moment in the upstairs room old Mr. Trenchard, suddenly -struggling for breath, tried to call out, failed, fell back, on to his -pillow, dead. - - THE END - - - - - =_Books by_ HUGH WALPOLE= - - _NOVELS_ - - THE WOODEN HORSE - THE GODS AND MR. PERRIN - THE DARK FOREST - THE SECRET CITY - THE CATHEDRAL - - * * * * * - - _The London Novels_ - - FORTITUDE - THE DUCHESS OF WREXE - THE GREEK MIRROR - THE CAPTIVES - THE YOUNG ENCHANTED - - * * * * * - - _Phantasies_ - - MARADICK AT FORTY - THE PRELUDE TO ADVENTURE - - * * * * * - - _BOOKS ABOUT CHILDREN_ - - THE GOLDEN SCARECROW - JEREMY - JEREMY AND HAMLET - - * * * * * - - _BELLES-LETTRES_ - - JOSEPH CONRAD: A CRITICAL STUDY - - - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Green Mirror, by Hugh Walpole - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREEN MIRROR *** - -***** This file should be named 60327-0.txt or 60327-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/3/2/60327/ - -Produced by David Jones, Al Haines, Mary Meehan & the -online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at -http://www.pgdpcanada.net - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Green Mirror - A Quiet Story - -Author: Hugh Walpole - -Release Date: September 19, 2019 [EBook #60327] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREEN MIRROR *** - - - - -Produced by David Jones, Al Haines, Mary Meehan & the -online Project Gutenberg team at -http://www.pgdpcanada.net - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='figcenter'> -<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0000' style='width:281px;height:500px;'/> -</div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line' style='margin-top:2em;font-size:1.4em;'><span class='it'>The</span> Green Mirror</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>A QUIET STORY</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>BY</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'>HUGH WALPOLE</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>NEW YORK</span></p> -<p class='line'>GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>COPYRIGHT, 1917,</p> -<p class='line'>BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'>THE GREEN MIRROR</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=' margin-top: 10em; '> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'>TO</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>DOROTHY</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>WHO FIRST INTRODUCED ME</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>TO</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>KATHERINE</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<p class='line'> </p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>“<span class='it'>There’s the feather bed element here brother, ach! -and not only that! There’s an attraction here—here -you have the end of the world, an anchorage, a quiet -haven, the navel of the earth, the three fishes that are -the foundation of the world, the essence of pancakes, of -savoury fish-pies, of the evening samovar, of soft sighs -and warm shawls, and hot stoves to sleep on—as snug -as though you were dead, and yet you’re alive—the -advantages of both at once.</span>”</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:0em;'><span class='sc'>Dostoeffsky.</span></p> - -</div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<p><span class='sc'>My dear Dorothy</span>,</p> - -<p>As I think you know, this book was finished in the month -of August, 1914. I did not look at it again until I revised -it during my convalescence after an illness in the autumn of -1915.</p> - -<p>We are now in a world very different from that with which -this story deals, and it must, I am afraid, appear slow in -development and uneventful in movement, belonging, in style -and method and subject, to a day that seems to us already -old-fashioned.</p> - -<p>But I will frankly confess that I have too warm a personal -affection for Katherine, Philip, Henry and Millicent to be -able to destroy utterly the signs and traditions of their existence, -nor can I feel my book to be quite old-fashioned when -the love of England, which I have tried to make the text of -it, has in many of us survived so triumphantly changes and -catastrophes and victories that have shaken into ruin almost -every other faith we held.</p> - -<p>Let this be my excuse for giving you, with my constant -affection, this uneventful story.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:5em;'>Yours always,</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:1em;'>HUGH WALPOLE.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:1em;'><span class='sc'>Petrograd</span>,</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:3em;'>May 11th, 1917.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='literal-container'> -<p class='toch'>CONTENTS</p> -<div class='literal'> -<p class='toc'><a href='#t132'>BOOK I: THE RAID</a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 2em'><a href='#ch01'>CHAPTER I: THE CEREMONY</a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 4em'><a href='#t138'></a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 4em'><a href='#t213'></a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 4em'><a href='#t388'></a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 4em'><a href='#t576'></a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 4em'><a href='#t689'></a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 4em'><a href='#t837'></a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 2em'><a href='#ch02'>CHAPTER II: THE WINTER AFTERNOON</a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 2em'><a href='#ch03'>CHAPTER III: KATHERINE</a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 2em'><a href='#ch04'>CHAPTER IV: THE FOREST</a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 2em'><a href='#ch05'>CHAPTER V: THE FINEST THING</a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 2em'><a href='#ch06'>CHAPTER VI: THE SHOCK</a></p> -<p class='toc'><a href='#t4765'>BOOK II: THE FEATHER BED</a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 2em'><a href='#ch07'>CHAPTER I: KATHERINE IN LOVE</a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 2em'><a href='#ch08'>CHAPTER II: MRS. TRENCHARD</a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 2em'><a href='#ch09'>CHAPTER III: LIFE AND HENRY</a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 2em'><a href='#ch10'>CHAPTER IV: GARTH IN ROSELANDS</a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 2em'><a href='#ch11'>CHAPTER V: THE FEAST</a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 2em'><a href='#ch12'>CHAPTER VI: SUNDAY</a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 2em'><a href='#ch13'>CHAPTER VII: ROCHE ST. MARY MOOR</a></p> -<p class='toc'><a href='#t11638'>BOOK III: KATHERINE AND ANNA</a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 2em'><a href='#ch14'>CHAPTER I: KATHERINE ALONE</a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 2em'><a href='#ch15'>CHAPTER II: THE MIRROR</a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 2em'><a href='#ch16'>CHAPTER III: ANNA AND MRS. TRENCHARD</a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 2em'><a href='#ch17'>CHAPTER IV: THE WILD NIGHT</a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 2em'><a href='#ch18'>CHAPTER V: THE TRENCHARDS</a></p> -<p class='toc' style='margin-left: 2em'><a href='#ch19'>CHAPTER VI: THE CEREMONY</a></p> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div><h1 id='t132'>BOOK I<br/> THE RAID</h1></div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2 id='ch01'>CHAPTER I<br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>THE CEREMONY</span></h2> - -<h3 id='t138'>I</h3> - -<p>The fog had swallowed up the house, and the house had -submitted. So thick was this fog that the towers of -Westminster Abbey, the river, and the fat complacency of the -church in the middle of the Square, even the three Plane -Trees in front of the old gate and the heavy old-fashioned -porch had all vanished together, leaving in their place, the -rattle of a cab, the barking of a dog, isolated sounds that -ascended, plaintively, from a lost, a submerged world.</p> - -<p>The House had, indeed, in its time seen many fogs for it had -known its first one in the days of Queen Anne and even then -it had yielded, without surprise and without curiosity, to its -tyranny. On the brightest of days this was a solemn, unenterprising, -unimaginative building, standing four-square to all -the winds, its windows planted stolidly, securely, its vigorous -propriety well suited to its safe, unagitated surroundings. -Its faded red brick had weathered many London storms and -would weather many more: that old, quiet Square, with its -uneven stones, its church, and its plane-trees, had the Abbey, -the Houses of Parliament, the river for its guardians ... -the skies might fall, the Thames burst into a flaming fire, -Rundle Square would not stir from its tranquillity.</p> - -<p>The old house—No. 5, Rundle Square—had for its most -charming feature its entrance. First came an old iron gate -guarded, on either side, by weather-beaten stone pillars. Then -a cobbled path, with little green lawns to right and left of -it, ran to the door whose stolidity was crowned with an old -porch of dim red brick. This was unusual enough for London, -but there the gate, the little garden, the Porch had stood -for some hundreds of years, and that Progress that had already -its throttling fingers about London’s neck, had, as yet, -left Rundle Square to its staid propriety.</p> - -<p>Westminster abides, like a little Cathedral town, at the -heart of London. One is led to it, through Whitehall, through -Victoria Street, through Belgravia, over Westminster Bridge -with preparatory caution. The thunder of London sinks, -as the traveller approaches, dying gradually as though the -spirit of the town warned you, with his finger at his lip. -To the roar of the traffic there succeeds the solemn striking -of Big Ben, the chiming of the Abbey Bells; so narrow and -winding are many of the little streets that such traffic as -penetrates them proceeds slowly, cautiously, almost sleepily; -there are old buildings and grass squares, many clergymen, -schoolboys in black gowns and battered top hats, and at the -corners one may see policemen, motionless, somnolent, stationed -one supposes, to threaten disturbance or agitation.</p> - -<p>There is, it seems, no impulse here to pile many more -events upon the lap of the day than the poor thing can decently -hold. Behind the windows of Westminster life is passing, -surely, with easy tranquillity; the very door-bells are, -many of them, old and comfortable, unsuited to any frantic -ringing; there does not sound, through every hour, the whirring -clang of workmen flinging, with eager haste, into the -reluctant air, hideous and contemptuous buildings; dust does -not rise in blinding clouds from the tortured corpses of old -and happy houses.... Those who live here live long.</p> - -<p>No. 5, Rundle Square then, had its destiny in pleasant -places. Upon a fine summer evening the old red brick with -its windows staring complacently upon a comfortable world -showed a fine colour. Its very chimneys were square and -solid, its eaves and water pipes regular and mathematical. -Whatever horrid catastrophe might convulse the rest of -London, No. 5 would suffer no hurt; the god of propriety—the -strongest of all the gods—had it beneath His care.</p> - -<p>Now behind the Fog it waited, as it had waited so often -before, with certain assurance, for its release.</p> - -<h3 id='t213'>II</h3> - -<p>Inside the house at about half-past four, upon this afternoon -November 8th, in the year 1902, young Henry Trenchard -was sitting alone; he was straining his eyes over a book -that interested him so deeply that he could not leave it in -order to switch on the electric light; his long nose stuck into -the book’s very heart and his eyelashes almost brushed the -paper. The drawing-room where he was had caught some -of the fog and kept it, and Henry Trenchard’s only light was -the fading glow of a red cavernous fire. Henry Trenchard, -now nineteen years of age, had known, in all those nineteen -years, no change in that old drawing-room. As an -ugly and tiresome baby he had wailed before the sombre -indifference of that same old stiff green wall-paper—a little -brighter then perhaps,—had sprawled upon the same old -green carpet, had begged to be allowed to play with the same -collection of little scent bottles and stones and rings and -miniatures that lay now, in the same decent symmetry, in the -same narrow glass-topped table over by the window. It was -by shape and design a heavy room, slipping into its true -spirit with the London dusk, the London fog, the London -lamp-lit winter afternoon, seeming awkward, stiff, almost affronted -before the sunshine and summer weather. One or -two Trenchards—two soldiers and a Bishop—were there in -heavy old gold frames, two ponderous glass-fronted book-cases -guarded from any frivolous touch high stiff-backed volumes -of Gibbons and Richardson and Hooker.</p> - -<p>There were some old water-colours of faded green lawns, -dim rocks and seas with neglected boats upon the sand—all -these painted in the stiff precision of the ’thirties and the -’forties, smoked and fogged a little in their thin black frames.</p> - -<p>Upon one round-table indeed there was a concession to the -modern spirit in the latest numbers of the “Cornhill” and -“Blackwood” magazines, the “Quarterly Review” and the -“Hibbert Journal.”</p> - -<p>The chairs in the room were for the most part stiff with -gilt backs and wore a “Don’t you dare to sit down upon me” -eye, but two arm-chairs, near the fire, of old green leather -were comfortable enough and upon one of these Henry was -now sitting. Above the wide stone fireplace was a large old -gold mirror, a mirror that took into its expanse the whole of -the room, so that, standing before it, with your back to the -door, you could see everything that happened behind you. -The Mirror was old and gave to the view that it embraced -some old comfortable touch so that everything within it was -soft and still and at rest. Now, in the gloom and shadow, -the reflection was green and dark with the only point of -colour the fading fire. Before it a massive gold clock with -the figures of the Three Graces stiff and angular at its summit -ticked away as though it were the voice of a very old -gentleman telling an interminable story. It served indeed for -the voice of the mirror itself....</p> - -<p>Henry was reading a novel that showed upon its back -Mudie’s bright yellow label. He was reading, as the clock -struck half-past four, these words:—</p> - -<p>“I sat on the stump of a tree at his feet, and below us -stretched the land, the great expanse of the forests, sombre -under the sunshine, rolling like a sea, with glints of winding -rivers, the grey spots of villages, and here and there a -clearing, like an islet of light amongst the dark waves of continuous -tree-tops. A brooding gloom lay over this vast and -monotonous landscape; the light fell on it as if into an abyss. -The land devoured the sunshine; only far off, along the coast, -the empty ocean, smooth and polished within the faint bays, -seemed to rise up to the sky in a wall of steel.</p> - -<p>“And there I was with him, high on the sunshine on the top -of that historic hill....”</p> - -<p>The striking of the clock brought him away from the book -with a jerk, so deep had he been sunk in it that he looked -now about the dusky room with a startled uncertain gaze. The -familiar place settled once more about him and, with a little -sigh, he sank back into the chair. His thin bony legs stuck -out in front of him; one trouser-leg was hitched up and his -sock, falling down over his boot, left bare part of his calf; -his boots had not been laced tightly and the tongues had -slipped aside, showing his sock. He was a long thin youth, -his hair untidy, his black tie up at the back of his collar; one -white and rather ragged cuff had slipped down over his wrist, -the other was invisible. His eyes were grey and weak, he -had a long pointed nose with two freckles on the very end -of it, but his mouth was kindly although too large and indeterminate. -His cheeks were thin and showed high cheek-bones; -his chin was pronounced enough to be strong but -nevertheless helped him very little.</p> - -<p>He was untidy and ungainly but not entirely unattractive; -his growth was at the stage when nature has not made -up its mind as to the next, the final move. That may, after -all, be something very pleasant....</p> - -<p>His eyes now were dreamy and soft because he was thinking -of the book. No book, perhaps, in all his life before had -moved him so deeply and he was very often moved—but, as -a rule, by cheap and sentimental emotions.</p> - -<p>He knew that he was cheap; he knew that he was sentimental; -he, very often, hated and despised himself.</p> - -<p>He could see the Forests “rolling like a sea”. It was as -though he, himself, had been perched upon that high, bright -hill, and he was exalted, he felt, with that same exultation; -the space, the freedom, the liberty, the picture of a world -wherein anything might happen, where heroes, fugitives, -scoundrels, cowards, conquerors all alike might win their -salvation. “Room for everyone ... no one to pull one up—No -one to make one ashamed of what one says and does. -No crowd watching one’s every movement. Adventures for -the wishing and courage to meet them.”</p> - -<p>He looked about the room and hated it,—the old, shabby, -hemmed-in thing! He hated this life to which he was condemned; -he hated himself, his world, his uninspiring future.</p> - -<p>“My God, I must do something!... I <span class='it'>will</span> do something!... -But suppose I can’t!” His head fell again—suppose -he were out in that other world, there in the heart -of those dark forests, suppose that he found that he did no -better there than here!... That would be, indeed, the most -terrible thing of all!</p> - -<p>He gazed up into the Mirror, saw in it the reflection of -the room, the green walls, the green carpet, the old faded -green place like moss covering dead ground. Soft, damp, dark,—and -beyond outside the Mirror, the world of the Forests—“the -great expanse of Forests” and “beyond, the Ocean—smooth -and polished ... rising up to the sky in a wall of -steel.”</p> - -<p>His people, his family, his many, many relations, his -world, he thought, were all inside the Mirror—all embedded -in that green, soft, silent enclosure. He saw, stretching from -one end of England to the other, in all Provincial towns, in -neat little houses with neat little gardens, in Cathedral Cities -with their sequestered Closes, in villages with the deep green -lanes leading up to the rectory gardens, in old Country -houses hemmed in by wide stretching fields, in little lost -places by the sea, all these persons happily, peacefully sunk -up to their very necks in the green moss. Within the Mirror -this ... Outside the Mirror the rolling forests guarded by -the shining wall of sea. His own family passed before him. -His grandfather, his great-aunt Sarah, his mother and his -father, Aunt Aggie and Aunt Betty, Uncle Tim, Millicent, -Katherine.... He paused then. The book slipped away -and fell on to the floor.</p> - -<p>Katherine ... dear Katherine! He did not care what -she was! And then, swept by a fresh wave of feeling springing -up, stretching his arms, facing the room, he did not care -what <span class='it'>any</span> of them were! <span class='it'>He</span> was the Idiot, the discontented, -ungrateful Idiot! He loved them all—he wouldn’t change -one of them, he wouldn’t be in any other family in all the -world!</p> - -<p>The door opened; in came old Rocket, the staff and prop -of the family, to turn up the lights, to poke up the fire. In -a minute tea would come in....</p> - -<p>“Why, Mr. Henry, no fire nor lights!” He shuffled to the -windows, pulling the great heavy curtains across them, his -knees cracking, very slowly he bent down, picked up the book, -and laid it carefully on the table next to the “Hibbert -Journal.”</p> - -<p>“I hope you’ve not been reading, Mr. Henry, in this bad -light,” he said.</p> - -<h3 id='t388'>III</h3> - -<p>Later, between nine and half-past, Henry was sitting with -his father and his uncle, smoking and drinking after dinner. -To-night was an evening of Ceremony—<span class='it'>the</span> Family Ceremony -of the year—therefore, although the meal had been -an extremely festive one with many flowers, a perfect mountain -of fruit in the huge silver bowl in the centre of the table, -and the Most Sacred Of All Ports (produced on this occasion -and Christmas Day) nevertheless only the Family had -been present. No distant relations even, certainly no friends.... -This was Grandfather Trenchard’s birthday.</p> - -<p>The ladies vanished, there remained only Henry, his father -and Uncle Tim. Henry was sitting there, very self-conscious -over his glass of Port. He was always self-conscious -when Uncle Tim was present.</p> - -<p>Uncle Tim was a Faunder and was large-limbed and -absent-minded like Henry’s father. Uncle Tim had a wild -head of grey hair, a badly-kept grey beard and clothed his -long, loose figure in long, loose garments. He was here to-day -and gone to-morrow, preferred the country to the town -and had a little house down in Glebeshire, where he led an -untidy bachelor existence whose motive impulses were birds -and flowers.</p> - -<p>Henry was very fond of Uncle Tim; he liked his untidiness, -his careless geniality, his freedom and his happiness.</p> - -<p>Henry’s father—George Trenchard—was “splendid”—that, -thought Henry, was the only possible word—and the -boy, surveying other persons’ fathers, wondered why Katherine, -Millicent, and himself should have been chosen out -of all the world to be so favoured.</p> - -<p>George Trenchard, at this time about sixty years of age, -was over six feet in height and broad in proportion. He -was growing too stout; his hair was grey and the top of his -head bald; his eyes were brown and absent-minded, his mouth -large with a lurking humour in its curves; his cheeks were -fat and round and there was the beginning of a double chin. -He walked, always, in a rambling, rolling kind of way, like -a sea-captain on shore, still balancing himself to the swing -of his vessel, his hands deep sunk in his trouser-pockets. -Henry had been privileged, sometimes, to see him, when, absorbed -in the evolution of an essay or the Chapter of some -book (he is, of course, one of our foremost authorities on -the early Nineteenth Century period of English Literature, -especially Hazlitt and De Quincey) he rolled up and down -his study, with his head back, his hand sunk in his pockets, -whistling a little tune ... very wonderful he seemed to -Henry then.</p> - -<p>He was the most completely careless of optimists, refused -to be brought down to any stern fact whatever, hated any -strong emotion or stringent relations with anyone, treated his -wife and children as the most delightful accidents against -whom he had, most happily tumbled; his kindness of heart -was equalled only by the lightning speed with which he forgot -the benefits that he had conferred and the persons upon -whom he had conferred them ... like a happy bird, he -went carolling through life. Alone, of all living beings, his -daughter Katherine had bound him to her with cords; for -the rest, he loved and forgot them all.</p> - -<p>Now, on this family occasion of his father’s birthday—his -father was eighty-seven to-day—he was absolutely happy. -He was proud of his family when any definite occasion, such -as this, compelled him to think of it; he considered that it -had all been a very jolly, pleasant dinner, that there would -certainly follow a very jolly, pleasant evening. He liked, -especially, to have his brother, Timothy, with him—he loved -them all, bless their hearts—he felt, as he assured them, “Not -a day more than twenty.”</p> - -<p>“How do you really think Father is, George?” asked -Timothy.</p> - -<p>“Sound as a bell,” said Henry’s father, “getting deaf of -course—must expect that—but it’s my belief that the harder -his hearing the brighter his eyes—never knew anyone so -sharp. Nothing escapes him, ’pon my soul.”</p> - -<p>“Well,” said George Trenchard, “I think it a most satisfactory -thing that here we should all be again—healthy, -happy, sound as so many bells—lively as crickets—not a happier -family in England.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t say that, George,” said Uncle Tim, “most unlucky.”</p> - -<p>“Nonsense,” said George Trenchard, brushing Uncle Tim -aside like a fly, “Nonsense. We’re a happy family, a healthy -family and a united family.”</p> - -<p>“I drink my gratitude to the God of Family Life, who-ever -He is....” He finished his glass of Port. “Here, -Timothy, have another glass. It’s a Port in a million, so it -is.”</p> - -<p>But Uncle Tim shook his head. “It’s all very well, George, -but you’ll have to break up soon. The girls will be marrying—Katherine -and Millicent—”</p> - -<p>“Rot,” said George, “Millie’s still at school.”</p> - -<p>“She’s coming home very soon—very shortly I believe. -And besides you can’t keep a family together as you used to. -You can’t. No one cares about the home at all now-a-days. -These youngsters will find that out soon enough. You’ll be -deserting the nest immediately, Henry, my friend, won’t -you?”</p> - -<p>This sudden appeal, of course, confused Henry terribly. -He choked over his wine, coloured crimson, stammered out:</p> - -<p>“No, Uncle Tim—Of course—Of course—not.”</p> - -<p>George Trenchard looked at his son with approval.</p> - -<p>“That’s right. Stick to your old father while you can. -The matter with you, Tim, is that you live outside the world -and don’t know what’s going on.”</p> - -<p>“The matter with you, George, is,” his brother, speaking -slowly and carefully, replied, “That you haven’t the ghost of -an idea of what the modern world’s like—not the ghost. Up -in the clouds you are, and so’s your whole family, my sister -and all—But the young ones won’t be up in the clouds always, -not a bit of it. They’ll come down one day and then -you’ll see what you <span class='it'>will</span> see.”</p> - -<p>“And what’ll that be?” said George Trenchard, laughing -a little scornfully.</p> - -<p>“Why you and Harriet doing Darby and Joan over the -dying fire and no one else within a hundred miles of you—except -a servant who’s waiting for your clothes and sleeve-links.”</p> - -<p>“There, Henry—Listen to that!” said his father, still -laughing—“See what an ungrateful fellow you’re going to -be in a year or two!”</p> - -<p>Henry blushed, swallowed in his throat, smiled idiotically. -They were all, he thought, laughing at him, but the -effect was very pleasant and genial....</p> - -<p>Moreover he was interested. He was, of course, one of -the young ones and it was his future that was under discussion. -His mind hovered over the book that he had been -reading that afternoon. Uncle Tim’s words had very much -the same effect upon Henry’s mind that that book’s words -had had, although from a different angle so to speak.... -Henry’s eyes lingered about a little silver dish that contained -sugared cherries.... He liked immensely sugared cherries. -Encouraged by the genial atmosphere he stretched out his -hand, took two cherries, and swallowed them, but, in his -agitation, so swiftly that he did not taste them at all.</p> - -<p>Then he drank two glasses of Port—he had never before -drunk so much wine. He was conscious now that he must -not, under any circumstances, drink any more. He was -aware that he must control, very closely, his tongue; he -told himself that the room was not in reality so golden and -glowing a place as it now seemed to him, that it was only -the same old dining-room with which he had all his life, been -familiar. He convinced himself by a steady gaze that the -great silver dish with the red and purple and golden fruit -piled upon it <span class='it'>was</span> only a silver dish, was not a deep bowl -whose sides, like silver walls stretched up right into the dim -electric clusters of electric light hanging from the ceiling. -He might convince himself of these facts, he might with a -great effort steady the room that very, very slightly swayed -about him ... what he could not deny was that Life was -gorgeous, that this was an Evening of all the Evenings, that -he adored his father, his uncle and all the family to such a -height and depth of devotion that, were he not exceedingly -careful, he would burst into tears—burst into tears he must -not because then would the stud in his shirt most assuredly -abandon its restraints and shame him, for ever, before Uncle -Tim.</p> - -<p>At this moment his father gave the command to move. -Henry rose, very carefully, from his seat, steadied himself -at the table for an instant, then, very, very gravely, with his -eye upon his shirt-stud, followed his uncle from the room.</p> - -<h3 id='t576'>IV</h3> - -<p>He retained, throughout the rest of that eventful evening, -the slightly exaggerated vision of the world. It was not that, -as he followed his father and uncle into the drawing-room, -he did not know what he would see. He would find them -sitting there—Grandfather in his chair, his feet on a stool, -his bony hands pressed upon his thin knees with that fierce, -protesting pressure that represented so much in his grandfather. -There would be, also, his Great-Aunt Sarah with her -high pyramid of white hair, her long black ear-trumpet and -her hard sharp little eyes like faded blue pebbles, there would -be his mother, square and broad and placid with her hands -folded on her lap, there would be Aunt Aggie, with her pouting, -fat little face, her cheeks quivering a little as she moved -her head, her eyes searching about the room, nervously, uneasily, -and there would be Aunt Betty, neat and tiny, with her -little trembling smile and her quiet air of having something -very important to do of which no one else in the family had -the ghost of an idea! Oh! he knew them all so well that -they appeared to him, now, to be part of himself and to -exist only as his ideas of the world and life and his own destiny. -They could not now do anything that would ever surprise -or disconcert him, he knew their ideas, their schemes, -their partialities, their disgusts, and he would not—so he -thought now with the fire of life burning so brightly within -him—have them changed, no, not in any tiniest atom of -an alteration.</p> - -<p>He knew that they would sit there, all of them, and talk -quietly about nothing, and then when the gold clock was approaching -half-past nine they would slip away,—save only -grandfather and Aunt Sarah—and would slip up to their -rooms and then they would slip down again with their parcels -in their hands and at half-past nine the Ceremony would take -place. So it had been for years and years and so it would -continue to be until Grandfather’s death, and, after that, -Henry’s father would take his place, and then, one day, perhaps, -it would be the turn of Henry himself.</p> - -<p>He paused for a moment and looked at the room—Katherine -was not there. She was always until the very last -moment, doing something to Grandfather’s present, tying it -up in some especial ribbon, writing something on the paper -wrapping, making it, in some way, more perfect. He knew -that, as he came in, his mother would look up and smile and -say “Well, Henry,” and then would resume her placidity, -that Uncle Tim would sit down beside Aunt Betty and begin, -very gently, to chaff her, which would please her immensely, -and that Aunt Sarah would cry “What did you say, Timothy?” -and that then he would shout down her ear-trumpet, -with a good-humoured smile peeping down from his beard -as though he were thinking “One must humour the old lady -you know.”</p> - -<p>All these things occurred. Henry himself sat in a low -chair by the fire and looked at his father, who was walking -up and down the other end of the room, his hands deep in -his pockets, his head back. Then he looked at his two aunts -and wondered, as he had wondered so many times before, that -they were not the sisters of his mother instead of his father. -They were so small and fragile to be the sisters of such large-limbed, -rough-and-tumble men as his father and Uncle Timothy. -They would have, so naturally, taken their position -in the world as the sisters of his mother.</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie, who thought that no one was paying her very -much attention, said:</p> - -<p>“I can’t think why Katherine wouldn’t let me get that silk -for her at Liberty’s this afternoon. I could have gone up -Regent Street so easily—it wouldn’t have been very much -trouble—not very much, but Katherine always must do everything -for herself.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard said: “It was very kind of you, Aggie -dear, to think of it—I’m sure it was very kind,” and Aunt -Betty said: “Katherine would appreciate your thinking of -her.”</p> - -<p>“I wonder, with the fog, that any of you went out at all,” -said Uncle Tim, “I’m sure I was as nearly killed as nothing -just coming back from the Strand.”</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie moved her hands on her lap, looked at them, -suspiciously, to see whether they meant what they said, and -then sighed—and, to Henry, this all seemed to-night wonderful, -magical, possessed of some thrilling, passionate quality; -his heart was beating with furious, leaping bounds, his -eyes were misty with sentimental happiness. He thought -that this was life that he was realising now for the first time.... -It was not—it was two glasses of Port.</p> - -<p>He looked at his grandfather and thought of the wonderful -old man that he was. His grandfather was very small and -very thin and so delicate was the colour of his white hair, his -face, and his hands that the light seemed to shine through -him, as though he had been made of glass. He was a silent -old man and everything about him was of a fine precious quality—his -black shoes with the silver buckles, the gold signet -ring on his finger, the black cord with the gold eye-glasses that -lay across his shirt-front; when he spoke it was with a thin, -silvery voice like a bell.</p> - -<p>He did not seem, as he sat there, to be thinking about any -of them or to be caring for anything that they might do.</p> - -<p>His thoughts, perhaps, were shining and silver and precious -like the rest of him, but no one knew because he said so -little. Aunt Betty, with a glance at the clock, rose and -slipped from the room. The moment had arrived....</p> - -<h3 id='t689'>V</h3> - -<p>Very soon, and, indeed, just as the clock, as though it were -summoning them all back, struck the half-hour, there they all -were again. They stood, in a group by the door and each -one had, in his or her hand, his or her present. Grandfather, -as silent as an ivory figure, sat in his chair, with Aunt Sarah -in her chair beside him, and in front of him was a table, -cleared of anything that was upon it, its mahogany shining -in the firelight. All the Trenchard soldiers and the Trenchard -Bishop looked down, with solemn approval, upon the -scene.</p> - -<p>“Come on, Henry, my boy, time to begin,” said his father.</p> - -<p>Henry, because he was the youngest, stepped forward, his -present in his hand. His parcel was very ill-tied and the -paper was creased and badly folded. He was greatly ashamed -as he laid it upon the table. Blushing, he made his little -speech, his lips together, speaking like an awkward schoolboy. -“We’re all very glad, Grandfather, that we’re all—most of -us—here to—to congratulate you on your birthday. We hope -that you’re enjoying your birthday and that—that there’ll -be lots more for you to enjoy.”</p> - -<p>“Bravo, Henry,” came from the back of the room. Henry -stepped back still blushing. Then Grandfather Trenchard, -with trembling hands, slowly undid the parcel and revealed -a purple leather blotting-book with silver edges.</p> - -<p>“Thank you, my boy—very good of you. Thank you.”</p> - -<p>Then came Katherine. Katherine was neither very tall -nor very short, neither fat nor thin. She had some of the -grave placidity of her mother and, in her eyes and mouth, -some of the humour of her father. She moved quietly and -easily, very self-possessed; she bore herself as though she -had many more important things to think about than anything -that concerned herself. Her hair and her eyes were -dark brown, and now as she went with her present, her smile -was as quiet and unself-conscious as everything else about -her.</p> - -<p>“Dear Grandfather,” she said, “I wish you many, many -happy returns—” and then <span class='it'>she</span> stepped back. Her present -was an old gold snuff-box.</p> - -<p>“Thank you, my dear,” he said. “Very charming. Thank -you, my dear.”</p> - -<p>Then came Aunt Aggie, her eyes nervous and a little resentful -as though she had been treated rather hardly but was -making the best of difficult circumstances. “I’m afraid you -won’t like this, Father,” she said. “I felt that you wouldn’t -when I got it. But I did my best. It’s a silly thing to give -you, I’m afraid.”</p> - -<p>She watched as the old man, very slowly, undid the parcel. -She had given him a china ink-stand. It had been as though -she had said: “Anything more foolish than to give an old -man who ought to be thinking about the grave a china ink-stand -I can’t imagine.”</p> - -<p>Perhaps her father had felt something of this in her voice—he -answered her a little sharply——</p> - -<p>“Thank ’ye—my dear Aggie—Thank ’ye.”</p> - -<p>Very different Aunt Betty. She came forward like a cheerful -and happy sparrow, her head just on one side as though -she wished to perceive the complete effect of everything that -was going on.</p> - -<p>“My present is handkerchiefs, Father. I worked the initials -myself. I hope you will like them,” and then she bent -forward and took his hand in hers and held it for a moment. -As he looked across at her, a little wave of colour -crept up behind the white mask of his cheek. “Dear Betty—my -dear. Thank ’ye—Thank ’ye.”</p> - -<p>Then followed Mrs. Trenchard, moving like some fragment -of the old house that contained her, a fragment anxious -to testify its allegiance to the head of the family—but anxious—as -one must always remember with Mrs. Trenchard—with -no very agitated anxiety. Her slow smile, her solid -square figure that should have been fat but was only broad, -her calm soft eyes—cow’s eyes—from these characteristics -many years of child-bearing and the company of a dreamy -husband had not torn her.</p> - -<p>Would something ever tear her?... Yes, there was something.</p> - -<p>In her slow soft voice she said: “Father dear, many -happy returns of the day—<span class='it'>many</span> happy returns. This is -a silk muffler. I hope you’ll like it, Father dear. It’s a -muffler.”</p> - -<p>They surveyed one another calmly across the shining table. -Mrs. Trenchard was a Faunder, but the Faunders were kin -by breeding and tradition to the Trenchards—the same green -pastures, the same rich, packed counties, the same mild -skies and flowering Springs had seen the development of their -convictions about the world and their place in it.</p> - -<p>The Faunders.... The Trenchards ... it is as though -you said Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Mrs. Trenchard -looked at her father-in-law and smiled, then moved away.</p> - -<p>Then came the men. Uncle Tim had a case of silver -brushes to present and he mumbled something in his beard -about them. George Trenchard had some old glass, he flung -back his head and laughed, gripped his father by the hand, -shouted something down Aunt Sarah’s trumpet. Aunt Sarah -herself had given, at an earlier hour, her offering because -she was so deaf and her brother’s voice so feeble that on -earlier occasions, her presentation, protracted and embarrassing, -had affected the whole evening. She sat there now, -like an ancient Boadicea, looking down grimly upon the presents, -as though they were so many spoils won by a raid.</p> - -<p>It was time for the old man to make a Speech: It was—“Thank -’ye, Thank ’ye—very good of you all—very. It’s -pleasant, all of us together—very pleasant. I never felt better -in my life and I hope you’re all the same.... Thank -’ye, my dears. Thank ’ye.”</p> - -<p>The Ceremony was thus concluded; instantly they were -all standing about, laughing, talking, soon they would be all -in the hall and then they would separate, George and Timothy -and Bob to talk, perhaps, until early hours in the morning.... -Here is old Rocket to wheel grandfather’s chair along -to his bedroom.</p> - -<p>“Well, Father, here’s Rocket come for you.”</p> - -<p>“All right, my dear, I’m ready....”</p> - -<p>But Rocket had not come for his master. Rocket, perplexity, -dismay, upon his countenance, was plainly at a loss, and -for Rocket to be at a loss!</p> - -<p>“Hullo, Rocket, what is it?”</p> - -<p>“There’s a gentleman, sir—apologises profoundly for the -lateness of the hour—wouldn’t disturb you but the fog—his -card....”</p> - -<h3 id='t837'>VI</h3> - -<p>Until he passes away to join the glorious company of -Trenchards who await him, will young Henry Trenchard remember -everything that then occurred—exactly he will remember -it and to its tiniest detail. It was past ten o’clock -and never in the memory of anyone present had the Ceremony -before been invaded.... Astonishing impertinence -on the part of someone! Astonishing bravery also did he -only realise it!</p> - -<p>“It’s the fog, you know,” said Henry’s mother.</p> - -<p>“What’s the matter!” screamed Aunt Sarah.</p> - -<p>“Somebody lost in the fog.”</p> - -<p>“Somebody what?”</p> - -<p>“Lost in the Fog.”</p> - -<p>“In the what?”</p> - -<p>“<span class='sc'>In the Fog!</span>”</p> - -<p>“Oh!... <span class='it'>How</span> did you say?”</p> - -<p>“<span class='sc'>Fog!</span>”</p> - -<p>George Trenchard then returned, bringing with him a -man. The man stood in the doorway, confused (as, indeed, -it was only right for him to be), blushing, holding his bowler -hat nervously in his hand, smiling that smile with which one -seeks to propitiate strangers.</p> - -<p>“I say, of all things,” cried George Trenchard. “What -<span class='it'>do</span> you think, all of you? Of all the coincidences! This is -Mr. Mark. You know, mother dear (this to Mrs. Trenchard, -who was waiting calmly for orders), son of Rodney Mark -I’ve so often told you of.... Here’s his son, arrived in -London yesterday after years’ abroad, out to-night, lost his -way in the fog, stopped at first here to enquire, found it of -all remarkable things ours where he was coming to call to-morrow!... -Did you ever!”</p> - -<p>“I really must apologise—” began Mr. Mark, smiling at -everyone.</p> - -<p>“Oh no! you mustn’t,” broke in George Trenchard—“Must -he, mother? He’s got to stop the night. Of course he has. -We’ve got as much room as you like. Here, let me introduce -you.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Mark was led round. He was, most certainly, (as -Aunt Betty remarked afterwards upstairs) very quiet and -pleasant and easy about it all. He apologised again to Mrs. -Trenchard, hadn’t meant to stop more than a moment, so -struck by the coincidence, his father had always said first -thing he must do in London....</p> - -<p>Rocket was summoned—“Mr. Mark will stop here to-night.” -“Certainly—of course—anything in the world—”</p> - -<p>Grandfather was wheeled away, the ladies in the hall hoped -that they would see Mr. Mark in the morning and Mr. Mark -hoped that <span class='it'>he</span> would see <span class='it'>them</span>. Good-night—good-night....</p> - -<p>“Come along now,” cried George Trenchard, taking his -guest’s arm. “Come along and have a smoke and a drink -and tell us what you’ve been doing all these years!... Why -the last time I saw you!...”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard, unmoved by this ripple upon the Trenchard -waters, stopped for a moment before leaving the drawing-room -and called Henry—</p> - -<p>“Henry dear. Is this your book?” She held up the -volume with the yellow Mudie’s label.</p> - -<p>“Yes, Mother.”</p> - -<p>“I hope it’s a nice book for you, dear.”</p> - -<p>“A very nice book, Mother.”</p> - -<p>“Well I’m sure you’re old enough to know for yourself -now.”</p> - -<p>“Good-night, Mother.”</p> - -<p>“Good-night, dear.”</p> - -<p>Henry, with the book under his arm, went up to bed.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2 id='ch02'>CHAPTER II<br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>THE WINTER AFTERNOON</span></h2> - -<p>Extracts from a letter written by Philip Mark to Mr. -Paul Alexis in Moscow:—</p> - -<p>“... because, beyond question, it was the oddest chance -that I should come—straight out of the fog, into the very -house that I wanted. That, mind you, was a week ago, and -I’m still here. You’ve never seen a London fog. I defy you -to imagine either the choking, stifling nastiness of it or the -comfortable happy indifference of English people under it. -I couldn’t have struck, if I’d tried for a year, anything more -eloquent of the whole position—my position, I mean, and -theirs and the probable result of our being up against one -another....</p> - -<p>“This will be a long letter because, here I am quite unaccountably -excited, unaccountably, I say, because it’s all as -quiet as the grave—after midnight, an old clock ticking out -there on the stairs. Landseer’s ‘Dignity and Impudence’ on -the wall over my bed and that old faded wall-paper that you -only see in the bedrooms of the upper middles in England, -who have lived for centuries and centuries in the same old -house. Much too excited to sleep, simply I suppose because -all kinds of things are beginning to reassert themselves on -me—things that haven’t stirred since I was eighteen, things -that Anna and Moscow had so effectually laid to rest. All -those years as a boy I had just this wall-paper, just this -ticking-clock, just these faded volumes of ‘Ivanhoe,’ ‘Kenilworth’, -‘The Scarlet Letter’ and Lytton’s ‘Night and Morning’ -that I see huddled together in the window. Ah, Paul, -you’ve never known what all that means—the comfort, the -safety, the muffled cosiness, the gradual decline of old familiar -things from shabbiness to shabbiness, the candles, and -pony-traps and apple-lofts and going to country dances in old, -jolting cabs with the buttons hopping off your new white -gloves as you go ... it’s all back on me to-night, it’s been -crowding in upon me all the week—The Trenchards are -bathed, soaked, saturated with it all—they <span class='sc'>ARE IT</span>!... Now, -I’ll tell you about them, as I’ve seen them so far.</p> - -<p>“Trenchard, himself, is fat, jolly, self-centred, writes about -the Lake Poets and lives all the morning with Lamb, Hazlitt -and De Quincey, all the afternoon with the world as seen by -himself, and all the evening with himself as seen by the world. -He’s selfish and happy, absent-minded and as far from all -reality as any man could possibly be. He likes me, I think, because -I understand his sense of humour, the surest key to -the heart of a selfish man. About Mrs. Trenchard I’m not -nearly so sure. I’ve been too long out of England to understand -her all in a minute. You’d say right off that she’s -stupider than any one you’d ever met, and then afterwards -you’d be less and less certain.... Tremendously full of -family (she was a Faunder), muddled, with no power over -words at all so that she can never say what she means, outwardly -of an extremely amiable simplicity, inwardly, I am -sure, as obstinate as a limpet ... not a shadow of humour. -Heaven only knows what she’s thinking about really. She -never lets you see. I don’t think she likes me.</p> - -<p>“There are only two children at home, Henry and Katherine. -Henry’s at ‘the awkward age’. Gauche, shy, sentimental, -rude, frightfully excitable from the public school conviction -that he must never show excitement about anything, -full of theories, enthusiasms, judgments which he casts aside, -one after the other, as fast as he can get rid of them—at the -very crisis of his development—might be splendid or no -good at all, according as things happen to him. He’s interested -in me but isn’t sure of me.</p> - -<p>“Then there’s Katherine. Katherine is the clue to the -house—know Katherine and you know the family. But then -Katherine is not easy to know. She is more friendly than -any of them—and she is farther away. Very quiet with all -the calm security of someone who knows that there are many -important things to be done and that you will never be allowed, -however insistent you may be, to interfere with those -things. The family depends entirely upon her and she lives -for the family. Nor is she so limited as that might seem to -make her. She keeps, I am sure, a great many things down -lest they should interfere, but they are all there—those things. -Meanwhile she is cheerful, friendly, busy, very, very quiet—and -distant—miles. Does she like me? I don’t know. She -listens to all that I have to say. She has imagination and -humour. And sometimes when I think that I have impressed -her by what I have said I look up and catch a glimpse -of her smiling eyes, as though she thought me, in spite of -all my wisdom, the most awful fool. The family do more -than depend upon her—they adore her. There is no kind of -doubt—they adore her. She alone in all the world awakes -her father’s selfish heart, stirs her mother’s sluggish imagination, -reassures her brother’s terrified soul. They love her for -the things that she does for them. They are all—save perhaps -Henry—selfish in their affection. But then so are the -rest of us, are we not? You, Paul, and I, at any rate....</p> - -<p>“And, all this time, I have said nothing to you about the -guardians of the House’s honour. Already, they view me -with intense suspicion. There are two of them, both very old. -An aged, aged man, bitter and sharp and shining like a glass -figure, and his sister, as aged as he. They are, both of them, -deaf and the only things truly alive about them are their eyes. -But with these they watch everything, and above all, they -watch me. They distrust me, profoundly, their eyes never -leave me. They allow me to make no advances to them. -They cannot imagine why I have been admitted—they will, -I am sure, take steps to turn me out very soon. It is as -though I were a spy in a hostile country. And yet they all -press me to stay—all of them. They seem to like to have -me. What I have to tell them interests them and they are -pleased, too, to be hospitable in a large and comfortable manner. -Trenchard was deeply attached to my father and speaks -of him to me with an emotion surprising in so selfish a man. -They like me to stay and yet, Paul, with it all I tell you that -I am strangely frightened. Of what? Of whom?... I -have no idea. Isn’t it simply that the change from Russia -and, perhaps, also Anna is so abrupt that it is startling? -Anna and Miss Trenchard—there’s a contrast for you! -And I’m at the mercy—you know, of anyone—you have always -said it and it <span class='it'>is</span> so—most unhappily. Tell Anna from -me that I am writing.</p> - -<p>“Because I couldn’t, of course, explain to her as I do to you -the way that these old, dead, long-forgotten things are springing -up again in me. She would never understand. But we -were both agreed—she as strongly as I—that this was the -right thing, the only thing.... You know that I would not -hurt a fly if I could help it. No, tell her that I won’t write. -I’ll keep to my word. Not a line from either of us until Time -has made it safe, easy. And Stepan will be good to her. -He’s the best fellow in the world, although so often I hated -him. For his sake, as well as for all the other reasons, I will -not write.... Meanwhile it is really true enough that I’m -frightened for, perhaps, the first time in my life....”</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Suspicion was the key-note of young Henry Trenchard at -this time. He was so unsure of himself that he must needs be -unsure of everyone else. He was, of course, suspicious of -Philip Mark. He was suspicious and he also admired him. -On the day after Mark had sat up writing his letter ‘half the -night because he was excited’, on the afternoon of that day -they were sitting in the green dim drawing-room waiting for -tea. Mark was opposite Henry, and Henry, back in the -shadow, as he liked to sit, huddled up but with his long legs -shooting out in front of him as though they belonged to another -body, watched him attentively, critically, inquisitively. -Mark sat with a little pool of electric light about him and -talked politely to Mrs. Trenchard, who, knitting a long red -woollen affair that trailed like a serpent on to the green carpet, -said now and then such things as:</p> - -<p>“It must be very different from England” or “I must say -I should find that very unpleasant,” breaking in also to say: -“Forgive me a moment. Henry, that bell did ring, didn’t -it?” or “Just a little more on the fire, Henry, please. That -big lump, please.” Then, turning patiently to Mark and -saying: “I beg your pardon, Mr. Mark—you said?”</p> - -<p>Henry, having at this time a passion for neatness and orderly -arrangements, admired Mark’s appearance. Mark was -short, thick-set and very dark. A closely-clipped black moustache -and black hair cut short made him look like an officer, -Henry thought. His thick muscular legs proved him a rider, -his mouth and ears were small, and over him from head to -foot was the air of one who might have to be ‘off’ on a dangerous -expedition at any moment and would moreover know exactly -what to do, having been on many other dangerous expeditions -before. Only his eyes disproved the man of action. -They were dreamy, introspective, wavering eyes—eyes that -were much younger than the rest of him and eyes too that -might be emotional, sentimental, impetuous, foolish and careless.</p> - -<p>Henry, being very young, did not notice his eyes. Mark -was thirty and looked it. His eyes were the eyes of a boy -of twenty.... From Henry his dark neat clothes, his compact -and resourceful air compelled envy and admiration—yes, -and alarm. For Henry was, now, entirely and utterly -concerned with himself, and every fresh incident, every new -arrival was instantly set up before him so that he might see -how he himself looked in the light of it. Never before, -within Henry’s memory, had anyone not a relation, not even -the friend of a relation, been admitted so intimately into the -heart of the house, and it seemed to Henry that now already -a new standard was being set up and that, perhaps, the family -by the light of this dashing figure, who knew Russia like -an open book and could be relied upon at the most dangerous -crisis, might regard himself, Henry, as something more -crudely shabby and incompetent than ever. Moreover he was -not sure that Mark himself did not laugh at him....</p> - -<p>Beyond all this there was the sense that Mark had, in a -way, invaded the place. It was true that the family had, -after that first eventful evening, pressed him to stay, but it -had pressed him as though it had, upon itself, felt pressure—as -though its breath had been caught by the impact of some -new force and, before it could recover from its surprise, behold -the force was there, inside the room with the doors closed -behind it.</p> - -<p>“It’s hardly decent for him to stay on like this,” thought -Henry, “and yet after all we asked him. And ... he <span class='it'>is</span> -jolly!”</p> - -<p>Jolly was something that only Henry’s father and Uncle -Tim of the Trenchard family could be said to be, and its -quality was therefore both enlivening and alarming.</p> - -<p>“Mother won’t like it, if he’s too jolly,” thought Henry, -“I’m not sure if she likes it now.”</p> - -<p>Henry had, upon this afternoon, an extra cause for anxiety; -a friend of his, a friend of whom he was especially -proud, was coming to tea. This friend’s name was Seymour -and he was a cheerful young man who had written several -novels and was considered ‘promising’—</p> - -<p>The Trenchards had a very slight knowledge of that world -known as ‘the Arts’ and they had (with the exception of -Henry) a very healthy distrust of artists as a race.</p> - -<p>But young Seymour was another affair. He was a gentleman, -with many relations who knew Trenchards and Faunders; -his novels were proper in sentiment and based always -upon certain agreeable moral axioms, as for instance “It is -better to be good than to be bad” and “Courage is the Great -Thing” and “Let us not despise others. They may have more -to say for themselves than we know.”</p> - -<p>It was wonderful, Mrs. Trenchard thought, that anyone -so young should have discovered these things. Moreover -he was cheerful, would talk at any length about anything, and -was full of self-assurance. He was fat, and would soon be -fatter; he was nice to everyone on principle because “one -doesn’t know how much a careless word may harm others.” -Above all, he was ‘jolly’. He proclaimed life splendid, -wished he could live to a thousand, thought that to be a novelist -was the luckiest thing in the world. Some people said -that what he really meant was “To be Seymour was the luckiest -thing in the world” ... but everyone has their enemies.</p> - -<p>Henry was nervous about this afternoon because he felt—and -he could not have given his reasons—that Mark and Seymour -would not get on. He knew that if Mark disliked Seymour -he, Henry, would dislike Mark. Mark would be criticising -the Trenchard taste—a dangerous thing to do. And, perhaps, -after all—he was not sure—he looked across the dark -intervening shadow into the light where Mark was sitting—the -fellow <span class='it'>did</span> look conceited, supercilious. No one in the -world had the right to be so definitely at his ease.</p> - -<p>There came in then Rocket and a maid with the tea, Katherine, -and finally Aunt Aggie with Harvey Seymour.</p> - -<p>“I found Mr. Seymour in the Hall,” she said, looking discontentedly -about her and shivering a little. “Standing in -the Hall.”</p> - -<p>Seymour was greeted and soon his cheerful laugh filled the -room. He was introduced to Mark. He was busy over tea. -“Sugar? Milk?”</p> - -<p>“Nice sharp twang in the air, there <span class='it'>is</span>. Jolly weather. -I walked all the way from Knightsbridge. Delightful. -Cake? Bread and butter? Hello, Henry! You ought to -have walked with me—never enjoyed anything so much in my -life.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard’s broad, impassive face was lighted with -approval as a lantern is lit. She liked afternoon-tea and her -drawing-room and young cheerful Seymour and the books -behind the book-case and the ticking of the clock. A cosy -winter’s afternoon in London! What could be pleasanter? -She sighed a comfortable, contented sigh....</p> - -<p>Mark was seized, as he sat there, with a drowsy torpor. -The fire seemed to draw from the room all scents that, like -memories, waited there for some compelling friendly warmth. -The room was close with more than the Trenchard protection -against the winter’s day—it was packed with a conscious pressure -of all the things that the Trenchards had ever done in -that room, and Mrs. Trenchard sat motionless, placid, receiving -these old things, encouraging them and distributing them. -Mark was aware that if he encouraged his drowsiness he -would very shortly acquiesce in and submit to—he knew not -what—and the necessity for battling against this acquiescence -irritated him so that it was almost as though everyone in the -room were subtly taking him captive and he would be lost before -he was aware. Katherine, alone, quiet, full of repose, -saying very little, did not disturb him. It was exactly as -though all the other persons present were wishing him to -break into argument and contradiction because then they -could spring upon him.</p> - -<p>His attention was, of course, directed to Seymour’s opinions, -and he knew, before he heard them, that he would disagree -violently with them all.</p> - -<p>They came, like the distant firing of guns, across the muffled -drowziness of the room.</p> - -<p>“I assure you, Mrs. Trenchard.... I assure you ... -assure you. You wouldn’t believe.... Well, of course, -I’ve heard people say so but I can’t help disagreeing with -them. One may know very little about writing oneself—I -don’t pretend I’ve got far—and yet have very distinct ideas -as to how the thing should be done. There’s good work and -bad, you know—there’s no getting over it....</p> - -<p>“But, my dear Henry ... dear old chap ... I assure -you. But it’s a question of Form. You take my word a -man’s nothing without a sense of Form ... Form ... -Form.... Yes, of course, the French are the people. Now -the Russians.... Tolstoi, Dostoevsky ... Dostoevsky, -Mrs. Trenchard. Well, people spell him different ways. -You should read ‘War and Peace’. Never read ‘War and -Peace’? Ah, you should and ‘Crime and Punishment’. But -compare ‘Crime and Punishment’ with ‘La maison Tellier’ ... Maupassant—The -Russians aren’t in it. But what -can you expect from a country like that? I assure you....”</p> - -<p>Quite irresistibly, as though everyone in the room had said: -“There now. You’ve simply got to come in now”, Mark was -drawn forward. He heard through the sleepy, clogged and -scented air his own voice.</p> - -<p>“But there are all sorts of novels, aren’t there, just as -there are all sorts of people? I don’t see why everything -should be after the same pattern.”</p> - -<p>He was violently conscious then of Seymour’s chin that -turned, slowly, irresistibly as the prow of a ship is turned, -towards him—a very remarkable chin for its size and -strength, jutting up and out, surprising, too, after the chubby -amiability of the rest of his face. At the same moment it -seemed to Mark that all the other chins in the room turned -towards him with stern emphasis.</p> - -<p>A sharp little dialogue followed then: Seymour was eager, -cheerful and good-humoured—patronising, too, perhaps, if -one is sensitive to such things.</p> - -<p>“Quite so. Of course—of course. But you will admit, -won’t you, that style matters, that the way a thing’s done, the -way things are arranged, you know, count?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know anything about writing novels—I only know -about reading them. The literary, polished novel is one -sort of thing, I suppose. But there is also the novel with -plenty of real people and real things in it. If a novel’s too -literary a plain man like myself doesn’t find it real at all. I -prefer something careless and casual like life itself, with -plenty of people whom you get to know....” Seymour -bent towards him, his chubby face like a very full bud ready -to burst with the eagerness of his amiable superiority.</p> - -<p>“But you can’t say that your Russians are real people—come -now. Take Dostoevsky—take him for a minute. Look -at them. Look at ‘Les Frères Karamazoff’. All as mad as -hatters—all of ’em—and no method at all—just chucked on -anyhow. After all, Literature is something.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, that’s just what I complain of,” said Mark, feeling -as though he were inside a ring of eager onlookers who were -all cheering his opponent. “You fellows all think literature’s -the only thing. It’s entirely unimportant beside real life. -If your book is like real life, why then it’s interesting. If -it’s like literature it’s no good at all except to a critic or -two.”</p> - -<p>“And I suppose,” cried Seymour, scornfully, his chin rising -higher and higher, “that you’d say Dostoevsky’s like real -life?”</p> - -<p>“It is,” said Mark, quietly, “if you know Russia.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’ve never been there,” Seymour admitted. “But -I’ve got a friend who has. He says that Russian fiction’s -nothing like the real thing at all. That Russia’s just like -anywhere else.”</p> - -<p>“Nonsense”—and Mark’s voice was shaking—“Your -friend ... rot—” He recovered himself. “That’s utterly -untrue,” he said.</p> - -<p>“I assure you—” Seymour began.</p> - -<p>Then Mark forgot himself, his surroundings, his audience.</p> - -<p>“Oh—go to Blazes!” he cried. “What do you know about -it? You say yourself you’ve never been there. I’ve lived in -Moscow for years!”</p> - -<p>There was then a tremendous silence, Mrs. Trenchard, -Aunt Aggie, Henry, all looked at Seymour as though they -said, “Please, please, don’t mind. It shall <span class='it'>never</span> happen -again.”</p> - -<p>Katherine looked at Mark. During that moment’s silence -the winter afternoon with its frost and clear skies, its fresh -colour and happy intimacies, seemed to beat about the house. -In Mark, the irritation that he had felt ever since Seymour’s -sentence, seemed now to explode within him, like the bursting -of some thunder cloud. He was for a moment deluged, almost -drowned by his impotent desire to make some scene, in -short, to fight, anything that would break the hot stuffy closeness -of the air and let in the sharp crispness of the outer -world.</p> - -<p>But the episode was at an end. Katherine closed it with:</p> - -<p>“Tell Mr. Seymour some of those things that you were -telling us last night—about Moscow and Russian life.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard’s eyes, having concluded their work of -consoling Seymour, fastened themselves upon Mark,—watching -like eyes behind closed windows; strangely in addition -to their conviction that some outrage had been committed -there was also a suspicion of fear—but they were the mild, -glazed eyes of a stupid although kindly woman....</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Mark that evening, going up to dress for dinner, thought -to himself, “I really can’t stay here any longer. It isn’t decent, -besides, they don’t like me.” He found, half in the -dusk, half in the moonlight of the landing-window Katherine, -looking for an instant before she went to her room, at the dark -Abbey-towers, the sky with the stars frosted over, it seemed, -by the coldness of the night, at the moon, faintly orange and -crisp against the night blue.</p> - -<p>He stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said abruptly, looking into -her eyes, very soft and mild but always with that lingering -humour behind their mildness. “I’m afraid I was rude to -that fellow this afternoon.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she said, turning to him but with her eyes still on -the black towers. “You were—but it would have no effect on -Mr. Seymour.”</p> - -<p>He felt, as he stood there, that he wished to explain that -he was not naturally so unpolished a barbarian.</p> - -<p>“Russia,” he began, hesitating and looking at her almost -appealingly, “is a sore point with me. You can’t tell—unless -you’ve lived there how it grows upon you, holds you, and, at -last, begs you to stand up for it whenever it may be attacked. -And he didn’t know—really he didn’t—”</p> - -<p>“You’re taking it much too seriously,” she said, laughing -at him, he felt. “No one thought that he <span class='it'>did</span> know. But -Mother likes him and he’s Henry’s friend. And we all -stick together as a family.”</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid your mother thought me abominable,” he said, -looking up at her and looking away again.</p> - -<p>“Mother’s old-fashioned,” Katherine answered. “So am I—so -are we all. We’re an old-fashioned family. We’ve -never had anyone like you to stay with us before.”</p> - -<p>“It’s abominable that I should stay on like this. I’ll go -to-morrow.”</p> - -<p>“No, don’t do that. Father loves having you. We all like -you—only we’re a little afraid of your ways”—she moved -down the passage. “We’re very good for you, I expect, and -I’m sure you’re very good for us.” She suddenly turned -back towards him, and dropping her voice, quite solemnly -said to him, “The great thing about us is that we’re fond of -one another. That makes it all the harder for anyone from -outside....”</p> - -<p>“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said, carrying on her note of -confidence, “I like people to like me. I’m very foolish about -it. It’s the chief thing I want.”</p> - -<p>“I like people to like me, too,” Katherine answered, raising -her voice and moving now definitely away from him. -“Why shouldn’t one?” she ended. “Don’t you be afraid, -Mr. Mark. It’s all right.”</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>He dressed hurriedly and came down to the drawing-room, -with some thought in the back of his mind that he would, -throughout the evening, be the most charming person possible. -He found, however, at once a check....</p> - -<p>Under a full blaze of light Grandfather Trenchard and -Great Aunt Sarah were sitting, waiting for the others. The -old man, his silver buckles and white hair gleaming, sat, -perched high in his chair, one hand raised before the fire, -behind it the firelight shining as behind a faint screen.</p> - -<p>Aunt Sarah, very stiff, upright and slim, was the priestess -before the Trenchard temple. They, both of them, gazed into -the fire. They did not turn their heads as Mark entered; -they had watched his entry in the Mirror.</p> - -<p>He shouted Good-evening, but they did not hear him. He -sat down, began a sentence.</p> - -<p>“Really a sharp touch in the air—” then abandoned it, -seizing ‘Blackwood’ as a weapon of defence. Behind his -paper, he knew that their eyes were upon him. He felt them -peering into ‘Blackwood’s’ cover; they pierced the pages, they -struck him in the face.</p> - -<p>There was complete silence in the room. The place was -thick with burning eyes. They were reflected, he felt, in -the Mirror, again and again.</p> - -<p>“How they hate me!” he thought.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2 id='ch03'>CHAPTER III<br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>KATHERINE</span></h2> - -<p>Katherine Trenchard’s very earliest sense of -morality had been that there were God, the Trenchard’s -and the Devil—that the Devil wished very much to win the -Trenchards over to His side, but that God assured the Trenchards -that if only they behaved well He would not let them -go—and, for this, Troy had burnt, Carthage been razed to -the ground, proud kings driven from their thrones and humbled -to the dust, plague, pestilence, and famine had wrought -their worst....</p> - -<p>The Trenchards were, indeed, a tremendous family, and -it was little wonder that the Heavenly Powers should fight -for their alliance. In the county of Glebeshire, where Katherine -had spent all her early years, Trenchards ran like spiders’ -webs, up and down the lanes and villages.</p> - -<p>In Polchester, the Cathedral city, there were Canon -Trenchard and his family, old Colonel Trenchard, late of the -Indian army, the Trenchards of Polhaze and the Trenchards -of Rothin Place—all these in one small town. There were -Trenchards at Rasselas and Trenchards (poor and rather unworthy -Trenchards) at Clinton St. Mary. There was one -Trenchard (a truculent and gout-ridden bachelor) at Polwint—all -of these in the immediate neighbourhood of Katherine’s -home. Of course they were important to God....</p> - -<p>In that old house in the village of Garth in Roselands, -where Katherine had been born, an old house up to its very -chin in deep green fields, an old house wedded, hundreds of -years ago to the Trenchard Spirit, nor likely now ever to be -divorced from it, Katherine had learnt to adore with her -body, her soul and her spirit Glebeshire and everything that -belonged to that fair county, but to adore it, also, because it -was so completely, so devoutly, the Trenchard heritage. So -full were her early prayers of petitions for successive Trenchards, -“God bless Father, Mother, Henry, Millie, Vincent, -Uncle Tim, Uncle Wobert, Auntie Agnes, Auntie Betty, -Cousin Woger, Cousin Wilfrid, Cousin Alice, etc., etc.,” that, -did it ever come to a petition for someone unhappily not a -Trenchard the prayer was offered with a little hesitating -apology. For a long while Katherine thought that when -Missionaries were sent to gather in the heathen they were -going out on the divine mission of driving all strangers into -the Trenchard fold.</p> - -<p>Not to be a Trenchard was to be a nigger or a Chinaman.</p> - -<p>And here I would remark with all possible emphasis that -Katherine was never taught that it was a fine and a mighty -thing to be a Trenchard. No Trenchard had ever, since time -began, considered his position any more than the stars, the -moon and the sun consider theirs. If you were a Trenchard -you did not think about it at all. The whole Trenchard -world with all its ramifications, its great men and its small -men, its dignitaries, its houses, its Castles, its pleasure-resorts, -its Foreign Baths, its Theatres, its Shooting, its Churches, -its Politics, its Foods and Drinks, its Patriotisms and Charities, -its Seas, its lakes and rivers, its Morality, its angers, its -pleasures, its regrets, its God and its Devil, the whole Trenchard -world was a thing intact, preserved, ancient, immovable. -It took its stand on its History, its family affection, its -country Places, its loyal Conservatism, its obstinacy and its -stupidity. Utterly unlike such a family as the Beaminsters -with their preposterous old Duchess (now so happily dead) -it had no need whatever for any self-assertion, any struggle -with anything, any fear of invasion. From Without nothing -could attack its impregnability. From Within? Well, -perhaps, presently ... but no Trenchard was aware of that.</p> - -<p>A young Beaminster learnt from the instant of its breaking -the Egg that it must at once set about showing the world -that it was a Beaminster.</p> - -<p>A young Trenchard never considered for a single second -that he was supposed to show anyone anything. <span class='sc'>He was</span> ... -that was enough.</p> - -<p>The Trenchards had never been conceited people—conceit -implied too definite a recognition of other people’s position -and abilities. To be conceited you must think yourself abler, -more interesting, richer, handsomer than someone else—and -no Trenchard ever realised anyone else.</p> - -<p>From the security of their Mirror they looked out upon -the world. Only from inside the House could the Mirror -be broken—surely then they were secure....</p> - -<p>Katherine was always a very modest little girl, but her -modesty had never led to any awkward shyness or embarrassment; -she simply did not consider herself at all. She had -been, in the early days, a funny little figure, ‘dumpy’, with -serious brown eyes and a quiet voice. She was never in the -way, better at home than at parties, she never ‘struck’ strangers, -as did her younger sister Millicent, ‘who would be brilliant -when she grew up’; Katherine would never be brilliant.</p> - -<p>She had, from the first, a capacity for doing things for -the family without attracting attention—and what more can -selfish people desire? She was soon busy and occupied—necessary -to the whole house. She very seldom laughed, but her -eyes twinkled and she was excellent company did anyone care -for her opinion. Only Uncle Tim of them all realised her -intelligence—for the rest of the family she was slow ‘but a -dear.’</p> - -<p>It was in her capacity of ‘a dear’ that she finally stood -to all of them. They adored because they knew that they -never disappointed her. Although they had, none of them -(save Henry) any concern as to their especial failings or -weaknesses, it was nevertheless comforting to know that they -might put anything upon Katherine, behave to her always -in the way that was easiest to them, and that she would always -think them splendid. They would not in public places -put Katherine forward as a Fine Trenchard. Millicent -would be a Fine Trenchard one day—but at home, in their -cosy fortified security, there was no one like Katherine.</p> - -<p>Katherine was perfect to them all.... Not that she did -not sometimes have her tempers, her impatiences, her ‘moods’. -They were puzzled when she was short with them, when she -would not respond to their invitations for compliments, when -she seemed to have some horrible doubt as to whether the -Trenchard world was, after all, the only one—but they waited -for the ‘mood’ to pass, and it passed very swiftly ... it is -noteworthy however that never, in spite of their devotion to -her, did they during these crises, attempt to help or console -her. She stood alone, and at the back of their love there -was always some shadow of fear.</p> - -<p>Very happy had her early years been. The house at Garth, -rambling, untidy, intimate, with the croquet-lawn in front -of it, the little wild wood at the right of it, the high sheltering -green fields at the left of it, the old church Tower above the -little wood, the primroses and cuckoos, the owls and moonlight -nights, the hot summer days with the hum of the reaping -machine, the taste of crushed strawberries, the dim-sleepy -voices from the village street. <span class='it'>This</span> was a world! The -Old House had never changed—as she had grown it had -dwindled perhaps, but ever, as the years passed, had enclosed -more securely the passion of her heart. She saw herself -standing in the dim passage that led to her bedroom, a tiny, -stumpy figure. She could hear the voice of Miss Mayer, the -governess, “Now, Katherine—come along, please—Millie’s in -bed.”</p> - -<p>She could smell the tallow of the candle, could hear the -owls’ hoot from the dark window, could smell apples and roses -somewhere, could remember how intensely she had caught -that moment and held it, and carried it, for ever and ever, -away with her. Yes, that <span class='it'>was</span> a World!</p> - -<p>And, beyond the House, there was the Country. Every -lane and wood and hill did she know. Those thick, deep, -scented lanes that only Glebeshire in all the world can provide—the -road to Rafiel, running, at first, with only a moment’s -peep now and again of the sea, then plunging with dramatic -fling, suddenly down into the heart of the Valley. -There was Rafiel—Rafiel, the only Cove in all the world! -How as the dog-cart bumped down that precipice had her -heart been in her mouth, how magical the square harbour, -the black Peak, the little wall of white-washed cottages, after -that defeated danger!</p> - -<p>There were all the other places—St. Lowe and Polwint, -Polchester with the Cathedral and the Orchards and the cobbled -streets, Grane Woods and Grane Castle, Rothin Woods, -Roche St. Mary, Moore with the seadunes and the mists and -rabbits, the Loroe river and the fishing-boats at Pelynt—world -of perfect beauty and simplicity, days stained with the -high glory of romance. And this was Trenchard Country!</p> - -<p>London, coming to her afterwards, had, at first, been hated, -only gradually accepted. She grew slowly fond of the old -Westminster house, but the crowds about her confused and -perplexed her. She was aware now that, perhaps, there were -those in the world who cared nothing for the Trenchards. -She flew from such confusion the more intensely into her devotion -to her own people. It was as though, at the very -first peep of the world, she had said to herself—“No. That -is not my place. They have no need of me nor I of them. -They would change me. I do not wish to be changed.”</p> - -<p>She was aware of her own duty the more strongly because -her younger sister, Millicent, had taken always the opposite -outlook. Millicent, pretty, slender, witty, attractive, had always -found home (even Garth and its glories) ‘a little slow’.</p> - -<p>The family had always understood that it was natural -for Millicent to find them slow—no pains had been spared -over Millicent’s development. She had just finished her education -in Paris and was coming back to London. Always -future plans now were discussed with a view to finding amusement -for Millicent. “Millie will be here then”. “I wonder -whether Millie will like him.” “You’d better accept it. -Millie will like to go.”</p> - -<p>Beyond all the family Katherine loved Millicent. It had -begun when Millie had been very small and Katherine had -mothered her,—it had continued when Millie, growing older, -had plunged into scrapes and demanded succour out of them -again—it had continued when Katherine and Millie had developed -under a cloud of governesses, Millie brilliant and -idle, Katherine plodding and unenterprising, it had continued -when Millie, two years ago, had gone to Paris, had written -amusing, affectionate letters, had told “Darling Katie that -there was <span class='it'>no one</span>, no one, no <span class='sc'>one</span>, anywhere in all the world, -to touch her—Mme. Roget was a pig, Mlle. Lefresne, who -taught music, an angel, etc. etc.”</p> - -<p>Now Millicent was coming home.... Katherine was -aware that from none of the family did she receive more genuine -affection than from Henry, and yet, strangely, she was -often irritated with Henry. She wished that he were more -tidy, less rude to strangers, less impulsive, more of a comfort -and less of an anxiety to his father and mother. She was -severe sometimes to Henry and then was sorry afterwards. -She could ‘do anything with him,’ and wished therefore that -he had more backbone. Of them all she understood her -mother the best. She was very like her mother in many -ways; she understood that inability to put things into words, -that mild conviction that ‘everything was all right’, a conviction -to be obtained only by shutting your eyes very tight. -She understood, too, as no other member of the family understood, -that Mrs. Trenchard’s devotion to her children was a -passion as fierce, as unresting, as profound, and, possibly, -as devastating as any religion, any superstition, any obsession. -It <span class='it'>was</span> an obsession. It had in it all the glories, the -dangers, the relentless ruthlessness of an overwhelming ‘idée -fixe’—that ‘idée fixe’ which is at every human being’s heart, -and that, often undiscovered, unsuspected, transforms the -world.... Katherine knew this.</p> - -<p>For her father she had the comradeship of a play-fellow. -She could not take her father very seriously—he did not wish -that she should. She loved him always and he loved her in -his ‘off’ moments, when he was not thinking of himself and -his early Nineteenth Century—if he had any time that he -could spare from himself it was given to her. She thought -it quite natural that his spare time should be slender.</p> - -<p>And, of them all, no one enquired as to her own heart, her -thoughts, her wonders, her alarms and suspicions, her happiness, -her desires. She would not if she could help it, enquire -herself about these things—but sometimes she was aware that -life would not for ever, leave her alone. She had one friend -who was not a Trenchard, and only one. This was Lady -Seddon, who had been before her marriage a Beaminster -and grand-daughter of the old Duchess of Wrexe. Rachel -Beaminster had married Roddy Seddon. Shortly after their -marriage he had been flung from his horse, and from that -time had been always upon his back—it would always be so -with him. They had one child—a boy of two—and they -lived in a little house in Regent’s Park.</p> - -<p>That friendship had been of Rachel Seddon’s making. She -had driven herself in upon Katherine and, offering her baby -as a reward, had lured Katherine into her company—but -even to her, Katherine had not surrendered herself. Rachel -Seddon was a Beaminster, and although the Beaminster -power was now broken, about that family there lingered -traditions of greatness and autocratic splendour. Neither -Rachel nor Roddy Seddon was autocratic, but Katherine -would not trust herself entirely to them. It was as though -she was afraid that by doing so she would be disloyal to her -own people.</p> - -<p>This, then, was Katherine’s world.</p> - -<p>Upon the morning of the November day when Millicent -was to make, upon London, her triumphal descent from Paris, -Katherine found herself, suddenly, in the middle of Wigmore -Street, uneasy—Wigmore Street was mild, pleasantly -lit with a low and dim November sun, humming with a little -stir and scatter of voices and traffic, opening and shutting its -doors, watching a drove of clouds, like shredded paper, sail -through the faint blue sky above it. Katherine stopped for -an instant to consider this strange uneasiness. She looked -about her, thought, and decided that she would go and see -Rachel Seddon.</p> - -<p>Crossing a little finger of the Park, she stopped again. -The shredded clouds were dancing now amongst the bare -stiff branches of the trees and a grey mist, climbing over the -expanse of green, spread like thin gauze from end to end of -the rising ground. A little soughing wind seemed to creep -about her feet. She stopped again and stood there, a solitary -figure. For, perhaps, the first time in her life she considered -herself. She knew, as she stood there, that she had for -several days been aware of this uneasiness. It was as though -someone had been knocking at a door for admittance. She -had heard the knocking, but had refused to move, saying to -herself that soon the sound would cease. But it had not -ceased, it was more clamorous than before. She was frightened—why? -Was it Millie’s return? She knew that it -was not that....</p> - -<p>Standing there, in the still Park, she seemed to hear something -say to her “You are to be caught up.... Life is coming -to you.... You cannot avoid it.... You are caught.”</p> - -<p>She might have cried to the sky, the trees, the little pools -of dead and sodden leaves “What is it? What is it? Do -you hear anything?” A scent of rotting leaves and damp -mist, brought by the little wind, invaded her. The pale sun -struck through the moist air and smiled down, a globe of -gold, upon her. There came to her that moment of revelation -that tells human beings that, fine as they may think -themselves, full of courage and independent of all men, Life, if it -exert but the softest pressure, may be too strong for them—the -armies of God, with their certain purpose, are revealed -for a brief instant entrenched amongst the clouds. “If we -crush you what matters it to Us?”</p> - -<p>She hurried on her way, longing for the sound of friendly -voices, and, when she found Rachel Seddon with her son in -the nursery, the fire, the warm colours, the absurd rocking-horse, -armies of glittering soldiers encamped upon the red -carpet, the buzz of a sewing-machine in the next room, above -all, Michael Seddon’s golden head and Rachel’s dark one, -she could have cried aloud her relief.</p> - -<p>Rachel, tall and slender, dark eyes and hair from a Russian -mother, restless, impetuous, flinging her hands out in -some gesture, catching her boy, suddenly, and kissing him, -breaking off in the heart of one sentence to begin another, was -a strange contrast to Katherine’s repose. Soon Katherine -was on the floor and Michael, who loved her, had his arms -about her neck.</p> - -<p>“That’s how she ought always to be,” thought Rachel, -looking down at her. “How could anyone ever say that she -was plain! Roddy thinks her so.... He should see her -now.”</p> - -<p>Katherine looked up. “Rachel,” she said, “I was frightened -just now in the Park. I don’t know why—I almost -ran here. I’m desperately ashamed of myself.”</p> - -<p>“You—frightened?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I thought someone was coming out from behind a -tree to slip a bag over my head, I—Oh! I don’t know what -I thought....”</p> - -<p>Then she would say no more. She played with Michael -and tried to tell him a story. Here she was, as she had -often been before, unsuccessful. She was too serious over -the business, would not risk improbabilities and wanted to -emphasise the moral. She was not sufficiently absurd ... -gravely her eyes sought for a decent ending. She looked up -and found that Michael had left her and was moving his -soldiers.</p> - -<p>The sun, slanting in, struck lines of silver and gold from -their armour across the floor.</p> - -<p>As she got up and stood there, patting herself to see -whether she were tidy, her laughing eyes caught Rachel.</p> - -<p>“There! You see! I’m no good at <span class='it'>that</span>!—no imagination—father’s -always said so.”</p> - -<p>“Katie,” Rachel said, catching her soft, warm, almost -chubby hand, “there’s nothing the matter, is there?”</p> - -<p>“The matter! No! what should there be?”</p> - -<p>“It’s so odd for you to say what you did just now. And I -think—I don’t know—you’re different to-day.”</p> - -<p>“No, I’m not.” Katherine looked at her. “It was the -damp Park, all the bare trees and nobody about.”</p> - -<p>“But it’s so unlike you to think of damp Parks and bare -trees.”</p> - -<p>“Well—perhaps it’s because Millie’s coming back from -Paris this afternoon. I shall be terrified of her—so smart -she’ll be!”</p> - -<p>“Give her my love and bring her here as soon as she’ll come. -She’ll amuse Roddy.” She paused, searching in Katherine’s -brown eyes—“Katie—if there’s ever—anything—<span class='it'>any</span>thing—I -can help you in or advise you—or do for you. You know, -don’t you?... You always <span class='it'>will</span> be so independent. You -don’t <span class='it'>tell</span> me things. Remember I’ve had my times—worse -times than you guess.”</p> - -<p>Katherine kissed her. “It’s all right, Rachel, there’s nothing -the matter—except that ... no, nothing at all. Good-bye, -dear. Don’t come down. I’ll bring Millie over.”</p> - -<p>She was gone—Rachel watched her demure, careful progress -until she was caught and hidden by the trees.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>There had been a little truth in her words when she told -Rachel that she dreaded Millie’s arrival. If she had ever, -in the regular routine of her happy and busy life, looked forward -to any event as dramatic or a crisis, that moment had -always been Millie’s return from Paris. Millie had been -happy and affectionate at home, but nevertheless a critic. -She had never quite seen Life from inside the Trenchard -Mirror nor had she quite seen it from the vision of family -affection. She loved them all—but she found them slow, unadventurous, -behind the times. That was the awful thing—‘behind -the times’—a terrible accusation. If Millie had felt -that (two years ago) how vehemently would she feel it now!... -and Katherine knew that as she considered this criticism -of Millie’s she was angry and indignant and warm with an -urgent, passionate desire to protect her mother from any -criticism whatever. “Behind the times”, indeed—Millie had -better not.... And then she remembered the depth of her -love for Millie ... nothing should interfere with that.</p> - -<p>She was in her bedroom, after luncheon, considering these -things when there was a tap on the door and Aunt Betty -entered. In her peep round the door to see whether she -might come in, in the friendly, hopeful, reassuring butterfly -of a smile that hovered about her lips, in the little stir of her -clothes as she moved as though every article of attire was -assuring her that it was still there, and was very happy to -be there too, there was the whole of her history written.</p> - -<p>It might be said that she had no history, but to such an -assertion, did she hear it, she would offer an indignant denial, -could she be indignant about anything. She had been perfectly, -admirably happy for fifty-six years, and that, after -all, is to have a history to some purpose. She had nothing -whatever to be happy about. She had no money at all, and -had never had any. She had, for a great number of years, -been compelled to live upon her brother’s charity, and she -was the most independent soul alive. In strict truth she had, -of her own, thirty pounds a year, and the things that she -did with those thirty pounds are outside and beyond any calculation. -“There’s always <span class='it'>my</span> money, George,” she would -say when her brother had gloomy forebodings about -investments. She lived, in fact, a minute, engrossing, adventurous, -flaming life of her own, and the flame, the colour, the fire -were drawn from her own unconquerable soul. In her bedroom—faded -wall-paper, faded carpet, faded chairs because -no one ever thought of her needs—she had certain possessions, -a cedar-wood box, a row of books, a water-colour sketch, photographs -of the family (Katherine 3½, Vincent 8 years old, -Millicent 10 years, etc., etc.), a model of the Albert Memorial -done in pink wax, a brass tray from India, some mother-of-pearl -shells, two china cats given to her, one Christmas day, -by a very young Katherine—those possessions were her world. -She felt that within that bedroom everything was her own. -She would allow no other pictures on the wall, no books not -hers in the book-case. One day when she had some of the -thirty pounds ‘to play with’ she would cover the chairs with -beautiful cretonne and she would buy a rug—so she had said -for the last twenty years. She withdrew, when life was tiresome, -when her sister Aggie was difficult, when there were -quarrels in the family (she hated quarrels) into this world -of her own, and would suddenly break out in the midst of -a conversation with “I might have the bed <span class='it'>there</span>” or “There -isn’t really room for another chair if I had one,” and then -would make a little noise like a top, ‘hum, hum, hum’. In -defiance of her serenity she could assume a terrible rage and -indignation were any member of the family attacked. Her -brother George and Katherine she loved best—she did not, -although she would never acknowledge it, care greatly for -Henry—Millie she admired and feared. She had only to -think of Katherine and her eyes would fill with tears ... -she was a very fount of sentiment. She had suffered much -from her sister Agnes, but she had learnt now the art of -withdrawal so perfectly that she could escape at any time -without her sister being aware of it. “You aren’t listening, -Elizabeth,” Agnes would cry suspiciously.</p> - -<p>“Yes, dear Aggie, I am. I don’t think things as bad as -you say. For instance,” and a wonderful recovery would -reassure suspicion. The real core of her life was Katherine -and Katherine’s future. There was to be, one day, for Katherine -a most splendid suitor—a Lord, perhaps, a great politician, -a great Churchman, she did not know—but someone -who would realise first Katherine’s perfection, secondly the -honour of being made a Trenchard, thirdly the necessity of -spending all his life in the noble work of making Katherine -happy. “I shall miss her—we shall all miss her—but we -mustn’t be selfish—hum, hum—she’ll have one to stay, perhaps.”</p> - -<p>Very often she came peeping into Katherine’s room as she -came to-day. She would take Katherine into her confidence; -she would offer her opinion about the events of the hour. -She took her stand in the middle of the room, giving little -excited pecks at one of her fingers, the one that suffered most -from her needle when she sewed, a finger scarred now by a -million little stabs. So she stood now, and Katherine, sitting -on the edge of her bed, looked up at her.</p> - -<p>“I came in, my dear, because you hardly ate any luncheon. -I watched you—hardly any at all.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, that’s all right, Aunt Betty. I wasn’t hungry.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t like your not eating—hum, hum. No, I don’t. -Mother always used to say ‘Don’t Eat, can’t Beat’—of military -forces, you know, dear, or anything that had a hard -task to perform.”</p> - -<p>She looked about her with an aimless and rather nervous -smile, which meant that she had something to say but was -afraid of it.</p> - -<p>“Katie, dear, do you know?” (This with an air of intense -importance.) “I don’t think I’ll show Millie my room—not -just at first at any rate.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, but you must. She’ll be longing to see it.”</p> - -<p>“Well, but—will she, do you think? Oh, no, she won’t, -not after Paris.... Paris is so grand. Perhaps, later I -will—show it her. I mean when she’s more accustomed to the -old life.”</p> - -<p>But even now it was plain that she had not delivered her -purpose. It was imprisoned, like a mouse in a very woolly -moth-eaten trap. Soon there will be a click and out it will -come!</p> - -<p>Her wandering, soft, kindly eyes looked gravely upon -Katherine.</p> - -<p>“My dear, I wish you’d eaten something. Only a little -mince and two of those cheese biscuits.... Katie dear, did -you hear what Mr. Mark said at luncheon about leaving us?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, Aunt Betty.”</p> - -<p>“He said he’d got somewhere from next Monday. Poor -young man—not <span class='it'>so</span> young now either—but he seems lonely. -I’m glad we were able to be kind to him at first. Katie, I -have an ‘Idea’.” Impossible to give any picture of the eagerness -with which now her eyes were lit and her small body -strung on a tiptoe of excitement, “I have an idea.... I -think he and Millie—I think he might be just the man for -Millie—adventurous, exciting, knowing so much about Russia—and, -after Paris, she’ll want someone like that.”</p> - -<p>Katherine turned slowly away from her aunt, gazing -vaguely, absent-mindedly, as though she had not been thinking -of the old lady’s words.</p> - -<p>“Oh, no, Aunt Betty. I don’t think so—What an old -matchmaker you are!”</p> - -<p>“I love to see people happy. And I like him. I think -it’s a pity he’s going on Monday. He’s been here a fortnight -now. I like him. He’s polite to me, and when a young man -is polite to an old woman like me that says a lot—hum, hum—yes, -it does. But your mother doesn’t like him—I wonder -why not—but she doesn’t. I always know when your mother -doesn’t like anybody. Millie will.... I know she will. -But I don’t think I’ll show her my things—not at first, not -right after Paris.”</p> - -<p>“Perhaps it would be better to wait a little.” Katherine -went and sat in front of her mirror. She touched the things -on her dressing-table.</p> - -<p>“I’ll go now, dear—I can’t bear to think of you only -having had that mince. My eye will be on you at dinner, -mind.”</p> - -<p>She peeped out of the door, looked about her with her -bright little eyes, then whisked away.</p> - -<p>Katherine sat before her glass, gazing. But not at herself. -She did not know whose face it was that stared back -at her.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Millie’s entrance that afternoon was very fine. There were -there to receive her, her grandfather, her great-aunt (in -white boa), her father, her mother, Henry, Katherine, Aunt -Betty and Aggie, Philip Mark, Esq. She stood in the doorway -of the drawing-room radiant with health, good spirits -and happiness at being home again—all Trenchards always -are. Like Katherine in the humour of her eyes, otherwise -not at all—tall, dark, slim in black and white, a little black -hat with a blue feather, a hat that was over one ear. She -had her grandfather’s air of clear, finely cut distinction, but -so alive, so vibrating with health was she that her entrance -extinguished the family awaiting her as you blow out a -candle. Her cheeks were flushed, her black eyes sparkled, -her arms were outstretched to all of them.</p> - -<p>“Here I am!” she seemed to say, “I’m sure you’ve forgotten -in all this time how delightful I am!—and indeed -I’m ever so much more delightful than I was before I went -away. In any case here I am, ready to love you all. And -there’s no family in the world I’d be gladder to be a member -of than this!”</p> - -<p>Her sharp, merry, inquisitive eyes sought them all out—sought -out the old room with all the things in it exactly as -she had always known them, and then the people—one after -the other—all of them exactly as she had always known -them....</p> - -<p>She was introduced to Philip Mark. Her eyes lingered up -him, for an instant, mischievously, almost interrogatively. -To him she seemed to say: “What on earth are you doing -inside here? How did you ever get in? And what are you -here for?” She seemed to say to him: “You and I—we -know more than these others here—but just because of that -we’re not half so nice.”</p> - -<p>“Well, Henry,” she said, and he felt that she was laughing -at him and blushed. He knew that his socks were hanging -loosely. He had lost one of his suspenders.</p> - -<p>“Well, Millie,” he answered, and thought how beautiful -she was.</p> - -<p>It was one of the Trenchard axioms that anyone who -crossed the English Channel conferred a favour—it was nice -of them to go, as though one visited a hospital or asked a poor -relation to stay. Paris must have been glad to have had -Millie—it must have been very gay for Paris—and that not -because Millie was very wonderful, but simply because Paris -wasn’t English.</p> - -<p>“It must be nice to be home again, Millie dear,” said Mrs. -Trenchard comfortably.</p> - -<p>Millie laughed and for a moment her eyes flashed across -at Philip Mark, but he was looking at Katherine. She -looked round upon them all, then, as though she were wondering -how, after all, things were going to be now that she -had come home ‘for good’—now that it would be always and -always—well, perhaps not always. She looked again at -Philip Mark and liked him. She surrendered herself then to -the dip and splash and sparkle of the family waters of affection. -They deluged and overwhelmed her. Her old grandfather -and the great-aunt sat silently there, watching, with -their bird-like eyes, everything, but even upon their grim -features there were furrowed smiles.</p> - -<p>“And the crossing was really all right?” “The trees in -the Park were blowing rather ...” “And so, Milly dear, -I said you’d go. I promised for you. But you can get out -of it as easily as anything....”</p> - -<p>“You must have been sorry, as it was the last time, but -you’ll be able to go back later on and see them....”</p> - -<p>And her father. “Well, <span class='it'>they’ve</span> had her long enough, and -now it’s our turn for a bit. She’s been spoiled there.... -She won’t get any spoiling here....”</p> - -<p>He roared with laughter, flinging his head back, coming -over and catching Millie’s head between his hands, laughing -above her own laughing eyes. Henry watched them, his -father cynically, his sister devotedly. He was always embarrassed -by the family demonstrations, and he felt it the -more embarrassing now because there was a stranger in their -midst. Philip was just the man to think this all odd.... -But Henry was anxious about the family behaviour simply -because he was devoted to the family, not at all because he -thought himself superior to it.</p> - -<p>Then Milly tore herself away from them all. She looked -at Katherine.</p> - -<p>“I’m going up to my room. Katy, come up and help -me—”</p> - -<p>“I’d better come and help you, dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard. -“There’s sure to be a mess....”</p> - -<p>But Milly shook her head with a slight gesture of impatience. -“No, no, Mother ... Katy and I will manage.”</p> - -<p>“Hilda will do everything if—”</p> - -<p>“No, I want to show Katy things....”</p> - -<p>They went.</p> - -<p>When the two girls were alone in the bedroom and the -door was closed Milly flung her arms round Katherine and -kissed her again and again. They stood there, in the silence, -wrapped in one another’s arms.</p> - -<p>“Katy—darling—if you only knew, all this time, how -I’ve longed for you. Sometimes I thought ‘I <span class='it'>must</span>—I <span class='it'>must</span>—see -her’—that’s you. I’d run away—I’d do anything. I -don’t think anything matters now that I’ve got you again—<span class='it'>and</span> -I’ve so much to tell you!”</p> - -<p>They sat down on the bed, Millie vibrating with the excitement -of her wonderful experiences, Katherine quiet, but -with one hand pressing Millie’s and her eyes staring into -distance.</p> - -<p>Suddenly Millie stopped.</p> - -<p>“Katie, dear, who’s this man?”</p> - -<p>“What man?”</p> - -<p>“The nice-looking man I saw downstairs.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, he’s a Mr. Mark. Son of a great friend of father’s. -He’s lived in Russia—Moscow—for years. He came in by -mistake one night in a fog and found that ours was the house -he was coming to next day—then Father asked him to stay—”</p> - -<p>“Do you like him?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. He’s very nice.”</p> - -<p>“He looks nice.”</p> - -<p>Milly went on again with her reminiscences. Katherine, -saying only a word now and then, listened.</p> - -<p>Then, exactly as though she had caught some unexpected -sound, Milly broke off again.</p> - -<p>“Katy—Katy.”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“You’re different, something’s happened to you.”</p> - -<p>“My dear!—nothing, of course.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, something has.—Something ... Katy!” And -here Milly flung her arms again about her sister and stared -into her eyes. “You’re in love with someone.”</p> - -<p>But Katherine laughed. “That’s Paris, Milly dear—Paris—Paris.”</p> - -<p>“It isn’t. It isn’t. It’s <span class='it'>you</span>. There is someone. Katy, -darling, tell me—you’ve always told me everything: who is -he? tell me.”</p> - -<p>Katherine drew herself away from Milly’s embrace, then -turned round, looking at her sister. Then she caught her -and kissed her with a sudden urgent passion. “There’s no -one, of course there’s no one. I’m the old maid of the family. -You know we, long ago, decided that. I’m not ...” -she broke off, laughed, got up from the bed. She looked at -Milly as though she were setting, subduing some thoughts -in her mind. “I’m just the same, Milly. <span class='it'>You’re</span> different, of -course.”</p> - -<p>At a sudden sound both the girls looked up. Their mother -stood in the doorway, with her placidity, her mild affection; -she looked about the room.</p> - -<p>“I had to come, my dears, to see how you were getting -on.” She moved forward slowly towards them.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2 id='ch04'>CHAPTER IV<br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>THE FOREST</span></h2> - -<p>Part of a letter that Philip Mark wrote to his friend:—</p> - -<p>“... I couldn’t stay any longer. They’d had me -there a fortnight and then one of the daughters came home -from being ‘finished’ in Paris, so that they’ve really no room -for strangers. I’ve moved here—not very far away—three -furnished rooms in an upper part in a small street off Victoria -Street. It’s quiet with an amazing quietness considering -its closeness to all the rattle. The Roman Catholic Cathedral -is just round the corner—hideous to look at, but it’s nice -inside. There’s a low little pub. opposite that reminds me -comfortably of one of our beloved ‘Trakteer’—you see I’m -sentimental about Moscow already—more so every day.</p> - -<p>“I’ve so much to tell you, and yet it comes down to one -very simple thing. I’ve found, I believe, already the very -soul I set out to find, set out with yours and Anna’s blessing, -remember. You mayn’t tell her yet. It’s too soon and -it may so easily come to nothing, but I do believe that if I’d -searched England through and through for many years I -could never have found anyone so—so—exactly what I need. -You must have guessed in that very first letter that it had, -even then, begun. It began from the instant that I saw her—it -seems to me now to be as deeply seated in me as my own -soul itself. But you know that at the root of everything is my -own distrust in myself. Perhaps if I had never gone to Russia -I should have had more confidence, but that country, as I -see it now, stirs always through the hearts of its lovers, questions -about everything in heaven or earth and then tells one -at the end that nothing matters. And the Englishman that -is in me has always fought that distrust, has called it sentimental, -feeble, and then again I’ve caught back the superstition -and the wonder. In Russia one’s so close to God and the -Devil—in England there is business and common-sense. Between -the two I’m pretty useless. If you had once seen Katherine -you’d know why she seems to me a refuge from all that -I’ve been fighting with Anna for so long. She’s clear and -true as steel—so quiet, so sure, so much better and finer than -myself that I feel that I’m the most selfish hound in the -world to dream of attaching her to me. Mind you, I don’t -know at present that she’s interested; she’s so young and -ignorant in so many ways, with all her calm common-sense, -that I’m terrified of alarming her, and if she doesn’t care for -me I’ll never disturb her—never. But if she should—well, -then, I believe that I can make her happy—I know myself -by now. I’ve left my Moscow self behind me just as Anna -said that I must. There’s nothing stranger than the way -that Anna foretold it all. That night when she shewed me -that I must go she drew a picture of the kind of woman whom -I must find. She had never been to England, she had only, -in all her life, seen one or two Englishwomen, but she knew, -she knew absolutely. It’s as though she had seen Katherine -in her dreams....</p> - -<p>“But I’m talking with absurd assurance. Putting Katherine -entirely aside there is all the family to deal with. Trenchard -himself likes me—Mrs. Trenchard hates me. That’s -not a bit too strong, and the strange thing is that there’s -no reason at all for it that I can see, nor have we been, either -of us, from the beginning anything but most friendly to one -another. If she suspected that I was in love with Katherine -I might understand it, but that is impossible. There has been -nothing, I swear, to give anyone the slightest suspicion. She -detects, I think, something foreign and strange in me. Russia -of course she views with the deepest suspicion, and it -would amuse you to hear her ideas of that country. Nothing, -although she has never been near it nor read anything but -silly romances about it, could shake her convictions. Because -I don’t support them she knows me for a liar. She is -always calm and friendly to me, but her intense dislike comes -through it all. And yet I really like her. She is so firm and -placid and determined. She adores her family—she will -fight for them to the last feather and claw. She is so sure -and so certain about everything, and yet I believe that in -her heart she is always afraid of something—it’s out of that -fear, I am sure, that her hatred of me comes. For the others, -the only one who troubled about me was the boy, and he is -the strangest creature. He’d like me to give him all my experiences: -he hasn’t the slightest notion of them, but he’s -morbidly impatient of his own inexperience and the way his -family are shutting him out of everything, and yet he’s Trenchard -enough to disapprove violently of that wider experience -if it came to him. He’d like me, for instance, to take -him out and show him purple restaurants, ladies in big hats, -and so on. If he did so he’d feel terribly out of it and then -hate me. He’s a jumble of the crudest, most impossible and -yet rather touching ideas, enthusiasms, indignations, virtues, -would-be vices. He adores his sister. About that at least -he is firm—and if I were to harm her or make her unhappy!...</p> - -<p>“I suppose it’s foolish of me to go on like this. I’m indulging -myself, I can talk to no one. So you ... just as I -used to in those first days such years ago when I didn’t know -a word of Russian, came and sat by the hour in your flat, -talked bad French to your wife, and found all the sympathy -I wanted in your kind fat face, even though we could only -exchange a word or two in the worst German. How good -you were to me then! How I must have bored you!... -There’s no one here willing to be bored like that. To an -Englishman time is money—none of that blissful ignoring -of the rising and setting of sun, moon, and stars that for so -many years I have enjoyed. ‘The morning and the evening -were the first day....’ It was no Russian God who said -that. I’ve found some old friends—Millet, Thackeray, you’ll -remember—they were in Moscow two years ago. But with -them it is ‘Dinner eight o’clock sharp, old man—got an engagement -nine-thirty.’ So I’m lonely. I’d give the world -to see your fat body in the doorway and hear your voice rise -into that shrill Russian scream of pleasure at seeing me. -You should sit down—You should have some tea although -I’ve no Samovar to boil the water in, and I’d talk about Katherine, -Katherine, Katherine—until all was blue. And you’d -say ‘Harosho’ ‘Harosho’—and it would be six in the morning -before we knew.... God help us all, I mustn’t talk -about it. It all comes to this, in the end, as to whether a -man can, by determination and resolve, of his own will, wipe -out utterly the old life and become a new man. All those -Russian years—Anna, Paul, Paul’s death, all the thought, -the view, the vision of life, the philosophy that Russia gave -me—those things have got to disappear.... They never existed. -I’ve got again what, all those years, you all said that -I wanted—the right to be once again an English citizen with -everything, morals and all, cut and dried. I can say, like -old Vladimir after his year in Canada, ‘I’d never seen so -many clean people in my life.’ I’ve got what I wanted, and -I mustn’t—I musn’t—look back.</p> - -<p>“I believe I can carry it all through if I can get Katherine—get -her and keep her and separate her from the family. -She’s got to belong to me and not to the Trenchards. Moscow—The -Trenchards! Oh, Paul, there’s a Comedy there—and -a tragedy too perhaps. I’m an ass, but I’m frightened. -I think I’m doing the finest things and, when they’re done, -they turn out the rottenest. Supposing I become a Trenchard -myself? Think of that night when Paul died. Afterwards -we went up to the Kremlin, you remember. How -quiet it was and how entirely I seemed to have died with -Paul, and then how quickly life was the same again. But -at any rate Moscow cared for me and told me that it cared—London -cares nothing ... not even for the Trenchards....</p> - -<p>“Think of me, Paul, as often as you can. Think of that -afternoon in the restaurant when you first showed me how -to drink Vodka and I told you in appalling German that -Byron and Wilde weren’t as good as you thought them.... -Think of me, old man. I believe I’m in for a terrible business. -If Katherine loves me the family will fight me. If -she doesn’t love me nothing else now seems to matter ... -and, with it all, I’m as lonely as though I were a foreigner -who didn’t know a word of English and hadn’t a friend.... -I’ve got my Ikon up on the right corner—Near it is a print -of ‘Queen Victoria receiving news of her accession to the -throne of England’ ...”</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Philip Mark sat, day after day, in his ugly sitting-room -and thought of Katherine Trenchard. It was nearly a fortnight -now since he had come to these rooms—he had not, -during that time, seen Katherine; he had called once at the -Trenchard’s house; he had spent then half an hour alone -with Mrs. Trenchard and Aunt Aggie.</p> - -<p>In these fourteen days she had grown from an attractive -thought into a compelling, driving impulse. Because his -rooms were unattractive and because he was sick for Moscow -(although he would not admit that) therefore he had -turned to the thought of her to comfort him; now he was a -slave to the combination of it.... He must see her, he -must speak to her, he must have something to remember.... -He must not speak to her, he must not see her lest he should -be foolish and ruin all his friendship with her by frightening -her; and, meanwhile, in these long, long evenings the -lamp from the street below trembled and trembled on his wall -as though London, like some hostile policeman, were keeping -its eye upon him, and warned him not to go too far.</p> - -<p>The history of Philip Mark, its past, its present, and its -future, is to be found clearly written in the character of his -mother. His mother had been a woman of great force, resolve -and determination. She had in complete subjection those -who composed her world. She was kind as the skilful executioner -is kind who severs a head with one neat blow; her -good-humoured husband, her friendly, sentimental, idealistic -son submitted, utterly, without question, to her kindness. -She had died when Philip was twenty-one, and instantly -Philip and his father had discovered, to their immense surprise, -their immense relief. Philip’s father had married at -once a young clergyman’s daughter of no character at all, -and was compelled to divorce her four years later. Philip, -to show his new and splendid independence, had discovered -an opening in a cloth business in Moscow. He went there -and so remained until, in his thirtieth year, the death of his -father had presented him with fifteen hundred pounds a year.</p> - -<p>Always, through all the Russian time, it had been his -dream that he would one day be an English land-owner with -a house and a wood, fields and children, white gates and a -curving drive. He had come home now to realise this ambition.</p> - -<p>The central motive of Philip’s existence was that he always -desired, very seriously, sometimes desperately, to be all -these things that the elements in his character would always -prevent him from being. For instance, awaking, at his -mother’s death, from her relentless domination, he resolved -that he would never be influenced by anyone again; five -minutes after this determination he was influenced by the -doctor who had attended his mother, the lawyer who read her -will, and the clergyman who buried her.</p> - -<p>It had seemed to him, as he grew up in England, that the -finest thing in the world was to be (when he was sixteen) like -St. Francis of Assisi, (when he was nineteen) like Shelley, -(when he was twenty-one) like Tolstoi, and the worst thing in -the world was to be a commonplace English Squire. He went -to Russia and, at once, concluded that there was nothing like -the solid, sensible beef-eating English Squire for helping on -the World, and that, as I have said, as soon as he was rich -enough, he would settle down in England, with, his estate, his -hunters and his weekly ‘Spectator’.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile he was influenced more and more by Russia and -the Russians. He did not really desire to be strong, sober, -moral, industrious, strong-minded, but only kindly, affectionate, -tolerant, with every one man for his friend.... He -found in Russia that the only thing demanded of him was -that he should love his brother. He made an immense number -of friends, lived with a Russian girl, Anna Petrovna -Semyonov, (she danced in the Moscow Imperial Ballet) for -three years, and had, by her, a son who died. At the end -of that time his father’s death gave him the opportunity of -doing what he had always declared to every Russian was -the ambition of his life—to settle in England as an English -land-owner. Anna was fond of him now, but not at all in -love with him—they were the best friends in the world. She -believed, very seriously, that the greatest thing for him would -be to find a nice English girl whom he could love, marry, and -make the mother of his children.</p> - -<p>Philip had, during these Russian years, grown stronger in -character, and still was determined that the worst thing in -the world was to be under anyone’s domination. He was -however under the power of anyone who showed him affection; -his outlook was now vehemently idealistic, romantic -and sentimental, although, in the cloth business, he was hard-headed, -cynical, and methodical. Did a human being care -for him, and he would do anything for him; under the influence -of anyone’s affection the world became so rosy to him -that he lost all count of time, common-sense and digestion.</p> - -<p>Anna was really fond of him, although often enough she -was desperately bored with him. She had always mothered -him, but thought now that an English girl would mother him -better. She sent him home. He was very young for his -thirty years, but then from the age of anyone who has lived -in Russia for long, you may take away, always, twenty years.</p> - -<p>He was resolved now to be the most English of all -English—to be strong, hard-headed, a little cynical, unsentimental.... -He had, of course, fallen in love with the first English -girl whom he met. Meanwhile he did not entirely assist -his cynical hardheadedness by writing long, introspective letters -to his Russian friend. However, to support his resolute -independence, he had always in front of him on his writing-table -a photograph of his mother.</p> - -<p>“It shall never be like that again”, he would say to himself, -looking fixedly at the rather faded picture of a lady -of iron-grey hair and a strong bosom clad in shining black -silk. “Won’t it, my son?” said his mother, looking back -at him with a steely twinkle somewhere in her eye. “Won’t -it?”</p> - -<p>Meanwhile there was no place in London where, at three -in the morning, he might drink with his friends and discover -that all the world loved him. He was very lonely in -London, and wanted Katherine more desperately with every -tick of the Ormolu clock on the marble mantelpiece; but he -would not go to see her.... One glance at his mother’s -photograph was enough to settle that. <span class='it'>No, he would not</span>....</p> - -<p>Then he met her. Upon a lonely November afternoon he -walked along the Embankment, past Lambeth Bridge, into -the melancholy, deserted silences of Pimlico. He turned -back, out of the little grey streets on to the river again, and -stood, for a while, looking back over the broad still sheet of -the river, almost white in colour but streaked with black -lines of shadow that trembled and wavered as though they -were rods about to whip the water into storm. The sky was -grey, and all the buildings clustered against it were grey, -but slowly, as though some unseen hand were tearing the -sky like tissue paper, a faint red background was stealing -into the picture and even a little faint gold that came from -God knows where flitted, in and out, upon the face of the -river.</p> - -<p>Heavy black barges lay, like ancient prehistoric beasts, -in the slime left now by the retreating tide. One little tug -pushed desperately up stream as though it would force some -energy into this dreaming, dying world—a revolutionary -striving to stir the dim silences that watched, from either -bank, into protest.</p> - -<p>The air was sharply cold and there was a smell of smoke -somewhere—also of tar and cabbage and mud.... The red -light pushed and pushed its way upwards.</p> - -<p>The silence emphasised, with rather a pleasing melancholy, -Philip’s loneliness. It seemed, down here, as though London -were a dead city and he, only, alive in it. Katherine, -too, was alive somewhere.... He looked and, as in one’s -dreams absurdity tumbles upon the heels of absurdity, he -saw her walking alone, coming, as yet without any recognition -in her eyes, towards him.</p> - -<p>The world was dead and he was dead and Katherine—let -it stay so then.... No, the world was alive. She had recognised -him; she had smiled—the air was suddenly warm -and pulsating with stir and sound. As she came up to him -he could think of nothing but the strange difference that his -fortnight’s absorption in her had made for him. His being -with her now was as though he had arrived at some long-desired -Mecca after a desperate journey of dust and strain -and peril. As he greeted her he felt “A fortnight ago we -had only just met, but now we have known each other for -years and years and years—but perhaps she does not know -that yet.”</p> - -<p>But he knew, as she gave him her hand, that she felt a -little awkwardness simply because she was so glad to see -him—and she had never been awkward with him before.</p> - -<p>“You’ve been hiding from us,” she said. Her cheeks were -flaming because she had walked fast, because the air was -frosty—because she was glad to see him. Her coat and muff -were a little old-fashioned and not very becoming to her—all -the more did he praise the beautiful kindliness of her -eyes. “I’m in love with you,” he wanted to say to her. “Do -you care that I am?” ... He turned at her side and they -faced together the reddening sky. The whole city lay in -absolute silence about them as though they were caught together -into a ball of grey evening cloud.</p> - -<p>“I haven’t hidden,” he said, smiling, “I came and called, -but you were not there.”</p> - -<p>“I heard,” she answered, “Aunt Aggie said you were -very agreeable and amusing—I hope you’re happy in your -rooms.”</p> - -<p>“They’re all right.”</p> - -<p>“We miss you. Father’s always beginning to tell you -something and then finding that you’re gone. Henry—”</p> - -<p>“Your Mother?”</p> - -<p>“Ah, you were quite wrong about Mother. You thought -that she disliked you. You care much too much, by the way, -whether people like you or no. But Mother’s hard, perhaps, -to get to know. You shocked and disturbed her a little, but -she didn’t dislike you.”</p> - -<p>Although he had asserted so definitely that Mrs. Trenchard -hated him, he had reassured himself, in his own heart, that -she rather liked him—now when he saw in spite of Katherine’s -words that she really had disliked him, he felt a little -shock of dismay.</p> - -<p>“You may say what you like,” he said, “I know—”</p> - -<p>“No, you don’t understand. Mother is so absorbed by -all of us. There are a great many of us, you know—that -it takes a long time for her to realise anyone from outside. -You were so much from outside. She was just beginning -to realise you when you went away. We are all so much -to her. In a family as big as ours there are always so many -things....”</p> - -<p>“Of course,” he said, “I know. As to myself, it’s natural -enough. At present I miss Moscow—but that will be all -right soon.”</p> - -<p>She came a little closer to him, and her eyes were so kindly -that he looked down upon the ground lest his own eyes should -betray him.</p> - -<p>“Look here—come to us whenever you like. Why, all this -time, have you kept away? Wasn’t it what you were always -telling us about your friends in Moscow that their houses -were open to everyone always? You must miss that. Don’t -be lonely whatever you do. There are ever so many of -us, and some of us are sure to be in.”</p> - -<p>“I will,” he said, stammering, “I will.”</p> - -<p>“Henry’s always asking questions about Russia now. -You’ve had a great effect upon him, and he wants you to tell -him ever so much more. Then there’s Millie. She hasn’t -seen you at all yet. You’ll like her so much. There’s Vincent -coming back from Eton. Don’t be lonely or homesick. -I know how miserable it is.”</p> - -<p>They were in the Square by the Church outside her house; -above the grey solid building the sky had been torn into -streaming clouds of red and gold.</p> - -<p>He took her hand and held it, and suddenly as she felt -his pressure the colour flooded her face; she strove to beat -it down—she could not. She tried to draw her hand away—but -her own body, as though it knew better than she, defied -her. She tried to speak—no words would come.</p> - -<p>She tried to tell him with her eyes that she was indifferent, -but her glance at him showed such triumph in his gaze -that she began to tremble.</p> - -<p>Then he released her hand. She said nothing—only with -quick steps hurried into the house. He stood there until -she had disappeared, then he turned round towards his rooms.</p> - -<p>He strode down Victoria Street in such a flame of exultation -as can flare this World into splendour only once or -twice in a lifetime. It was the hour when the lights come -out, and it seemed to him that he himself flung fire here, -there, for all the world to catch, now high into a lamp-post, -now low beneath some basement window, now like a cracker -upon some distant trees, now, high, high into the very evening -blue itself. The pavement, the broad street, the high, -mysterious buildings caught and passed the flame from one -to another.</p> - -<p>An ancient newspaper man, ragged in a faded tail coat, -was shouting “Finals! Finals! All the Finals!” but to -Philip’s ear he was saying—“She cares for you! she cares -for you! Praise God! What a world it is.”</p> - -<p>He stumbled up the dark stairs of his house past the door -from whose crevices there stole always the scent of patchouli, -past the door, higher up, whence came, creeping up his stairs -the suggestion of beef and cabbage, into his own dark lodging. -His sitting-room had its windows still open and its -blinds still up. The lamp in the street below flung its squares -of white light upon his walls; papers on his table were blowing -in the evening breeze, and the noise of the town climbed -up, looked in through the open windows, fell away again, -climbed up again in an eternal indifferent urgency. He was -aware that a man stood by the window, a wavering shadow -was spread against the lighted wall.</p> - -<p>Philip stopped in the doorway.</p> - -<p>“Hullo!” he said, “who’s there?”</p> - -<p>A figure came forward. Philip, to whom all the world -was, to-night, a fantasy, stared, for a moment, at the large -bearded form without recognising it—wild and unreal as it -seemed in the dim room. The man chuckled.</p> - -<p>“Well, young man. I’ve come to call, I got here two -minutes before you.”</p> - -<p>It was Uncle Tim, Mrs. Trenchard’s brother, Timothy -Faunder, Esq.</p> - -<p>“I beg your pardon,” said Philip, “the room was dark -and—and—as a matter of fact I was thinking of something -rather hard as I came in. Wait a minute. You shall have -some light, tea and a cigarette in a moment.”</p> - -<p>“No, thanks.” Uncle Tim went back to the window again. -“No tea—no cigarette. I hate the first. The second’s poisonous. -I’ve got a pipe here—and don’t light up—the room’s -rather pleasant like this. I expect it’s hideous when one -can see it.”</p> - -<p>Philip was astonished. He had liked Tim Faunder, but -had decided that Tim Faunder was indifferent to <span class='it'>him</span>—quite -indifferent. For what had he come here? Sent by the family?... -Yes, he liked Uncle Tim, but he did not want him -or anyone else in the world there just then. He desired to -sit by the open window, alone, to think about Katherine, to -worship Katherine!</p> - -<p>They both sat down; Faunder on the window-seat, Philip -near by. The noise of the town was distant enough to make -a pleasant rumbling accompaniment to their voices. The -little dark public-house opposite with its beery eye, a dim -hanging lamp in the doorway, watched them.</p> - -<p>“Well, how are you?” said Faunder, “lonely?”</p> - -<p>“It was at first,” said Philip, who found it immensely -difficult to tie his thoughts to his visitor. “And I hadn’t -been lonely for so long—not since my first days in Moscow.”</p> - -<p>“<span class='it'>They</span> were lonely then?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, horribly. My first two months there were the worst -hours in all my life. I wanted to learn Russian, so I kept -away from English people—and Russian’s difficult to pick -up at first.”</p> - -<p>Faunder made one of the rumbling noises in his throat -that always testified to his interest.</p> - -<p>“I like what you said—over there, at my sister’s,” he -waved his hand, “about Russia—and about everything. I -listened, although perhaps you didn’t think it. I hope you’re -going to stick to it, young man.”</p> - -<p>“Stick to what?”</p> - -<p>“Your ideas about things—everything being for the best. -There’s a great time coming—and the Trenchards are -damned fools.”</p> - -<p>“But I never—”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, you did. You implied it. Nobody minded, -of course, because the Trenchards know so well that they’re -not. <span class='it'>They</span> don’t bother what people think, bless them. Besides, -you don’t understand them in the least—nor won’t -ever, I expect.”</p> - -<p>“But,” said Philip, “I really never thought for a moment.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t be so afraid of hurting people’s feelings. I liked -your confidence. I liked your optimism. I just came this -afternoon to see whether a fortnight alone had damped it a -little.”</p> - -<p>Philip hesitated. It would be very pleasant to say that -no amount of personal trouble could alter his point of view; -it would be very pleasant to say that the drearier his personal -life was the surer he was of his Creed. He hesitated—then -spoke the truth.</p> - -<p>“As a matter of fact, I’m afraid it <span class='it'>was</span> dimmed for a bit. -Russia seemed so far away and so did England, and I was -hanging in mid-air, between. But now—everything’s all -right again.”</p> - -<p>“Why now?... Because I’ve paid you a call?”</p> - -<p>Uncle Timothy laughed.</p> - -<p>Philip looked down at the little public-house. “I’m very -glad you have. But this afternoon—it’s been the kind of -day I’ve expected London to give me, it seemed to settle me -suddenly with a jerk, as though it were pushing me into my -place and saying, ‘There! now I’ve found a seat for you’.”</p> - -<p>He was talking, he knew, at random, but he was very conscious -of Uncle Timothy, the more conscious, perhaps, because -he could not see his face.</p> - -<p>Then he bent forward in his chair. “It was very jolly of -you,” he said, “to come and see me—but tell me, frankly, -why you did. We scarcely spoke to one another whilst I -was at your sister’s house.”</p> - -<p>“I listened to you, though. Years ago I must have been -rather like you. How old are you?”</p> - -<p>“Thirty.”</p> - -<p>“Well, when I was thirty I was an idealist. I was impatient -of my family although I loved them. I thought the -world was going to do great things in a year or two. I believed -most devoutly in the Millennium. I grew older—I -was hurt badly. I believed no longer, or thought I didn’t. -I determined that the only thing in life was to hold oneself -absolutely aloof. I have done that ever since.... I had -forgotten all these years that I had ever been like you. And -then when I heard once again the same things, the same beliefs ...” -He broke off, lit his pipe, puffed furiously at -it and watched the white clouds sail into the night air.</p> - -<p>“Whatever I have felt,” said Philip, slowly, “however I -have changed, to-night I know that I am right. To-night I -know that all I believed in my most confident hour is true.”</p> - -<p>The older man bent forward and put his hand on Philip’s -arm.</p> - -<p>“Stick to that. Remember at least that you said it to me. -If before I died.... There have been times.... After -the Boer War here in England it seemed that things were -moving. There was new life, new blood, new curiosity. -But then I don’t know—it takes so long to wake people up. -<span class='it'>You</span> woke me up a little with your talk. You woke them all -up—a little. And if people like my sister and my brother-in-law—whom -I love, mind you—wake up, why then it will be -painful for them but glorious for everyone else.”</p> - -<p>Philip was more alarmed than ever. He had not, at all, -wished to wake the Trenchards up—he had only wanted them -to like him. He was a little irritated and a little bored with -Uncle Timothy. If only Mr. and Mrs. Trenchard allowed -him to love Katherine, he did not care if they never woke -up in all their lives. He felt too that he did not really fill -the picture of the young ardent enthusiast. He was bound, -he knew, to disappoint Uncle Timothy. He would have -liked to have taken him by the hand and said to him: “Now -if only you will help me to marry Katherine I will be as -optimistic as you like for ever and ever.”</p> - -<p>But Uncle Tim was cleverer than Philip supposed. -“You’re thinking—how tiresome! Here’s this old man forcing -me into a stained-glass window. Don’t think that. I -know you’re an ordinary nice young fellow just like anyone -else. It’s your age that’s pleasant. I’ve lived very much -alone all these years at a little house I’ve got down in Glebeshire. -You must come and see it. You’re sure to stay with -my sister there; she’s only five minutes away. But I’ve been -so much alone there that I’ve got into the habit of talking to -myself.”</p> - -<p>Philip at once loved Uncle Tim.</p> - -<p>“I’m delighted that you came. If you’ll let me be a friend -of yours I shall be most awfully proud. It was only that I -didn’t want you to expect too much of me. One gets into -the way in Russia of saying that things are going to be -splendid because they’re so bad—and really there they do -<span class='it'>want</span> things to be better. And often I do think that there’s -going to be, one day, a new world. And many people now -think about it and hope for it—perhaps they always did.”</p> - -<p>Uncle Timothy got up. “That’s all right, my son. We’ll -be friends. Come and see me. London’s a bit of a forest—one -can’t make out always quite what’s going on. You’ll get -to know all of us and like us, I hope. Come and see me. -Yes?”</p> - -<p>“Of course I will.”</p> - -<p>“I’ve got a dirty little room in Westminster, 14 Barton -Street. I go down to Glebeshire for Christmas, thank God. -Good-night.”</p> - -<p>He clumped away down the stairs. He had stayed a very -short time, and Philip felt vaguely that, in some way or another, -Uncle Tim had been disappointed in him. For what -had he come? What had he wanted? Had the family sent -him? Was the family watching him?</p> - -<p>That sense that Philip had had during the early days in -London suddenly returned. He felt, in the dark room, in the -dark street, that the Trenchards were watching him. From -the old man down to Henry they were watching him, waiting -to see what he would do.</p> - -<p>Did Uncle Tim think that he loved Katherine? Had he -come to discover that?</p> - -<p>Although it was early, the room was very cold and very -dark. Philip knew that for an instant he was so afraid -that he dared not look behind him.</p> - -<p>“London’s a forest....”</p> - -<p>And Katherine! At the thought of her he rose, defied all -the Trenchards in the world, lit his lamp and pulled down -the blinds. The smell of Uncle Tim’s tobacco was very -strong in the room.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2 id='ch05'>CHAPTER V<br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>THE FINEST THING</span></h2> - -<p>When a stranger surveys the life of a family it is very -certain that the really determining factor in the development -of that group of persons will escape his notice. -For instance, in surveying the Trenchards, Philip had disregarded -Aunt Aggie.</p> - -<p>As this is a record of the history of a family and not only -of individuals, Aunt Aggie must be seriously considered; it -was the first ominous mistake that Philip made that he did -not seriously consider her. Agnes Trenchard, when quite a -young girl, had been pretty in a soft and rounded manner. -Two offers of marriage had been made to her, but she had -refused these because she had a great sense of her destiny. -From her first thinking moment she had considered herself -very seriously. She had very high ideals; the finest thing in -this world was a life of utter unselfishness, a life of noble -devotion and martyred self-interest. She looked about her -and could see no signs of such lives; all the more then was -it clear that she was set apart to give the world such an example. -Unfortunately, allied to this appreciation of a fine -self-sacrificing character was a nature self-indulgent, indolent -and suspicious. Could she be unselfish without trouble -or loss then how unselfish she would be! She liked the idea -of it immensely....</p> - -<p>For some years she was pretty, sang a little and obviously -‘thought more’ than either of her sisters. People listened -then to her creed and believed in her intentions. She talked -often of unselfishness, was always ready to do anything for -anybody, and was always prevented or forestalled by less altruistic -people. When, after her two offers of marriage, she -stepped very quickly into the shapes and colours of an old -maid, went to live with her sister-in-law and brother, and -formed ‘habits’, people listened to her less readily. She herself -however, quite unaware that at thirty-five, life for a -woman is, sexually, either over or only just commencing, -hoped to continue the illusions of her girlhood. The nobility -of unselfishness appealed to her more than ever, but she found -that the people around her were always standing in her way. -She became, therefore, quite naturally, rather bitter. Her -round figure expressed, in defiance of its rotundity, peevishness.</p> - -<p>She had to account for her failures in self-sacrificing altruism, -and found it not in her own love of ease and dislike -of effort, but, completely, in other people’s selfishness. Had -she been permitted she would have been the finest Trenchard -alive, and how fine that was only a Trenchard could know! -But the world was in a conspiracy against her—the world, -and especially her sister Elizabeth, whom she despised and -bullied, but, somewhere in her strange suspicious crust of a -heart, loved. That was, perhaps, the strangest thing about -her—that, in spite of her ill-humour, discontents and irritations, -she really loved the family, and would like to have -told it so were she not continually prevented by its extraordinary -habit of being irritating just when she felt most affectionate! -She really did love them, and she would go down -sometimes in the morning with every intention of saying so, -but in five minutes they had destroyed that picture of herself -which, during her absence from them, she had painted—for -that, of course, she could not forgive them.</p> - -<p>In the mansion of the human soul there are many chambers; -Aunt Aggie’s contradictions were numberless; but, on -broad lines it may be said that her assurance of the injustice -of her own fate was balanced only by her conviction of the -good luck of everyone else. She hoped, perpetually, that -they would all recognise this—namely, that their Life had -treated them with the most wonderful good fortune. Her -brother George Trenchard, for instance, with his careless -habits, his indifference to the facts of life, his obvious selfishness. -What disasters he would, had he not been incredibly -favoured, most surely have encountered! Aunt Aggie -was afraid that he did not sufficiently realise this, and so, -in order that he might offer up thanks to God, she reminded -him, as often as was possible, of his failings. Thus, too, with -the others. Even Katherine, for whom she cared deeply, betrayed, -at times, a haughty and uplifted spirit, and, frequently -forestalled her aunt’s intended unselfishness, thus, -in a way, rebuking her aunt, a thing that a niece should -never do. With this consciousness of her relations’ failings -went an insatiable curiosity. Aunt Aggie, because she was -the finest character in the family, should be rewarded by the -trust and confidence of the family; she must, at any rate, -maintain the illusion that she received it. Did they keep her -quiet with little facts and stories that were of no importance, -she must make them important in order to support her dignity. -She made them very important indeed....</p> - -<p>A great factor was her religion. She was, like her sister, -a most sincere and devout member of the Church of England. -She believed in God as revealed to her by relations and -clergymen in the day of her baptism; time and a changing -world had done nothing to shake her confidence. But, unlike -her sisters, she believed that this God existed chiefly as a -friend and supporter of Miss Agnes Trenchard. He had -other duties and purposes, of course, but did not hide from -her His especial interest in herself. The knowledge of this -gave her great confidence. She was now fifty years of age, -and believed that she was still twenty-five; that is not to -say that she dressed as a young woman or encouraged, any -longer, the possibility of romantic affairs. It was simply -that the interest and attraction that she offered to the world -as a fine and noble character were the same as they had ever -been—and if the world did not recognize this that was because -fine and noble characters were few and difficult to discover. -One knew this because the Trenchard family offered -so seldom an example of one, and the Trenchards were, of -course, the finest people in England.</p> - -<p>She had great power with her relations because she knew, -so intimately, their weaknesses. People, on the whole, may -be said to triumph over those who believe in them and submit -to those who don’t. The Trenchards, because life was full -and time was short, submitted to Aunt Aggie and granted -anything in order that they might not be made uncomfortable. -They could not, however, allow her to abuse them, -one to another, and would submit to much personal criticism -before they permitted treachery. Their mutual affection was -a very real factor in their lives. Aunt Aggie herself had -her share in it. She possessed, nevertheless, a genius for -creating discomfort or for promoting an already unsteady atmosphere. -She was at her best when the family was at its -worst, because then she could perceive, quite clearly, her own -fine nobility.</p> - -<p>Philip Mark had made a grave mistake when he disregarded -her.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>She had disliked Philip from the first. She had disapproved -of the way that he had burst in upon the family just -when she had been at her best in the presentation to her -father. He had not known that she had been at her best, but -then that was his fault. She had been ready to forgive this, -however, if, in the days that followed, he had shown that he -appreciated her. He had not shown this, at all—he had, in -fact, quite obviously preferred her sister Elizabeth. He had -not listened to her with close attention when she had talked -to him about the nobility of unselfishness, and he had displayed -both irritation and immorality in his views of life. -She had been shocked by the abruptness with which he had -rebuked Mr. Seymour, and she thought his influence on -Henry was, already, as bad as it could be. It was of course -only too characteristic of George that he should encourage -the young man. She could see what her father and Aunt -Sarah thought of him, and she could only say that she entirely -shared their opinion.</p> - -<p>Philip’s visit had upset her, and Millie’s return from Paris -upset her still more. She had never cared greatly about -Millie, who had never showed her any deference or attention, -but Millie had until now always been a Trenchard. She had -come back from Paris only half a Trenchard. Aunt Aggie -was grievously afraid that troublesome times were in store -for them all.</p> - -<p>It was just at this point that her attention was directed -towards Katherine. She always considered that Katherine -knew her better than any other member of the family did, -which simply meant that Katherine considered her feelings. -Lately, however, Katherine had not considered her feelings. -She had, on at least two occasions, been deliberately uncivil! -Once Aunt Aggie had suffered from neuralgia, and Katherine -had promised to come and read her to sleep and had forgotten -to do so. Next morning, her neuralgia being better, Aunt -Aggie said—“I can’t, dear Katherine, imagine myself, under -similar conditions, acting as you have done.... I had a -sleepless night.... But of course you had more important -duties”—and Katherine had scarcely apologised. On the second -occasion Aunt Aggie at breakfast, (she was always bitter -at breakfast, mildly unhappy over her porridge and violently -sarcastic by marmalade time) had remarked with regret that -Millie, who was late, had “picked up these sad habits abroad. -She had never known anyone the finer, whether in character -or manners, for living abroad;” here was a little dust flung -at the inoffensive person of Philip, now soundly asleep in -Jermyn Street. At once Katherine was “in a flurry.” -“What right had Aunt Aggie to say so? How could she -tell? It might be better if one went abroad more, lost some -of one’s prejudices ...” quite a little scene! Very unlike -Katherine!</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie did not forget. Like some scientist or mathematician, -happily let loose into some new theory or problem, -so now did she consider Katherine. Katherine was different, -Katherine was restless and out of temper. She had -been so ever since Philip Mark’s visit.... With her sewing -or her book Aunt Aggie sat in a corner by the drawing-room -fire and watched and waited.</p> - -<p>Upon that afternoon that had seen Katherine’s meeting -with Philip by the river Aunt Aggie had been compelled to -have tea alone. That had been annoying, because it looked -as though the gay world was inviting everyone except Aunt -Aggie to share in its excitements and pleasures. At last -there arrived Mrs. Trenchard and Millie, and finally Katherine. -Aunt Aggie had sat in her warm corner, pursuing -with her needle the green tail of an unnatural parrot which -she was working into a slowly-developing cushion cover and -had considered her grievances. It had been a horrible day, -cold and gloomy. Aunt Aggie had a chilblain that, like the -Waits, always appeared about Christmas and, unlike them, -stayed on well into the spring. It had made its appearance, -for the first time this season, during the past night. Millie -talked a great deal about very little, and Mrs. Trenchard -received her remarks with the nonchalant indifference of a -croupier raking in the money at Monte Carlo. Katherine sat -staring into the fire and saying nothing.</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie, watching her, felt quite suddenly as though -the firelight had leapt from some crashing coal into a flaring -splendour, that something strange and unusual was with them -in the room. She was not at all, like her sister Elizabeth, -given to romantic and sentimental impressions. She seldom -read novels, and cared nothing for the theatre. What she felt -now was really unpleasant and uncomfortable, as though she -had soap in her eyes or dropped her collection under the seat -during the Litany. The room positively glowed, the dim -shadows were richly coloured, and in Aunt Aggie’s heart was -alarm and agitation.</p> - -<p>She stared about her; she looked about the room and -pierced the shadows; she sewed a wrong stitch into the parrots’ -tail, and then decided that it was Katherine’s eyes.... -She looked at the girl—she looked again and again—saw her -bending forward a little, her hands pressed together on her -lap, her breast rising and falling with the softest suspicion -of some agitation, and, in her eyes, such a light as could come -from no fire, no flame from without, but only from the very -soul itself. Katherine’s good-tempered, humorous eyes, so -charged with common-sense, affectionate but always mild, unagitated, -calm, like her mother’s—now what was one to say?</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie said nothing. Her own heart felt for an instant -some response. She would have liked to have taken the -girl into her arms and kissed her and petted her. In a moment -the impulse passed. What was the matter with Katherine? -<span class='it'>Who</span> was the matter with Katherine? It was almost -improper that anyone should look like that in a drawing-room -that had witnessed so much good manners. Moreover -it was selfish, this terrible absorption. If Katherine began -to think of herself, whatever would happen to them all! And -there were Millie and her mother, poor things, chattering -blindly together. Aunt Aggie felt that the business of watching -over this helpless family did indeed devolve upon her. -From that moment Katherine and the things that were possibly -happening to Katherine never left her thoughts. She -was happier than she had been for many months.</p> - -<p>But Katherine, in the days that followed, gave her curiosity -no satisfaction. Aunt Aggie dated, in future years, -all the agitation that was so shortly to sweep down upon -the Trenchard waters from that afternoon when ‘Katherine’s -eyes had seemed so strange’, but her insistence on that -date did not at all mean that it was then that Katherine invited -her aunt’s confidence, Aunt Aggie was compelled to -drive on her mysterious way alone. She was now assured -that ‘something was the matter’, but the time had not yet -arrived when all the family was concerned in it.</p> - -<p>In any case, to begin with, what was her sister-in-law -Harriet Trenchard thinking? No one ever knew what -Harriet Trenchard thought; and foolish and hasty observers -said that that was because Harriet Trenchard never thought -at all. Aggie Trenchard was neither foolish nor hasty; -she was afraid of Harriet because, after all these years, she -knew nothing about her. She had never penetrated that -indifferent stolidity. Harriet had never spoken to her intimately -about anything, nor had Harriet once displayed -any emotions, whether of surprise or anger, happiness or -grief, but Aggie was penetrating enough to fear that brooding -quiet.</p> - -<p>At least Aggie knew her sister-in-law well enough to -realise that her children were an ever-present, ever-passionate -element in her life. On certain occasions, concerning Millie, -Katherine, Henry or Vincent, Aggie had seen that silence, -for a moment, quiver as a still lake trembles with a sudden -shake or roll when the storm is raging across the hills—especially -was Katherine linked to her mother’s most intimate -hold upon life, even though the words that they exchanged -were of the most commonplace; Aunt Aggie knew that, and -strangely, obscurely, she was moved, at times, to sudden impulses -of bitter jealousy. Why was it that no one cared for -her as Katherine cared for her mother? What was there -in Harriet to care for?... and yet—nevertheless, Aggie -Trenchard loved her sister-in-law. With regard to this -present business Aggie knew, with sufficient assurance, that -Harriet disliked Philip Mark, had disliked him from the -first. Had Harriet noticed this change in her daughter, -and had she drawn her conclusions? What would Harriet -say if...? Aunt Aggie added stitches to the green parrot’s -tail with every comfortable assurance that ‘in a time -or two’, there would be plenty of trouble.</p> - -<p>Ultimately, through it all, it was her jealousy that moved -her and her jealousy that provoked the first outburst ... -instantly, without warning, new impulses, new relationships, -new motives were working amongst them all, and their world -was changed.</p> - -<p>Upon an afternoon, Aunt Aggie hearing that Henry -wished to change a novel at Mudie’s Library (that very -novel that he had been reading on the day of Philip’s arrival) -offered to take it for him. This was at luncheon, and -she felt, because she liked her food and barley-water, a sudden -impulse towards the Ideal Unselfishness. She made -her offer, and then reflected that it would be very troublesome -to go so far as Oxford Street; she therefore allowed -Katherine to accept the mission, retaining at the same time -her own nobility. She became quite angry: “Of course,” -she said, “you consider me too old to do anything—to sit -in a corner and sew is all I’m good for—well, well—you’ll -be old yourself one day, Katherine, my dear. I should -have liked to have helped Henry.... However ...”</p> - -<p>She was conscious, during the afternoon, of some injustice; -she had been treated badly. At dinner that night -Rocket forgot the footstool that was essential to her comfort; -she was compelled at last to ask him for it. He had -never forgotten it before; they all thought her an old woman -who didn’t matter; no one troubled now about her—well, they -should see....</p> - -<p>Great Aunt Sarah was, as often happened to her, rheumatic -but Spartan in bed. The ladies, when they left the -dining-room and closed around the drawing-room fire, were -Mrs. Trenchard, Aunt Aggie, Aunt Betty, Katherine and -Millie. Happy and comfortable enough they looked, with -the shadowed dusky room behind them and the blaze in -front of them. In the world outside it was a night of intense -frost: here they were reflected in the Mirror, Mrs. -Trenchard’s large gold locket (Henry as a baby inside it), -Aggie’s plump neck and black silk dress, Aunt Betty’s darting, -sparkling eyes, Millie’s lovely shoulders, Katherine’s -rather dumpy ones—there they all were, right inside the -Mirror, with a reflected fire to make them cosy and the -walls ever so thick and old. The freezing night could not -touch them.</p> - -<p>“Rocket’s getting very old and careless,” said Aggie.</p> - -<p>Everyone had known that Aunt Aggie was out of temper -this evening, and everyone, therefore, was prepared for a -tiresome hour or two. Rocket was a great favourite; Mrs. -Trenchard, her arms folded across her bosom, her face the -picture of placid content, said:</p> - -<p>“Oh, Aggie, do you think so?... I don’t.”</p> - -<p>“No, of course, you don’t, Harriet,” answered her sister -sharply. “He takes care with you. Of course he does. But -if you considered your sister sometimes—”</p> - -<p>“My dear Aggie!” Mrs. Trenchard, as she spoke, bent -forward and very quietly picked up a bright green silk -thread from the carpet.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I’m not complaining! That’s a thing I don’t believe -in! After all, if you think Rocket’s perfection I’ve -no more to say. I want others to be comfortable—for myself -I care nothing. It is for the rest of the family.”</p> - -<p>“We’re <span class='it'>quite</span> comfortable, Aunt Aggie, thank you,” said -Millie laughing.</p> - -<p>“I hope you don’t think, Harriet,” said Aggie, disregarding -her niece, “that I’m complaining—I—”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard leant towards her, holding out the thread -of green silk!</p> - -<p>“That must be from your silks, Aggie dear,” she said. -“It’s just the colour of your parrot’s tail. I couldn’t think -what it was, lying there on the carpet.”</p> - -<p>It was then that Katherine, who had paid no attention -to this little conversation but had followed her own thoughts, -said:</p> - -<p>“Oh! how careless of me! I never took Henry’s book, -after all—and I went right up Oxford Street too!”</p> - -<p>This was unfortunate, because it reminded Aunt Aggie of -something that she had very nearly forgotten. Of course -Katherine had never intended to take the book—she had -simply offered to do so because she thought her Aunt old, -feeble, and incapable.</p> - -<p>“Really, Katherine,” said Aunt Aggie, “you might have -let me take it after all. I may be useless in most ways and -not worth anyone’s consideration, but at least I’m still able -to walk up Oxford Street in safety!”</p> - -<p>Her aunt’s tones were so bitter that Katherine looked -across at her in some dismay.</p> - -<p>Aunt Betty did not assist the affair by saying:</p> - -<p>“Why, Aggie dear, who ever supposed you couldn’t; -I’m sure you can do anything you want to!”</p> - -<p>“Well, perhaps, next time,” Aunt Aggie said sharply. -“When I offer some help someone will listen to me. <span class='it'>I</span> -should not have forgotten the book.”</p> - -<p>“I <span class='it'>can’t</span> think why <span class='it'>I</span> did,” said Katherine, “I remembered -it just before I started, and then something happened—”</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie looked about her, and thought that this would -be a very good opportunity for discovering the real state of -Katherine’s mind.</p> - -<p>“You must take care, Katherine dear,” she said, “you -don’t seem to me to have been quite yourself lately. I’ve -noticed a number of little things. You’re tired, I think.”</p> - -<p>Katherine laughed. “Why should I be? I’ve had nothing -to make me.”</p> - -<p>It was then that Aunt Aggie caught a look of strange, -almost furtive anxiety in Harriet’s eyes. Following this, -for the swiftest moment, Katherine and her mother exchanged -a gleam of affection, of reassurance, of confidence.</p> - -<p>“Ah!” thought Aunt Aggie, “they’re laughing at me. -<span class='it'>Everyone’s</span> laughing at me.”</p> - -<p>“My dear Katherine,” she snapped, “I’m sure <span class='it'>I</span> don’t -know what’s tired you, but I think you must realise what -I mean. You are not your normal self; and, if your old -aunt may say so, that’s a pity.”</p> - -<p>Millie, looking across at her sister, was astonished to see -the colour rising in her cheeks. Katherine was annoyed! -Katherine minded Aunt Aggie! Katherine, who was never -out of temper—never perturbed! and at Aunt Aggie!</p> - -<p>“Really, Aunt Aggie,” Katherine said, “it’s very tiresome -if all the family are going to watch one day and night as -though one were something from the Zoo. Tiresome is not -nearly strong enough.”</p> - -<p>Her aunt smiled bitterly.</p> - -<p>“It’s only my affection for you,” she said. “But of course -you don’t want that. Why should you? One day, however, -you may remember that someone once cared whether you -were tired or not.”</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie’s hands trembled on her lap.</p> - -<p>Katherine shook her head impatiently.</p> - -<p>“I’m very grateful for your kindness—but I’d much -rather be left alone. I’m not tired, nor odd, nor anything—so, -please, don’t tell me that I am.”</p> - -<p>Aggie rose from her chair, and very slowly with trembling -fingers drew her work together. “I think,” she said, her -voice quivering a little, “that I’ll go to bed. Next time you -wish to insult me, Katherine, I’d rather you did it when -we were alone.”</p> - -<p>A very slow and stately figure, she walked down the drawing-room -and disappeared.</p> - -<p>There was a moment’s silence.</p> - -<p>“Oh, dear!” cried Katherine, “I’m so sorry!” She looked -round upon them all, and saw quite clearly that they were -surprised at her. Again behind Mrs. Trenchard’s eyes -there hovered that suspicion of anxiety.</p> - -<p>“What did I do? What did I say? Aunt Aggie’s so -funny.” Then, as still they did not answer, she turned -round upon them: “<span class='it'>Have</span> I been cross and tiresome lately? -<span class='it'>Have</span> you all noticed it? Tell me.”</p> - -<p>Aunt Betty said, “No, dear, of course not.”</p> - -<p>Millie said, “What <span class='it'>does</span> it matter what Aunt Aggie says?”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard said, “There’s another of Aggie’s green -threads. Under your chair, Millie dear. I’d better go up -and see whether she wants anything.”</p> - -<p>But Katherine rose and, standing for an instant with a -little half-smile, half-frown, surveying them, moved then -slowly away from them down the room.</p> - -<p>“No. I’ll go, Mother, and apologise. I suppose I was -horrid.” She left them.</p> - -<p>She went up through the dark passages slowly, meditatively. -She waited for a moment outside her aunt’s door -and then knocked, heard then her aunt’s voice, “Come in!”—in -tones that showed that she had been expecting some -ambassador.</p> - -<p>Katherine stood by the door, then moved forward, put -her arms about Aunt Aggie and kissed her.</p> - -<p>“I’m so sorry. I’m afraid that I hurt you. You know -that I didn’t mean to.”</p> - -<p>Upon Aunt Aggie’s dried cheeks there hovered a tiny -cold and glassy tear. She drew back from Katherine’s embrace, -then with a strange, almost feverish movement caught -Katherine’s hand.</p> - -<p>“It wasn’t, my dear, that you hurt me. I expect I’m too -sensitive—that has always been my misfortune. But I -felt” (another glassy tear now upon the other cheek) “that -you and Millie are finding me tiresome now.”</p> - -<p>“Aunt Aggie! Of <span class='it'>course</span> not!”</p> - -<p>“I wish to be of some use—it is my continual prayer—some -use to someone—and you make me feel—but of course -you are young and impatient—that I’d be better perhaps -out of the way.”</p> - -<p>Katherine answered her very gravely: “If I’ve ever -made you feel that for a moment, Aunt Aggie, there’s nothing -too bad for me. But how can you say such a thing? -Aren’t you a little unjust?”</p> - -<p>The two tears had disappeared.</p> - -<p>“I daresay I am, my dear, I daresay I am—or seem so -to you. Old people often do to young ones. But I’m not -unjust, I think, in fancying that you yourself have changed -lately. I made you angry when I said that just now, but -I felt it my duty—”</p> - -<p>Katherine was silent. Aunt Aggie watched her with -bright, inquisitive eyes, from which tears were now very -far away.</p> - -<p>“Well, we won’t say any more, dear. My fault is, perhaps, -that I am too anxious to do things for others, and so -may seem to you young ones interfering. I don’t know, -I’m sure. It has always been my way. I’m glad indeed -when you tell me that nothing is the matter. To my old -eyes it seems that ever since Mr. Mark stayed here the house -has not been the same. You have not been the same.”</p> - -<p>“Mr. Mark?” Katherine’s voice was sharp, then suddenly -dropped and, after an instant’s silence, was soft, -“You’ve got Mr. Mark on the brain, Aunt Aggie.”</p> - -<p>“Well, my dear, I didn’t like him. I’m sure he was very -bad for Henry. But then I’m old-fashioned, I suppose. Mr. -Mark shocked me, I confess. Russia must be a very wild -country.”</p> - -<p>Then, for a space, they looked at one another. Katherine -said nothing, only, her cheeks flushed, her breath coming -sharply, stared into the mirror on the dressing-table. Aunt -Aggie faced in this silence something alarming and uneasy; -it was as though they were, both of them, listening for some -sound, but the house was very still.</p> - -<p>“I think I’ll go to bed, my dear. Kiss me, Katherine. -Don’t forget that I’m older than you, dear. I know something -of the world—yes ... good-night, my dear.”</p> - -<p>They embraced; Katherine left the room. Her cheeks -were flaming; her body seemed wrapt in dry, scorching heat. -She hurried, her heart beating so loudly that it seemed to -her to fill the passage with sound, into her own room.</p> - -<p>She did not switch on the electric-light, but stood there -in the darkness, the room very cool and half-shadowed; some -reflected outside light made a pool of grey twilight upon the -floor, and just above this pool Katherine stood, quite motionless, -her head raised, her hands tightly clasped together. -She knew. That moment in her aunt’s room had told her!</p> - -<p>She was lifted, by one instant of glorious revelation, out -of herself, her body, her life, and caught up into her divine -heaven, could look down upon that other arid, mordant world -with eyes of incredulous happiness.</p> - -<p>She loved Philip Mark. She had always loved him. She -had never loved anyone before. She had thought that life -was enough with its duties, its friendships, its little pleasures -and little sorrows. She had never lived; she was born now -here in the still security of her room.... The clocks were -striking ten, the light on the carpet quivered, dimly she -could see her books, her bed, her furniture. Some voice, -very far away, called her name, waited and then called again—called -the old Katherine, who was dead now ... dead -and gone ... buried in Aunt Aggie’s room. The new -Katherine had powers, demands, values, insistences, of which -the old Katherine had never dreamed.</p> - -<p>Katherine, at this instant, asked herself no questions—whether -he loved her, what the family would say, how she -herself would face a new world, why it was that, through -all these weeks, she had not known that she loved him? She -asked herself nothing.... Only waited, motionless, staring -in front of her.</p> - -<p>Then suddenly her heart was so weighed down with happiness -that she was utterly weary; her knees trembled, her -hands wavered as though seeking some support. She turned, -fell down on her knees beside the bed, her face sank deep -in her hands and so remained, thinking of nothing, conscious -of nothing, her spirit bathed in an intensity of overwhelming -joy.</p> - -<p>She recovered, instantly in the days that followed, her -natural sweetness; she was, as all the household, with relief, -discovered, the real Katherine again. She did not to herself -seem to have any existence at all. The days in this early -December were days of frost, red skies, smoking leaves, and -hovering silver mists that clouded the chimneys, made the -sun a remotely yellow ball, shot sunset and sunrise with all -rainbow colours.</p> - -<p>Beautiful days—she passed through them with no consciousness -of herself, her friends, not even of Philip. No -thought of anything was possible, only that breathless, burning, -heart-beat, the thickness of the throat, the strange heat -and then sudden cold about her face, the vision of everyone -near her as ghosts who moved many, many worlds away. -Her daily duties were performed by someone else—some -kindly, considerate, sensible person, who saw that she was -disturbed and preoccupied. She watched this kind person, -and wondered how it was that the people about her did not -notice this. At night for many hours she lay there, thinking -of nothing, feeling the beating of her heart, wrapped in a -glorious ecstasy of content, then suddenly soothed as though -by some anaesthetic she would sleep, dumbly, dreamlessly, -heavily.</p> - -<p>For a week this continued—then Philip came to dinner, -scarcely a dinner-party, although it had solemnity. The only -invited guests were Philip, Rachel Seddon, her fat uncle, -Lord John Beaminster, and an ancient Trenchard cousin. -Lord John was fat, shining, and happy. Having survived -with much complacency the death of his mother, the Duchess -of Wrexe, and the end of the Beaminster grandeur, he led -a happy bachelor existence in a little house behind Shepherds -Market. He was the perfect symbol of good temper, good -food, and a good conscience. Deeply attached to his niece, -Rachel, he had, otherwise, many friends, many interests, -many happinesses, all of a small bird-like amiable character. -He bubbled with relief because he was not compelled, any -longer, to sustain the Beaminster character. He had beautiful -white hair, rosy cheeks, and perfect clothes. He often -dined at the Trenchard’s house with Rachel—he called himself -‘Roddy’s Apology.’ The Trenchards liked him because -he thought very highly of the Trenchards.</p> - -<p>He sat beside Katherine at dinner and chattered to her. -Philip sat on her side of the table, and she could not see -him, but when he had entered the drawing-room earlier in -the evening the sudden sight of him had torn aside, as though -with a fierce, almost revengeful gesture, all the mists, the -unrealities, the glories that had, during the last weeks, surrounded -her. She saw him and instantly, as though with -a fall into icy water, was plunged into her old world again. -He looked at her, she thought, as he would look at a stranger. -He did not care for her—he had not even thought about her. -Why had she been so confident during all these strange days? -Her one longing now was to avoid him. With a great effort -she drove her common-sense to her service, talked to him for -a moment or two with her customary quiet, half-humorous -placidity, and went into dinner. She heard his voice now -and then. He was getting on well with Rachel. They would -become great friends. Katherine was glad. Dinner was -interminable; Lord John babbled and babbled and babbled. -Dinner was over. The ladies went into the drawing-room.</p> - -<p>“I like your friend, Katie,” said Rachel. “He’s interesting.”</p> - -<p>“I’m glad you do,” said Katherine.</p> - -<p>The men joined them. Philip was conveyed by Mrs. -Trenchard to the ancient Trenchard cousin, who had a bony -face and an eager, unsatisfied eye. Philip devoted himself -to these.</p> - -<p>Katherine sat and talked to anyone. She was so miserable -that she felt that she had never known before what to be -miserable was. Then, when she was wondering whether the -evening would ever end, she looked up, across the room. -Philip, from his corner, also looked up. Their eyes met -and, at that moment, the fire, hitherto decorously confined -behind its decent bounds, ran golden, brilliant about the -room, up to the ceiling, crackling, flaming. The people in -the room faded, disappeared; there was no furniture there, -the book-cases, the chairs, the tables were gone, the mirror, -blazing with light, burning with some strange heat, shone -down upon chaos. Only, through it all, Katherine and -Philip were standing, their eyes shining, for all to see, and -Heaven, let loose upon a dead, dusty world, poured recklessly -its glories upon them.</p> - -<p>“I was saying,” said Lord John, “that it’s these young -fellows who think they can shoot and can’t who are doin’ -all the harm.”</p> - -<p>Slowly, very slowly Katherine’s soul retreated within its -fortresses again. Slowly the fires faded, Heaven was withdrawn. -For a moment she closed her eyes, then, once more, -she regarded Lord John. “Oh, God! I’m so happy!” something -within her was saying, “I shall be absurd and impossible -in a moment if I can’t do something with my happiness!”</p> - -<p>She was saved by the ancient cousin’s deciding that it -was late. She always ended an evening party by declaring -that it was later than she could ever have supposed. She -was followed by Rachel, Lord John and Philip.</p> - -<p>When Philip and Katherine said good-bye their hands -scarcely touched, but they were burning.</p> - -<p>“I will come to-morrow afternoon,” he whispered.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she whispered back to him.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Through the history of that old Westminster house there -ran the thread of many of such moments, now it could not -be surprised nor even so greatly stirred, whispering through -its passages and corridors. “Here it is again.... Pleasant -enough for the time. I wish them luck, poor dears, but I’ve -never known it answer. This new breath, out through my -rafters, up through my floors, down my chimneys, in at my -windows—just the same as it used to be. Very pleasant -while it lasts—poor young things.”</p> - -<p>It was only natural that the House, long practised in the -affairs of men, should perceive these movements in advance -of the Trenchard family. As to warning the Trenchards, -that was not the House’s business. It was certainly owing -to no especial virtue of perception that Aunt Aggie decided -that she would spend the afternoon of the day following the -dinner-party in the drawing-room.</p> - -<p>This decision was owing to the physical fact that she -fancied that she had a slight cold, and the spiritual one -that her sister Harriet had said: would she mind being most -unselfish: would she stay in and receive callers as she, Harriet, -was compelled to attend an unfortunate Committee? -There was nothing that Aunt Aggie could have preferred -to sitting close to the drawing-room fire, eating muffin if -alone, and being gracious were there company. However, -Harriet had said that it would be unselfish—therefore unselfish -it was.</p> - -<p>Katherine, it appeared, also intended to stay at home.</p> - -<p>“You needn’t, my dear,” said Aunt Aggie, “I promised -your mother. I had rather looked forward to going to the -Misset-Faunders’, but never mind—I promised your -mother.”</p> - -<p>“I’m sure it’s better for your cold that you shouldn’t go -out,” said Katherine. “<span class='it'>I</span> think you ought to be upstairs—in -bed with a hot bottle.”</p> - -<p>“My cold’s nothing”—Aunt Aggie’s voice was sharp, -“Certainly the Misset-Faunders wouldn’t have hurt it. I -could have gone in a cab. But I promised your mother.... -It’s a pity. They always have music on their second -Fridays. Alice plays the violin very well ... and I dare -say, after all, no one will come this afternoon. You really -needn’t bother to stay in, Katherine.”</p> - -<p>“I think I will to-day,” said Katherine quietly.</p> - -<p>So aunt and niece sat, one on each side of the fire, waiting. -Katherine was very quiet, and Aunt Aggie, who, like -all self-centred people, was alarmed by silence, spun a little -web of chatter round and round the room.</p> - -<p>“It was all quite pleasant last night I thought; I must -say Lord John can make himself very agreeable if he pleases. -How did you think Rachel was looking? I wanted to ask -her about Michael, who had a nasty little cold last week, -but Mr. Mark quite absorbed her—talking about his Russia, -I suppose. I don’t suppose anyone will come this afternoon. -The very last thing Clare Faunder said on Sunday was -‘Mind you come on Friday. We’ve some special music on -Friday, and I know how you love it.’ But of course one must -help your mother when one can. Your Aunt Betty would -take one of her walks. Walking in London seems to me -such an odd thing to do. If everyone walked what would -the poor cabmen and busses do? One must think of others, -especially with the cold weather coming on.”</p> - -<p>Her voice paused and then dropped; she looked sharply -across at Katherine, and realized that the girl had not been -listening. She was staring up into the Mirror; in her eyes -was the look of burning, dreaming expectation that had on -that other afternoon been so alarming.</p> - -<p>At that moment Rocket opened the door and announced -Philip Mark.</p> - -<p>Katherine’s eyes met Philip’s for an instant, then they -travelled to Aunt Aggie. That lady rose with the little -tremor of half-nervous, half-gratified greeting that she always -bestowed on a guest. She disliked Mr. Mark cordially, -but that was no reason why the memory of an hour or two -filled with close attention from a young man should not -brighten to-morrow’s reminiscences. She was conscious also -that she was keeping guard over Katherine. Not for an -instant would she leave that room until Mr. Mark had also -left it. She looked at the two young people, Katherine -flushed with the fire, Philip flushed with the frosty day, -and regarded with satisfaction their distance one from the -other. Tea was brought; life was very civilised; the doors -were all tightly closed.</p> - -<p>Philip had come with the determined resolve of asking -Katherine to marry him. Last night he had not slept. With -a glorious Katherine at his side he had paced his room, his -soul in the stars, his body somewhere underground. All day -he had waited for a decent hour to arrive. He had almost -run to the house. Now he was faced by Aunt Aggie. As -he smiled at her he could have taken her little body, her -bundle of clothes, her dried little soul, crunched it to nothing -in his hands and flung it into the fire.</p> - -<p>Although he gave no sign of outward dismay, he was raging -with impatience. He would not look at Katherine lest, -borne upon some wave of passion stronger than he, he should -have rushed across the room, caught her to his side, and so -defied all the Trenchard decencies; he knew that it was -wiser, at present, to preserve them.</p> - -<p>They talked about Rachel Seddon, Dinner-parties, Cold -Weather, Dancing, Exercise, growing Stout, Biscuits, the best -Church in London, Choirs, Committees, Aunt Aggie’s duties, -growing Thin, Sleeplessness, Aunt Aggie’s trials, Chilblains, -Cold Weather.... At this renewed appearance of the -weather Philip noticed an old calf-bound book lying upon -a little table at his side. Behind his eyes there flashed the -discovery of an idea.</p> - -<p>“Pride and Prejudice,” he said.</p> - -<p>“Oh!” cried Katherine. “That’s one of Father’s precious -Jane Austen’s—a first edition. He keeps them all locked -up in his study. Henry must have borrowed that one. -They’re never allowed to lie about.”</p> - -<p>Philip picked it up. From between the old leaves, brown -a little now, with the black print sunk deep into their very -heart, there stole a scent of old age, old leather, old tobacco, -old fun and wisdom.</p> - -<p>Philip had opened it where Mr. Collins, proposing to -Elizabeth Bennet, declines to accept her refusal.</p> - -<p>“I am not now to learn,” replied Mr. Collins, with a -formal wave of the hand, “that it is usual with young ladies -to reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean -to accept, when he first applies for their favour; and that -sometimes the refusal is repeated a second, or even a third -time. I am, therefore, by no means discouraged by what -you have just said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar -ere long.”</p> - -<p>“Upon my word, sir,” cried Elizabeth, “your hope is -rather an extraordinary one after my declaration. I do -assure you that I am not one of those young ladies (if such -young ladies there are) who are so daring as to risk their -happiness on the chance of being asked a second time. I am -perfectly serious in my refusal. You could not make me -happy, and I am convinced that I am the last woman in the -world who would make you so. Nay, were your friend Lady -Catherine to know me, I am persuaded she would find me -in every respect ill-qualified for the situation.”</p> - -<p>“Were it certain that Lady Catherine would think so,” -said Mr. Collins very gravely—“but I cannot imagine that -her ladyship would at all disapprove of you. And you may -be certain that when I have the honour of seeing her again, -I shall speak in the highest terms of your modesty, economy, -and other amiable qualifications.”</p> - -<p>“ ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I always thought,” said Aunt -Aggie with amiable approval, “a very pretty little tale. It’s -many years since I read it. Father read it aloud to us, I -remember, when we were girls.”</p> - -<p>Philip turned a little from her, as though he would have -the light more directly over his shoulder. He had taken -a piece of paper from his pocket, and in an instant he had -written in pencil:</p> - -<p>“I love you. Will you marry me? Philip.”</p> - -<p>This he slipped between the pages.</p> - -<p>He knew that Katherine had watched him; very gravely -he passed the book across to her, then he turned to Aunt -Aggie, and with a composure that surprised himself, paid -her a little of the deference that she needed.</p> - -<p>Katherine, with hands that trembled, had opened the -book. She found the piece of paper, saw the words, and -then, in a sort of dreaming bewilderment, read to the bottom -of the old printed page.</p> - -<p>“Mr. Collins thus addressed her:</p> - -<p>“When I do myself the honour of speaking to you next on -this subject, I shall hope to receive a more favourable answer -than you have now given me; though I am far from accusing -you of cruelty at present, because I know it to be the -established custom of your sex to reject a man on the first—”</p> - -<p>She did not turn the page; for a moment she waited, her -mind quite empty of any concentrated thought, her eyes seeing -nothing but the shining, glittering expanse of the Mirror.</p> - -<p>Very quickly, using a gold pencil that hung on to her -watch chain, she wrote below his name: “Yes. Katherine.”</p> - -<p>“Let me see the book, my dear,” said Aunt Aggie. “You -must know, Mr. Mark, that I care very little for novels. -There is so much to do in this world, so many people that -need care, so many things that want attention, that I think -one is scarcely justified in spending the precious time over -stories. But I own Miss Austen is a memory—a really -precious memory to me. Those little simple stories have -their charm still, Mr. Mark.... Yes.... Thank you, -my dear.”</p> - -<p>She took the book from Katherine, and began very slowly -to turn over the pages, bending upon Miss Austen’s labours -exactly the look of kindly patronage that she would have -bent upon that lady herself had she been present.</p> - -<p>Katherine glanced at Philip, half rose in her chair, and -then sat down again. She felt, as she waited for the dreadful -moment to pass, a sudden perception of the family—until -this moment they had not occurred to her. She saw -her mother, her father, her grandfather, her aunts, Henry, -Millie. Let this affair be suddenly flung upon them as a -result of Aunt Aggie’s horrified discovery and the tumult -would be, indeed, terrible. The silence in the room, during -those moments, almost forced her to cry out.</p> - -<p>Had Philip not been there she would have rushed to her -aunt, torn the book from her hands, and surrendered to the -avalanche.</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie paused—she peered forward over the page. -With a little cry Katherine stood up, her knees trembling, -her eyes dimmed, as though the room were filled with fog.</p> - -<p>“I doubt very much,” said Aunt Aggie, “whether I could -read it now. It would seem strangely old-fashioned, I daresay, -I’m sure to a modern young man like yourself, Mr. -Mark.”</p> - -<p>Philip took the book from her; he opened it, read Katherine’s -answer, laid the volume very carefully upon the table.</p> - -<p>“I can assure, Miss Trenchard,” he said, “a glance is -enough to assure me that ‘Pride and Prejudice’ is and always -will be my favourite novel.”</p> - -<p>Katherine moved to the table, picked up the book, and -slipped the paper from the leaves into her belt. For an instant -her hand touched Philip’s.</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie looked at them, and satisfied with hot tea, a -fire, a perfect conscience and a sense of her real importance -in the business of the world, thought to herself—“Well, this -afternoon at any rate those two have had no chance.”</p> - -<p>She was drowsy and anxious for a little rest before dinner, -but her guard, she assured herself with a pleasant little bit -of conscious self-sacrifice, should not be relaxed....</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Eleven had boomed that night, from the Abbey clock, -when Philip Mark took his stand opposite the old house, -looking up, as all the lovers in fiction and most of the lovers -in real life have done, at his mistress’ window. A little red -glow of light was there. The frosty night had showered its -sky with stars, frozen into the blue itself in this clear air, -a frozen sea; an orange moon scooped into a dazzling curve, -lay like a sail that had floated from its vessel, idly above -the town; the plane trees rustled softly once and again, as -though, now that the noise of men had died away, they might -whisper in comfort together. Sometimes a horn blew from -the river, or a bell rang.</p> - -<p>Philip waited there, and worshipped with all the humility -and reverence of a human soul at the threshold of Love.</p> - -<p>The lights in the house went out. Now all the Trenchards -were lying upon their backs, their noses towards the ceilings, -the ceilings that shut off that starry sky. They were very -secure, fenced round by Westminster. No danger could -threaten their strong fortress.... Their very dreams were -winged about with security, their happy safety was penetrated -by no consciousness of that watching, motionless figure.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2 id='ch06'>CHAPTER VI<br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>THE SHOCK</span></h2> - -<p>George Trenchard’s study expressed, very pleasantly, -his personality. The room’s walls were of a -deep warm red, and covering three sides ran high book-cases -with glass fronts; within these book-cases were beautiful new -editions, ugly old ones, books, for the greater part, relating -to his favourite period, all ranged and ordered with the most -delicate care. The windows of the room were tall and bright -even on dull and foggy days, the carpet soft and thick, the -leather chairs large and yielding, the fireplace wide and shining. -Most significant of all was his writing-table; upon this -lay everything that any writer could possibly desire, from -the handsomest of gold inkstands to the minutest of elastic -bands. There was also here a little bust of Sir Walter Scott. -Within this room George Trenchard knew, always, perfect -happiness—a very exceptional man, indeed, that he could -know it so easily. He knew it by the simple expedient of -shutting off entirely from his consciousness the rest of mankind; -his study door once closed, he forgot his family absolutely. -No one was allowed to disturb or interrupt him; it -was understood that he was at work upon a volume that -would ultimately make another of that series that contained -already such well-known books as “William Wordsworth -and his Circle,” “Hazlitt—The Man in his Letters” and -“The Life of Thomas de Quincey.” These had appeared a -number of years ago; he had been indeed a young man when -he had written them. It was supposed that a work entitled -“The Lake Poets, a Critical Survey” would appear ‘Next -Autumn’.</p> - -<p>For some time now the literary schemes of the weekly -journals had announced this. George Trenchard only -laughed at enquiries: “It takes a damned long time, you -know,” he said, “ ’tisn’t any use rushing the thing.” He -enjoyed, however, immensely, making notes. From half-past -nine in the morning until half-past one, behind his -closed doors, he considered the early Nineteenth Century, -found it admirable (Scott seemed to him the perfect type) -took first one book, then another from his book-shelves, wrote -a few lines, and before his fire imagined the Trenchards -of that period, considered their food and their drink, their -morals, their humour and their literature. Hazlitt’s essays -seemed to him the perfection, not of English prose, but of -a temporal and spiritual attitude. “Hang it all,” he would -conclude, “we’re a rotten lot now-a-days.” He did not worry -over this conclusion, but it gave him the opportunity of a -superior attitude during the rest of the day when he joined -the world. “If you knew as much about the early Nineteenth -Century as I do,” he seemed to say, “you wouldn’t -be so pleased with yourselves.” He did not, however, express -his superiority in any unpleasant manner. There was -never anyone more amiable. All that he wanted was that -everyone should be happy, and to be that, he had long ago -discovered, one must not go too deep. “Keep out of close -relationships and you’re safe” might be considered his advice -to young people. He had certainly avoided them all his life, -and avoided them by laughing at them. He couldn’t abide -“gloomy fellows” and on no account would he allow a ‘scene’. -He had never lost his temper.</p> - -<p>During the months that he spent at his place in Glebeshire -he pursued a plan identically similar. He possessed an invaluable -‘factotum’, a certain James Ritchie, who took -everything in a way of management off his hands. Ritchie -in Glebeshire, Mrs. Trenchard and Rocket in London. Life -was made very simple for him.</p> - -<p>As has been said elsewhere, Katherine, alone of his family, -had in some degree penetrated his indifferent jollity; -that was because she really did seem to him to have some -of the Early Nineteenth Century characteristics. She -seemed to him (he did not know her very well) tranquil, -humorous, unadventurous, but determined. She reminded -him of Elizabeth Bennet, and he always fancied (he regarded -her, of course, from a distance,) that she would make -a very jolly companion. She seemed to him wiser than the -others, with a little strain of satirical humour in her comment -on things that pleased him greatly. “She should have -been the boy, and Henry the girl,” he would say. He thought -Henry a terrible ass. He was really anxious that Katherine -should be happy. She deserved it, he thought, because she -was a little wiser than the others. He considered sometimes -her future, and thought that it would be agreeable to have -her always about the place, but she must not be an old maid. -She was too good for that. “She’d breed a good stock,” -he would say. “She must marry a decent fellow—one day.” -He delighted in the gentle postponement of possibly charming -climaxes. His size, geniality and good appetite may be -attributed very largely to his happy gifts of procrastination. -“Always leave until to-morrow what ought to be done to-day” -had made him the best-tempered of men.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>After luncheon on the day that followed Philip’s tea with -Aunt Aggie, George Trenchard retired to his study “to -finish a chapter”. He intended to finish it in his head -rather than upon paper, and it was even possible that a nap -would postpone the conclusion; he lit his pipe and preferred -to be comfortable—it was then that Rocket informed him -that Mr. Mark had called, wished to see him alone, would -not keep him long, apologised, but it was important.</p> - -<p>“Why the devil couldn’t he come to lunch? What a time -to appear!” But Trenchard liked Philip, Philip amused -him—he was so alive and talked such ridiculous nonsense. -“Of course he would see him!”</p> - -<p>Then when Trenchard saw Philip Mark standing inside -the room, waiting, with a smile half-nervous, half-friendly, -the sight of that square, sturdy young man gave him to his -own uneasy surprise a moment of vague and unreasonable -alarm. George Trenchard was not accustomed to feelings -of alarm; it was his principle in life that he should deny -himself such things.</p> - -<p>He connected now, however, this very momentary sensation -with other little sensations that he had felt before in -Philip’s company. The young man was so damnably full -of his experiences, so eager to compare one thing with another, -so insistent upon foreign places and changes in England -and what we’d all got to do about it. Trenchard did -not altogether dislike this activity. That was the devil of -it. It would never do to change his life at this time of -day....</p> - -<p>He stood, large, genial, and rosy, in front of his fire. -“Well, young man, what are you descending upon us at -this hour for? Why couldn’t you come to lunch?”</p> - -<p>“I wanted to speak to you seriously about something. I -wanted to see you alone.”</p> - -<p>“Well, here I am. Sit down. Have a cigar.” Trenchard -saw that Philip was nervous, and he liked him the better -for that. “He’s a nice young fellow, nice and clean and -healthy—not too cocksure either, although he’s clever.”</p> - -<p>Philip, on his part, felt, at this moment, a desperate determination -to make all the Trenchard family love him. -They <span class='it'>must</span>.... They <span class='sc'>MUST</span>.</p> - -<p>His heart was bursting with charity, with fine illusions, -with self-deprecation, with Trenchard exultation. He -carried the flaming banner of one who loves and knows that -he is loved in return.</p> - -<p>He looked round upon George Trenchard’s book-cases and -thought that there could, surely, be nothing finer than writing -critical books about early Nineteenth Century Literature.</p> - -<p>“I love Katherine,” he said, sitting on the very edge of -his arm-chair. “And she loves me. We want to be married.”</p> - -<p>George Trenchard stared at him.</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m damned!” he said at last, “you’ve got some -cheek!” His first impression was one of a strange illumination -around and about Katherine, as though his daughter -had been standing before him in the dark and then had suddenly -been surrounded with blazing candles. Although he -had, as has been said, already considered the possibility of -Katherine’s marriage, he had never considered the possibility -of her caring for someone outside the family. That -struck him, really, as amazing. That made him regard his -daughter, for a moment, as someone quite new and strange.</p> - -<p>He burst into laughter.</p> - -<p>“It’s ridiculous!” he said. “Why! you two have scarcely -seen one another!”</p> - -<p>Philip blushed, but looked up into Trenchard’s face with -eyes that were strangely pleading for a man who could, at -other times, be so firmly authoritative.</p> - -<p>“I know that it must seem so to you,” he said. “But -really we <span class='it'>have</span> met a good deal. I knew from the very beginning.... -I’ll make her happy,” he ended, almost defiantly, -as though he were challenging some unseen enemy.</p> - -<p>“Well, state your case,” said Trenchard.</p> - -<p>“I love her,” he stammered a little, then his voice cleared -and he stared straight before him at Trenchard’s velvet -waistcoat. “Of course there’ve been people in my life before, -but I’ve never felt anything like this. I should like -to tell you that my life is absolutely free from any entanglements—of -any kind. I’m thirty and as fit as a fiddle. My -share in the business and some other things come to about -fifteen hundred a year. It’s all very decently invested, but, -of course, I’d show you all that. I’m not bad about managing -those things, although you mightn’t think so. I want -to buy a little place somewhere in England and settle down—a -little place with a bit of land. I do think I could make -Katherine happy—I’d devote myself to that.”</p> - -<p>“She cares for you?” asked Trenchard.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Philip quite simply.</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m damned,” said Trenchard.</p> - -<p>This was not so rude as it appeared to be. He was not -thinking about Philip at all—only about Katherine. She -had fallen in love, she, Katherine, the staid, humorous, -comfortable companion. He had not realised, until now, -that he had always extracted much complacent comfort from -the belief that she cared for him more than for any other -member of the family. He did not know that every individual -member extracted from Katherine the same comfort. -He looked at Philip. What did she see in the man to lead -her to such wild courses? He was nice enough to look at, -to listen to—but to love? It seemed to him that his quiet -daughter must have been indulging in melodrama.</p> - -<p>“Why, you know,” he cried at last, “it never entered my -head—Katherine’s marrying anybody. She’s very young—you’re -very young too.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know,” said Philip, “I’m thirty—lots of men -have families by then.”</p> - -<p>“No, but you’re young though—both of you,” persisted -Trenchard. “I don’t think I want Katherine to marry anybody.”</p> - -<p>“Isn’t that rather selfish?” said Philip.</p> - -<p>“Yes. I suppose it is,” said Trenchard, laughing, “but -it’s natural.”</p> - -<p>“It isn’t, you see,” said Philip eagerly, “as though I -wanted to take her away to Russia or in any way deprive -you of her. I know how much she is to all of you. She’s -sure to marry some day, isn’t she? and it’s much better that -she should marry someone who’s going to settle down here -and live as you all do than someone who’d go right off with -her.”</p> - -<p>“It’s all right, I shouldn’t let him,” said Trenchard. He -bent his eyes upon the eager lover, and again said to himself -that he liked the young man. It would certainly be -much pleasanter that Katherine should care about a fine -healthy young fellow, a good companion after dinner, a -good listener with a pleasant sense of humour, than that -she should force into the heart of the family some impossibility—not -that Katherine was likely to care about impossibilities, -but you never knew; the world to-day was so full of -impossibilities....</p> - -<p>“I think we’ll send for Katherine,” he said.</p> - -<p>He rang the bell, Rocket came, Katherine was summoned. -As they waited Trenchard delivered himself of a random, -half-humorous, half-conscious, half-unconscious discourse:</p> - -<p>“You know, I like you—and I don’t often like modern -young men. I wouldn’t mind you at all as a son-in-law, -and you’d suit me as a son much better than Henry does. -At least I think so, but then I know you very slightly, and -I may dislike you intensely later on. We none of us know -you, you see. We never had anybody drop in upon us as -you did.... It doesn’t seem to me a bit like Katherine—and -I don’t suppose she knows you any better than the -rest of us do. <span class='it'>She</span> mayn’t like you later on. I can’t say -that marriage is going to be what you think it is. You’re -very unsettling. You won’t keep quiet and take things -easily, and Katherine is sure not to like that. She’s as -quiet as anything.... If it were Millie now. I suppose -you wouldn’t care to have Millie instead? she’d suit you -much better. Then, you know, the family won’t like your -doing it. My wife won’t like it.” He paused, then, standing, -his legs wide apart, his hands deep in his pockets, roared -with laughter: “It <span class='it'>will</span> disturb them all—not that it won’t -be good for them perhaps. You’re not to think though that -I’ve given my consent—at any rate you’re not to marry her -for a long time until we see what you’re like. I’m not to -give her just to anyone who comes along, you know. I -rather wish you’d stayed in Russia. It’s very unsettling.”</p> - -<p>The door opened—Katherine entered. She looked at -Philip, smiled, then came across to her father and put her -arm through his. She said nothing, but was radiant; her -father felt her hand tremble as it touched his, and that suddenly -moved him as, perhaps, nothing had ever moved him -before.</p> - -<p>“Do you want to marry him?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she answered.</p> - -<p>“But you hardly know him.”</p> - -<p>“I know him very well indeed,” she said, looking at -Philip’s eyes.</p> - -<p>“But I don’t want you to marry anyone,” her father went -on. “We were all very nice as we were.... What’ll you -do if I say you’re not to marry him?”</p> - -<p>“You won’t say that,” she answered, smiling at him.</p> - -<p>“What do you want to marry him for?” he asked. “He’s -just an ordinary young man. You don’t know him,” he repeated, -“you can’t yet, you’ve seen so little of him. Then -you’ll upset us all here very much—it will be very unpleasant -for everybody. Do you really think it’s worth it?”</p> - -<p>Katherine laughed. “I don’t think I can help it, father,” -she answered.</p> - -<p>Deep in Trenchard’s consciousness was the conviction, -very common to men of good digestion over fifty, that had -he been God he would have managed the affairs of the world -very agreeably for everybody. He had not, often, been in -the position of absolute power, but that was because he had -not often taken the trouble to come out of his comfortable -shelter and see what people were doing. He felt now that -he could be Jove for a quarter of an hour without any discomfort -to himself—a very agreeable feeling.</p> - -<p>He was also the most kind-hearted of men. “Seriously, -Katherine,” he said, separating himself from her, drawing -his legs together and frowning, “you’re over age. You can -do what you like. In these days children aren’t supposed to -consider their parents, and I don’t really see why they -should ... it’s not much I’ve done for you. But you’re -fond of us. We’ve rather hung together as a family.... -I like your young man, but I’ve only known him a week or -two, and I can’t answer for him. You know <span class='it'>us</span>, but you -don’t know <span class='it'>him</span>. Are you sure you’re making a wise exchange?”</p> - -<p>Here Philip broke in eagerly but humbly. “It isn’t that -there need be any change,” he said. “Katherine shall belong -to you all just as much as ever she did.”</p> - -<p>“Thank you,” said Trenchard laughing.</p> - -<p>“I’ll be proud,” Philip cried, impulsively, jumping up -from his chair, “if you’ll let me marry Katherine, but I’ll -never forget that she was yours first. Of course I can’t -come into the family as though I’d always been one of you, -but I’ll do my best.... I’ll do my best....”</p> - -<p>“My dear boy,” said Trenchard, touched by the happy -atmosphere that he seemed, with a nod of his head, to fling -about him, “don’t think <span class='it'>I’m</span> preventing you. I want everyone -to be pleased, I always have. If you and Katherine -have made up your minds about this, there isn’t very much -for me to say. If I thought you’d make her miserable I’d -show you the door, but I don’t think you will. All I say is—we -don’t know you well enough yet. Nor does she. After -all, does she?” He paused, and then, enjoying the sense -of their listening attention, thought that he would make a -little speech. “You’re like children in a dark wood, you -know. You think you’ve found one another—caught hold -of one another—but when there’s a bit of a moon or something -to see one another by you may find out you’ve each -of you caught hold of someone quite different. Then, there -you are, you see. That’s all I can tell you about marriage; -all your lives you’ll be in the forest, thinking you’ve made -a clutch at somebody, just for comfort’s sake. But you never -know whom you’re catching—it’s someone different every -five minutes, even when it’s the same person. Well, well—all -I mean is that you mustn’t marry for a year at least.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! a year!” cried Philip.</p> - -<p>“Yes, a year. Won’t hear of it otherwise. What do you -say, Katherine?”</p> - -<p>“I think Philip and I can wait as long as that quite -safely,” she answered, looking at her lover.</p> - -<p>Trenchard held out his hand to Philip. “I congratulate -you,” he said. “If you’ve made Katherine love you you’re -a lucky fellow. Dear me—yes, you are.” He put his hand -on Philip’s shoulder. “You’d better be good to her,” he -said, “or there’ll be some who’ll make you pay for it.”</p> - -<p>“Be good to her! My God!” answered Philip.</p> - -<p>“Now you’d better clear. Reveal yourselves to the family.... -There, Katherine, my dear, give me a kiss. Don’t -neglect me or I shall poison the villain.... There, there—God -bless you.”</p> - -<p>He watched them depart with real affection both for them -and for himself.</p> - -<p>“I’m not such a bad father after all,” he thought as he -settled down into his chair.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Outside the study door, in the dark corner of the little -passage, Philip kissed Katherine. Her lips met his with a -passion that had in it complete and utter self-surrender.</p> - -<p>They did not speak.</p> - -<p>At last, drawing herself gently away from him, she said: -“<span class='it'>I’ll</span> tell Mother—I think it would be better not for both -of us....”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” he whispered back, as though they were conspirators. -“I don’t think I’ll face them all now—unless you’d -like me to help you. I’ll come in to-night.”</p> - -<p>With a strange, fierce, almost desperate action she caught -his arm and held him for a moment with his cheek against -hers.</p> - -<p>“Oh! Philip ... my <span class='it'>dear</span>!” Her voice caught and -broke. They kissed once again, and then, very quietly, went -back into the world.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile they had been watched; Henry had watched -them. He had been crossing at the farther end of the little -passage, and stopping, holding himself back against the wall, -had seen, with staring eyes, the two figures. He knew instantly. -They were Philip and Katherine. He saw Katherine’s -hand as it pressed into Philip’s shoulder; he saw -Philip’s back set with so fierce a strength that Henry’s knees -trembled before the energy of it. He was disgusted—he -was wildly excited. “This is real life.... I’ve seen something -at last. I didn’t know people kissed like that, but -they oughtn’t to do it in the passage. Anyone might see -them.... Katherine!”</p> - -<p>Staggered by the contemplation of an utterly new Katherine -with whom, for the rest of his life, he would be compelled -to deal, he slipped into a room as he heard their steps. -When they had gone he came out; he knocked on his father’s -door:</p> - -<p>“I’m sorry to bother you, Father,” he began. “I wanted -to know whether I might borrow—” he stopped; his heart -was beating so wildly that his tongue did not belong to him.</p> - -<p>“Well, get it and cut.” His father looked at him. -“You’ve heard the news, I see.”</p> - -<p>“What news?” said Henry.</p> - -<p>“Philip and Katherine. They’re engaged, they tell me. -Not to marry for a year though.... I thought you’d heard -it by the look of you. What a mess you’re in! Why can’t -you brush your hair? Look at your tie up the back of your -collar! Get your book and go! I’m busy!”</p> - -<p>But Henry went without his book.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Katherine went up to her mother’s room. She would -catch her alone now for half an hour before tea-time, when -many of the family would be assembled, ready for the news. -With such wild happiness was she surrounded that she saw -them all in the light of that happiness; she had always -shared so readily in any piece of good fortune that had ever -befallen any one of them that she did not doubt that now -they too would share in this fortune—this wonderful fortune!—of -hers. She stopped at the little window in the -passage where she had had the first of her little personal -scraps of talk with Philip. Little scraps of talks were all -that they had been, and yet now, looking back upon them, -how weighted they seemed with heavy golden significance. -The sky was amber-coloured, the Abbey tower sharply black, -and the low archway of Dean’s Yard, that she could just -catch with her eye, was hooped against the sky, pushing upwards -to have its share in the evening light. There was -perfect quiet in the house and beyond it, as she went to -her mother’s room. This room was the very earliest thing -that she could remember, this, or her mother’s bedroom in -the Glebeshire house. It was a bedroom that exactly expressed -Mrs. Trenchard, large, clumsy, lit with five windows, -mild and full of unarranged trifles that nevertheless arranged -themselves. At the foot of the large bed, defended -with dark sateen faded curtains, was a comfortable old-fashioned -sofa. Further away in the middle of a clear space -was a table with a muddle of things upon it—a doll half-clothed, -a writing-case, a silver ink-stand, photographs of -Millie, Henry and Katherine, a little younger than they -were now, a square silver clock, a pile of socks with a needle -sticking sharply out of them, a little oak book-case with -‘Keble’s Christian Year’, Charlotte Yonge’s ‘Pillars of the -House’, two volumes of Bishop Westcott’s ‘Sermons’ and -Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Wives and Daughters’. There was also a -little brass tray with a silver thimble, tortoiseshell paper-knife, -a little mat made of bright-coloured beads, a reel of -red silk and a tiny pocket calendar. Beside the bed there -was a small square oaken table with a fine silver Crucifix -and a Bible and a prayer book and copy of ‘Before the -Throne’ in dark blue leather. The pictures on the walls—they -hung against a wall-paper of pink roses, faded like the -bedroom curtains and the dark red carpet, but comfortably, -happily faded—were prints of ‘Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus’, -‘Crossing the Brook’, and ‘Christ leaving the -Temple’. These three pictures were the very earliest things -of Katherine’s remembrance. There were also several photographs -of old-fashioned but sturdy ladies and gentlemen—an -officer in uniform, a lady with high shoulders against a background -of a grey rolling sea. There were photographs of -the children at different ages. There were many cupboards, -and these, although they were closed, seemed to bulge, as -though they contained more clothes than was comfortable -for them.</p> - -<p>There was a faint scent in the room of eau-de-cologne and -burning candles. The little clock on the table gave an -irritating, self-important whirr and clatter now and then, -and it had been doing that for a great many years.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard was lying upon her sofa making a little -crimson jacket for the half-clothed doll. She did not move -when Katherine came in, but went on with her work, her -fat, rather clumsy-looking fingers moving very comfortably -up and down the little piece of red cloth.</p> - -<p>“Who is that?” she said.</p> - -<p>“It’s I, Mother,” said Katherine, remaining by the door.</p> - -<p>“Ah, it’s you, dear,” her mother answered. “Just give -me that doll on the table. It’s for Miss Sawyer’s Bazaar -in the Hampstead Rooms. I said I’d dress three dolls, and -I only remembered this morning that they’ve got to go off to-morrow. -I thought I’d snatch this quiet time before tea. -Yes, it’s for Miss Sawyer, poor thing. I’m sure I shall -run out of red silk, and I don’t suppose there’s any in the -house. Did you want anything, Katherine?”</p> - -<p>Katherine came forward, picked up the doll from the -table and gave it to her mother. Then she went to one of -the broad high windows and stood looking out. She could -see the river, over whose face the evening, studded with -golden lamps, was dropping its veil. She could see, very -dimly, Westminster Bridge, with dots and little splashes -of black passing and repassing with the mechanical indifference -of some moving toy. The sight of her mother’s room -had suddenly told her that her task would be a supremely -difficult one; she did not know why she had not realised -that before. Her personal happiness was overwhelmed by -her consciousness of her mother; nothing at this moment -seemed to be of importance save their relations, the one to -the other. “I’m going to hurt her,” she thought, as she -turned round from the window. All her life it had been her -urgent passion to save her mother from pain.</p> - -<p>“Mother dear,” she said, “I’ve got something very important -to tell you. Mr. Mark has asked me to marry him, -and I’ve accepted him. Father says we’re to wait for a -year.”</p> - -<p>She moved forward and then stopped. Mrs. Trenchard -looked at her, suddenly, as a house of cards crumples up at -a single touch, her face puckered as though she were going -to cry. For an instant it was like the face of a baby. It -was so swift that in a flash it was gone, and only in the -eyes there was still the effect of it. Her hands trembled -so that she forced them down upon her lap. Then her face, -except for her eyes, which were terrified, wore again exactly -her look of placid, rather stupid composure. The force that -she had driven into her hands had done its work, for now -she could raise them again; in one hand she held the doll -and in another the little red jacket.</p> - -<p>“My <span class='it'>dear</span> Katherine!” she said. Then—“Just give me -that reel of silk, dear, on the table.” Then—“But it’s -absurd—you don’t—” she seemed to struggle with her words -as though she were beating back some other personality that -threatened to rise and overwhelm her. “You don’t—” -She found her words. “You don’t know him.”</p> - -<p>Katherine broke in eagerly. “I loved him at the very -beginning I think. I felt I knew him at once. I don’t -know; it’s so hard to see how it began, but I can’t help it, -Mother. I’ve known it myself for weeks now; Mother—” -She knelt down beside the sofa and looked up, and then, at -something in her mother’s eyes, looked down again. “Please—please—I -know it seems strange to you now, but soon -you’ll get to know him—then you’ll be glad—” She broke -off, and there followed a long silence.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard put down the doll very carefully, and -then, with her hands folded on her lap, lay back on her sofa. -She watched the dark evening as it gathered in beyond the -windows; she heard her maid’s knock on the door, watched -her draw the curtains and switch on the light.</p> - -<p>It was only four o’clock, but it was very cold.</p> - -<p>“I think I’ll have my shawl, dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard. -“The Indian one that your Uncle Timothy gave me—it’s -in the third drawer—there—to the right.... Thank you. -I must go down. Grandfather’s coming down to tea this -afternoon.”</p> - -<p>Katherine drew closer to the sofa, after she had brought -the shawl; she laid her hand upon her mother’s, which were -very cold.</p> - -<p>“But, Mother, you’ve said nothing! I know that now it -must seem as though I’d done it without asking you, without -telling you, but I didn’t know myself until yesterday afternoon. -It came so suddenly.”</p> - -<p>“Yesterday afternoon?” Mrs. Trenchard drew her shawl -closely about her. “But how could he—Mr. Mark—yesterday -afternoon? You weren’t alone with him—Aggie was -there. Surely she—”</p> - -<p>“No. He wrote on a piece of paper and slipped it across -to me, and I said ‘yes.’ We both felt we couldn’t wait.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t like him,” Mrs. Trenchard said slowly. “You -knew that I didn’t like him.”</p> - -<p>The colour rose in Katherine’s cheeks.</p> - -<p>“No,” she said, “I knew that you thought some of his -ideas odd. But you didn’t know him.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t like him,” said Mrs. Trenchard again. “I could -never like him. He isn’t a religious man. He has a bad -effect upon Henry. You, Katherine, to accept him when -you know that he doesn’t go to church and was so rude -to poor Mr. Seymour and thinks Russia such a fine country! -I can’t think,” said Mrs. Trenchard, her hands trembling -again, “what’s come over you.”</p> - -<p>Katherine got up from her knees. “You won’t think that -when you know him better. It’s only that he’s seen more -of the world than we have. He’ll change and we’ll change, -and perhaps it will be better for all of us. Down in Glebeshire -we always have done so much the same things and -seen the same people, and even here in London—”</p> - -<p>Her mother gave a little cry, not sharp for anyone else -in the world, but very sharp indeed for Mrs. Trenchard.</p> - -<p>“You! Katherine—you! If it had been Millie!”</p> - -<p>They looked at one another then in silence. They were -both of them conscious of an intensity of love that they had -borne towards one another through the space of a great many -years—a love that nothing else had ever approached. But -it was an emotion that had always been expressed in the -quietest terms. Both to Katherine and her mother demonstrations -were unknown. Katherine felt now, at what -promised to be, perhaps, the sharpest crisis that her life had -yet experienced, an urgent desire to break through, to fling -her arms round her mother, to beat down all barriers, to assure -her that whatever emotion might come to her, nothing -could touch their own perfect relationship. But the habits -of years muffled everything in thick, thick wrappings—it -was impossible to break through.</p> - -<p>“Your father is pleased?” said Mrs. Trenchard.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” answered Katherine. “He likes Philip. But we -must wait a year.”</p> - -<p>“Your father has never told me anything. Never.” She -got up slowly from the sofa.</p> - -<p>“He couldn’t have told you,” Katherine said eagerly. -“He has only just known. I came straight to you from -him.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard now stood, looking rather lost, in the -middle of her room; the shawl had slipped half from her -shoulders, and she seemed, suddenly, an old woman.</p> - -<p>The vision of something helpless in her, as she stood there, -stirred Katherine passionately.</p> - -<p>She took her mother into her arms, stroking her hair, -kissing her cheeks and whispering to her: “Darling—darling—it -doesn’t make any difference to us—it can’t—it -can’t. Nothing can. Nothing.... Nothing!”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard kissed her daughter very quietly, remained -in her embrace for a little, then drew herself away -and went to her mirror. She tidied her hair, patted her -dress, put some eau-de-Cologne on her handkerchief, laid -the shawl carefully away in the drawer.</p> - -<p>“I must go down now. Father will want his tea. I’ll -take the doll—I shan’t have another chance of finishing it.” -She walked to the door, then, turning, said with an intensity -that was amazing in its sudden vehemence and fire: “No -one shall take you from me, Katherine. No one. Let him -do what he likes. No one shall take you.”</p> - -<p>She did not appear an old woman, then, as she faced her -daughter.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, in the drawing-room, the family had already -gathered together as though it were aware that something -had occurred. Mr. Trenchard, Senior, surrounded by his -rugs, his especial table, his silver snuff-box (he never took -snuff in the drawing-room, but liked his box to be there), -a case of spectacles, and the last number of ‘Blackwood’s -Magazine’. Great Aunt Sarah, Aunt Aggie, Aunt Betty, -and Millie. Millie, watching them, was, to her own immense -surprise, sorry for them.</p> - -<p>Millie, watching them, wondered at herself. What had -happened to her? She had returned from Paris, eager to -find herself as securely inside the family as she had always -been—longing after the wide, vague horizons of the outside -world to feel that security. She had laughed at them a little, -perhaps, but she had always understood and approved of -their motives.</p> - -<p>Now she found herself at every turn criticising, wondering, -defending against her own intelligence, as though she -had been the merest stranger. She loved them—all of them—but—how -strange they were! And how terrible of her -that she should find them strange! They were utterly unaware -of any alteration in her; she seemed to herself to -be a spy in their midst....</p> - -<p>Happily, however, they were all, this afternoon, most -comfortably unaware of any criticism from anyone in the -world. They sat about the room, waiting for their tea and -saying very little. They knew one another so well that conversation -was a mere emphasis of platitudes. Aunt Aggie -talked, but nobody listened, unless one of the above-mentioned -assurances were demanded.</p> - -<p>Her dry, sharp little voice, like the fire and the ticking of -the clock, made an agreeable background.</p> - -<p>Upon this innocent gathering, so happy and tranquil, -Henry burst with his news. He came with all the excited -vehemence sprung from his own vision of the lovers. He -could see only that; he did not realise that the others had -not shared his experience. It was almost as though he had -tumbled into the middle of them, so abrupt, so agitated, so -incoherent was he!</p> - -<p>“They’re engaged!” he burst out.</p> - -<p>“My dear Henry!” said Millie. “What’s the matter?”</p> - -<p>“I tell you! Katherine and Mark. They’ve been into -father, and he says they’re to wait a year, but it’s all right. -He says that he didn’t know till they told him. Katherine’s -with Mother now,—Mark’s coming in to-night; Katherine!”</p> - -<p>He broke off, words failed him, and he was suddenly -conscious of his Uncle’s eye.</p> - -<p>“What?” said Aunt Aggie.</p> - -<p>“They’re engaged,” repeated Henry.</p> - -<p>“Whom?” cried Aunt Aggie, ungrammatically, with a -shrill horror that showed that she had already heard.</p> - -<p>“Katie and Philip,” Henry almost screamed in reply.</p> - -<p>What Aunt Aggie, whose eyes were staring as though she -saw ghosts or a man under her bed, would have said to -this no one could say, but Aunt Sarah drove, like a four-wheeled -coach, right across her protruding body.</p> - -<p>Aunt Sarah said: “What are you all talking about? -What’s the matter with Henry? Is he ill? I can’t hear.”</p> - -<p>Millie went up to her. “Katherine’s engaged, Aunt -Sarah, to Mr. Mark.”</p> - -<p>“What do you say about Katherine?”</p> - -<p>“She’s engaged.”</p> - -<p>“She’s what?”</p> - -<p>“<span class='sc'>Engaged!</span>”</p> - -<p>“Who to?”</p> - -<p>“Mr. Mark.”</p> - -<p>“Eh? What?”</p> - -<p>“Mark!”</p> - -<p>At the shouting of that name it did indeed seem that the -very walls and ceiling of that old room would collapse. To -Aunt Aggie, to Millie, to Henry, to Aunt Betty, this raid -upon Katherine struck more deeply than any cynical student -of human nature could have credited. For the moment -Philip Mark was forgotten—only was it apparent to them -all from Grandfather Trenchard and Great Aunt Sarah to -Henry that Katherine, their own absolute property, the -assurance given to them that life would be always secure, -solid, unalterable, had declared publicly, before the world, -that she preferred a stranger, a complete, blown-from-anywhere -stranger, to the family. What would happen to -them all, to their comforts, their secret preferences and -habits (known as they all, individually, believed, only to -Katherine), to their pride, to their self-esteem? They loved -one another, yes, they loved the Trenchard family, the -Trenchard position, but through all these things, as a skewer -through beef, ran their reliance upon Katherine. It was -as though someone had cried to them: “The whole of Glebeshire -is blown away—fields and houses, roads and rivers. -You must go and live in Yorkshire. Glebeshire cares for -you no longer!”</p> - -<p>“<span class='sc'>They’re to wait a year, Father says!</span>” shouted -Millie.</p> - -<p>Aunt Sarah shook her white-plumed head and snorted:</p> - -<p>“Katherine! Engaged! To a Stranger! Impossible!”</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie was conscious, at the moment, of nothing except -that she herself had been defeated. They had tricked -her, those two. They had eluded her vigilance.... They -were now, in all probability, laughing at her.</p> - -<p>“The last thing I want to do,” she said, “is to blame -anybody, but if I’d been listened to at the beginning, Mr. -Mark would never have been asked to stay.... It was -thoughtless of George. Now we can all see—”</p> - -<p>But Millie, standing before them all, her face flushed, -said:</p> - -<p>“The chief thing is to consider Katherine’s happiness. -Mr. Mark is probably delightful. She was sure to marry -somebody. How can people help falling in love with Katherine? -We all love her. She loves us. I don’t see what -Mr. Mark can do to prevent that—and he won’t want to. -He <span class='it'>must</span> be nice if Katherine loves him!”</p> - -<p>But the final word was spoken by Grandfather Trenchard, -who had been hitherto utterly silent. In his clear, silvery -voice he said:</p> - -<p>“A great deal can happen in a year!”</p> - -<p>At that moment Katherine and her mother came in.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div><h1 id='t4765'>BOOK II<br/> THE FEATHER BED</h1></div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2 id='ch07'>CHAPTER I<br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>KATHERINE IN LOVE</span></h2> - -<p>Katherine Trenchard, although she had, for a -number of years now, gone about the world with open -eyes and an understanding heart, was, in very many ways, -absurdly old-fashioned. I say “absurd” because many people, -from amongst her own Trenchard relations, thought her -prejudices, simplicities, and confidences absurd, and hoped -that she would grow out of them. The two people who really -knew her, her Uncle Timothy and Rachel Seddon, hoped -that she never would. Her “old-fashioned” habits of mind -led her to believe in “people” in “things” and in “causes”, -and it was her misfortune that up to this year of which I am -speaking she had never been disappointed. That may be -because she had grown up amongst the rocks, the fields, the -lanes of Glebeshire, true ground where sincerity and truth -flourish yet in abundance—moreover it is assured that man -lives up to the qualities with which he is by his friends -credited, and all the Trenchard family lived up to Katherine’s -belief in their word of honour.</p> - -<p>She was not so simple a character that she found the -world perfect, but she was in no way subtle, and, because she -herself acted in her faults and virtues, her impetuosities and -repentances, her dislikes and affections with clear-hearted -simplicity, she believed that other persons did the same. -Her love for her mother was of this quite unquestioning -sort; her religion too was perfectly direct and unquestioning: -so, then, her love for Philip....</p> - -<p>She had never before been in love, nor had she ever -considered men very closely as anything but visitors or relations. -The force and power of the passion that now held -her was utterly removed from anything that had ever encountered -her before, but she was a strong character, and -her simplicity of outlook helped her. Philip seemed to her -to be possessed of all the qualities of the perfect hero. His -cleverness, his knowledge of the world, his humour were -only balanced by his kindness to everyone and everything, -his unselfishness, his honesty of speech and eye. She had -thought him, once, a little weak in his anxiety to be liked -by all the world, but now that was forgotten. He was, during -these days, a perfect character.</p> - -<p>She had not, however, lost her clear-sighted sense of -humour; that humour was almost cynical sometimes in its -sharp perception of people and things, and did not seem -to belong to the rest of Katherine at all. It was driven -more often upon herself than upon anyone else, but it was, -for a character of Katherine’s simplicity, strangely sharp. -A fair field for the employment of it was offered to her just -now in the various attitudes and dispositions of her own -immediate family, but, as yet, she was unable to see the -family at all, so blinding was Philip’s radiance.</p> - -<p>That year England enjoyed one of the old romantic -Christmases. There were sparkling dazzling frosts. The -snow lay hard and shining under skies of unchanging blue, -and on Christmas Eve, when the traffic and smoke of the -town had stolen the purity away, more snow fell and restored -it again.</p> - -<p>It had always been the rule that the Trenchards should -spend Christmas in Glebeshire, but, this year, typhoid fever -had visited Garth only a month or two before, and London -was held to be safer. Katherine had not had, in her life, -so many entertainments that she could afford to be blasé -about them, and she still thought a Pantomime splendid, -“The Only Way” certainly the most magnificent play in -the world, and a dance a thing of perfect rapture, if only -she could be more secure about the right shapes and colours -of her clothes. She had no vanity whatever—indeed a little -more would have helped her judgment: she never knew -whether a dress would suit her, nor why it was that one -thing “looked right” and another thing “looked wrong”. -Millie could have helped her, because Millie knew all about -clothes, but it was always a case with Katherine of something -else coming first, of having to dress at the last minute, -of “putting on any old thing because there was no time.”</p> - -<p>Now, however, there was Philip to dress for, and she did -really try. She went to Millie’s dressmaker with Millie as -her guide, but unfortunately Mrs. Trenchard, who had as -little idea about dress as Katherine, insisted on coming too, -and confused everyone by her introduction of personal motives -and religious dogmas into something that should have -been simply a matter of ribbons and bows. Katherine, indeed, -was too happy to care. Philip loved her in any old -thing, the truth being that when he went about with her, -he saw very little except his own happiness....</p> - -<p>It is certainly a fact that during these weeks neither of -them saw the family at all.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Rachel Seddon was the first person of the outside world -to whom Katherine told the news.</p> - -<p>“So that was the matter with you that day when you -came to see me!” she cried.</p> - -<p>“What day?” said Katherine.</p> - -<p>“You’d been frightened in the Park, thought someone -was going to drop a bag over your head, and ran in -here for safety.”</p> - -<p>“I shall always run in here for safety,” said Katherine -gravely. Rachel came, in Katherine’s heart, in the place -next to Mrs. Trenchard and Philip. Katherine had always -told Rachel everything until that day of which Rachel had -just spoken. There had been reticence then, there would be -reticences always now.</p> - -<p>“You will bring him very quickly to see me?” said -Rachel.</p> - -<p>“I will bring him at once,” answered Katherine.</p> - -<p>Rachel had liked Philip when she met him at the -Trenchards; now, when he came to call, she found that she -did not get on with him. He seemed to be suspicious of -her: he was awkward and restrained. His very youthful -desire to make the person he was with like him, seemed -now to give way to an almost truculent surliness. “I don’t -care whether you like me or not,” he seemed to say. -“Katherine’s mine and not yours any longer.”</p> - -<p>Neither Philip nor Rachel told Katherine that they did -not like one another. Roddy Seddon, Rachel’s husband, on -the other hand, liked Philip very much. Lying for many -years on his back had given him a preference for visitors -who talked readily and gaily, who could tell him about -foreign countries, who did not too obviously pity him for -being “out of the running, poor beggar.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t like the feller?” Roddy said to his wife.</p> - -<p>“He doesn’t like me,” said Rachel.</p> - -<p>“Rot,” said Roddy. “You’re both jealous. You both -want Katherine.”</p> - -<p>“I shan’t be jealous,” answered Rachel, “if he’s good -enough for her—if he makes her happy.”</p> - -<p>“He seems to me a very decent sort of feller,” said Roddy.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile Rachel adored Katherine’s happiness. She -had chafed for many years now at what she considered was -the Trenchards’ ruthless sacrifice of Katherine to their own -selfish needs.</p> - -<p>“They’re never going to let her have any life of her own,” -she said. Now Katherine <span class='it'>had</span> a life of her own, and if only -that might continue Rachel would ask no more. Rachel had -had her own agonies and disciplines in the past, and they -had left their mark upon her. She loved her husband and -her child, and her life was sufficiently filled with their demands -upon her, but she was apprehensive of happiness—she -saw the Gods taking away with one hand whilst they gave -with the other.</p> - -<p>“I knew more about the world at ten,” she thought, “than -Katherine will ever know. If she’s hurt, it will be far worse -for her than it ever was for me.”</p> - -<p>Although she delighted in Katherine’s happiness, she -trembled at the utter absorption of it. “We aren’t meant -to trust anything so much,” she thought, “as Katherine -trusts his love for her.”</p> - -<p>Katherine, perhaps because she trusted so absolutely, did -not at present ask Philip any questions. They talked very -little. They walked, they rode on the tops of omnibuses, -they went to the Zoo and Madame Tussaud’s and the Tower, -they had tea at the Carlton Restaurant and lunch in Soho, -they went to the Winter Exhibition at Burlington House, -and heard a famous novelist give a portentous lecture on -the novel at the “Times” Book Club. They were taken to -a solemn evening at the Poets’ Club, where ladies in evening -dress read their own poetry, they went to a performance -given by the Stage Society, and a tea-party given by four -lady novelists at the Lyceum Club: old Lady Carloes, who -liked Katherine, chaperoned her to certain smart dances, -whither Philip also was invited, and, upon two glorious occasions, -they shared a box with her at a winter season of -German Opera at Covent Garden. They saw the Drury -Lane pantomime and Mr. Martin Harvey and one of Mr. -Hall Caine’s melodramas and a very interesting play by Sir -Arthur (then Mr.) Pinero. They saw the King driving -out in his carriage and the Queen driving out in hers.</p> - -<p>It was a wild and delirious time. Katherine had always -had too many duties at home to consider London very thoroughly, -and Philip had been away for so long that everything -in London was exciting to him. They spoke very -little; they went, with their eyes wide open, their hearts -beating very loudly, side by side, up and down the town, -and the town smiled upon them because they were so young, -so happy, and so absurdly confident.</p> - -<p>Katherine was confident because she could see no reason -for being otherwise. She knew that it sometimes happened -that married people did not get on well together, but it was -ridiculous to suppose that that could be the case with herself -and Philip. She knew that, just at present, some members -of her family did not care very greatly for Philip, but that -was because they did not know him. She knew that a year -seemed a long time to wait, but it was a very short period -compared with a whole married lifetime. How anyone so -clever, so fine of soul, so wise in his knowledge of men and -things could come to love anyone so ordinary as herself -she did not know—but that had been in God’s hands, and -she left it there.</p> - -<p>There was a thing that began now to happen to Katherine -of which she herself was only very dimly perceptive. She -began to be aware of the living, actual participation in her -life of the outside, abstract world. It was simply this—that, -because so wonderful an event had transformed her own -history, so also to everyone whom she saw, she felt that something -wonderful must have happened. It came to more than -this; she began now to be aware of London as something -alive and perceptive in the very heart of its bricks and -mortar, something that knew exactly her history and was -watching to see what would come of it. She had always -been concerned in the fortunes of those immediately about -her—in the villages of Garth, in all her Trenchard relations—but -they had filled her world. Now she could not go out -of the Westminster house without wondering—about the -two old maids in black bonnets who walked up and down -Barton Street, about a tall gentleman with mutton-chop -whiskers and a white bow, whom she often saw in Dean’s -Yard, about a large woman with a tiny dog and painted -eyebrows, about the young man with the bread, the young -man with the milk, the very trim young man with the post, -the very fat young man with the butcher’s cart, the two -smart nursemaids with the babies of the idle rich, who -were always together and deep in whispered conversation; -the policeman at the right corner of the Square, who was -friendly and human, and the policeman at the left corner -who was not; the two young men in perfect attire and -attaché cases who always lounged down Barton Street about -six o’clock in the evening with scorn for all the world at -the corners of their mouths, the old man with a brown muffler -who sold boot laces at the corner of Barton Street, and -the family with the barrel-organ who came on Friday mornings -(man once been a soldier, woman pink shawl, baby in -a basket), a thick-set, grave gentleman who must be somebody’s -butler, because his white shirt was so stiff and his -cheeks blue-black from shaving so often, a young man always -in a hurry and so untidy that, until he came close to -her, Katherine thought he must be Henry ... all those -figures she had known for years and years, but they had -been only figures, they had helped to make the pattern in -the carpet, shapes and splashes of colour against the grey.</p> - -<p>Now they were suddenly alive! They had, they must -have, histories, secrets, triumphs, defeats of a most thrilling -order! She would like to have told them of her own amazing, -stupendous circumstances, and then to have invited their -confidences. The world that had held before some fifty or -sixty lives pulsated now with millions. But there was more -than that before her. Whereas she had always, because she -loved it, given to Garth and the country around it a conscious, -individual existence, London had been to her simply -four walls with a fire and a window. From the fire there -came heat, from the window a view, but the heat and the -view were made by man for man’s convenience. Had man -not been, London was not.... Garth had breathed and -stormed, threatened and loved before Man’s spirit had been -created.</p> - -<p>Now, although as yet she did not recognise it, she began -to be aware of London’s presence—as though from some -hidden corner, from long ago some stranger had watched -her; now, because the room was lit, he was revealed to her. -She was not, as yet, at all frightened by her knowledge, but -even in quiet Westminster there were doorways, street -corners, trees, windows, chimneys, houses, set and square -and silent, that perceived her coming and going—“Tum—te -tum—Tat—Tat—Tat ... Tat—Tat—Tat—Tum—te—tum....</p> - -<p>“We know all about it, Katherine Trenchard—We know -what’s going to happen to you, but we can’t tell you—We’re -older and wiser, much older and much, much wiser than -you are—Tat—Tat—Tat....”</p> - -<p>She was so happy that London could not at present disturb -her, but when the sun was suddenly caught behind -black clouds, when a whirr of rain came slashing down from -nowhere at all, when a fog caught with its yellow hand London’s -throat and squeezed it, when gusts of dust rose from -the streets in little clouds as though the horses were kicking -their feet, when a wind, colder than snow came, blowing -from nowhere, on a warm day, Katherine needed Philip, -clung to him, begged him not to leave her ... she had -never, in all her life, clung to anyone before.</p> - -<p>But this remains that, during these weeks, she found him -perfect. She liked nothing better than his half-serious, half-humorous -sallies at himself. “You’ve got to buck me up, -Katherine—keep me from flopping about, you know. Until -I met you no one had any real influence on me—never in -all my days. Now you can do anything with me. Tell -me when I do anything hateful, and scold me as often as -you can. Look at me with the eyes of Aunt Aggie if you -can—she sees me without any false colouring. I’m not a -hero—far from it—but I can be anything if you love me -enough.”</p> - -<p>“Love him enough!” Had anyone ever loved anyone before -as she loved him? She was not, to any ordinary -observer, very greatly changed. Quietly and with all the -matter-of-fact half-serious, half-humorous common-sense she -went about her ordinary daily affairs. Young Seymour -came to tea, and she laughed at him, gave him teacake, and -asked him about the latest novel just as she had always done. -Mr. Seymour had come expecting to see love’s candle lit -for the benefit of his own especial genius. He was greatly -disappointed, but also, because he hated Mark, gratified. -“I don’t believe she loves him a bit,” he said afterwards. -“He came in while I was there, and she didn’t colour up or -anything. Didn’t show anything, and I’m pretty observant. -She doesn’t love him, and I’m jolly glad—I can’t stand the -man.”</p> - -<p>But those who were near her knew. They felt the heat, -they watched the colour, of the pure, unfaltering flame. Old -Trenchard, the Aunts, Millie, Henry, her mother, even -George Trenchard felt it. “I always knew,” said Millie, -“that when love came to Katherine it would be terrible”. -She wrote that in a diary that she kept.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard said nothing at all. During those weeks -Katherine was, for the first time in her life, unaware of -her mother.</p> - -<p>The afternoon of the Christmas Eve of that year was -never afterwards forgotten by Katherine. She had been buying -last desperate additions to Christmas presents, had -fought in the shops and been victorious; then, seeing through -the early dusk the lights of the Abbey, she slipped in at the -great door, found a seat near the back of the nave, and remembered -that always, at this hour, on Christmas Eve, a -Carol Service was held. The service had not yet begun, -and a hush, with strange rhythms and pulsations in it, as -though some phantom conductor were leading a phantom -orchestra, filled the huge space. A flood of people, dim and -very silent, spread from wall to wall. Far away, candles -fluttered, trembled and flung strange lights into the web of -shadow that seemed to swing and stir as though driven by -some wind. Katherine sank into a happy, dreamy bewilderment. -The heat of the building after the cold, frosty air, -some old scent of candles and tombstones and ancient walls, -the consciousness of utter, perfect happiness carried her into -a state that was half dream, half reality. She closed her -eyes, and soon the voices from very far away rose and fell -with that same phantom, remotely inhuman urgency.</p> - -<p>A boy’s voice that struck, like a dart shot by some heavenly -archer, at her heart, awoke her. This was “Good King -Wenceslaus”. A delicious pleasure filled her: her eyes -flooded with tears and her heart beat triumphantly. “Oh! -how happy I am! And I realise it—I <span class='it'>know</span> that I can never -be happier again than I am now!”</p> - -<p>The carol ceased. After a time, too happy for speech, -she went out.</p> - -<p>In Dean’s Yard the snow, with blue evening shadows upon -it, caught light from the sheets of stars that tossed and -twinkled, stirred and were suddenly immovable. The Christmas -bells were ringing: all the lights of the houses in the -Yard gathered about her and protected her. What stars -there were! What beauty! What silence!</p> - -<p>She stood, for a moment, taking it in, then, with a little -shiver of delight, turned homewards.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2 id='ch08'>CHAPTER II<br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>MRS. TRENCHARD</span></h2> - -<p>Millie, like many of the Trenchard ladies before her, -kept a diary. She had kept it now for three years, -and it had not during that time, like the diaries of other -young ladies, died many deaths and suffered many resurrections, -but had continued with the utmost regularity and -discipline. This regularity finds its explanation in the fact -that Millie really was interested in other people as well as -in herself, was sometimes surprised at her cleverness and in -turn suspicious of it—in fact, she knew as much about the -world as most girls of eighteen who have been “finished” in -Paris: she thought that she knew more than she did, and -was perfectly determined to know a great deal more than -she thought she knew.</p> - -<p>These were some entries:</p> - -<p><span class='it'>Dec. 6th.</span> Tried on the new white silk, but it won’t -do even now—too tight and makes me skimpy—Refused to -let mother come with me this time. Took Aunt Betty instead, -and we saw a <span class='it'>peach</span> of a hat at Reneé’s which I’d give -my eyes for, only of course I haven’t got the money now with -Christmas coming and everything. Aunt Betty said it was -much better wanting things you can’t have, because then -you go on being excited, but that’s of course <span class='it'>absurd</span> and just -like Aunt Betty.</p> - -<p>Bought Aunt Aggie a calendar-blotter thing for Christmas -which she won’t like (blue leather with silver corners) but I -<span class='it'>can’t</span> help it. I’m sick of thinking what to get her, and she -won’t be contented whatever it is. Meanwhile, in the afternoon: -the sensation of a lifetime—All sitting in the drawing-room, -waiting for tea. When in bursts Henry with the -wild news that Katie’s engaged herself to Philip Mark. We -all turned blue—I’d like to have been someone outside and -seen us. No one had really suspected it. <span class='it'>I</span> hadn’t myself—although -one might have, I suppose, if one had watched -more closely. It’s very exciting, and if Katie’s happy I don’t -care about anything else. At least I do. It was so lovely -coming back from Paris and having her all to oneself. We -understand one another so <span class='it'>much better</span> than any of the others -do. I’m the only one in the family who really knows her. I -never thought of her as being married, which was silly, I -suppose. It’s funny to think of her liking a man, whom she’s -only just seen, better than all of us. It wouldn’t be funny -with most people, but Katherine’s so <span class='it'>quiet</span> and so <span class='it'>steady</span>. -It all depends on what <span class='it'>he’s</span> like. Finished ‘La Faute de -l’abbé Mouret’. <span class='it'>Loved</span> it. Downstairs I’m reading ‘Sesame -and Lilies’—well-written but awfully silly.</p> - -<p><span class='it'>Dec. 9th.</span> Dreary day buying presents with mother at -the Stores. <span class='it'>Why</span> she will go there I can’t think, and she -takes it like a week on the Riviera or a box at the opera. -She says nothing about Philip—not a word. He dined last -night, and was most tactful. I never saw anyone so determined -to make us all devoted to him, but he’s got a -difficult business with Aunt Aggie and mother. I <span class='it'>like</span> him, -and have a kind of idea that I understand him better than -any of the others do. He’s certainly not the God that Katherine -thinks him—and he knows he isn’t. He’s a little -uncomfortable about it, I think. He’s certainly very much -in love with her. Letter from Louise Pougé—She’s engaged—to -no one very particular. She’s younger than I am—<span class='it'>and</span> -prettier—lots.</p> - -<p>Spoke to Henry about clean handkerchiefs. He’s really -incredible at his age. Philip seems to influence him though. -That may do something.</p> - -<p><span class='it'>Dec. 13th.</span> Dismal day. Out of sorts and cross. Dreadfully -restless. I don’t know why. It’s all wrong this Christmas, -not being down at Garth and Katherine so occupied. -On days like these I have terrible scruples about myself. I -suppose I <span class='it'>am</span> terribly conceited really—and yet I don’t -know. There are plenty of people I admire ever so much -more than myself. I suppose it’s seeing Katherine so happy -that makes me restless. It must be nice to have anyone as -devoted as that to you.... I’ve always been very cynical -about being in love, but when one watches it, quite close, -with anyone as good as Katherine ... anyway it’s been a -beastly day, and Aunt Aggie went on like an old crow at -dinner. I wish I knew what mother was feeling about it -all—she’s so quiet.</p> - -<p><span class='it'>Dec. 17th.</span> Had a long talk with Philip this evening. -I must say I liked him—he was so modest about himself. He -said that he wished he were a little more as Katherine thinks -he is, and that he’s going to try to be. I said that’s all right -so long as he made Katherine happy and didn’t take her -right away from us all. He said that he would do anything -to make mother like him, and did I think that she -liked him better now? I said that I was sure that she did—but -I’m not sure really. It’s impossible to know what -mother thinks. Katherine came in whilst we were talking. -Afterwards, I don’t know why, I felt afraid somehow. -Katie’s so <span class='it'>sure</span>. I know I’d never be sure of anybody, least -of all anyone in love with me. But then I know so much -more about men than Katie does. And I’m sure Philip -knows lots more about women than Katie thinks. Katie and -mother are <span class='it'>so</span> alike in some ways. They’re both as obstinate -as anything. Such a lovely afternoon out with the Swintons—Snow -in the Green Park, sparkling all over and the -air like after you’ve eaten peppermints. Lady Perrot asked -me to go with them to New Year’s supper at the Savoy. -Hope I’ll be allowed.</p> - -<p><span class='it'>Dec. 23rd.</span> Had a walk with Katie—first walk had alone -since her engagement. She was so happy that she was almost—a -beastly word—<span class='it'>frisky</span>, Katie frisky! We’re miles away -from one another just now, and that’s the truth. I suppose -one must simply wait until this period’s passed away. But -supposing it never passes away? Supposing she disappears -altogether—from all of us. At any rate, what can one say? -I like Philip, and can honestly say so, but I don’t think him -the angel Gabriel. Not that Katie at present cares, in the -least, what one thinks—she doesn’t wait to hear. She is -making no plans, thinking of no possible future, imagining -nothing. She never had any imagination, or at any rate -never used it. Perhaps she’ll get some now from Philip, -who has <span class='it'>plenty</span>—far too much. It’s <span class='it'>his</span> trouble, I believe -that he’s always imagining something a little better than -he’s got.... We Trenchards have none. I haven’t any -really—it’s only curiosity. Henry and I might have some -if we were all very uncomfortable. But of course the whole -family only keeps together because it can’t imagine things -being different. <span class='it'>Are</span> things going to be different now?... -Rachel Seddon came to tea. Don’t like her. Thinks she -owns Katie—and Katie’s let her. Went with the Aunts to -the Messiah. Very long, with nice bits. Aunt Aggie had a -crick in the neck, and wriggled all the time. Hope I get -some money on Christmas Day or I shall be in an <span class='it'>awful</span> -hole.</p> - -<p><span class='it'>Dec. 26th.</span> Two pounds from father, one from grandfather, -ten shillings Cousin Alice, five Aunt Grace, kettle-holder -Aunt Aggie, two dozen handkerchiefs Uncle Bob, -fountain-pen father, new hat mother (quite hopeless), photo-gravure -‘Happy Warrior’ Aunt Betty, two books ‘Reuben -Hallard’ by Westcott (Mudie second-hand) ‘Rossetti’s -Poems’ from Henry—lovely amethyst brooch Katie (darling!) -two novels by Turgenieff from Philip—lots of other -things.</p> - -<p>Nice day on the whole, but not <span class='it'>quite right</span> somehow. Wish -mother didn’t always look so anxious when there’s a dinner -party. You always <span class='it'>expect</span> things to happen wrong, and really -Rocket knows his business by this time. All of us a little -forced, I think. It seemed funny not being at Garth and -Philip the first person we’ve ever had not of the family. -Aunt Sarah keeps forgetting who he is, or pretends to. I -wish he didn’t make up to mother quite so much. That -isn’t the way to make her like him. I really <span class='it'>do</span> understand -him much better than anyone else does—<span class='it'>much</span> better than -Katie.</p> - -<p><span class='it'>Dec. 31st.</span> Going to the Savoy party to-night. Hope it will -be fun. Never expected mother to let me, but she’s awfully -sweet to me lately. She’s a darling, but we’re really always -just a little afraid of one another. Of course I’m not out -yet, so I’ll have to be quiet to-night. Mother never would -have dreamt of letting me go six months back. End of the -year—made several resolutions. Not to be snappy, nor -superior, nor cynical, nor selfish. That’s enough for anyone -to look after! Wonder what things will be like this -year, and how Katie and Philip will turn out. Feel as -though things will all go wrong, and yet I don’t know why. -Bought the hat I saw a fortnight ago. Finished ‘House of -Gentlefolks’. <span class='it'>Adored</span> it. Discussed it with Philip. Going -to get all the other Turgenieffs. Think Russia must be a -wonderful country. Time to dress. I know I’ll just <span class='it'>love</span> -the party....</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Only Mrs. Trenchard herself could say whether or no -she had enjoyed this Christmas. She displayed the same -busy placidity as on other occasions; of her fears, disappointments, -surprises, she said nothing. The turkey was a success, -the plum-pudding burnt with a proper glow, no one was -ill, she had forgotten, in sending out her parcels, no single -Trenchard relation—surely all was well.</p> - -<p>Her brother, Timothy, who knew her better than anyone -else did, had long abandoned the penetration of her motives, -aims, regrets. There had been a time when she had been -almost intimate with him, then something (he never knew -what) had driven her in more obstinately than ever upon -herself. Something he had said.... He could point almost -exactly to the day and hour. She had been a stranger to him -from that moment.</p> - -<p>Her history was, however, very simple.</p> - -<p>When she had been a very, very small child she had decided -for herself that the way to give life a real value was to -fix one’s affection upon someone: perhaps there had been also -the fear of life as a motive, the discovery that the best way -to be protected from all kinds of perils was to be so fond of -someone that nothing else mattered. With a quiet, undemonstrative -but absolutely tenacious hold she attached herself -to her nurse, who deserted her on the appearance of a younger -sister, to her mother, who died, to her father, who was always -so busy that loving him was like being devoted to a blotting -pad. When she was ten years of age she went to school, and -clung to a succession of older girls, who, however, found, -in her lack of all demonstrations, her almost cynical remarks, -her inability to give any expression whatever to her emotions, -something, at first, terrifying, and afterwards merely tiresome.</p> - -<p>When she was about eighteen she discovered that the person -to whom a woman should be properly attached was her -husband. She waited then very calmly until she was twenty, -when George Trenchard appeared, proposed to her, and was -accepted. She took it so utterly for granted that her devotion -to him would fill sufficiently the energy of her remaining -days that it wasn’t until the end of a year of married life that -she discovered that, although he liked her very much, he could -do quite beautifully without her, and did, indeed, for three-quarters -of every day forget her altogether. No one, except -herself, knew whether that discovery hurt her. She, of course, -said nothing to anyone about it. She waited for the arrival -of her children. Katherine, Henry and Mildred came, and -at last it seemed that Mrs. Trenchard’s ship had come into -port. During their early years, at any rate, they clung to -her tenaciously, did not in the least mind that she had nothing -to say to them: they found her sure and safe and, best -of all possible things in a parent, always the same. It was -when Katherine was six years old that Timothy said to her -one day:</p> - -<p>“Look here, Harriet, don’t get so wrapt in the children -that you’ll never be able to unwrap yourself again. I’ve seen -it happen dozens of times, and it always gives endless trouble -later on. It’s all very well now, but the time will come when -they’ll break away—it <span class='it'>must</span> come, and you’ll suffer horribly -unless you’re ready for it. I’m not married myself, it’s true, -but I see all the more for that very reason.”</p> - -<p>This was the speech that severed Mrs. Trenchard from -her brother. She never forgot nor forgave it. She never -forgave it because she could not forget it: his words were to -haunt her from the moment of their utterance until the last -conscious instant of her life. She had been born entirely -without imagination, but she had not been born without the -wish for romance. Moreover, the Faunder tradition (which -is the same as the Trenchard tradition) taught her to believe -that there was something enfeebling and dangerous about -imagination, and that the more one thought about things not -immediately within sight the less likely one was to do one’s -daily task with efficiency. Her longing for a romantic life -therefore (that is for the justification of her own personal -existence) was assisted by no private dreams nor castle-building. -No Faunder or Trenchard had ever built a castle in -the air when there were good square manors and vicarages -waiting to be constructed on good solid ground. She directed -the whole of her passionate life towards her relations -with her children, but never even to herself would she admit -that she had any passionate life at all. Take away the children -and there was nothing left for her except her religion; -because the loss of them would be the one tragedy that would -drive her to question the justice of her God was justification -of itself for her passionate determination.</p> - -<p>Now Timothy had said that she would lose them—well, -Timothy should see. With other children, with other -mothers, it might be so. God Himself should not take them -from her.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, as the children grew, the shadows of his words -ever pursued her and hemmed her in. She watched, with -close attention, other families, and saw that Timothy’s warning -was justified often enough, but always she was able to -find for herself some reason. The weakness of selfishness -or carelessness of the parent. Not weak, nor selfish, nor -careless could any watching Powers, waiting to pounce, accuse -her of being!</p> - -<p>When the children grew older she discovered certain things -about them. Henry often annoyed her with his untidiness -and strangely unjustified egotism. He always thought about -himself, and yet never did anything. She liked Henry least -of her children.</p> - -<p>Mildred was delightful, clever, the “show child”, but for -that very reason would in all probability be, afterwards, the -most restless of them. As the two girls grew Mrs. Trenchard -told herself that, perhaps, Millie would have to be sacrificed, -and in telling herself this she implied that if she would -only, when the time came, allow Millie without a murmur -to depart, the Gods would be satisfied with that and Katherine -would remain.</p> - -<p>It came to this, that by the time that Katherine was -twelve she was the centre of her mother’s existence. Mildred -and Henry would be held as long as it was possible -to hold them, but, if the worst came, they should go. Katherine -would always remain....</p> - -<p>It seemed indeed that she would. She loved her home, -her parents, her relations, Glebeshire, the whole of the -Trenchard inheritance. She placed her mother first in her -life, and she was able to satisfy the love in her mother’s -heart without saying anything about it or drawing anyone’s -attention towards it. She had all the qualities that her -mother admired—sincerity, trust, common-sense, practical -punctuality, moral as well as physical: above all, she took -things for granted without asking endless questions, as was -Henry’s unfortunate habit. There grew then in the lives -both of Mrs. Trenchard and Katherine a passionate affection, -which was never allowed by either of them to find outward -expression. This became, behind the commonplace -matter-of-fact of all their days, a kind of romantic conspiracy. -Even when Katherine was still a child Mrs. Trenchard knew -that the hours that they spent alone together had some strange -almost incoherent quality, something that was mixed, inextricably, -with the high lanes, the grassy lawns, the distant -strip of sea beyond the fields, the rooks in the high trees, the -smell of the village shop, boot-laces, liquorice, tallow, cheese -and cotton, the dark attic bedroom of Katherine’s, the cries -of village children beyond the garden wall, afternoon Sunday -school upon hard benches under glazed lamps to the accompaniment -of the harmonium; all the things that belonged to -Garth belonged also to the love between Mrs. Trenchard and -Katherine. Katherine had been first taken to the sea when -she had been a very little girl; she had been shown Rafiel and -the Pirates’ Cove with its cave (too small for any but very -thin pirates), and the village with the cottages cut out of -the rock and the sea advancing and retreating as a lazy cat -stretches and withdraws its paws upon the pebbled beach. -Driving home through the twilight in the high dog-cart behind -the fat and beloved family pony, Katherine had been besieged -with questions. What had she thought of it all? What -had she liked best? Had it been wonderful? She had said -nothing. She was obstinately silent. At last, persecuted -beyond bearing, she looked, imploringly, at her mother. Her -eyes had met her mother’s, and, as complete understanding -passed between them, it seemed that they made, there and -then, a compact of mutual help and protection that was never -afterwards to be broken. Mrs. Trenchard had never, never -been known to mention scenery, sunsets or buildings, except -for strictly practical reasons. She would say: “Come in, -children, you’ll catch cold, the sun’s setting”, or “I <span class='it'>don’t</span> -think we’ll have rain to-day. There’s not a cloud”, or “It’s -so hot, there’s quite a mist. I hope there’ll be enough strawberries -and cream for everyone.” That was her attitude, and -yet she loved Glebeshire, every stone and tree, with an unfaltering -and unarguing devotion. She never said “Glebeshire -is the loveliest spot in the world”. But only: “Oh! -you’ve never been to Glebeshire? You don’t know the Clarence -Faunders then? They’re only five miles from us”, or -“Yes. We live in Glebeshire—a little village not far from -Polchester. We’re very lucky in our clergyman, a Mr. Smart, -one of the Smarts, etc.” Moreover, she never when she was -quite alone said to herself: “Oh! what a heavenly day!” or -“How lovely the new leaves are”, or “Look at the primroses!” -She only said to herself: “Lucy Cartwright’s Annie has -got to have that ointment”, or “I must tell Rebekah about -the poor Curtises. She could take them the things.”</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, when she discovered that Katherine cared -for Glebeshire with a love as deep as her own, how happy -she was! How firmly that discovery bound them together! -For them both that journey twice a year from London to -Garth was as exciting as though they had never taken it before. -The stations, whose names were like the successive -wrappers that enclose a splendid present, Rasselas, the little -windy station where they changed from the London Express -into the halting, stumbling little train that carried them towards -the sea; then Stoep in Roselands, tiniest station of all, -with the sea smell blowing across the dark fields, the carriage -with its lights and Jacob, the coachman, the drive through -the twilight lanes, the gleaming white gates, the house itself -and old Rebekah on the doorstep ... yes, of all these things -was the love between Mrs. Trenchard and her daughter made.</p> - -<p>Most wonderful of all was it that, with Katherine, Mrs. -Trenchard never knew a moment’s awkwardness or embarrassment. -With everyone else in the world and, perhaps -especially with her own family, Mrs. Trenchard was often -awkward and embarrassed, although no one but herself was -aware of it. Of this embarrassment Mrs. Trenchard had a -horrible dread: it was to her as though she were suddenly -lifted off her feet by a giant hand and held dangling: she -felt that all the world must see how her skirts blew in the -wind. With Katherine she was always safe: she grew, most -urgently, to depend upon this safety. Then, as the years -passed she felt that she might, with justice, consider Katherine -secure. Katherine seemed to have no interest in young -men: already she adopted a rather motherly attitude towards -them and, perhaps because Henry was the young man immediately -before her, considered them rather helpless, rather -clumsy, rather unwieldy and ungainly. She was always kind -but a little satirical in her relations to the other sex: young -men were, perhaps, afraid of her.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard did, of course, consider the possibility of -Katherine’s marriage, but, if that ever occurred, it would be, -she knew, with someone in the family, someone like themselves, -who would live near by, who would worship Katherine -but never interfere with her, who would give her -children, to whom Mrs. Trenchard could be a delightful -grandmother. This surrender the Gods might demand—it -would need more than such a marriage to separate, now, -Katherine from her mother. Mrs. Trenchard, like all unimaginative -people, relied very strongly upon little facts and -well-accustomed places and familiar family relations. She -did not believe that Victoria Street would walk away or that -the old woman (Mrs. Pengello, an ancient widow with a pension, -two granddaughters and a cast in her eye) at the Garth -post office would appear one morning as a radiant young -beauty, or that her brother Timothy would go on to the music -halls. Her world was thus a place of security, and Katherine -was one of the most secure things in it. “Ah! Timothy, -you’re wrong after all,” she would sometimes, in the -watches of the night, think to herself. “Nothing can take -Katherine from me now. You may be as right as you like -about Millie and Henry. Katherine is enough....”</p> - -<p>She had, during these last years, been wrapped in with a -strange, placid content: Millie had been at school in Paris: -there was nothing inside the Trenchard fortress that spoke -of the outside world. No secret spirit ever whispered to Mrs. -Trenchard: “Are you not being selfish in keeping your -daughter? You will die some day, and then she will have a -lonely old maid’s life when she might have been so happy. -The children’s lives are their own. What right have you to -Katherine’s life and ambitions and love? Would you, in -your youth, have given up your future for your parents? -Why should she?”</p> - -<p>There was nothing that Mrs. Trenchard desired more than -Katherine’s happiness. If Katherine had not loved her she -would have let her go, but now ... Katherine’s life was -bound up with hers so tightly that nothing, nothing could -part them....</p> - -<p>Then there came a night of fog, a stranger bowing in the -doorway, and all the old days were dead. Mrs. Trenchard -was still stunned, the fog was yet about her eyes, and in her -heart was a dread that had not yet found its voice nor driven -her to determine what she would do.... Meanwhile there -was no one in the world who knew her. She did not know -herself. Until now there had been in her life no crisis strong -enough to force open that realisation.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>One morning early in January Mrs. Trenchard said to -Katherine at breakfast: “Will you come to the Stores with -me this afternoon, Katherine? I have to buy some hot-water -bottles and one or two other things. Two of them leak badly ... -some hot-water bottles ... and I’d like you to help -me.”</p> - -<p>“I’m lunching with Rachel, mother,” Katherine said. “But -I’ll be back by three if that’s time enough.”</p> - -<p>“Three o’clock. Very well, dear. They oughtn’t to leak—we’ve -had them quite a short time. Shall I meet you -there?”</p> - -<p>“No. I’ll come back. We might miss there. I’ll be back -by three.”</p> - -<p>At ten minutes past three in a large rather confused hat -with a black bird and white feathers Mrs. Trenchard was -seated waiting in the drawing-room. The fire had had coal -poured upon it by Rocket, and it was very black: the room -was cold and dark, and Mrs. Trenchard, feeling like an unwelcome -guest in her own house, shivered. At twenty minutes -past three Mrs. Trenchard began to be afraid that there -had been an accident. Katherine was always so punctual. -Millie came in.</p> - -<p>“<span class='it'>Dear</span> mother, what on earth!”</p> - -<p>“I’m waiting for Katherine. She was to be back at three -from Rachel Seddon’s. We are—were—going to the Stores. -You don’t think there can have been an accident?”</p> - -<p>“Katherine! Why, I saw her twenty minutes ago. I’ve -just come back from Lady Carloes. Katie was at Hyde Park -Corner with Philip.”</p> - -<p>“Philip!”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard got up, took off one black glove, then put -it on again. She looked at the clock.</p> - -<p>“Will you come to the Stores with me, Millie? I’ve got -to get some hot-water bottles and some other things.... -Two of ours leak.... I’d like you to help me.”</p> - -<p>Millie looked once at the clock, and her mother saw her. -Then Millie said:</p> - -<p>“Of course I will. We won’t be very long, will we?”</p> - -<p>“Why, no, dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard, who would have -been happy to spend a week at the Stores had she the opportunity. -“Quite a little time.”</p> - -<p>They set off together.</p> - -<p>Millie was not yet of such an age that she could disguise -her thoughts. She was wondering about Katherine, and Mrs. -Trenchard knew that this was so. Mrs. Trenchard always -walked through the streets of London as a trainer in the -company of his lions. Anything might happen, and one’s -life was not safe for a moment, but a calm, resolute demeanour -did a great deal, and, if trouble came, one could -always use the whip: the whip was the Trenchard name. To-day, -however, she gave no thought to London: she was very -gentle and kind to Millie—almost submissive and humble. -This made Millie very uncomfortable.</p> - -<p>“I’m rather foolish about the Stores, I’m afraid. I know -several places where you can get better hot-water bottles and -cheaper. But they know me at the Stores now.”</p> - -<p>Once she said: “I hope, Millie dear, I’m not keeping you -from anything. We shall be home by half-past four.”</p> - -<p>In exchange for these two little remarks Millie talked a -great deal, and the more she talked the more awkward she -seemed. She was very unhappy about her mother, and she -wished that she could comfort her, but she knew her so little -and had been always on such careless terms with her that -now she had no intuition about her.</p> - -<p>“What is she thinking?... I know Katherine has hurt -her terribly. She oughtn’t to wear a hat like that: it doesn’t -suit her a bit. Why isn’t it <span class='it'>I</span> who have forgotten, and Katie -here instead to console her? Only then she wouldn’t want -consolation....”</p> - -<p>As they walked up the steps of the Stores they were stared -at by a number of little dogs on chains, who all seemed to -assert their triumphant claims on somebody’s especial affections. -The little dogs stirred Mrs. Trenchard’s unhappiness, -without her knowing why. All down Victoria Street -she had been thinking to herself: “Katherine never forgot -before—never. It was only this morning—if it had even been -yesterday—but this morning! Millie doesn’t understand, and -she didn’t want to come—Katie....”</p> - -<p>She walked slowly into the building, and was at once received -by that friendly, confused smell of hams and medicines -which is the Stores’ note of welcome. Lights shone, warmth -eddied in little gusts of hot air from corner to corner: there -was much conversation, but all of a very decent kind: ladies, -not very grand ones and not very poor ones, but comfortable, -motherly, housekeeping ladies were everywhere to be seen.</p> - -<p>No wonder, surely, that Mrs. Trenchard loved the Stores! -Here was everything gathered in from the ends of the earth -that was solid and sound and real. Here were no extravagances, -no decadencies, no flowing creations with fair outsides -and no heart to them, nothing foreign nor degenerate. -However foreign an article might be before it entered the -Stores, once inside those walls it adopted itself at once to the -claims of a Cathedral City—even the Eastern carpets, stained -though their past lives might be with memories of the Harem, -recognised that their future lay along the floor of a Bishop’s -study, a Major’s drawing-room or the dining-room of a country -rectory. If ever Mrs. Trenchard was alarmed by memories -of foreign influences, of German invasions, or Armenian -atrocities, she had only to come to the Stores to be entirely reassured. -It would be better for our unbalanced and -hysterical alarmists did they visit the Stores more frequently....</p> - -<p>But frequent visits had bred in Mrs. Trenchard a yet -warmer intimacy. Although she had never put her feeling into -words, she was determined now that the Stores was maintained -solely in the Trenchard and Faunder interests. So -pleasant and personally submissive had the young men and -young women of the place been to her all these years, that she -now regarded them with very nearly the personal benevolence -that she bestowed upon her own Rebekah, Rocket, Jacob and -so on. She felt that only Trenchards and Faunders could have -produced an organisation whose spirit was so entirely sprung -from their own views and observances. She did not defend -or extol those views. There simply they were! and out of -them the Stores were born. She paid her call here, therefore, -rather as a Patroness visits a Hospital in which she is -interested—with no conceit or false pride, but with a maternal -anxiety that everything should be well and prosperous. -Everything always was well and prosperous.... She was -a happy Patroness!</p> - -<p>“That’s a splendid ham!” were invariably her first words, -and “I do like the way they arrange things here,” her second. -She could have wandered, very happily, all day from -compartment to compartment, stopping continually to observe, -to touch, to smile, to blow her nose (being moved, very -often, quite emotionally) to beam happily upon the customers -and then to turn, with a little smile of intimacy, to the -young men in frock coats and shiny hair, as though she would -say: “We’ve got a good crowd to-day. Everyone seems comfortable ... but how can they help it when everything is -so beautifully done?”</p> - -<p>Her chief pride and happiness found its ultimate crown -in the furniture department. Here, hung as it was somewhere -up aloft, with dark bewildering passages starting into -infinity on every side of it, was the place that her soul truly -loved. She could gaze all day upon those sofas and chairs. -Those wonderful leather couches of dark red and dark blue, -so solid, so stern in their unrelenting opposition to flighty -half-and-half, so self-supporting and self-satisfying, so assured -of propriety and comfort and solid value for your -money. She would sink slowly into a huge leather arm-chair, -and from her throne smile upon the kind gentleman -who washed his hands in front of her.</p> - -<p>“And how much is this one?”</p> - -<p>“Nine pounds, eight and sixpence, ma’am.”</p> - -<p>“Really. Nine pounds, eight and sixpence. It’s a splendid -chair.”</p> - -<p>“It is indeed, ma’am. We’ve sold more than two dozen -of this same article in this last fortnight. A great demand -just now.”</p> - -<p>“And so there ought to be—more than two dozen! Well, -I’m not surprised—an excellent chair.”</p> - -<p>“Perhaps we can send it for you? Or you prefer—?”</p> - -<p>“No, thank you. Not to-day. But I must say that it’s -wonderful for the money. That sofa over there—”</p> - -<p>Up here, in this world of solid furniture, it seemed that -England was indeed a country to be proud of! Mrs. Trenchard -would have made no mean Britannia, seated in one -of the Stores’ arm-chairs with a Stores’ curtain-rod for her -trident!</p> - -<p>Upon this January afternoon she found her way to the -furniture department more swiftly than was usual with her. -The Stores seemed remote from her to-day. As she passed -the hams, the chickens, the medicines and powders, the petticoats -and ribbons and gloves, the books and the stationery, the -cut-glass and the ironware, the fancy pots, the brass, the -Chinese lanterns, the toys, the pianos and the gramophones, -the carpets and the silver, the clocks and the pictures, she -could only be dimly aware that to-day these things were not -for her, that all the treasures of the earth might be laid at -her feet and she would not care for them, that all the young -men and young women in England might bow and smile before -her and she would have no interest nor pleasure in them. -She reached the furniture department. She sank down in -the red-leather arm-chair. She said, with a little sigh:</p> - -<p>“She has never forgotten before!”</p> - -<p>This was, considering her surroundings and the moment -of its expression, the most poignant utterance of her life.</p> - -<p>Millie’s chief emotion, until this moment, had been one -of intense boredom. The Stores seemed to her, after Paris, -an impossible anachronism; she could not understand why -it was not instantly burnt up and destroyed, and all its solemn -absurdities cast, in dirt and ashes, to the winds.</p> - -<p>She followed her mother with irritation, and glances of -cynical contempt were flung by her upon the innocent ladies -who were buying and chatting and laughing together. Then -she remembered that her mother was in trouble, and she was -bowed down with self-accusation for a hard heartless girl -who thought of no one but herself. Her moods always thus -followed swiftly one upon another.</p> - -<p>When, in the furniture department, she heard that forlorn -exclamation she wanted to take her mother’s hand, but -was shy and embarrassed.</p> - -<p>“I expect Katie <span class='it'>had</span> to go with Philip.... Something -she <span class='it'>had</span> to do, and perhaps it only kept her a moment or -two and she got back just after we’d left. We didn’t wait -long enough for her. She’s been waiting there, I expect, -all this time for us.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard’s cheek flushed and her eyes brightened.</p> - -<p>“Why, Millie, that’s most likely! We’ll go back at once ... that’s -most likely.... We’ll go back at once.”</p> - -<p>“This is a very cheap article,” said the young man, “or -if Madame would prefer a chair with—”</p> - -<p>“No, no,” said Mrs. Trenchard quite impatiently. “Not -to-day. Not to-day, thank you.”</p> - -<p>“There are the hot-water bottles,” said Millie.</p> - -<p>“Oh, of course.... I want some hot-water bottles. Ours -leak ... three of them....”</p> - -<p>“In the rubber department, Madam, first to the right, second -to the left....”</p> - -<p>But Mrs. Trenchard hurried through the hot-water bottles -in a manner utterly foreign to her.</p> - -<p>“Thank you. I’m sure they’re very nice. They won’t -leak, you say? How much?... Thank you ... no, I -prefer these.... If you’re sure they won’t leak.... Yes, -my number is 2157.... Thank you.”</p> - -<p>Outside in Victoria Street she said: “I might have given -her until quarter to four. I daresay she’s been waiting all this -time.”</p> - -<p>But Millie for the first time in all their days together -was angry with Katherine. She said to herself: “She’s -going to forget us all like this now. We aren’t, any of us, -going to count for anything. Six months ago she would -have died rather than hurt mother....”</p> - -<p>And behind her anger with Katherine was anger with -herself because she seemed so far away from her mother, -because she was at a loss as to the right thing to do, because -she had said that she had seen Philip with Katherine. “You -silly idiot!” she thought to herself. “Why couldn’t you have -kept your mouth shut?”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard spoke no word all the way home.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Katherine was not in the house when they returned. -Millie went upstairs, Mrs. Trenchard stared at the desolate -drawing-room. The fire was dead, and the room, in spite -of its electric light, heavy and dark. Mrs. Trenchard -looked at the reflection of her face in the mirror; with both -hands she pushed her hat a little, then, with a sudden gesture, -took it off, drawing out the pins slowly and staring at -it again. Mrs. Trenchard glanced at the clock, and then -slowly went out, holding her hat in her hand, advancing with -that trailing, half-sleepy movement that was peculiarly hers.</p> - -<p>She did then what she had not done for many years: she -went to her husband’s study. This hour before tea he always -insisted was absolutely his own: no one, on any pretext, was -ever to disturb him. To-day, cosily, with a luxurious sense -that the whole world had been made for him, and made for -him exactly as he liked it, he was, with a lazy pencil, half-writing, -half-thinking, making little notes for an essay on -William Hazlitt.</p> - -<p>As his wife entered he was reading: “How fine it is to -enter some old town, walled and turreted, just at the approach -of nightfall, or to come to some straggling village, with the -lights streaming through the surrounding gloom; and then, -after enquiring for the best entertainment the place affords, -to take one’s ease at one’s inn! These eventful moments in -our lives’ history are too precious, too full of solid, heartfelt -happiness to be frittered and dribbled away in imperfect sympathy. -I would have them all to myself, and drain them to -the last drop.”</p> - -<p>How thoroughly George Trenchard agreed with that. How -lucky for him that he was able to defend himself from so -much of that same “imperfect sympathy”. Not that he did -not love his fellow-creatures, far from it, but it was pleasant -to be able to protect oneself from their too constant, their -too eager ravages. Had he been born in his beloved Period, -then he fancied that he might, like magnificent Sir Walter, -have built his Castle and entertained all the world, but in this -age of telephones and motorcars one was absolutely compelled.... -He turned Hazlitt’s words over on his tongue with a -little happy sigh of regret, and then was conscious that his -wife was standing by the door.</p> - -<p>“Hullo!” he cried, starting up. “Is anything the matter?”</p> - -<p>It was so unusual for her to be there that he stared at her -large, heavy figure as though she had been a stranger. Then -he jumped up, laughing, and the dark blue Hazlitt fell on -to the carpet.</p> - -<p>“Well, my dear,” he said, “tea-time?”</p> - -<p>She came trailing across the room, and stood beside him -near the fire.</p> - -<p>“No ...” she said, “not yet ... George.... You, -look very cosy here,” she suddenly added.</p> - -<p>“I am,” he answered. He looked down at the Hazlitt, -and her eyes followed his glance. “What have you been doing?”</p> - -<p>“I’ve been to the Stores.”</p> - -<p>“Why, of course,” he said, chaffing her. “You live there. -And what have you been buying this time?”</p> - -<p>“Hot-water bottles.”</p> - -<p>“Well, <span class='it'>that’s</span> exciting!”</p> - -<p>“Ours leaked.... Two of them, and we’d had them a -very short time. I took Millie with me!”</p> - -<p>“Very good for her. Clear some of her Parisian fancies.”</p> - -<p>There was a pause then, and he bent forward as though -he would pick up the book, but he pulled himself up again.</p> - -<p>“Katherine’s been out with Philip all the afternoon.”</p> - -<p>He smiled one of his radiant, boyish smiles.</p> - -<p>“She’s happy, isn’t she? It does one good to see her. She -deserves it too if anyone in this world does. I like him—more -and more. He’s seen the world, and has got a head on -his shoulders. And he isn’t conceited, not in the least. He’s -charming to her, and I think he’ll make her a very good -husband. That was a lucky thing for us his coming along, -because Katherine was sure to marry someone, and she might -have set her heart on an awful fellow. You never know -in these days.”</p> - -<p>“Ah! I don’t think so,” said Mrs. Trenchard, nervously -turning her hat over in her hands, “that wouldn’t be like -Katie at all.”</p> - -<p>“No, well, perhaps it wouldn’t,” said George cheerfully. -There was another pause, and now he bent right down, picked -up the book, grunting a little, then stood, turning over the -pages.</p> - -<p>“I’m getting fat,” he said, “good for all of us when we -get down to Garth.”</p> - -<p>“George ...” she began and stopped.</p> - -<p>“Well, my dear.” He put his hand on her shoulder, and -then as though embarrassed by the unexpected intimacy that -his action produced, withdrew it.</p> - -<p>“Don’t you think we might go out to the theatre one evening—theatre -or something?”</p> - -<p>“What! With the children? Family party! Splendid -idea!”</p> - -<p>“No, I didn’t mean with the children—exactly. Just you -and I alone. Dine somewhere—have an evening together.”</p> - -<p>It was no use to pretend that he was not surprised. She -saw his astonishment.</p> - -<p>“Why, of course—if you’d really care about it. Mostly -pantomimes just now—but I daresay we could find something. -Good idea. Good idea.”</p> - -<p>“Now that—now that—the children are beginning to -marry and go off by themselves. Why, I thought ... you -understand....”</p> - -<p>“Of course. Of course,” he said again. “Any night you -like. You remind me....”</p> - -<p>He whistled a gay little tune, and turned over the pages -of the Hazlitt, reading sentences here and there.</p> - -<p>“Tea in a minute?...” he said gaily. “Just got a line -or two more to finish. Then I’ll be with you.”</p> - -<p>She looked at him as though she would say something -more: she decided, however, that she would not, and trailed -away.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Returning to the drawing-room, she found Katherine -standing there. Katherine’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes -sparkled: she was wearing a little black hat with red berries, -and the black velvet ribbon round her neck had a diamond -brooch in it that Philip had given her. Rocket was bending -over the fire: she was laughing at him. When she saw -her mother she waved her hand.</p> - -<p>“Mother, darling—what kind of an afternoon have you -had? I’ve had the loveliest time. I lunched at Rachel’s, and -there, to my immense surprise, was Philip. I hadn’t the -<span class='it'>least</span> idea he was coming. Not the slightest. We weren’t -to have met to-day at all. Just Lord John, Philip, Rachel -and I. Then we had <span class='it'>such</span> a walk. Philip and I. Hyde -Park Corner, right through the Park, Marble Arch, then -through Regent’s Park all the way up Primrose Hill—took -a ’bus home again. <span class='it'>Never</span> enjoyed anything so much. -You’ve all been out too, because here’s the fire dead. I’ve -been telling Rocket what I think of him. Haven’t I, Rocket?... -Where are the others? Millie, Aunt Aggie. It’s tea-time.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, dear, it is,” said Mrs. Trenchard.</p> - -<p>It was incredible, Katherine was utterly unconscious. She -remembered nothing.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard looked at Rocket.</p> - -<p>“That’ll do, Rocket. That’s enough. We’ll have tea at -once.”</p> - -<p>Rocket went out. She turned to her daughter.</p> - -<p>“I’m glad you’ve enjoyed your afternoon, dear. I couldn’t -think what had happened to you. I waited until half-past -three.”</p> - -<p>“Waited?”</p> - -<p>“Yes—to go to the Stores. You said at breakfast that -you’d come with me—that you’d be back by three. I waited -until half-past.... It was quite all right, dear. Millie -went with me. She had seen you—you and Philip at Hyde -Park Corner—so, of course, I didn’t wait any longer.”</p> - -<p>Katherine stared at her mother: the colour slowly left her -face and her hand went up to her cheeks with a gesture of -dismay.</p> - -<p>“Mother!... How <span class='it'>could</span> I!”</p> - -<p>“It didn’t matter, dear, in the slightest ... dear me, no. -We went, Millie and I, and got the hot-water bottles, very -good and strong ones, I think, although they said they couldn’t -positively guarantee them. You never can tell, apparently, -with a hot-water bottle.”</p> - -<p>Katherine’s eyes, now, were wide and staring with distress.</p> - -<p>“How <span class='it'>could</span> I possibly have forgotten? It was talking -about it at breakfast when Aunt Aggie too was talking about -something, and I got confused, I suppose. No, I haven’t -any excuse at all. It was seeing Philip unexpectedly....”</p> - -<p>She stopped abruptly, realising that she had said the worst -thing possible.</p> - -<p>“You mustn’t let Philip, dear, drive everything out of your -head,” Mrs. Trenchard said, laughing. “We have some claim -on you until you are married—then, of course....”</p> - -<p>The colour mounted again into Katherine’s face.</p> - -<p>“No, mother, you mustn’t say that,” she answered in a -low voice, as though she was talking to herself. “Philip -makes <span class='it'>no</span> difference—none at all. I’d have forgotten in any -case, I’m afraid, because we talked about it at breakfast when -I was thinking about Aunt Aggie. It was nothing to do -with Philip—it was my fault absolutely. I’ll never forgive -myself.”</p> - -<p>All the joy had left her eyes. She was very grave: she -knew that, slight as the whole incident was, it marked a real -crisis in her relations, not only with her mother, but with the -whole house. Perhaps during all these weeks, she had forgotten -them all, and they had noticed it and been hurt by it. -She accused herself so bitterly that it seemed that nothing -could be bad enough for her. She felt that, in the future, -she could not show her mother enough attention and affection. -But now, at this moment, there was nothing to be done. Millie -would have laughed, hugged her mother and forgotten in five -minutes that there had been any crime. But, in this, Katherine’s -character resembled, exactly, her mother’s.</p> - -<p>“Really, Katie, it didn’t matter. I’m glad you liked the -walk. And now it’s tea-time. It always seems to be tea-time. -There’s so much to do.”</p> - -<p>They were then, both of them, conscious that Aunt Aggie -had come in and was smiling at them. They wished intensely -to fling into the pause some conversation that would be trivial -and unimportant. They could think of nothing to say....</p> - -<p>“Why, Katherine,” said Aunt Aggie, “where <span class='it'>have</span> you -been? Millie says she’s been to the Stores.... You said at -breakfast ...”</p> - -<p>“I was kept ...” said Katherine sharply, and left the -room.</p> - -<p>“I’ll be down in five minutes, Aggie,” said Mrs. Trenchard. -“Tea-time—”</p> - -<p>Her sister watched her as she went out, carrying her hat -in her hand. Half-way upstairs she saw Henry, who was -half-tumbling, half-sliding from step to step: he was evidently -hurrying, in his confused way, to do something that he had -forgotten to do or to finish some task that he should long ago -have completed.</p> - -<p>“Henry,” she said, “I wonder whether—”</p> - -<p>“Right, mother,” he called back to her. “I must—” the -rest of his sentence was swallowed by distance. She turned -and looked after him, then walked through the long passages -to her room. She entered it, closed the door, and stood -by her dressing-room staring in front of her. There was complete, -intense silence here, and all the things lay about the -room, as though waiting for her to address them.</p> - -<p>“George, Millie, Henry, Katherine ... Millie didn’t -want to go ... Katherine....”</p> - -<p>On her table was a list of articles, the week’s washing—her -own list.</p> - -<p>Handkerchiefs—12.</p> - -<p>Stockings—8 pairs.</p> - -<p>She looked at it without seeing it, then with a sudden, -vindictive, passionate movement tore it in half, and then -those halves into smaller pieces, tore the smaller pieces into -little shreds of paper that fluttered in the air and then fell -on to the floor at her feet.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2 id='ch09'>CHAPTER III<br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>LIFE AND HENRY</span></h2> - -<p>Philip was entirely happy during the first days of his -engagement—so happy that he assured himself that he -had never before known what happiness was. When, however, -this glorious state had continued for four or five weeks -he was aware that that most sensitive and unreliable of his -spiritual possessions, his conscience, was being attacked. He -was aware that there was something that he ought to do, -something that he did not want to do—he was aware that he -must tell Katherine about Anna and his life with her. Now -when he had said to Mr. Trenchard that his life was free of -all complications and that there was nothing in it that need -be hidden from the world, he was, quite honestly, convinced -that that was so. His life with Anna was entirely at an end: -he had done her no wrong, she owed him no grudge, he did -not know that he had ever taken any especial pains in Moscow -to hide his relations with her, and he did not believe that anyone -there thought the worse of him for them. He had come -to England with that chapter closed, eager to begin another. -His only thought of Anna when he had proposed to Katherine -was that this was exactly what she had intended him to do—that -she would be pleased if she knew. His conscience was -always at rest when he thought that everyone liked him....</p> - -<p>Now he knew, quite definitely, after a month of his engagement -to Katherine, that some of the members of the -Trenchard family did not like him—No amount of <span class='it'>his</span> determination -to like <span class='it'>them</span> could blind him to the truth of this -unpleasant fact—Mrs. Trenchard did not like him, Aunt -Aggie did not like him, probably Mr. Trenchard, senior, and -Great-Aunt Sarah did not like him (he could not tell, because -they were so silent), and he was not sure whether Henry -liked him or not. Therefore, in front of this alarming array -of critics his conscience awoke.</p> - -<p>The other force that stirred his conscience was Katherine’s -belief in him. In Moscow no one had believed in anyone—anyone -there, proved to be faultless, would have been, for that -very reason, unpopular. Anna herself had held the most humorous -opinion of him. (She liked Englishmen, respected -their restraint and silence, but always laughed at their care -for appearances.) Although he had known that his love for -Katherine had sprung partly from his sense of her difference -from Anna, he, nevertheless, had expected the qualities that -had pleased him in the one to continue in the other. He discovered -that Katherine trusted him utterly, that she believed, -with absolute confidence, in every word that fell from his lips, -and he knew that, if the old whole world came to her and told -her that he had had for several years a mistress in Moscow -and he denied it to her, that she would laugh at the world. -This knowledge made him extremely uncomfortable. First, -he tried to persuade himself that he had never had a mistress, -that Anna had never existed, then, when that miserably -failed, he told himself that he could always deny it if she -asked him, then he knew that he loved her so much that he -would not lie to her (this discovery pleased him). He must, -he finally knew, tell her himself.... He told himself that -he would wait a little until she believed in him less completely; -he must prepare her mind. He did not even now, -however, consider that she would feel his confession very -deeply; Anna would simply have laughed at his scruples.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile he loved her so deeply and so completely that -Anna’s figure was a ghost, dimly recalled from some other -life. He had almost forgotten her appearance. She had -a little black mole on her left cheek—or was it her right?...</p> - -<p>Somewhere in the beginning of February he decided that -he would cultivate Henry, not because he liked Henry, but -because he thought that Katherine would like it—also, although -this he did not confess to himself, because Henry was -so strange and unexpected that he was half afraid of him.</p> - -<p>Of course Henry ought to be sent to one of the Universities, -it was absurd to keep a great, hulking boy of nineteen -hanging about, wasting his own time and the time of his -family, suffering no discipline and learning nothing of any -value. George Trenchard had told Philip that Henry was -too young for Oxford, and was to have a year of “seeing the -world” before he “went up”. A fine lot of seeing the world -Henry was doing, slouching about the house, reading novels -and sulking! Philip, in spite of his years in Russia, felt -very strongly that every Englishman should be shaven clean -and wear clothes from a good tailor. About men of other nationalities -it did not matter, but smartness was expected from -an Englishman. Henry, however, was in that unpleasant -condition known as “sprouting.” He had a little down on -one cheek, apparently none on the other; in certain lights his -chin boasted a few hairs of a forlorn and desolate appearance, -in other lights you would swear that there were none. -His forehead often broke into pimples (these were a terrible -agony to him).</p> - -<p>“Why can’t he do something with his hair?” thought -Philip, “brush it and have it cut regularly. Why is it that -awful dusty colour? He might at least do something to his -clothes. Mrs. Trenchard ought to see to it.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard did try to “see to it”. She was perpetually -buying new clothes for Henry; she took him to her husband’s -tailor and dragged him, again and again, to have things “tried -on”. Henry, however, possessed the art of reducing any suit, -within twenty-four hours of his first wearing it, to chaos. -He was puzzled himself to know what he did.</p> - -<p>“But, Henry, it was new last week!”</p> - -<p>“<span class='it'>I</span> know. How can I help it? I haven’t done anything -to the beastly thing. It simply came like that.”</p> - -<p>He affected a lofty indifference to clothes, but Philip, who -saw him look frequently into the looking-glass, suspected the -sincerity of this. Katherine said to Philip:</p> - -<p>“You have so much influence on Henry. Do talk to him -about his clothes and other things. He won’t mind it from -you. He gets so angry if we say anything.”</p> - -<p>Philip was not at all sure that Henry would “not mind it -from him”. When they were alone Henry would listen with -the greatest interest to the things that Philip told him; his -eyes would soften, his mouth would smile, his voice would -quiver with his excitement. Then, quite suddenly, his face -would cloud, he would blush and frown, almost scowl, then, -abruptly, with some half-muttered word, fall into a sulky -silence. Once he had broken in to Philip’s information with: -“Oh! I suppose you think I don’t know anything about it, -that I’m a stupid idiot.... Well, if I am, what do you -bother to talk to me for?”</p> - -<p>This, of course, annoyed Philip, who always liked to feel, -after a conversation with anyone, that “everything had gone -off all right”. Had it not been for Katherine, he would not -have bothered with the fellow. Another thing puzzled and -even alarmed Philip. Henry would often, when he thought -that he was unwatched, stare at Philip in a perplexed brooding -fashion with a look in his eye that said: “I’ll find out -one day all right. You think that no one’s watching you, that -I’m not worth anyone’s trouble.... You wait and see.”</p> - -<p>Henry would look at Philip’s buttons, studs, tie, handkerchief -with this same puzzled stare. It was another side of -that surveillance of which Philip had been conscious ever -since Tim Flaunder’s visit to his rooms. “Ah!” thought -Philip, “once I’m married, they can watch as much as they -like.... A year’s a long time though.”</p> - -<p>He decided then to cultivate Henry and to know the boy -better. “I’ll show him that there’s nothing in me to be -suspicious about—that I’m worthy of marrying his sister. I’ll -make a friend of him.”</p> - -<p>He asked George Trenchard whether he might give Henry -an evening. “Take him out to dinner and a music-hall. I’ll -look after him.”</p> - -<p>Trenchard said:</p> - -<p>“My dear fellow, if you can make Henry look something -like an ordinary civilised being we’ll all be in your debt for -ever. I don’t envy you your job ... but, of course, do what -you like with him.”</p> - -<p>When Philip told Mrs. Trenchard she said:</p> - -<p>“How nice for Henry! How kind of you to bother with -the boy! He goes out so little. How nice for Henry!”</p> - -<p>When Philip asked Henry himself, Henry coloured crimson, -looked at his boots, muttered something about shirts, -stammered “Thanks ... very glad ... awful bore for -you”, and finally stumbled from the room.</p> - -<p>Philip thought Jules for dinner, The Empire, The Carlton -for supper. Katherine’s delight when he told her compensated -him for all the effort of the undertaking.</p> - -<p>To understand Henry’s emotion at Philip’s invitation -would be to understand everything about Henry, and that -no one has ever done. His chief sensation was one of delight -and excitement—this he hid from all the world. He had -waited, during more years than he could remember, for the -arrival of that moment when he would be treated as a man. -Lately he had said to himself, “If they’re all going to laugh -at me always, I’ll show them one day soon.” He had a ferocious -disgust at their lack of penetration. He had, from the -very first, admired Philip’s appearance. Here was a man -still young, with perfect clothes, perfect ability to get in -and out of a room easily, perfect tranquillity in conversation. -He had been offended at Philip’s treatment of Seymour, but -even that had been a bold, daring thing to do, and Henry -was forced to admit that he had been, since that episode, himself -sometimes doubtful of Seymour’s ability. Then Philip in -his conversation had shown such knowledge of the world; -Henry could listen all day to his talk about Russia. To be -able to travel so easily from one country to the other, without -fear or hesitation, that was, indeed, wonderful!</p> - -<p>Afterwards had occurred one of the critical moments in -Henry’s career; his passionate memory of that afternoon -when he had seen the embrace of Katherine and Philip, -changed those two into miraculous beings, apart from all the -world. He heard Philip for the audacity of it, he also admired -him, envied him, speculated endlessly about it. “Ah! -if somebody would love me like that”, he thought. “I’d be -just as fine. They think me a baby, not fit even to go to -college, I could—I could ...” He did not know what -it was that he could do. Perhaps Philip would help him.</p> - -<p>And yet he did not really like Philip. He thought that -Philip laughed at him, despised him. His one continual -fear was lest Philip should teach Katherine, Henry’s adored -and worshipped Katherine, also to despise him. “If he were -to do that I’d kill him”, he thought. He believed utterly in -Katherine’s loyalty, “but she loves Philip so now. It’s -changed her. She’ll never belong to us properly again.” -Always his first thought was: “So long as he’s good to her -and makes her happy nothing matters.”</p> - -<p>Now it seemed that Philip <span class='it'>was</span> making her happy. Katherine’s -happiness lit, with its glow, the house, the family, all -the world. When, therefore, Philip asked Henry to dine -with him, the great moment of Henry’s life seemed to have -come, and to have come from a source honourable enough -for Henry to accept it.</p> - -<p>“If only I dare,” Henry thought, “there are so many -things that I should like to ask him.” The remembered -passion of that kiss told Henry that there could be nothing -that Philip did not know. He was in a ferment of excitement -and expectation. To the family he said:</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid I shan’t be in, Tuesday evening. Sorry, but -Philip and I are dining together. Expect I’ll be in, Wednesday, -though.”</p> - -<p>It is a fact, strange but true, that Henry had never entered -one of the bigger London restaurants. The Trenchards -were not among those more modern parents who spend -their lives in restaurants and take their infant sons in Eton -jackets to supper at the Savoy after the Drury Lane pantomime. -Moreover, no one ever thought of taking Henry -anywhere. He had been at school until a few months ago, -and when, in the holidays, he had gone to children’s parties -he had always behaved badly. George Trenchard went very -seldom into restaurants, and often, for days together, forgot -that he had a son at all. Down in Glebeshire Henry was -allowed to roam as he pleased; even in London no restrictions -were placed on his movements. So long as he went -to the Abbey twice on Sunday he could do what he liked. -A friend of Seymour’s had put him up as a member of a -club in a little street off St. James: the entrance was only -a guinea, and “anyone could be a member”. Henry had, -three months ago, received a book of club rules, a list of members, -and a printed letter informing him that he was now -elected, must pay five guineas entrance and a guinea subscription. -He had extorted the money from his father, and, -for twenty-four hours, was the proudest and happiest human -being in London. He had never, alas! dared to venture -inside the building. Seymour’s friend had forgotten him. -The Club had remained strangely ignorant of his existence. -On three occasions he had started out, and on three occasions -his fears had been too strong for him. Once he had arrived -at the very club door, but a stout gentleman, emerging and -staring at him haughtily, had driven the blood from his -heart. He had hurried home, feeling that he had been personally -insulted. He found, on his return, that some vehicle -had splashed mud on to his cheek. “There! you see -what happens!...”</p> - -<p>He was not far from tears.</p> - -<p>He had, behind his unhappy experiences, the resolved certainty -that he was marked apart by destiny for some extraordinary -future: his very misfortunes seemed to prove this. -He had bought for himself a second-hand copy of that romance -to which I have made earlier allusion. It exercised, -at this time, an extraordinary influence upon him, and in -the hero’s fight against an overwhelming fate he saw his own -history, even when the circumstance was as trivial as his -search for a stud under the washing-stand. So young was -he, so crude, so sentimental, impulsive, suspicious, self-confident, -and lacking in self-confidence, loyal, ambitious, modest -and conceited that it was not strange that Philip did not -understand him.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>On the evening of his dinner with Philip he dressed with -the utmost care. There were three dress-shirts in his drawer, -and it was, of course, fate that decided that there should be -something the matter with all of them—one of them had -been worn once already, one was frayed at the cuffs, one had -a cracked and gaping stud hole. He pared the frayed cuffs -with his scissors, and hoped for the best. He then produced -the only valuable article in his possession, a pearl stud given -to him by his Uncle Bob on his last birthday. He was -greatly afraid of this stud, because the head of it screwed -into the body of it, and he was never sure whether he had -screwed it sufficiently. Suppose it were to leap into the -soup! Suppose it were to fall off and he not see it and -lose it! Such catastrophes were only too probable where -he was concerned. He screwed it in so vigorously to-night -that he made a grey mark round the stud-hole. He dabbed -this with a sponge, and the grey mark was greyer. His -father had told him that he must never wear a “made-up” -evening tie, but he had not told him how to tie one that -was not made-up, and Henry had been too timid to enquire. -To-night, by a sudden twist of genius, he produced something -that really seemed satisfactory; one end was longer -than the other, but his father approved of a little disorder—when -the tie was too neat it was almost “made-up”. -Henry’s dress-clothes, lying there upon the bed, seemed a -little faded. The trousers glistered in the electric light, and -the tails of the coat were sadly crumpled. But when they -were on his body Henry gazed at them with pleasure. One -trouser leg seemed oddly longer than the other, and his shirt -cuff had disappeared altogether, but the grey mark round the -stud was scarcely visible, and his collar was beautifully clean.</p> - -<p>His face was red and shining, his hair was plastered -down with water; it was a pity that there were three red -pimples on his forehead, but there had been four yesterday. -His ears, too, were dreadfully red, but that was from excitement.</p> - -<p>He had an opera hat and a black greatcoat with a velvet -collar, so that he felt very smart indeed as he slipped out -of the house. He was glad that he had escaped the family, -although he fancied that Aunt Aggie watched him from the -top of the stairs. He would have liked to have seen Katherine -for a moment, and had he spoken his heart out, he -would have assured her that, for her sake, he would do his -best to love Philip. It was for her sake, after all, that he -had dressed so carefully, for her sake that he wanted to be -a fine figure in the world. If he <span class='it'>had</span> seen her, all that he -would have said would have been: “So long, Katherine. -Dining with Philip, you know. See you in the morning....”</p> - -<p>He rode on an omnibus from Whitehall to Piccadilly Circus, -and walked then to Jules’. The clocks were striking half-past -seven, the appointed hour, as he entered. A stout man -like an emperor insisted on disrobing him of his greatcoat, -and he felt suddenly naked. He peeped into the room, which -was very empty, and all the waiters, like figures in Mme. -Tussaud’s, stared at him together. He was sure that his tie -had mounted above his collar; he put up his hand, found that -this was so, and thought that the emperor was laughing at -him. He bent down to tie his shoe, and then, just as a large -party entered the restaurant, there was a little pop, and the -head of his pearl stud was gone. He was on his knees in a -second.</p> - -<p>“Beg pardon, sir,” said the Emperor. “Allow me.”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Henry, whose face was purple, whose heart -was beating like a hammer, and through whose chasm in his -shirt a little wind was blowing against his vest.</p> - -<p>“It’s my stud. I can—I beg your—Oh, there—No, it -isn’t—”</p> - -<p>He was conscious of towering forms above him, of a lady’s -black silk stockings, of someone saying: “Why, dammit”; -of a sudden vision of the pearl and a large masculine boot -thundering towards it.</p> - -<p>From his position on the floor he cried in agony: “Oh, -do look out, you’re stepping on it!... I say ... Please!”</p> - -<p>He heard a sharp little cry, then, just as he seized it, -Philip’s voice:</p> - -<p>“Why, Henry!”</p> - -<p>He staggered up from his knees, which were white with -dust: his purple face, his disordered hair, a piece of pink -vest that protruded from his shirt made an unusual picture. -Someone began to laugh.</p> - -<p>“I say,” said Philip quickly, “come in here.” He led the -way into the lavatory. “Now, what’s the matter?”</p> - -<p>Henry stared at him. Why couldn’t the silly fool see?</p> - -<p>“It’s my stud ... the head came off ... might have -happened to anyone.”</p> - -<p>“That’s all right,” said Philip cheerfully. “Got it now? -That’s good. Look here, I’ll screw it in for you.”</p> - -<p>“The other piece ...” said Henry, who was near tears ... -“It’s slipped down—inside.”</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid you’ll have to take your trousers off,” said -Philip gravely. “Just let ’em down. It’s all right. There’s -no one here who matters.”</p> - -<p>Henry undressed. A smart man with hair like a looking-glass -came in, stared and went out again. Two attendants -watched sympathetically. After some time the stud was arranged, -and Henry was dressed again.</p> - -<p>“You’d better just let me tie your tie,” said Philip. “It’s -so difficult in here. One can’t see to do it oneself.”</p> - -<p>Henry said nothing. He brushed his hair again, suffered -himself to be dusted and patted by the attendant, and followed -Philip into the restaurant. He was so miserable that -suicide was the only alternative to a disgraced and dishonoured -life. He was sure that everyone in the restaurant was -laughing at him; the grave waiter who brought him his soup, -the fat, round button of a waiter who brought the champagne -in a bucket of ice, the party opposite, two men and -two women (beasts!), all these were laughing at him! His -forehead was burning, his heart deadly cold. He glared -at Philip, gulped down his food without knowing at all what -it was that he was eating, said “yes” and “no”; never looked -at Philip, but stared, fiercely, round him as though he were -looking for someone.</p> - -<p>Philip persisted, very bravely, in a succession of bright -and interesting anecdotes, but at last he flagged. He was -afraid that he had a terrible evening before him ... never -again....</p> - -<p>“He’s thinking,” said Henry to himself, “that I’m impossible. -He’s wondering what on earth he asked me for. -Why did he if he didn’t want to? Conceited ass ... that -about the stud might have happened to anyone. He’ll tell -Katherine....”</p> - -<p>“Coffee?” said Philip.</p> - -<p>“No, thank you,” said Henry.</p> - -<p>“All right. We’ll have it later. We’d better be getting -on to the show. Ready?”</p> - -<p>They moved away; they were in a cab; they were caught -into the heart of some kaleidoscope. Lights flashed, men -shouted, someone cried in a high treble. Lights flashed again, -and they were sitting in the stalls at the “Empire” music-hall. -Henry hailed the darkness with relief; he felt as -though his body were bruised all over, and when he looked -up and saw a stout man upside down on a tight-rope he -thought to himself: “Well, he can’t see me anyhow.... -He doesn’t know that the top of my stud came off.”</p> - -<p>There followed then a number of incredible people. (It -must be remembered that he had never been to a music-hall -before.) There was a man with two black eyes and a red -nose who sang a song about the wives he had had (seven -verses—one wife to every verse), there was a stout lady who -sang about porter, and there were two small children who -danced the Tango—finally a gentleman in evening dress and -a large white button-hole who recited poems whilst his friends -in the background arranged themselves in illustrative groups. -In this strange world Henry’s soul gradually found peace. -It was a world, after all, in which it was not absurd to grope -on one’s knees for the top of one’s stud—it was the natural -and clever thing to do. When the lady who sang about the -porter kissed her hand to the audience, Henry, clapping enthusiastically, -felt a throb of sympathy. “I’m so glad she’s -been a success to-night,” he thought to himself, as though she -had been his cousin or his aunt. “She’ll feel pleased.” He -wanted, by this time, everyone to be happy.... When, -at the last, the fat man in evening clothes recited his tale of -“the good old British Flag,” and was surrounded instantly -by a fluttering cloud of Union Jacks, Henry was very near -to tears. “I’ll make them send me to Oxford,” he said to -himself. “At once ... I’ll work like anything.”</p> - -<p>The lights went up—ten minutes’ interval—whilst the -band played tunes out of “Riogletta”, and behind the curtain -they prepared for that immensely popular ballet “The -Pirate”.</p> - -<p>“Let’s walk about a bit, shall we?” said Philip.</p> - -<p>Henry, humbly, with a timid smile agreed. He tumbled -over a lady as he passed out of his row, but he did not mind -now, his eyes were shining and his head was up. He -followed Philip, admiring his broad shoulders, the back of his -head, his sturdy carriage and defiant movement of his body. -He glared haughtily at young men lolling over the bar, and -the young men glared back haughtily at him. He followed -Philip upstairs, and they turned into the Promenade (Henry -did not know that it was the Promenade). With his head -in the air he stepped forward and plunged instantly into something -that flung powder down his throat, a strange and acrid -scent up his nose: his fingers scraped against silk.</p> - -<p>“There! clumsy!” said a voice.</p> - -<p>A lady wearing a large hat and (as it appeared to Henry) -tissue of gold, smiled at him.</p> - -<p>“It doesn’t matter,” she said, putting some fat fingers on -his hand for a moment. “It doesn’t, dear, really. Hot, isn’t -it?”</p> - -<p>He was utterly at a loss, scarlet in the face, his eyes staring -wildly. Philip had come to his rescue.</p> - -<p>“Hot, it is,” said Philip.</p> - -<p>“What about a drink, dear?” said the lady.</p> - -<p>“Not just now,” said Philip, smiling at her as though he’d -known her all his life. “Jolly good scrum up here, isn’t -there?”</p> - -<p>“Everyone bangin’ about so,” said the lady. “What about -a drink <span class='it'>now</span>? Rot waitin’.”</p> - -<p>“Sorry,” said Philip. “Got an engagement. Very important—” -The lady, however, had suddenly recognised an -old friend. “Why, Charlie!” Henry heard her say: “Who -ever ...”</p> - -<p>They sat down on a sofa near the bar and watched the -group. Henry was thinking: “He spoke to her as though -he had known her all his life....” He was suddenly aware -that he and his father and mother and aunts, yes, and Katherine -too were babies compared with Philip. “Why, they -don’t know anything about him. Katherine doesn’t know anything -really....” He watched the women who passed him; -he watched their confidential whispers with gentlemen who all -seemed to have red faces and bulging necks. He watched two -old men with their hats cocked to one side; they had faces -like dusty strawberries, and they wore white gloves and carried -silver-topped canes. They didn’t speak, and nothing -moved in their faces except their eyes. He watched a woman -who was angry and a man who was apologetic. He watched a -girl in a simple black dress who stood with grave, waiting -eyes. She suddenly smiled a welcome to someone, but the -smile was hard, practised, artificial, as though she had fastened -it on like a mask. Philip belonged to these people; -he knew their ways, their talk, their etiquette, their tragedies -and comedies. Henry stared at him, at his gaze, rather uninterested -and tired. (Philip, at that moment, was thinking -of Katherine, of the bore that her young brother was: he was -remembering the last time that she had kissed him, of her -warm cheek against his, of a little laugh that she had given, -a laugh of sheer happiness, of trusting, confident delight.) -Henry sat there, frightened, thrilled, shocked, proud, indignant -and terribly inquisitive. “I’m beginning to know about -life. Already I know more than they do at home.”</p> - -<p>Two boys who must have been younger than he passed him; -they were smart, shining, scornful. They had the derisive, -incurious gaze of old men, and also the self-assertive swagger -of very young ones. Henry, as he looked at them, knew that -he was a babe in arms compared with them; but it seemed -to him to-night that all his family was still in the cradle. -“Why, even father,” he thought, “if you brought him here I -don’t believe he’d know what to say or do.”</p> - -<p>They went downstairs, then found their seats, and the curtain -rose on the ballet. The ballet was concerned with pirates -and Venice in the good Old Days. The first scene was on an -island in the Adriatic: there were any number of pirates and -ladies who loved them, and the sun slowly set and the dancers -on the golden sand sank, exhausted, at the feet of their lovers, -and the moon rose and the stars came out in a purple sky. -Then the Pirate Chief, an enormous Byronic figure with hair -jet black and tremendous eyebrows, explained through his -hands, that there was a lady in Venice whom he loved, whom -he must seize and convey to his island. Would his brave fellows -follow him in his raid? His brave fellows would! One -last dance and one last drink, then death and glory! The -curtain came down upon figures whirling madly beneath the -moon.</p> - -<p>There followed then the Doge’s Palace, a feast with much -gold plate, aged senators with white beards, who watched the -dancing with critical gaze, finally a lovely lady who danced -mysteriously beneath many veils. She was, it appeared, a -Princess, sought in marriage by the Doge, her heart, however, -lost utterly to a noble Stranger whom she had once seen but -never forgotten. The Doge, mad with love for her, orders -her to be seized. She is carried off, wildly protesting, and the -golden scene is filled with white dancers, then with fantastic -masked figures, at last with dancers in black, who float like -shadows through the mazes of the music.</p> - -<p>The third scene is the Piazza. The country people have -a holiday—drinking and dancing. Then enters a magnificent -procession, the Doge leading his reluctant bride. Suddenly -shouts are heard. It is the Pirates! A furious fight follows, -the Pirates, headed by their chief, who wears a black mask, -are, of course, victorious. The Princess is carried, screaming, -to the Pirates’ ship, treasure is looted, pretty village maidens -are captured. The Pirates sail away. Last scene is the -Island again. The ladies are expecting their heroes, the vessel -is sighted, the Pirates land. There are dances of triumph, -the spoil, golden goblets, rich tapestries, gleaming -jewels are piled high, finally the captive lady Princess, who -weeps bitterly, is led by the Chieftain, still masked, into the -middle of the stage. She, upon her knees, begs for pity. He -is stern (a fine melancholy figure). At last he removes the -mask. Behold, it is the noble Stranger! With what rapture -does she fall into his arms, with what dances are the triumphant -Pirates made happy, upon what feasting does the sun -again set. The moon rises and the stars appear. Finally, -when the night-sky is sheeted with dazzling lights and the -moon is orange-red, the Pirates and their ladies creep away. -Only the Chieftain and his Princess, locked in one another’s -arms, are left. Someone, in the distance, pipes a little tune ... -the curtain descends.</p> - -<p>Impossible to describe the effect that this had upon Henry. -The nearest approach to its splendour in all his life before -had been the Procession of Nations at the end of the Drury -Lane pantomime, and, although he had found that very beautiful, -he had nevertheless been disturbed by a certain sense -of incongruity, Aladdin and his Princess having little to do -with Canada and Australia represented, as those fine countries -were, by two stout ladies of the Lane chorus. I think -that this “Pirate” ballet may be said to be the Third Crisis -in this critical development of Henry, the first being the -novel about the Forest, the second his vision of Katherine -and Philip.</p> - -<p>It will be, perhaps, remembered that at Jules’ restaurant -Henry had drunk champagne and, because of his misery and -confusion there, had had no consciousness of flavour, quantity -or consequences. It was certainly the champagne that lent -“The Pirate” an added colour and splendour.</p> - -<p>As the boy followed Philip into Leicester Square he felt -that any achievement would be now possible to him, any summit -was to be climbed by him. The lights of Leicester Square -circled him with fire—at the flame’s heart were dark trees -soft and mysterious against the night sky—beneath these -trees, guarded by the flame, the Pirate and the Princess slept.</p> - -<p>It seemed to him that now he understood all the world, -that he could be astonished and shocked by nothing, that every -man, be he never so degraded, was his brother.... He was -unaware that his tie was again above his collar and his shoe -lace unfastened. He strode along, thinking to himself: “How -glorious!... How splendid!... How glorious!”</p> - -<p>Philip, too, although the Empire ballet had once been -commonplace enough, although, moreover, he had come so little -a time ago from the country where the ballet was in all the -world supreme, had been plunged by the Pirate into a most -sentimental attitude of mind. He was to-night terribly in love -with Katherine, and, when the lights had been turned down -and the easy, trifling music had floated out to him, caught -him, soothed and whispered to him, he had held Katherine -in his arms, her cheek touching his, her heart beating with -his, his hand against her hair.</p> - -<p>Her confidence in him that, at other times, frightened him, -to-night thrilled him with a delicious pleasure. His old distrust -of himself yielded, to-night, to a fine, determined assurance. -“I will be all that she thinks I am. She shall see how -I love her. They shall all see.”</p> - -<p>“I think we’ll go down into the Grill Room,” said Philip, -when they arrived at the Carlton. “We can talk better -there.”</p> - -<p>It was all the same to Henry, who was busy feasting with -the Pirate upon the Adriatic Island, with the Princess dancing -for them on the golden sand. They found a quiet little -table in that corner which is one of the pleasantest places in -London, so retired from the world are you and yet so easy is -it to see all that goes on amongst your friends, enemies and -neighbours.</p> - -<p>“Oysters?... Must have oysters, Henry.... Then -grilled bones ... then we’ll see. Whisky and soda—split -soda, waiter, please....”</p> - -<p>Henry had never eaten oysters before, and he would have -drunk his whisky with them had Philip not stopped him. -“Never drink whisky with oysters—you’d die—you would -really.”</p> - -<p>Henry did not like oysters very much, but he would have -suffered the worst kind of torture rather than say so. The -bones came, and the whisky with them. Henry drank his -first glass very quickly in order to show that he was quite used -to it. He thought, as he looked across the table, that Philip -was the finest fellow in the world; no one had ever been so -kind to him as Philip—How could he ever have disliked -Philip? Philip was going to marry Katherine, and was the -only man in all the world who was worthy of her. Henry felt -a burning desire to confide in Philip, to tell him all his most -secret thoughts, his ambitions, his troubles....</p> - -<p>He drank his second glass of whisky, and began a long, -rather stumbling narration.</p> - -<p>“You know, I shall never be able to tell you how grateful -I am to you for giving me such a ripping evening. All this -time ... I’ve been very rude sometimes, I expect ... you -must have thought me a dreadful ass, and I’ve wanted so -much to show you that I’m not.”</p> - -<p>“That’s all right,” said Philip, who was thinking of Katherine.</p> - -<p>“No, it isn’t all right,” said Henry, striking the table with -his fist. “I must tell you, now that you’ve been so kind to -me. You see I’m shy really, I wouldn’t like most people to -know that, but I am. I’m shy because I’m so unfortunate -about little things. You must have noticed long ago how -unlucky I am. Nothing ever goes right with me at home. -I’m always untidy and my clothes go to pieces and I break -things. People seem to think I want to ...” His voice -was fierce for a moment.</p> - -<p>“That’s all right,” said Philip again. “Have some more -bone.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, thank you,” said Henry, staring darkly in front of -him. “I don’t know why I’m so unfortunate, because I know -I <span class='it'>could</span> do things if I were given a chance, but no one will -ever let me try. What do they keep me at home for when -I ought to be at Oxford? Why don’t they settle what I’m -going to be? It’s quite time for them to make up their mind.... -It’s a shame, a shame....”</p> - -<p>“So it is. So it is,” said Philip. “But it will be all right -if you wait a bit.”</p> - -<p>“I’m always told I’ve got to wait,” said Henry fiercely. -“What about other fellows? No one tells them to wait.... -I’m nineteen, and there are plenty of men of nineteen I know -who are doing all kinds of things. I can’t even dress properly—soot -and fluff always come and settle on <span class='it'>my</span> clothes rather -than on anyone else’s. I’ve often noticed it. Then people -laugh at me for nothing. They don’t laugh at other men.”</p> - -<p>“You oughtn’t to care,” said Philip.</p> - -<p>“I try not to, but you can’t help it if it happens often.”</p> - -<p>“What do you want to be?” said Philip. “What would -you like to do?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t mind; anything,” said Henry, “if only I did it -properly. I’d rather be a waiter who didn’t make a fool of -himself than what I am. I’d like to be of use. I’d like to -make people proud of me. I’d like Katherine—”</p> - -<p>At that name he suddenly stopped and was silent.</p> - -<p>“Well?” said Philip. “What about Katherine?... -Have some more whisky.... Waiter, coffee.”</p> - -<p>“I want to do something,” said Henry, “to make Katherine -proud of me. I know it must be horrible for her to have a -brother whom everyone laughs at. It’s partly because of her -that I’m so shy. But she understands me as none of the others -do. She knows I’ve got something in me. She believes in me. -She’s the only one.... I can talk to her. She understands -when I say that I want to do something in the world. <span class='it'>She</span> -doesn’t laugh. And I’d die for her.... Here, now, if it -was necessary. And I’ll tell you one thing. I didn’t like you -at first. When you got engaged to Katherine I hated it until -I saw that she’d probably have to be engaged to someone, and -it might as well be you.”</p> - -<p>“Thank you,” said Philip, laughing.</p> - -<p>“I saw how happy you made her. It’s hard on all of us -who’ve known her so long, but we don’t mind that ... if -you <span class='it'>do</span> make her happy.”</p> - -<p>“So,” said Philip, “it’s only by the family’s permission -that I can keep her?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you know what I mean,” said Henry. “Of course -she’s her own mistress. She can do what she likes. But she -<span class='it'>is</span> fond of us. And I don’t think—if it came to it—that she’d -ever do anything to hurt us.”</p> - -<p>“If it came to what?” said Philip.</p> - -<p>But Henry shook his head. “Oh! I’m only talking. I -meant that we’re fonder of one another as a family than -people outside can realise. We don’t seem to be if you watch -us, but if it came to pulling us apart—to—to—taking Katherine -away, for instance, it—it wouldn’t be easy.”</p> - -<p>“Another soda, waiter,” said Philip. “But I don’t want to -take Katherine away. I don’t want there to be any difference -to anyone.”</p> - -<p>“There <span class='it'>must</span> be a difference,” said Henry, shaking his -head and looking very solemn. “If it had been Millie it -mightn’t have mattered so much, because she’s been away a -lot as it is, but with Katherine—you see, we’ve always -thought that whatever misfortune happened, Katherine -would be there—and now we can’t think that any longer.”</p> - -<p>“But that,” said Philip, who’d drunk quite a number of -whiskies by this time, “was very selfish of you. You couldn’t -expect her never to marry.”</p> - -<p>“We never thought about it,” said Henry. He spoke -now rather confusedly and at random. “We aren’t the sort -of people who look ahead. I suppose we haven’t got much -imagination as a family. None of the Trenchards have. -That’s why we’re fond of one another and can’t imagine -ever not being.”</p> - -<p>Philip leant forward. “Look here, Henry, I want us to -be friends—real friends. I love Katherine so much that I -would do anything for her. If she’s happy you won’t grudge -her to me, will you?... I’ve felt a little that you, some -of you, don’t trust me, that you don’t understand me. But -I’m just what I seem: I’m not worthy of Katherine. I can’t -think why she cares for me, but, as she does, it’s better, isn’t -it, that she should be happy? If you’d all help me, if you’d -all be friends with me—”</p> - -<p>He had for some minutes been conscious that there was -something odd about Henry. He had been intent on his -own thoughts, but behind them something had claimed his -attention. Henry was now waving a hand in the air vaguely, -he was looking at his half-empty glass with an intent and -puzzled eye. Philip broke off in the middle of his sentence, -arrested suddenly by this strangeness of Henry’s eye, which -was now fixed and staring, now red and wandering. He -gazed at Henry, a swift, terrible suspicion striking him. -Henry, with a face desperately solemn, gazed back at him. -The boy then tried to speak, failed, and very slowly a large -fat tear trembled down his cheek.</p> - -<p>“I’m trying—I’m trying,” he began. “I’ll be your friend—always—I’ll -get up—stand—explain.... I’ll make a -speech,” he suddenly added.</p> - -<p>“Good Lord!” Philip realised with a dismay pricked with -astonishment, “the fellow’s drunk.” It had happened so -swiftly that it was as though Henry were acting a part. -Five minutes earlier Henry had apparently been perfectly -sober. He had drunk three whiskies and sodas. Philip had -never imagined this catastrophe, and now his emotions were -a confused mixture of alarm, annoyance, impatience and disgust -at his own imperception.</p> - -<p>Whatever Henry had been five minutes ago, there was no -sort of question about him now.</p> - -<p>“Someone’s taken off my—b-boots,” he confided very confidentially -to Philip. “Who—did?”</p> - -<p>The one clear thought in Philip’s brain was that he must -get Henry home quietly—from the Carlton table to Henry’s -bed, and with as little noise as possible. Only a few people -now remained in the Grill Room. He summoned the waiter, -paid the bill. Henry watched him.</p> - -<p>“You must—tell them—about my boots,” he said. “It’s -absurd.”</p> - -<p>“It’s all right,” said Philip. “They’ve put them on again -now. It’s time for us to be moving.” He was relieved to -see that Henry rose at once and, holding for a moment on -to the table, steadied himself. His face, very solemn and -sad, with its large, mournful eyes and a lock of hair tumbling -forward over his forehead, was both ridiculous and pathetic.</p> - -<p>Philip took his arm.</p> - -<p>“Come on,” he said. “Time to go home.”</p> - -<p>Henry followed very meekly, allowed them to put on his -coat, was led upstairs and into a “taxi.”</p> - -<p>Then he suddenly put his head between his hands and -began to sob. He would say nothing, but only sobbed hopelessly.</p> - -<p>“It’s all right,” said Philip, as though he were speaking -to a child of five. “There’s nothing to cry about. You’ll -be home in a moment.” He was desperately annoyed at the -misfortune. Why could he not have seen that Henry was -drinking too much? But Henry had drunk so little. Then -he had had champagne at dinner. He wasn’t used to it. -Philip cursed his own stupidity. Now if they made a noise -on the way to Henry’s room there might follow fatal consequences. -If anyone should see them!</p> - -<p>Henry’s sobs had ceased: he seemed to be asleep. Philip -shook his arm. “Look here! We must take care not to wake -anyone. Here we are! Quietly now, and where’s your key?”</p> - -<p>“Wash key?” said Henry.</p> - -<p>Philip had a horrible suspicion that Henry had forgotten -his key. He searched. Ah! there it was in the waistcoat -pocket.</p> - -<p>Henry put his arms round Philip’s neck.</p> - -<p>“They’ve turned the roa’ upside down,” he whispered confidentially. -“We mustn’t lose each other.”</p> - -<p>They entered the dark hall. Philip with one arm round -Henry’s waist. Henry sat on the lowest step of the stairs.</p> - -<p>“I’ll shtay here to-night,” he said. “It’s shafer,” and was -instantly asleep. Philip lifted him, then with Henry’s boots -tapping the stairs at each step, they moved upwards. Henry -was heavy, and at the top Philip had to pause for breath. -Suddenly the boy slipped from his arms and fell with a -crash. The whole house re-echoed. Philip’s heart stopped -beating, and his only thought was, “Now I’m done. They’ll -all be here in a moment. They’ll drive me away. Katherine -will never speak to me again.” A silence followed abysmally -deep, only broken by some strange snore that came -from the heart of the house (as though it were the house -that was snoring) and the ticking of two clocks that, in their -race against one another, whirred and chuckled.</p> - -<p>Philip picked Henry up again and proceeded. He found -the room, pushed open the door, closed it and switched on the -light. He then undressed Henry, folding the clothes carefully, -put upon him his pyjamas, laid him in bed and tucked -him up. Henry, his eyes closed as though by death, snored -heavily....</p> - -<p>Philip turned the light out, crept into the passage, listened, -stole downstairs, let himself into the Square, where he stood -for a moment, in the cold night air, the only living thing in -a sleeping world, then hastened away.</p> - -<p>“Thank Heaven,” he thought, “we’ve escaped.” He had -<span class='it'>not</span> escaped. Aunt Aggie, a fantastic figure in a long blue -dressing-gown, roused by Henry’s fall, had watched, from -her bedroom door, the whole affair. She waited until she had -heard the hall-door close, then stole down and locked it, stole -up again and disappeared silently into her room.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>When Henry woke in the morning his headache was very -different from any headache that he had ever endured before. -His first thought was that he could never possibly get -up, but would lie there all day. His second that, whatever -he did, he must rouse suspicion in no one, his third that he -really <span class='it'>had</span> been terribly drunk last night, and remembered -nothing after his second whisky at the Carlton, his fourth -that someone must have put him to bed last night, because -his clothes were folded carefully, whereas it was his own -custom always to fling them about the room. At this moment -Rocket (who always took upon himself the rousing of Henry) -entered with hot water.</p> - -<p>“Time to get up, sir,” he said. “Breakfast-bell in twenty -minutes. Bath quite ready.”</p> - -<p>Henry watched. “He’ll suspect something when he sees -those clothes,” he thought. But Rocket, apparently, suspected -nothing. Henry got up, had his bath and slowly -dressed. His headache was quite horrible, being a cold headache -with a heavy weight of pain on his skull and a taste in -his mouth of mustard and bad eggs. He felt that he could -not possibly disguise from the world that he was unwell. -Looking in the glass he saw that his complexion was yellow -and muddy, but then it was never, at any time, very splendid. -He looked cross and sulky, but then that would not surprise -anyone. He went downstairs and passed successfully -through the ordeal: fortunately Aunt Aggie was in bed. Only -Millie, laughing, said to him: “You don’t look as though -evenings with Philip suited you, Henry—”</p> - -<p>(How he hated Millie when she teased him!)</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Trenchard placidly, “there -must be thunder about—thunder about. I always feel it -in my back. George dear, do put that paper down, your -tea’s quite cold.”</p> - -<p>“Well,” said George Trenchard, looking up from the -‘Morning Post’ and beaming upon everyone, “what did Philip -do with you last night, Henry. Show you the town—eh?”</p> - -<p>“We had a very pleasant evening, thank you, father,” said -Henry. “We went to the Empire.”</p> - -<p>“You came in very quietly. I didn’t hear you. Did you -hear him, Harriet?”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Mrs. Trenchard. “I do hope you locked the -front door, Henry.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, mother. That was all right,” he said hurriedly.</p> - -<p>“Well, dear, I’m very glad you had a pleasant evening. -It was kind of Philip—very kind of Philip. Yes, that’s -Aunt Aggie’s tray, Katie dear. I should put a little more -marmalade—and that bit of toast, the other’s rather dry—yes, -the other’s rather dry. Poor Aggie says she had a disturbed -night—slept very badly. I shouldn’t wonder whether -it’s the thunder. I always know by my back. Thank you, -Katie. Here’s a letter from Rose Faunder, George, and she -says, ‘etc., etc.’ ”</p> - -<p>After breakfast Henry escaped into the drawing-room; he -sank into his favourite chair by the fire, which was burning -with a cold and glassy splendour that showed that it had -just been lit. The room was foggy, dim and chill, exactly -suited to Henry, who, with his thin legs stretched out in front -of him and his headache oppressing him with a reiterated emphasis -as though it were some other person insisting on his -attention, stared before him and tried to think.</p> - -<p>He wanted to think everything out, but could consider -nothing clearly. It was disgusting of him to have been drunk, -but it was Philip’s fault—that was his main conclusion. -Looking back, everything seemed to be Philip’s fault—even -the disaster to himself. There was in Henry a strange puritanical, -old-maidish strain, which, under the persuasion of -the headache, was allowed full freedom. Philip’s intimacy -with those women, Philip’s attitude to drink, to ballets, even -to shirt studs, an attitude of indifference bred of long custom, -seemed to Henry this morning sinister and most suspicious. -Philip had probably been laughing at him all the -evening, thought him a fool for getting drunk so easily (terrible -idea this), would tell other people about his youth and -inexperience. Thoughts like these floated through Henry’s -aching head, but he could not really catch them. Everything -escaped him. He could only stare into the old mirror, with -its reflection of green carpet and green wall-paper, and fancy -that he was caught, held prisoner by it, condemned to remain -inside it for ever, with an aching head and an irritated -conscience.</p> - -<p>He was ill, he was unhappy, and yet through it all ran the -thought: “You are a man now. You have received your -freedom. You’ll never be a boy again....”</p> - -<p>He was aroused from his thoughts by the sudden vision of -Katherine, who was, he found, sitting on the elbow of his -arm-chair with her hand on his shoulder.</p> - -<p>“Hullo,” he said, letting her take his hand. “I didn’t -hear you come in.”</p> - -<p>“I didn’t know you were in here,” she answered. “You -were hidden by the chair. I was looking for you, though.”</p> - -<p>“Why?” said Henry, suspiciously.</p> - -<p>“Oh, nothing—except that I wanted to hear about last -night. Did you enjoy it?”</p> - -<p>“Very much.”</p> - -<p>“Was Philip nice?”</p> - -<p>“Very nice.”</p> - -<p>“What did you do?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, we dined at Jules, went to the Empire, had supper -at the Carlton, and came home.” He looked at Katherine’s -eyes, felt that he was a surly brute and added: “The ballet -was called ‘The Pirate’. I thought it was fine, but it was -the first one I’d seen—I don’t think Philip cared much for -it, but then he’s seen so many in Moscow, where they go on -all night and are perfectly splendid.”</p> - -<p>Katherine’s hand pressed his shoulder a little, and he, in -response, drew closer to her.</p> - -<p>“I’m glad Philip was nice to you,” she said, gazing into -the fire. “I want you two to be great friends.” There -sprang then a new note into her voice, as though she were -resolved to say something that had been in her mind a long -time. “Henry—tell me—quite honestly, I want to know. -Have I been a pig lately? A pig about everybody. Since -I’ve been engaged have I neglected you all and been different -to you all and hurt you all?”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Henry, slowly. “Of course you haven’t ... -but it has been different a little—it couldn’t help being.”</p> - -<p>“What has?”</p> - -<p>“Well, of course, we don’t mean so much to you now. -How can we? I suppose what Philip said last night is true, -that we’ve been all rather selfish about you, and now we’re -suffering for it.”</p> - -<p>“Did Philip say that?”</p> - -<p>“Yes—or something like it.”</p> - -<p>“It isn’t true. It simply shows that he doesn’t understand -what we all are to one another. I suppose we’re different. -I’ve been feeling, since I’ve been engaged, that we -<span class='it'>must</span> be different. Philip is so continually surprised at the -things we do.”</p> - -<p>Henry frowned. “He needn’t be. There’s nothing very -wonderful in our all being fond of you.”</p> - -<p>She got up from the chair and began to walk up and down -the room. Henry’s eyes followed her.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know what it is,” she said suddenly. “But during -these last weeks it’s as though you were all hiding something -from me. Even you and Millie. Of course I know -that Aunt Aggie hates Philip. She never <span class='it'>can</span> hide her feelings. -But mother ...” Katherine broke out. “Oh! it’s all -so silly! Why can’t we all be natural? It’s unfair to Philip. -He’s ready for anything, he wants to be one of us, and you, -all of you—”</p> - -<p>“It isn’t quite fair,” said Henry slowly, “to blame only us. -We’ve all been very nice to Philip, I think. I know Aunt -Betty and Millie and father like him very much.”</p> - -<p>“And you?” said Katherine.</p> - -<p>“I don’t think I’d like anyone who was going to take -you away.”</p> - -<p>“But he isn’t going to take me away. That’s where you’re -all so wrong. He’s just going to be one more of the family.”</p> - -<p>Henry said nothing.</p> - -<p>Katherine then cried passionately: “Ah, you don’t know -him! you simply don’t know him!” She stopped, her eyes -shining, her whole body stirred by her happiness. She came -over and stood close to him: “Henry, whatever happens, -<span class='it'>whatever</span> happens, nothing can take me away from you and -mother and the rest. Nor from Garth.... If you’re <span class='it'>sure</span> -of that then you needn’t be afraid of Philip.”</p> - -<p>Henry looked up at her. “Suppose, Katherine—just suppose—that -he insisted on your going, leaving us all, leaving -Garth, going right away somewhere. What would you do?”</p> - -<p>Katherine smiled with perfect confidence. “He wouldn’t -insist on anything that would make me so unhappy—or anyone -unhappy. All he wants is that everyone should like -everyone else, and that no one should be hurt.”</p> - -<p>“I’m not sure,” said Henry, “whether it isn’t that sort -who hurt people most in the end.” He took her hand in his. -“He can do anything he likes, Katherine, anything, and I’ll -adore him madly, so long as he doesn’t hurt you. If he -does that—”</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie, standing in the doorway with the look of -one who must live up to having had breakfast in bed, interrupted -him:</p> - -<p>“Ah, Katherine, there you are. The last thing I want is -to give trouble to anyone, but I passed so poor a night that -I feel quite unequal to marking those pillow-cases that I -offered yesterday to do for your mother. I was so anxious -yesterday afternoon to help her, as indeed I always am, but -of course I couldn’t foretell that my night would be so disturbed. -I wonder whether you—”</p> - -<p>“Why, of course, Aunt Aggie,” said Katherine.</p> - -<p>Henry’s morning reflections resolved themselves finally -into the decision that to continue his emancipation he would, -definitely, before the day closed, penetrate into the heart -of his Club. He found, when he arrived there, that he was -so deeply occupied with thoughts of Katherine, Philip and -himself that he knew no fear. He boldly passed the old man -in the hall who exactly resembled a goat, climbed the stairs -with the air of one who had been doing it all his life, and discovered -a room with a fire, a table with papers, some book-cases -with ancient books, and Seymour. That gentleman was -standing before the fire, a smile of beaming self-satisfaction -upon his red fat face; he greeted Henry with that altruistic -welcome that was peculiarly his own. A manner that implied -that God had sent him especially into the world to show -other men how to be jolly, optimistic, kind-hearted and -healthy.</p> - -<p>“Why, who ever expected to see you here?” he cried. -“You’re yellow about the gills, my son. Have a whisky and -soda.”</p> - -<p>“No, thank you,” said Henry, with an internal shudder. -“I thought I’d just look in.”</p> - -<p>“Why, of course,” said Seymour. “How jolly to see -you!”</p> - -<p>They drew their chairs in front of the fire and talked—at -least Seymour talked. He told Henry what a lucky fellow -he, Seymour, was, how jolly the world was, how splendid -the weather was. He let slip by accident the facts that three -publishers were fighting for his next book, that America had -gone mad about his last one (“although I always said, you -know, that to be popular in America was a sure sign that one -was no good”), and that he’d overheard some woman at a -party saying that he was the most interesting young man of -the day. He told these tales with an air as though he would -imply—“How absurd these people are! How ridiculous!”</p> - -<p>Then, suddenly, he paused. It seemed that he had remembered -something.</p> - -<p>“By the way, Trenchard—I knew there was something. -There’s a fellow in this Club, just been lunching with him. -I don’t expect he’s gone. I want you to meet him, I was -thinking about you at luncheon. He’s just come from Moscow, -where he’s been two years.”</p> - -<p>“Moscow?” said Henry.</p> - -<p>“Yes. I’ll go and find him. He may have left if I don’t -go now.”</p> - -<p>Seymour hurried away to return an instant later with a -very-much dressed young man in a purple suit and a high, -shrill voice. He gave Henry a languid finger, said that he -wouldn’t mind a drink, and sat down in front of the fire. -Seymour began a fresh monologue, the young man (Morrison -was his name) drank his whisky with a delicate foreign -attitude which Henry greatly admired, said at last that -he must be going. It was only then that Henry plucked up -courage.</p> - -<p>“I say—Seymour tells me you’ve just come from Moscow.”</p> - -<p>“Yes—damned rotten town,” said Morrison, “two years -of it—nearly killed me.”</p> - -<p>“Did you happen to know,” said Henry, “a man there -called Mark?”</p> - -<p>“What! Phil Mark! Think I did!... Everyone knew -Phil Mark! Hot stuff, my word!”</p> - -<p>“I beg your pardon?” said Henry.</p> - -<p>Mr. Morrison looked at Henry with curiosity, stared into -his glass, found that it was empty, rose and brushed his trousers.</p> - -<p>“Went the pace—had a mistress there for years—a girl -out of the ballet. Everyone knew about it—had a kid, but -the kid died ... conceited sort o’ feller—no one liked him. -Know I didn’t.”</p> - -<p>“It can’t have been the same man,” said Henry slowly.</p> - -<p>“No? daresay not,” said Morrison languidly, “name of -Philip though. Short square feller, bit fat, black hair; he -was in Maddox and Custom’s—made a bit of money they -said. He chucked the girl and came to England—here somewhere -now I believe....”</p> - -<p>He looked at Henry and Seymour, found them silent, -disliked the stare in Henry’s eyes, saw a speck of dust on his -waistcoat, was very serious about this, found the silence unpleasant -and broke away—</p> - -<p>“Well, so long, you fellows.... Must be toddling.”</p> - -<p>He wandered out, his bent shoulders expressing great contempt -for his company.</p> - -<p>Seymour had watched his young friend’s face. He was, -for once, at a loss. He had known what would occur; he -had produced Morrison for no other purpose. He had hated -Mark since that day at the Trenchard’s house with all the -unresting hatred of one whose whole peace of mind depends -on the admiration of others. Morrison had told him stories -about Mark: he did not, himself, wish to inform Henry, -because his own acquaintance with the family and knowledge -of Miss Trenchard’s engagement made it difficult, but he had -no objection at all to Morrison’s agency. He was frightened -now at Henry’s white face and staring eyes.</p> - -<p>“Did you know this?” Henry said.</p> - -<p>“ ’Pon my word, Trenchard—no idea. Morrison was -talking the other day about Englishmen in Moscow, and mentioned -Mark, I think, but I never connected him. If I’d -thought he was coming out with it like that of course I’d have -stopped it, but <span class='it'>he</span> didn’t know—”</p> - -<p>“He’s lying.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t know why he should. He’d no idea your sister was -engaged. It’s a bit rotten, isn’t it? I’m awfully sorry—”</p> - -<p>Henry stared at him. “I believe you <span class='it'>did</span> know: I believe -you meant him to tell me. That’s what you brought him for—you -hate Mark anyway.” Henry laughed, then broke off, -stared about him as though he did not know where he was, -and rushed from the room. He did not know through what -streets he passed; he saw no people, heard no noise; was -conscious neither of light nor darkness. He knew that it was -true. Mark was a blackguard. Katherine—Katherine....</p> - -<p>As he crossed the bridge in St. James’ Park he tumbled -against a man and knocked off his hat. He did not stop to -apologise. What was he to do? What was he to do? Why -had it been he who had heard this?</p> - -<p>In the dark hall of the house he saw Katherine. She -spoke to him; he tore past her, tumbling upstairs, running -down the passage as though someone pursued him. His bedroom -door banged behind him.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2 id='ch10'>CHAPTER IV<br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>GARTH IN ROSELANDS</span></h2> - -<p>Philip, on the day following his evening with Henry, -left London to spend three weeks with some relations -who lived near Manchester. This was the first parting from -him that Katherine had suffered since the beginning of their -engagement, and when she had said good-bye to him at the -station, she seemed to return through empty streets, through -a town without colour or movement, and the house, when she -entered it, echoed, through its desolate rooms and passages, -to her steps.</p> - -<p>She resolved at once, however, that now was the time to -show the family that she was the same Katherine as she had -ever been. As she waited for a little in her bedroom, finally -dismissing Philip’s presence and summoning the others, she -laughed to think how simply now she would brush away the -little distrusts and suspicions that seemed, during those last -weeks, to have grown about her.</p> - -<p>“They <span class='it'>shall</span> know Phil,” she thought to herself. “They -can’t help loving him when they see him as he really is. Anyway, -no more keeping anything back.” It seemed to her, -at that moment, a very simple thing to impart her happiness -to all of them. She had no fear that she would fail. Then, -almost at once, the most delightful thing occurred.</p> - -<p>Two or three days after Philip’s departure Mrs. Trenchard, -alone with Katherine in the dining-room before breakfast, -said:</p> - -<p>“I’ve written to Philip, my dear, to ask him to go down -with us to Garth.”</p> - -<p>Katherine’s eyes shone with pleasure.</p> - -<p>“Mother!... How delightful of you! I was hoping that -perhaps you might ask him later. But isn’t it tiresome to -have him so soon?”</p> - -<p>“No—my dear—no. Not tiresome at all. I hope he’ll be -able to come.”</p> - -<p>“Of course he’ll be able to come,” laughed Katherine.</p> - -<p>“Yes—well—I’ve written to ask him. We go down on the -fifth of March. Your father thinks that’s the best day. -Griffiths writes that that business of the fences in Columb -meadow should be looked into—Yes. No, Alice, not the ham—tell -Grace to boil two more eggs—not enough—I’m glad -you’re pleased, Katherine.”</p> - -<p>Katherine looked up, and her eyes meeting her mother’s, -the confidence that had been clouded ever since that fatal -affair with the hot-water bottles seemed to leap into life between -them. Mrs. Trenchard put out her hand, Katherine -moved forward, but at that moment Aunt Aggie and Aunt -Betty entered; breakfast began.</p> - -<p>“I believe,” thought Katherine, “Aunt Aggie waits outside -the door and chooses her moment. She’s always interrupting....” -The fact that there was now some restraint between -her mother and herself was only emphasised the more -by the feeling of both of them that an opportunity had been -missed.</p> - -<p>And why, Katherine wondered afterwards, had her mother -asked Philip? If he had been invited to come to them after -Easter—but now, to go down with them, as one of the family! -Was not this exactly what Katherine had been desiring? -And yet she was uncomfortable. She felt sometimes -now that her mother, who had once been her other self, in -whose every thought, distress, anxiety she had shared, was -almost a stranger.</p> - -<p>“It’s just as though there were ghosts in the house,” she -thought. As she went to bed she was, for the first time in -her life, lonely. She longed for Philip ... then suddenly, -for no reason that she could name, began to cry and, so crying, -fell asleep. She was much younger than everyone -thought her....</p> - -<p>Throughout the three weeks that followed she felt as -though she were beating the air. Rachel Seddon had taken -her husband abroad. There was no one to whom she could -speak. She wrote to Philip every day, and discovered how -useless letters were. She tried to approach Millie, but found -that she had not the courage to risk Millie’s frankness. Her -sister’s attitude to her was: “Dear Katie, let’s be happy and -jolly together without talking about it—it’s much better....” -There had been a time, not so very long ago, -when they had told one another everything. Henry was the -strangest of all. He removed himself from the whole family, -and would speak to no one. He went apparently for long -solitary walks. Even his father noticed his depression, and -decided that something must really be done with the boy. -“We might send him abroad for six months—learn some -French or German ...” but of course nothing was done.</p> - -<p>Aunt Betty was the only entirely satisfactory member of -the family. She frankly revelled in the romance of the -whole affair. She was delighted that Katherine had fallen -in love “with such a fine manly fellow” as Philip. Her attention -was always centred upon Katherine to the exclusion -of the others, therefore she noticed no restraint nor awkwardness. -She was intensely happy, and went humming about the -house in a way that annoyed desperately her sister Aggie. -She even wrote a little letter to Philip, beginning “My dear -Boy,” saying that she thought that he’d like to know from -one of the family that Katherine was in perfect health and -looking beautiful. She received a letter from Philip that -surprised and delighted her by its warmth of feeling. This -letter was the cause of a little battle with Aggie.</p> - -<p>They were alone together in Betty’s room when she said, -half to herself:</p> - -<p>“<span class='it'>Such</span> a delightful letter from the ‘dear boy’.”</p> - -<p>“<span class='it'>What</span> dear boy?” said Aunt Aggie sharply.</p> - -<p>Aunt Betty started, as she always did when anyone spoke -to her sharply, sucked her fingers, and then, the colour mounting -into her cheeks, said:</p> - -<p>“Philip. He’s written to me from Manchester.”</p> - -<p>“I do think, Betty,” Aggie answered, “that instead of -writing letters to young men who don’t want them you might -try to take a little of the burden of this house off my shoulders. -Now that Katherine has lost all her common-sense -I’m supposed to do everything. I don’t complain. They -wish me to help as much as I can, but I’m far from strong, -and a little help from you ...”</p> - -<p>Then Aunt Betty, with the effect of standing on her toes, -her voice quite shrill with excitement, spoke to her sister -as she had never, in all her life, spoken to anyone before.</p> - -<p>“It’s too bad, Aggie. I used to think that you were fond -of Katherine, that you wished her happiness—Now, ever -since her engagement, you’ve done nothing but complain -about her. Sometimes I think you really want to see her -unhappy. We ought to be glad, you and I, that she’s found -someone who will make her happy. It’s all your selfishness, -Aggie; just because you don’t like Philip for some fancied -reason ... it’s unfair and wicked. At anyrate to me you -shan’t speak against Katherine and Philip.... I love -Katherine, even though you don’t.”</p> - -<p>Now it happened that, as I have said elsewhere, Aggie -Trenchard loved her niece very deeply. It was a love, however, -that depended for its life on an adequate return. “That -young man has turned Katherine against me. Ever since he -first came into the house I knew it.” Now at her sister’s -accusation her face grew grey and her hands trembled.</p> - -<p>“Thank you, Betty. I don’t think we’ll discuss the matter. -Because you’re blind and know nothing of what goes on under -your nose is no reason that other people’s sight should be -blinded too. Can’t you see for yourself the change in Katherine? -If you loved her a little more sensibly than you do, -instead of romancing about the affair, you’d look into the -future. I tell you that the moment Philip Mark entered this -house was the most unfortunate moment in Katherine’s life. -Nothing but unhappiness will come of it. If you knew what -I know—”</p> - -<p>Aunt Betty was, in spite of herself, struck by the feeling -and softness in her sister’s voice.</p> - -<p>“What do you mean?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“I mean nothing. I’m right, that’s all. <span class='it'>You’re</span> a silly, -soft fool, Elizabeth, and so you always were. But Harriet ... -asking him to go down to Garth with us, when she hates -him as I know she does! <span class='it'>I</span> don’t know what it means. Do -you suppose that I don’t love Katherine any longer? I love -her so much that I’d like to strangle Mr. Philip Mark in his -sleep!”</p> - -<p>She flung from the room, banging the door behind her.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Philip arrived on the evening before the departure into the -country. He came well pleased with all the world, because -his Manchester relations had liked him and he had liked his -Manchester relations. Viewed from that happy distance, the -Trenchards had been bathed in golden light. He reviewed his -recent agitations and forebodings with laughter. “Her family,” -he told his relations, “are a bit old-fashioned. They’ve -got their prejudices, and I don’t think they liked the idea, at -first, of her being engaged—she’s so valuable. But they’re -getting used to it.” He arrived in London in the highest -spirits, greeted Rocket as though he had been his life-long -friend, and going straight up to his room to dress for dinner, -thought to himself that he really did feel at home in the old -house. He looked at his fire, at the cosy shape of the room, -heard a purring, contented clock ticking away, thought for -a moment of Moscow, with its puddles, its mud, its dark, uneven -streets, its country roads, its weeks of rain.</p> - -<p>“No, I’ve found my place,” he thought, “<span class='it'>this</span> is home.”</p> - -<p>And yet, during dinner, his uneasiness, like a forgotten -ghost, crept back to him. Henry had a headache, and had -gone to bed.</p> - -<p>“He’s not been very well lately,” said Aunt Aggie to -Philip, “that evening with you upset him, I believe—over-excited -him, perhaps. I’m glad you liked Manchester.” He -could not deny that dinner was a little stiff. He was suddenly -aware over his pudding that he was afraid of Mrs. Trenchard, -and that his fear of her that had been vague and -nebulous before his absence was now sharp and defined.</p> - -<p>He looked at her, and saw that her eyes were anything but -placid and contented, like the rest of her.</p> - -<p>“More pudding, Philip?” she asked him, and his heart beat -as though he had received a challenge.</p> - -<p>Afterwards in the drawing-room he thought to himself: -“ ’Tis this beastly old house. It’s so stuffy”—forgetting that -two hours earlier it had seemed to welcome him home. “We’ll -be all right when we get down to the country,” he thought.</p> - -<p>Finally he said good-night to Katherine in the dark little -passage. As though he were giving himself some desperate -reassurance, he caught her to him and held her tightly in his -arms:</p> - -<p>“Katie—darling, have you missed me?”</p> - -<p>“Missed you? I thought the days were never going to -pass.”</p> - -<p>“Katie, I want to be married, here, now, to-night, at once. -I hate this waiting. I <span class='it'>hate</span> it. It’s impossible—”</p> - -<p>Katherine laughed, looking up into his eyes.</p> - -<p>“I like you to be impatient. I’m so happy. I don’t think -anything can ever be happier. Besides, you know,” and her -eyes sparkled—“you may change—you may want to break -it off—and then think how glad you’ll be that we waited.”</p> - -<p>He held her then so fiercely that she cried out.</p> - -<p>“Don’t say that—even as a joke. How dare you—even -as a joke? I love you—I love you—I love you.” He kissed -her mouth again and again, then suddenly, with a little movement -of tenderness, stroked her hair very softly, whispering -to her, “I love you—I love you—I love you—Oh! how I love -you!”</p> - -<p>That night she was so happy that she lay for many hours -staring at the black ceiling, a smile on her lips. He, also, -was awake until the early morning....</p> - -<p>The departure to the station was a terrific affair. There -were Mr. Trenchard, senior, Great Aunt Sarah (risen from -a bed of sickness, yellow and pinched in the face, very yellow -and pinched in the temper, and deafer than deaf), Aunt -Aggie, Aunt Betty, George Trenchard, Mrs. Trenchard, Millie -(very pretty), Henry (very sulky), Katherine, Philip, -Rocket and Aunt Sarah’s maid (the other maids had left by -an earlier train)—twelve persons. The train to be caught -was the eleven o’clock from Paddington, and two carriages -had been reserved. The first business was to settle old Mr. -Trenchard and Aunt Sarah. They were placed, like images, -in the best corners, Mr. Trenchard saying sometimes in his -silvery voice: “It’s very kind of you, Harriet,” or “Thank -ye, Betty, my dear,” and once to Millie, “I like to see ye -laughing, my dear—very pretty, very pretty”. Aunt Sarah -frowned and wrinkled her nose, but was, in her high black -bonnet, a very fine figure. Her maid, Clarence, was plain, -elderly and masculine in appearance, having a moustache and -a stiff linen collar and very little hair visible under her black -straw hat. She, however, knew just how Great-Aunt Sarah -liked to be....</p> - -<p>The others in that compartment were Aunt Aggie, George -Trenchard (he sat next to his father and told him jokes out -of the papers) and Mrs. Trenchard. In the other carriage -Katherine and Philip had the corners by the window. Aunt -Betty sat next to Philip, Millie and Henry had the farther -corners. When the train started, Katherine’s heart gave a -jump, as it always did when she set off for Garth. “We’re -really off. We’ll really be in Garth by the evening. We’ll -really wake up there to-morrow morning.”</p> - -<p>Philip had not seen Henry since his return from -Manchester, so he tried to talk to him. Henry, however, was -engaged upon a very large edition of “War and Peace,” and, -although he answered Philip’s enquiries very politely, he was -obviously determined to speak to no one. Millie had Henry -Galleon’s “Roads” to read, but she did not study it very -deeply—Aunt Betty had a novel called “The Rosary” and -her knitting; now and then she would break into little scraps -of talk as: “But if I moved the bed across lengthways that -would leave room for the book-case,” or “I do think people -must be clever to make up conversations in books,” or -“There’s Reading”. The lovers, therefore, were left to one -another....</p> - -<p>Katherine had upon her lap the novel that had so greatly -excited Henry; he had insisted upon her reading it, but now -it lay idly there, unopened. That little smile that had hovered -about her lips last night was still there to-day. Often -her eyes were closed, and she might have seemed to be asleep -were it not that the little smile was alive—her eyes would -open, they would meet Philip’s eyes, they would be drawn, -the two of them, closer and closer and closer.</p> - -<p>They talked together, their voices scarcely above a whisper. -The day was one of those that are given sometimes, in a fit -of forgetfulness, by the gods, at the beginning of March. It -was a very soft, misty day, with the sun warm and golden but -veiled. Trees on the dim blue horizon were faintly pink, -and streams that flashed for an instant before the windows -were pigeon-colour. Everywhere the earth seemed to be -breaking, flowers pushing through the soil, rivers released -from their winter bondage laughing in their new freedom, -the earth chuckling, whispering, humming with the glorious -excitement of its preparation, as though it had never had a -spring in all its life before, as though it did not know that -there would yet be savage winds, wild storms of rain, many -cold and bitter days. Blue mist—running water—trees with -their bursting buds—a haze of sun and rain in the air—a -great and happy peace.</p> - -<p>Katherine and Philip, although they saw no one but one -another, were aware of the day—it was as though it had been -arranged especially for them. The rise and fall of their -voices had a sleepy rhythm, as though they were keeping time -with the hum of the train:</p> - -<p>“I’m so glad,” said Katherine, “that your first view of -Glebeshire will be on a day like this.”</p> - -<p>“I’m a little afraid,” he answered. “What will you say if -I don’t like it?”</p> - -<p>She seemed really for an instant to be afraid. “But, of -course, of course, you will.”</p> - -<p>“Everyone doesn’t. Someone told me the other day that -either it was desolate enough to depress you for a lifetime or -stuffy like a hot-house, and that the towns were the ugliest -in the United Kingdom.”</p> - -<p>Katherine sighed and then smiled.</p> - -<p>“I expect they’d think Manchester the loveliest place on -earth,” she said. Then, looking at him very intently, she -asked him: “Do you regret Russia—the size and the space -and the strangeness? I daresay you do. Do you know, Phil, -I’m rather jealous of Russia, of all the things you did before -I knew you, I wonder whether I’d have liked you if I’d met -you then, whether you’d have liked me. I expect you were -very different. Tell me about it. I’m always asking you -about Moscow, and you’re so mysterious—yes, I believe I’m -jealous.”</p> - -<p>Philip looked away from her, out of the window, at the -fields with their neat hedges, the gentle hills faintly purple, -villages tucked into nests of trees, cows grazing, horses mildly -alert at the passing train. For a moment he was conscious -of irritation at the tidy cosiness of it all. Then he spoke, -dreamily, as though he were talking in his sleep:</p> - -<p>“No. That’s all behind me. I shall never go back there -again. I don’t think of it often, but sometimes I fancy I’m -there. Sounds will bring it back, and I dream sometimes.... -One gets so used to it that it’s hard now to say what one did -feel about it. I had a little flat in a part of the town called -the Arbat. Out of my window I could see a church with sky-blue -domes covered with silver stars, there was a shop with -food, sausages and all kinds of dried fish, and great barrels -of red caviare and mountains of cheese. The church had a -cherry-coloured wall, with a glittering Ikon at the gate and a -little lamp burning in front of it. There were always some -cabs at the end of my street, with the cabmen in their fat, -bunched-up clothes sleeping very often, their heads hanging -from the shafts. Lines of carts from the country would pass -down the street with great hoops of coloured wood over the -horses’ necks and wild-looking peasants in charge of them. -They didn’t seem wild to me then—they were quite ordinary. -Always just before six the bells at the church would ring, -one slow, deep note and a little funny noisy jangle as well—one -beautiful and unearthly; the other like a talkative woman, -all human.... In the autumn there’d be weeks of rain -and the mud would rise and rise, and the carts and cabs go -splashing through great streams of water. When the snow -came there’d be fine days and the town on fire, all sparkling -and quivering, and every ugly thing in the place would be -beautiful. There’d be many days too when the sky would -fall lower and lower and the town be like grey blotting-paper -and the most beautiful things hideous. Opposite my window -there was a half-built house that had been there for three -years, and no one had troubled to finish it. There was a -beggar at the corner—a fine old man with no legs. He must -have made a fortune, because everyone who passed gave him -something. It would be fine on a snowy night when the -night-watchmen built great fires of logs to keep them warm.</p> - -<p>“On a starry night I could see the domes of St. Saviour’s -Cathedral like little golden clouds—very beautiful.”</p> - -<p>“And what was the inside of your flat like?” asked Katherine. -She had been leaning a little forward, her hands -clasped together, deeply interested.</p> - -<p>“Oh! very small! I made it as English as I could. It -had central heating and, in the winter, with the double windows, -it got very stuffy. I had English pictures and English -books, but it was never very comfortable. I don’t know why. -Nothing in Russia’s comfortable. I had a funny old servant -called Sonia. She was fond of me, but she drank; she was -always having relations to stay with her. I would find funny-looking -men in the kitchen in the morning. She had no idea -of time, and would cook well or badly as she pleased. She -liked to tell fairy stories; she stole and she drank and she -lied, but I kept her because I couldn’t bother to change her.”</p> - -<p>He stopped—then began again, but now more dreamily -than before, as though he’d been carried far away from the -train, from England, from Katherine. “Yes—that was it—one -couldn’t be bothered. One couldn’t be bothered about -anything, and one didn’t need to bother, because no one else -bothered either. Perhaps that’s just why I loved it, as I see -now that I did love it. No one cared for anything but what -was in the air—dreams, superstitions, stories. The country -itself was like that too—so vague, so vast and boundless, so -careless and heedless, so unpractical, so good for dreams, so -bad for work, so unfinished, letting so many things go to -pieces, so beautiful and so ugly, so depressing and so cheerful, -so full of music and of ugly sounds ... so bad to live -in, so good to dream in. I was happy there and I didn’t -know it—I was happy and didn’t know it.” His voice had -sunk to a whisper, so that Katherine could not catch his -words. She touched the sleeve of his coat.</p> - -<p>“Come back, Phil, come back,” she said, laughing. -“You’re lost.”</p> - -<p>He started, then smiled at her.</p> - -<p>“It’s all right ... but it’s odd. There are so many things -that didn’t seem to me to be curious and beautiful then that -are so now.” Then, looking at Katherine very intently, as -though he were calling her back to him, he said:</p> - -<p>“But don’t talk to me about Russia. It’s bad for me. I -don’t want to think of it. I’ve left it for ever. And when -you ask me questions it revives me, as though it still had some -power.... You say that you’re afraid of it—why,” he -ended, laughing, “I believe I’m afraid of it too—I don’t -<span class='it'>want</span> to think of it. It’s England now and Glebeshire and -you—and you,” he whispered. They were interrupted then -by an attendant, who told them that it was time for the first -luncheon.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Afterwards, when the shadows were lengthening across the -fields and the misty sun rode low above the far hills, they sat -silently dreaming of their great happiness. It was an afternoon -that was to remain, for both of them, throughout their -lives, in spite of all after events, a most perfect memory. -There are moments in the histories of all of us when we are -carried into heights that by the splendour of their view, the -fine vigour of their air, the rapture of their achievement offer -to us a sufficient reassurance against the ironic powers. We -find in them a justification of our hopes, our confidences, our -inspirations, our faith....</p> - -<p>So, for these few hours at least, Katherine and Philip -found their justification.</p> - -<p>This was a moment that two others, also, in that carriage -were never afterwards to forget. Millie, under the warm -afternoon sun, had fallen asleep. She woke to a sudden, half-real, -half-fantastic realisation of Philip. She was awake, -of course, and yet Philip was not quite human to her—or was -it that he was more human than he had ever been before? -She watched him, with her young, eager, inquisitive gaze, -over the cover of her book. She watched him steadily for a -long time.</p> - -<p>She had always liked the clean, bullet-shaped head, his -black eyes, his sturdiness and set, square shoulders, his colour -and his strength. She had always liked him, but to-day, in -this sudden glimpse, he seemed to be revealed to her as someone -whom she was seeing for the first time. Millie, in all the -freshness of her anticipated attack upon the world, had at this -period very little patience for bunglers, for sentimentalists, -for nervous and hesitating souls. Now, strangely, she saw in -Philip’s eyes some hinted weakness, and yet she did not despise -him. “I believe,” she thought, “he’s afraid of us.” -That discovery came as though it had been whispered to her -by someone who knew. Her old conviction that she knew -him better than did the others showed now no signs of faltering. -“I believe I could help him as they none of them can,” -she thought. “No, not even Katherine.” She had, in spite -of her determined, practical common-sense, the most romantic -idea of love, and now, as she thought of the two of them -wrapped up there before her eyes in one another, she felt irritated -by her own isolation. “I wonder whether Katherine -understands him really,” she thought. “Katherine’s so simple, -and takes everything for granted. It’s enough for her -that she’s in love. I don’t believe it’s enough for him.” She -had always in very early days felt some protecting, motherly -element in her love for Katherine. That protection seemed -now to spread to Philip as well. “Oh! I do hope they’re -going to be happy,” she thought, and so, taking them both -with her under her wing, dozed off to sleep again....</p> - -<p>The other was, of course, Henry.</p> - -<p>No one could ever call Henry a gay youth. I don’t think -that anyone ever did, and although with every year that he -grows he is stronger, more cheerful and less clumsy and misanthropic, -he will never be really gay. He will always be far -too conscious of the troubles that may tumble on to his head, -of the tragedies of his friends and the evils of his country.</p> - -<p>And yet, in spite of his temperament, he had, deep down in -his soul, a sense of humour, an appreciation of his own comic -appearance, a ready applause for the optimists (although -to this he would never, never confess). “He’s a surly brute,” -I heard someone say of him once—but it is possible (I do not -say probable) that he will be a great man one of these days, -and then everyone will admire his fine reserve, “the taciturnity -of a great man”; in one of his sudden moments of -confidence he confessed to me that this particular journey -down to Glebeshire was the beginning of the worst time in -his life—not, of course, quite the beginning. Philip’s appearance -on that foggy night of his grandfather’s birthday was -that—and he is even now not so old but that there may be -plenty of bad times in store for him. But he will know now -how to meet them; this was his first test of responsibility.</p> - -<p>He had always told himself that what he really wanted was -to show, in some heroic fashion, his love for Katherine. Let -him be tested, he cried, by fire, stake, torture and the block, -and he would “show them.” Well, the test had come. As he -sat opposite her in the railway carriage he faced it. He -might go up to Philip and say to him: “Look here, is it true? -Did you have a mistress in Moscow for three years and have -a son by her?” But what then? If Philip laughed, and -said: “Why, of course ... everyone knows it. That’s all -over now. What is it to you?” He would answer: “It’s this -to me. I’m not going to have a rotten swelp of a fellow marrying -my sister and making her miserable.”</p> - -<p>Then Philip might say: “My dear child—how young -you are! all men do these things. I’ve finished with that part -of my life. But, anyway, don’t interfere between me and -Katherine, you’ll only make her miserable and you’ll do no -good.”</p> - -<p>Ah! that was just it. He would make her miserable; he -could not look at her happiness and contemplate his own destruction -of it. And yet if Philip were to marry her and -afterwards neglect her, and leave her as he had left this other -woman, would not Henry then reproach himself most bitterly -for ever and ever? But perhaps, after all, the story of -that wretched man at the Club was untrue, it had been, perhaps, -grossly exaggerated. Henry had a crude but finely-coloured -fancy concerning the morals of the Man of the World. -Had not Seymour dismissed such things with a jolly laugh -and “my dear fellow, it’s no business of ours. We’re all very -much alike if we only knew.” Had he not a secret envy of -this same Man of the World who carried off his sins so lightly -with so graceful an air? But now it was no case of an -abstract sinner—it was a case of the happiness or unhappiness -of the person whom Henry loved best in life.</p> - -<p>A subtler temptation attacked him. He knew (he could not -possibly doubt) that if his parents were told, Philip would -have to go. One word from him to his mother, and the family -were rid of this fellow who had come out of nowhere to -disturb their peace. The thing was so infernally easy. As -he sat there, reading, apparently, his novel, his eyes were on -Katherine’s face. She was leaning back, her eyes closed, -smiling at her thoughts. What would Katherine do? Would -she leave them all and go with him? Would she hate him, -Henry, for ever afterwards? Yes, that she would probably -do.... Ah, he was a weak, feeble, indeterminate creature. -He could make up his mind about nothing.... That evening -he had had with Philip, it had been glorious and disgusting, -thrilling and sordid. He was rather glad that he -had been drunk—he was also ashamed. He was intensely -relieved that none of the family had seen him, and yet he saw -himself shouting to them: “I was drunk the other night, and -I talked to rotten women and I didn’t care what happened -to me.... I’m a boy no longer.”</p> - -<p>He hated Philip, and yet, perhaps, Philip was leading -him to freedom. That fellow in the novel about the sea and -the forests (Henry could see him challenging his foes, walking -quietly across the square towards his friend, who was -waiting to slay him). He would have admired Philip. -Henry saw himself as that fine solitary figure waiting for his -opportunity. How grand he could be had he a chance, but life -was so lofty, so unromantic, so conventional. Instead of -meeting death like a hero, he must protect Katherine ... -and he did not know how to do it....</p> - -<p>As the sun was sinking in a thick golden web that glittered -behind the dark purple woods—woods that seemed now to -stand like watchers with their fingers upon their lips—the -train crossed the boundary river. That crossing bad been, -ever since he could remember, a very great moment to Henry. -To-day the recognition of it dragged him away from Philip -and Katherine, from everything but Glebeshire.</p> - -<p>He looked across at Katherine instinctively—she, sitting -now upright, gazing out of the window, turned as though she -had known and smiled at him. They were in Glebeshire, -there was the first valley, mysterious, now like a dark purple -cup, there the white winding road that went over the hill -on to Rasselas, Liskane, Clinton and Truxe, there was the -first break in the hills, where you always peered forward expecting -to catch a shimmer of the sea, here that cluster of -white cottages that, when he had been small, had seemed to -be tumbling down the hill, very dangerous to live in ... at -last the pause at Carlyon, the last stop before Rasselas.</p> - -<p>It was quite dark now. The light had suddenly been drawn -from the sky, and the earth was filled with new sounds, new -scents, new mysteries. The train stopped for a minute before -Rasselas, and, suddenly all about it, through the open -window there crowded whispers, stealthy movements, the -secret confidences of some hidden stream, the murmured -greetings of the trees. The train lay there as though it had -wanted them all to know how lovely the evening was. On the -road that skirted the train a man with a lantern greeted a cart. -“Well, good-night to ’ee,” a voice said clear and sharp like an -invitation; Henry’s heart began to beat furiously. Glebeshire -had welcomed them.</p> - -<p>With a jerk the train stumbled forward again, and they -were in Rasselas. The little station, which was of some importance -because it was a junction for Pelynt and therefore -also for Rafiel, lay very quietly at the bottom of the wooded -hill. A porter went down the train swinging a lantern and -crying: “Change for P’lynt. Change for P’lynt.”</p> - -<p>A stream flowed near by, and the scent of a garden flooded -the station: there would be already snowdrops and primroses -and crocuses. The whole party of them were bundled out on -to the platform—a great pile of luggage loomed in the distance. -Heads from the carriage windows watched them, then -a pause, a cry, and the train was off, leaving them all high -and dry, with the wind blowing round their hair and clothes -and ankles like a friendly and inquisitive dog. There was -sea in the wind.</p> - -<p>“Smell the sea!” cried Millie. “I must have left it in the -restaurant car,” said Aunt Aggie. “Too provoking. I particularly -wanted you to read that article, Harriet. I think -you might have noticed, Millie ... you were sitting next -to me.”</p> - -<p>“There’s Jacob!” Henry, suddenly happy and excited and -free from all burdens, cried:</p> - -<p>“Hallo! Jacob! How are you? How’s everyone? How’s -Rebekah?”</p> - -<p>Jacob, with a face like a red moon, smiled, touched his hat, -stormed at a young man in buttons. “Do ’ee bustle a bit, -John. Didn’t I tell ’ee the box with the black ’andles?... -very comfortable, Mr. ’Enry, sir, thank ’ee, as I ’opes you -finds yourself. Been a bit o’ sickness around down along in -the village ... but not to ’urt....”</p> - -<p>Could they all get in? Of course they could. The luggage -was all on the luggage-cart, and Rock and Clarence with it; a -silver moon, just rising now above the station roofs, peeping -at her, laughed at her serious dignity.</p> - -<p>“No, we’ll go on the box, Philip and I,” said Katherine. -“Of course I shan’t be cold. No, really, we’d rather, wouldn’t -we, Philip? Plenty of room, Jacob.”</p> - -<p>They were off, up the little hill, down over the little bridge -and through the little village. Katherine, sitting between -Philip and Jacob, pressing her cheek against Philip’s rough -tweed coat, her hand lying in his under the rug, seemed to -slip, dreaming, fulfilling some earlier vision, through space. -She had wondered sometimes, in the earlier days, whether -there could be any greater happiness in life than that ever-thrilling, -ever-satisfying return to Garth. She knew now that -there was a greater happiness....</p> - -<p>A white world of crackling, burning stars roofed them in; -an owl flew by them through the grey dusk; the air smelt of -spring flowers and fresh damp soil. The stream that had been -with them since their entrance into Glebeshire still accompanied -them, running with its friendly welcome at their side. -Beyond the deep black hedges cows and horses and sheep -moved stealthily: it seemed that they might not disturb the -wonderful silence of the night.</p> - -<p>“Are you warm enough?” he asked her; he caught her -hand more tightly and kissed her cheek, very softly and -gently. She trembled with happiness, and pressed more -closely against his coat.</p> - -<p>“Can you smell the sea yet? You will when you get to the -top of Rasselas Hill. This is the high road to Pelynt. It -runs parallel with the railway until we get to the cross roads, -Pelynt Cross, you know.... You’ll smell the sea there. -You can see it on a clear day. To the left of you there is just -Pelynt Moor. It runs for miles and miles, right along by the -Drymouth Road.... Look through the break in the hedge. -Do you see that light across the field? That’s John Pollen’s -cottage. John was murdered just about a hundred years ago. -He was an old miser, and some men robbed him, but they -never found his head. They say he wanders about still looking -for it.... Oh, if this could go on for ever. Philip, are -you happy?”</p> - -<p>“Happy?” ... Ah! she could feel his body quiver.</p> - -<p>“Yes, and now we’re coming down to the Well. There’s a -little wood just at the body of the hill. We always call it the -Well because it’s so dark and green. It’s the most famous -wood for primroses in all Glebeshire. They’ll be coming -now.... We’ll walk here.... I cried once because I -thought I was lost here. They forgot me and went home. -Then I was comforted by the postman, who found me and -carried me home.... Jacob, do you remember?”</p> - -<p>“Ah, Miss Kathie, doan’t ’ee think that I’d forget ought -about ’ee. Not likely. And your mother in a fine takin’, poor -soul, too. We’re a-coming to P’lynt Cross now, sir—as famous -as any spot o’ ground in the ’ole of Glebeshire, sir—Hup, -then! Hup, then—Whey—Oh! oh! Hup, then!”</p> - -<p>They pulled to the top, leaving the wood in the dip behind -them. The wind met them, flinging its salt and freshness in -their faces with a rough, wild greeting. Philip could hear -suddenly the humming of the telegraph wires, as though they -had sprung from their imprisonment in the valley and were -chanting their victory. To his left, vague and formless under -the starlight, stretched Pelynt Moor, waiting there, scornfully -confident in its age and strength and power, for daylight. -The salt wind flung its arms around them and dragged -them forward; Philip, listening, could hear, very stealthily, -with the rhythm of armed men marching, the beating of the -sea....</p> - -<p>“Now we’re near—now we’re very near. It’ll be Garth -Cross in a minute. There it is. Now we turn off down to the -Almshouses. We don’t really come into the village.... -There are the Almshouses and the Common.... Now round -the corner.... There it is—there’s the Gate—the Gate!... -Oh! Philip, are you <span class='it'>happy</span>?”</p> - -<p>She was crying a very little: her eyes were blurred as they -turned up the long drive, past all the rhododendron bushes, -past the lawn with the giant oak at the farther end of it, round -the curve to the hall door, with Rebekah standing under the -porch to welcome them. Philip was down, and had helped -her to the ground. She stood a little away from them all as -they laughed and chattered about the door. She wiped her -eyes with her gloved hand to stop the tears.</p> - -<p>Philip was conscious of standing in a long dark hall with -stairs at the end of it and a large oak chest with a glass case -that contained a stuffed bird taking up much of the space; -that, he always afterwards remembered, was his first impression -of the house, that it was absurd to put so large a chest -just there where everyone would knock against it. A misty -babel of talk surrounded him: he was conscious of a tall old -woman wearing a high, stiffly-starched white cap: she had a -fine colour, very dark red cheeks, hair a deep black and flashing -eyes. She must be between sixty and seventy, but her -body was straight and vigorous. This was, he supposed, Rebekah. -He saw, in the background, old Mr. Trenchard being -helped up the stairs by Rocket; he heard Aunt Betty in a -happy twitter, “Ah, now, this is nice ... this <span class='it'>is</span> nice ... -how nice this is.” He heard Mrs. Trenchard’s slow, sleepy -voice: “No—the train was punctual, Rebekah, quite punctual. -We had luncheon on the train ... yes, we were quite -punctual.”</p> - -<p>Someone said: “I’ll show Philip his room,” and George -Trenchard, laughing, cried to him: “Come on, Philip, this -way—this way.” Trenchard, like a boy, bounded up the -stairs in front of him. They were old, black, winding and -creaking stairs that sighed as you mounted them. Trenchard -cried: “To the right now—mind your head!” They turned -through a little passage, so low that Philip must bend double -and so dark that he could see nothing before him. He put -out his hand, touched Trenchard’s broad back, and was surprised -at his sense of relief. Now they walked along another -passage, very narrow, white walls with coloured sporting -prints hanging on them. “Ah! here’s the Blue Room. Here -you are. Hope you’ll like it—got a decent view. Brought -you hot water? Ah, yes, there it is. When you’ve washed -come down just as you are. Don’t bother to change.... -It’s only supper to-night, you know.... Right you are.”</p> - -<p>His room was charming, with cherry-coloured wall-paper -on walls that seemed a thousand years old. He flung his windows -open, and there was the moon, thin, sharp, quivering -with light in the sky, and he could hear the stream that had -accompanied him ever since his entry into Glebeshire still -singing to him. The night air was so sweet, the trees, that -sighed and trembled and sighed again, so intimate. There -was an intimacy here that he had never felt in any country -before.</p> - -<p>There was an intimacy and also, for him, at any rate, some -strange loneliness.... He closed the window. He found -his way down into the hall, and there saw Katherine. -“Quick!” she cried. “Quick! I hoped that you’d come down -before the others. We’ve got ten minutes.” She was almost -dancing with excitement (she his staid, reserved Katherine). -She was pulling him by the arm, out through the door, under -the porch, into the garden. She ran across the lawn, and he, -more slowly, followed her. He caught her and held her close -to him.</p> - -<p>“You love it, Philip—don’t you? You must. Of course -you’ve hardly seen anything to-night. To-morrow we must -both get up early, before anyone else, and come down. But -look back now. Isn’t the house simply—? Isn’t it? Don’t -you feel the happiness and cosiness and friendliness? Oh, -you must! You must!”</p> - -<p>“When I’ve got you I don’t want anything. Everything is -lovely.”</p> - -<p>“But you’re happy now to be here, aren’t you?”</p> - -<p>“Very happy.”</p> - -<p>“And you won’t be disappointed, will you? You must -promise me that you won’t be disappointed.”</p> - -<p>“I promise you.”</p> - -<p>“And there’s so much to show you! Oh! it’s so wonderful -to have all the old places that I’ve loved so long, to have them -all to show you—to share them all with you.... Oh, wonderful, -wonderful!”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I’ll share them all with you. But—but ... Katherine, -darling. No, turn round—come closer. There, like -that: I don’t want to share <span class='it'>you</span> with <span class='it'>them</span>. I don’t want to -share you with anyone or anything.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t—you can’t. Of course you can’t. I’m all -yours—but then this is part of me, so <span class='it'>it’s</span> all yours too.”</p> - -<p>“And you couldn’t live away from it? You couldn’t imagine -having to be right away from it—if I <span class='it'>had</span> to live somewhere -else?”</p> - -<p>“But why should you? You won’t have to live somewhere -else. And let’s not imagine anything. Things are so lovely, -so perfect, as they are. I don’t like imagining things. I can’t -when <span class='it'>this</span> is all so real.”</p> - -<p>“Katie ... Katie ... No, come closer. Much closer. -I don’t care if I do hurt you. I want to. I want <span class='it'>you, you, -you</span>. It’s what I said last night. Let’s marry soon—not this -awful year. I feel—I don’t know—I imagine too much. I -suppose—Rut I feel as though you’d escape me, as though -they’d all come between and take you away. If once you -were <span class='it'>mine</span> I’d never care again. We’d stay anywhere, do -anything you like. But this is so hard—to wait like this. -To see you caring so much for other people, who don’t, perhaps, -care for me. I <span class='it'>want</span> you. I <span class='it'>want</span> you—<span class='it'>all</span> of you. -And I’ve only got half.”</p> - -<p>“Half!” She laughed triumphantly. “You <span class='it'>have</span> all of -me—<span class='it'>all</span> of me—for <span class='it'>ever</span>! Philip, how funny you are! Why, -you don’t trust me! I’d wait for ever if necessary, and never -doubt for an instant that anything could come between. I -trust you as I trust this place.”</p> - -<p>A voice broke in upon them. Someone called.</p> - -<p>“Katherine! Katherine!”</p> - -<p>Slowly she drew away from him. “That’s mother. I -must go.”</p> - -<p>He caught her hand. “Stay a little longer. They can -wait.”</p> - -<p>“No, it’s mother. She wants me. Come on, Phil darling. -Supper time. We’ll creep out again afterwards.”</p> - -<p>She crossed the lawn, expecting Philip to follow her. But -he stayed there under the oak tree. He heard the voices -laughing and calling in the lighted house. He was suddenly -desperately lonely. He was frightened.... He crossed hurriedly -the lawn, and as he walked he knew that what he -wanted was that someone, someone who really knew him, -should come and comfort him.</p> - -<p>Before he entered the hall he stopped and looked back into -the dark garden. Was there someone beneath the oak, someone -who watched him with an ironical, indulgent smile?... -No, there was no one there. But he knew who it was that -could comfort him. With a swift, sharp accusation of disloyalty -he confessed to himself that it was Anna for whom, -during that instant, he had looked.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2 id='ch11'>CHAPTER V<br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>THE FEAST</span></h2> - -<p>Some entries in Millie’s diary:</p> - -<p><span class='it'>March 12th.</span> Wind and rain like anything. Been -in most of the day patching up the screen in my bedroom -with new pictures—got them as much like the old ones as -possible. Went for an hour’s tussle with the wind out to the -Cross, and it was fine. Wish I could have got over to Rafiel. -The sea must have been fine to-day coming in over the Peak. -Father drove Philip over to Polchester in the morning. Felt -bored and out of temper in the evening.</p> - -<p><span class='it'>March 13th.</span> Katie and Philip had their first tiff this -morning—at least first I’ve seen. He wanted her to go off -with him for the day. She’d got to stop and help mother with -the Merrimans from Polneaton, coming to tea. Mother said -it didn’t matter, but I could see that she was awfully pleased -when K. stayed. But if I’d been K. I’d have gone. What -<span class='it'>does</span> a family matter when one’s in love? and she <span class='it'>is</span> in love, -more than anyone I’ve ever seen. But I think she’s disappointed -with Phil for not caring more about Garth, although -she never owns it. I’m sorry for him. He wanders about -not knowing what to do with himself, and everyone’s too -busy to think of him. I try, but he doesn’t want me, he wants -Katherine, and thinks he ought to have her all the time. -Aunt Aggie makes things worse in every way she can....</p> - -<p><span class='it'>March 15th.</span> Cross all day. Garth isn’t quite so nice this -time somehow. Is it because of Paris? I don’t think so—it -used to make one care all the more. I think Philip upsets -one. When you see someone criticising something you’ve always -loved, it makes you hot defending it, but also, although -you’d never own it, it makes you see weak spots. Then he -stirs my imagination as no one ever has done before. I believe -he always sees the place he’s not in much more vividly -than the place he is. If I were Katie I’d marry him to-morrow -and make sure of him. Not that he isn’t in love with her—he -<span class='it'>is</span>—more every day—but he doesn’t want to divide her -with us, and she doesn’t understand it and we won’t have it—so -there you are!</p> - -<p><span class='it'>March 16th.</span> Henry very queer to-day. I wish they’d -send him to Oxford or do something with him. It’s so hard on -him to let him hang around doing nothing—it’s so bad for -him, too. I think he hates Philip, but is fascinated by him. -He took me into the garden after lunch to-day as though he -were going to tell me something very important. He was so -very mysterious, and said I could advise him, and he was -dreadfully worried. Then he suddenly stopped, said it was -nothing, and wasn’t it a fine day? I know I shall kill Henry -one day. He thinks he’s so important and has got a great -destiny, whereas he can’t even keep his face clean. So I -told him, and then I wanted to hug him and comfort him. -I’m really awfully fond of him, but I do wish he was nice -and smart like other men.</p> - -<p><span class='it'>March 17th.</span> Had a long walk with Philip this afternoon. -Really I do like him most tremendously, partly, I think, because -he always treats me as though I’d come out years ago -and knew all about everything. He talked all the time about -Katherine, which was natural enough, I suppose. He said -(what he’d told me in London) that he was frightened by her -idea of him, and wished she thought him more as he was. -He said he hated a long engagement, that he wished it were -over—then he said that he was a poor sort of fellow for anyone -so fine as Katherine, and I said that I didn’t think it did -to be too humble about oneself and that I always made myself -out as grand as I could in my mind.</p> - -<p>He said that it was Russia made one like that, that after -you’d been in Russia a little you doubted everyone and everything, -most of all yourself. I said that I thought that rather -flabby ... but I do like him. I don’t think Katie ought -to insist so much on his liking Garth. She’ll frighten him off -it altogether if she does that.</p> - -<p><span class='it'>March 19th.</span> Rachel Seddon arrived. Mother asked her -down. She doesn’t generally come at this time, and she’s -only just back from abroad, but I think she wants to see how -the engagement’s getting on. Of course she doesn’t like -Philip—you can see that in a moment—and of course he -knows it. But he wants to make her like him. I wish he -didn’t care so much whether people like him or no. Henry -quite his old self to-night, and we danced (I tried to teach -him a cake-walk) in my room, and smashed a lamp of Aunt -Aggie’s—I’d quite forgotten her ceiling was my floor. The -house is awfully old and shaky—letter from Rose La Touche—Paris -does seem funny to think of here....</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Part of a letter that was never posted—</p> - -<p>“I haven’t written to you all these weeks because I was -determined not to write to Russia until I was settled and -happy and married for life. Then, also, you yourself have -not written. Have you all, over there, forgotten me? Russians -never do write letters, do they? I don’t suppose I -ought to be disappointed—you warned me. If I’d forgotten -all of you there—but I haven’t. I thought for a time that I -had, but I haven’t ... then a bell rings, and all the servants -troop in and kneel down in a row with their heels up, and -George Trenchard reads a bit out of the New Testament and, -very fast, a prayer about ‘Thy humble servants’, and he has -his eye on the weather out of the window all the time. Afterwards -there is the Post—also eggs, bacon, marmalade, brown -bread and white and the family arriving one by one with -‘sorry I’m late!’ Fancy a Russian saying: ‘Sorry I’m late’!... -so the day’s begun. Afterwards, everyone has their own -especial job. I don’t know what my especial job is supposed -to be. George has his writing and the whole place—fences, -weeds, horses, dogs—anything yon like. He fancies himself -Walter Scott at Abbotsford, and is as happy as the day is -long; Mrs. Trenchard has the village and the inside of the -house (with Katherine her lieutenant). There is no living -soul from the infant of a week to the old man of ninety-seven -(John Wesley Moyle—he sees visions) who does not have his -or her life exactly and precisely arranged. Mrs. Trenchard -has a quiet hypnotic power that fills me with terror, because -I know that I shall soon be ranged with all the others. She -is kindness itself I am sure, and no cloud passing across the -sun’s face makes less sound—and yet she has always her way. -Oh, Paul, old man, I’m frightened of her as I have never -been of anyone before. When I see her here I want to run. I -had a horrible dream last night. The terror of it is with me -still. I thought that I said good-night to everyone and went -up to my bedroom. To my surprise I found Mrs. Trenchard -there, and instead of my usual bed was an enormous feather-bed—an -<span class='it'>enormous</span> one stretching from wall to wall. ‘You -will sleep on that to-night,’ said Mrs. Trenchard, pointing to -it. In some way I knew that if I once lay down upon it I -should never get up again. I said ‘No, I would not lie -down.’ ‘I think you’d better,’ she said in her slow way. -‘I think you’d better.’ ‘No!’ I cried, ‘I defy you!’ Instantly -the feather-bed like a cloud rose, filled the room, was above -me, under me, around me. It pressed in upon me. I tore at -it, and the feathers floated in a great stifling fog against my -eyes, up my nose, in my mouth. I screamed for mercy, I -fought, I fell, I was suffocating, death was driving down -upon me ... I woke. There’s nonsense for you! And yet -not such nonsense neither. On a stuffy day here, when everything -steams and the trees and grass and hedges close up about -the house like an army, when Mrs. Trenchard, with Katherine, -is arranging meals and lives, birth and death, when, trying -to escape down one of the lanes, they rise so high above -one’s head that it’s like being drowned in a green bath, I tell -you the feather-bed is not so far away—suffocation seems no -idle dream. The fact of the matter is that there’s nothing -here for me to do. It didn’t matter having nothing to do in -Russia—although, as a matter of fact, I always had plenty, -because no one else had anything to do that couldn’t be -stopped at any moment for the sake of a friend, or a drink, or -a bit of vague thinking. I suppose it’s the order, the neatness, -the punctuality and, at the same time, the solid, matter-of-fact -assumption that things must be exactly what they look -(which they never are) that fusses me. But really of course -I came down here to make love to Katherine—and I only get -a bit of her. She cherishes the faith that I want the family -as badly as I want her, and that the family want me as badly -as she does. She has got a thousand little duties here that I -had never reckoned on, and they are like midges on a summer’s -evening. I would throw myself into their life if they -would let me, but there doesn’t seem any real place for me. -It’s fighting with shadows. George Trenchard takes me for -drives, Millie, Katherine’s sister, takes me for walks—Katie -herself is, I do believe, with me whenever she can be.... -I ought to be satisfied. But only last night Great Aunt Sarah, -who is in her dotage (or pretends to be), said, in the drawing-room -to Millie, in a loud whisper, ‘Who is that young man, -my dear, sitting over there? I seem to know his face.’ That -sort of thing doesn’t exactly make you feel at home. With -all this, I feel the whole time that they are criticising me and -waiting for me to make some big blunder. Then they’ll say -to Katherine, ‘You see, my dear!’ Oh, of course, I’m an ass -to make a fuss. Any sensible fellow would just wait his year, -marry Katherine and say good-bye to the lot. But I shan’t -be able to say good-bye to the lot. That’s the whole business ... -partly because I’m weak, partly because Katherine -adores them, partly because that is, I believe, Mrs. T.’s plan. -To absorb me, to swallow me, to have me ever afterwards, -somewhere about the place, a colourless imitation of the rest -of them. So they’ll keep Katie, and I’m not important -enough to matter. That’s her plan. Is she stronger than I? -Perhaps after all I shall snatch Katherine from them and -escape with her—and then have her homesick for ever after.... -Why am I always imagining something that isn’t here? -Russia poisoned my blood—sweet poison, but poison all the -same. You’ll understand this letter, but if George Trenchard, -or indeed any ordinary sensible Englishman were to read it, -what an ass he’d think me! ‘If he thought more about the -girl he was going to marry than about himself he wouldn’t -have all this worry.’ But isn’t it just that. If, in nine -months from now, I, swallowed whole by Mrs. T., marry -Katie, will that be much fun for her? I shall be a sort of -shadow or ghost. I can see myself running Mrs. Trenchard’s -errands, hurrying down to be in time for breakfast (although -she never scolds anyone), sometimes waking, seeing myself, -loathing, despising myself. Ah! Anna would understand ... -Anna, even when she laughed, understood ... Anna ... -I don’t think I shall send this. I’m determined to drive you -all from me until, in a year’s time, I can think of you safely -again. I described Moscow to Katherine in the train, and -speaking of it, has reminded me ...”</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Katherine could not remember that there had ever been a -year since her eighth birthday when she had missed “The -Feast” at Rafiel. “The Feast” was held always on the 24th -of March, unless that day were a Sunday: it had been held, -old Dr. Pybus, the antiquarian of Pelynt, said, ever since -Phoenician days. To Katherine the event was the crowning -day of the spring. After the 24th there would be, of course, -many cold, blustering days: nevertheless the spring, with -primroses, violets, anemones thick in the four valleys that ran -down to Rafiel, the sky blue with white clouds like bubbles, -the stream running crystal-clear over the red soil, the spring -was here, and “The Feast” was its crowning.</p> - -<p>For the fishermen and their families “The Feast” meant a -huge tea in the Schools, great bonfires on the Peak, and a -dance on the fish-market, a drink at ‘The Pilchards,’ and, -above all, for the younger men and women, love and engagements. -It was on “The Feast” day that the young men of -Rafiel asked the young women whether ‘they would walk -out’, and the young women said ‘yes’ or ‘no’ according to their -pleasure. On a fine night, with the bonfires blazing to the -sky and showers of golden sparks like fire-flies over the quiet -sea, there was no happier village in the world than Rafiel. In -its little square harbour the stars, and the fires and the amphitheatre-shaped -village looked down and the ghosts of the -Phoenicians peered over the brow of the hill, sighed for the -old times that they once knew, and crept at last, shivering, -back into their graves.</p> - -<p>This was to be the greatest “Feast” that Katherine had -ever known, because Philip was, of course, to be with her. -It was to be, for them both, the crowning of their love by the -place, the soil, the good Glebeshire earth. To Katherine it -seemed that if anything untoward happened on this day, it -would be as though Glebeshire itself rejected them. She -would confess to no one how solemn it seemed to her....</p> - -<p>Uncle Tim was in charge of the party. Timothy Faunder -had not, for many, many years missed a “Feast”; thither he -went, his outward appearance cynical and careless as ever, -but obeying, inwardly, more sacred instincts than he would -acknowledge. He would be in charge of Katherine, Millie, -Philip, Rachel—Henry did not care to go.</p> - -<p>The 24th of March was wonderful weather. Uncle Tim, -coming over from his house up the road, to luncheon, said -that he had never seen a finer day. He said this to his sister -Harriet, standing before the window of her little room, looking -down upon the lawn that reflected the sunny shadows like -a glass, looking down upon the clumps of daffodils that -nodded their heads to him from the thick grass by the garden -wall. Harriet was very fond of her brother; she had an intimate -relationship with him that had never been expressed in -words by either of them. She was a little afraid of him. She -was sitting now writing notes. She did not pause as she -talked to him, and sometimes she rubbed the side of her nose -with her fingers in a puzzled way. She wrote a large sprawling -hand, and often spelt her words wrongly.</p> - -<p>This conversation was before luncheon.</p> - -<p>“Well, Harriet,” Tim said. “How are you?”</p> - -<p>She looked up for a moment at his big, loose, untidy body, -his shaggy beard, his ruffled hair.</p> - -<p>“Why do you never brush your hair, Tim? It’s such a bad -example for Henry. And you’re standing in the light.... -Thank you.... Oh—I’m very well. Why didn’t you come -in last night, as you said you would?... Yes, I’m quite -well, thank you.”</p> - -<p>“I went walking,” said Timothy. “I do brush my hair, -only I am not going to put grease on it for anybody ... -How do you like the young man?”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard nodded her head several times as though -she were adding up a sum.</p> - -<p>“He likes it here, I think, although of course it must be -quiet for him—‘And if Tuesday—isn’t convenient—suggest—another -day—next week!’ ”</p> - -<p>“So you don’t like him even so much as you expected to?”</p> - -<p>“No.” She answered quite abruptly, spreading her large -hand flat out upon the table as though, by her sudden pounce, -she had caught a fly. “He’s weaker than I had fancied, and -vainer.... More insignificant altogether.... Miss Propert, -The Close, Polchester....”</p> - -<p>“He’s weak, yes,” said Tim, staring down upon his sister. -“But he isn’t insignificant. He’s weak because his imagination -paints for him so clearly the dreadful state of things it would -be if affairs went wrong. He wants then terribly to make -them right. But he hasn’t the character to do much himself, -and he knows it. A man who knows he’s weak isn’t insignificant.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard made no reply.</p> - -<p>“Well, what are you going to do about it?” at last said Tim.</p> - -<p>“Oh, he’ll marry Katherine of course.”</p> - -<p>“And then?”</p> - -<p>“And then they’ll live here.... ‘Dear Canon, I wonder -whether ...’—”</p> - -<p>“And then?”</p> - -<p>“And then—why then it will be just as it is now.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! I see!”</p> - -<p>Timothy turned his back upon her, staring down upon all -the green that came up like a river to the walls of the house. -His eyes were grave, his back square, his hands locked tight. -He heard the scratching of his sister’s pen—otherwise there -was deep silence about them. He wheeled round.</p> - -<p>“Harriet, look here! I’ve never—no, I think, never—asked -you a favour.”</p> - -<p>She turned in her chair and faced him, looking up to him -with her wide, rather sleepy, kindly eyes—now a little humorous, -even a little cynical.</p> - -<p>“No, Tim—never,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m going to ask you one now.”</p> - -<p>“Yes?” Her eyes never flickered nor stirred from his.</p> - -<p>“It’s this. I like the young man—like him, for God knows -what reason. I think I must myself once have seen the world -as he does. I know I believed that it could be such a splendid -world with such a little effort—if only everyone were nice to -everyone. I understand young Philip—I believe that this is -a crisis in his life and in Katherine’s. There are three possible -endings to the engagement. He can marry her, carry -her off and live his own life. He can marry her, not carry -her off and live your life. The engagement can break down, -and he disappear back to where he came from. You love -Katherine, you are determined not to lose her, therefore you -intend to make the first impossible. You see that Katherine -is so deeply attached to him that it will break her heart if he -goes—therefore the last is not to be. There remains only the -second. To that you devote all your energies. You are quite -selfish about it. You see only yourself and Katherine in the -matter. You see that he is weak and afraid of you.... -You will break him in, then turn him into the paddock here -to graze for the rest of his life. It would serve you right if -Katherine were to run away with him.”</p> - -<p>“She won’t do that,” said Mrs. Trenchard quietly.</p> - -<p>“Who knows? I wish she would, but she’s faithful, faithful, -faithful down to the soles of her shoes.... Bless her!”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard smiled. “Dear Tim. You are fond of her, -I know.... There’s the luncheon-bell.”</p> - -<p>“Wait a minute.” He stood over her now. “Just listen. -I believe you’re wrong about Katherine, Harriet. She’s old-fashioned -and slow compared with the modern girl—we’re an -old-fashioned family altogether, I suppose. It’s the first time -she’s been in love in her life, and, as I said just now, she’s -faithful as death—but she’ll be faithful to him as well as to -you. Let him have his fling, let him marry her and carry her -off, go where he likes, develop himself, be a man she can be -proud of! It’s the crisis of his life and of hers too—perhaps -of yours. You won’t lose her by letting her go off with him. -She’ll stick to you all the more firmly if she knows that you’ve -trusted him. But to keep him here, to break his spirit, to -govern him through his fear of losing her—I tell you, Harriet, -you’ll regret it all your life. He’ll either run away and -break Katie’s heart or he’ll stay and turn into a characterless, -spiritless young country bumpkin, like thousands of other -young fellows in this county. It isn’t even as though he had -the money to be a first-class squire—just enough to grow fat -(he’s rather fat now) and rotten on. Worse than dear -George, who at least has his books.</p> - -<p>“And he isn’t a stupid fool neither ... he’ll always know -he might have been something decent. If I thought I had any -influence over him I’d tell him to kidnap Katie to-morrow, -carry her up north, and keep her there.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard had listened to him with great attention; -her eyes had never left his face, nor had her body moved. -She rose, now, very slowly from her chair, gathered her notes -together carefully, walked to the door, turned to him, saying:</p> - -<p>“How you do despise us all, Tim!” then left the room.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>After luncheon they started off. Philip, sitting next to -Katherine in the waggonette, was very silent during the -drive; he was silent because he was determined that it was on -this afternoon that he would tell Katherine about Anna.</p> - -<p>Without turning directly round to her he could see her -profile, her dark hair a little loose and untidy, her cheek -flushed with pleasure, her eyes smiling. “No, she’s not -pretty,” he thought. “But she’s better than that. I can’t -see what she’s like—it’s as though she were something so -close to me and so precious that I could never see it, only -feel that it was there. And yet, although I feel that she’s unattainable -too—she’s something I can never hold completely, -because I shall always be a little frightened of her.”</p> - -<p>He made this discovery, that he was frightened, quite suddenly, -sitting there on that lovely afternoon; he saw the shadows -from the clouds, swooping, like black birds, down over the -valley beneath him: far beyond him he saw a thread of yellow -running beside the water of the stream that was now blue in -the sunshine and now dark under the hill; there were hosts -of primroses down there, and the hedges that now closed the -carriage were sheeted with gold: when the hedges broke the -meadows beyond them flowed, through the mist, like green -clouds, to the hazy sea; the world throbbed with a rhythm -that he could hear quite clearly behind the clap-clap of the -horses’ hoofs—‘hum—hum—hum—hum’—The air was -warm, with a little breath of cold in it; the dark soil in the -ditches glistened as though, very lately, it had been frozen.</p> - -<p>Riding there through this beautiful day he was frightened. -He was aware that he did not know what Katherine would do -when he told her. During his years in Russia he had grown -accustomed to a world, inevitably, recklessly, voluble. Russians -spoke, on any and ever occasion, exactly what was in -their mind; they thought nothing of consequences whether to -themselves or any other; their interest in the ideas that they -were pursuing, the character that they were discussing, the -situation that they were unravelling, was always so intense, so -eager, so vital that they would talk for days or weeks, if -necessary, and lose all sense of time, private feelings, restraint -and even veracity. Philip had become used to this. Had -Katherine been a member of a Russian family he would, two -days after his engagement, have had everything out with them -all—he would have known exactly where he stood. With the -Trenchards he did not know anything at all; from the moment -of his engagement he had been blindfolded, and now he -felt as though in a monstrous game of “Blind Man’s Buff” -he were pushed against, knocked on the elbows, laughed at, -bumped against furniture, always in black, grim darkness. -Since he had come down to Garth he had lost even Katherine. -He felt that she was disappointed in some way, that she had -never been quite happy since their journey together in the -train. Well, he would put everything straight this afternoon. -He would tell her about Moscow, Anna, all his life—tell her -that he could not, after their marriage, live at Garth, that it -would stifle him, make him worthless and useless, that she -must show him that she definitely cared for him more than -for her family....</p> - -<p>He felt as though, with a great sweeping stroke of his arm, -all the cobwebs would be brushed away and he would be free. -He rehearsed to himself some of the things that he would say: -“You must see, dear, that the family don’t like me. They’re -jealous of me. Much better that we go away for a year or -two—right away—and allow them to get used to the idea. -Then we can come back.”</p> - -<p>But what would she say about Anna? Did she know anything -about men, their lives and affairs? Would her fine -picture of him be dimmed? He hoped a little that it would. -He wanted simply to love her, that she should understand -him and that he should understand her, and then they two -together (the world, Garth, the Trenchards blown to the -wind) should—</p> - -<p>“That’s Tredden Cove, that dip beyond the wood,” said -Katherine. “We used to go there—”</p> - -<p>Yes, he was frightened. He felt as though this afternoon -would be the crisis of his life. (There had been already a -great many crises in his life.) He was impatient; he wanted -to begin, now, in the waggonette. He could imagine turning -to her, saying: “Katie, darling, I want to tell you—”</p> - -<p>He was conscious that Lady Seddon was watching him. -“Jolly day, isn’t it?” he said. He thought to himself. “She -hates me as the others do.”</p> - -<p>They had come to the Cross-Roads. Jacob put on the drag, -and they began, very slowly, to creak down a precipitous hill. -The fantastic element in the affair that Philip had been expecting -as a kind of reply to his own sense of his personal adventure -seemed to begin with this hill. It resembled no ordinary -hill; it plunged down with a sudden curve that seemed -to defy the wheels of any carriage; on their right the bank -broke sheer away far down to one of the Rafiel four valleys, -vivid green now with tufted trees. There was no fence nor -wall, and one slip of the wheels would have hurled the carriage -over. At a turn of the road a cluster of white cottages, -forming one figure together as though they had been a great -stone flung from the hill-top by some giant, showed in the -valley’s cup. At his sense of that remoteness, of that lifting -wildness of the rising hills, at the beauty of the green and -grey and silver and white, he could not restrain a cry.</p> - -<p>Katherine laughed. “That’s Blotch End,” she said. “One -turn and we’re at the bottom.” The carriage wheeled round, -crossed a brown bridge and had started down the road to -Rafiel.... On one side of the road was a stream that, hurrying -down from the valley, hastened past them to the sea; on -the other side of them a wooded hill, with trees like sentinels -against the sky—then the village street began, ugly at first, as -are the streets of so many Glebeshire villages, the straight, -uniform houses, with their grey slate roofs, now and then -hideous-coloured glass over the doorways, and, ugliest of all, -the Methodist chapel with ‘1870’ in white stone over the door. -But even with such a street as this Rafiel could do something: -the valley stream, hidden sometimes by houses, revealed itself -suddenly in chuckling, leaping vistas. Before the houses -there were little gardens, thick now with daffodils and primroses -and hyacinths: through the deep mouth of the forge -fires flamed, and a sudden curve of the street brought a bridge, -a view of the harbour and a vision of little houses rising, tier -on tier, against the rock, as though desperately they were -climbing to avoid some flood. This contrast of the wild place -itself, with the ugly patches of civilisation that had presented -themselves first, was like the voice of the place chuckling at -its visitors’ surprise.</p> - -<p>First the row of villas, the tailor’s shop with a pattern picture -in the window, the sweet shop, the ironmonger’s—now -this sudden huddle of twisted buildings, wildly climbing to -the very sky, a high, rugged peak guarding the little bay, two -streams tossing themselves madly over the harbour ridges, -the boats of the fleet rocking as though dancing to some mysterious -measure, a flurry of gulls, grey and white, flashing, -wheeling, like waves and foam against the sky, the screaming -of the birds, the distant thud of the sea ... this was Rafiel.</p> - -<p>They left the carriage and turned to go back to the schools, -where the tea had already begun. Katherine slipped her arm -into Philip’s: he knew that she was waiting for him to speak -about the place, and he knew, too, that she was not expecting -his praise as confidently as she would have expected it three -weeks ago. A little of her great trust in him was shadowed -by her surprise that he had not surrendered to Glebeshire -more completely. Now he could tell her that it was to the -Trenchards and not to Glebeshire that he had refused to -surrender.</p> - -<p>She could not tell, of course, that all his attention now was -fixed on his determination to tell her everything as soon as he -was alone. Walking with him up the road was that secret -figure who attends us all—the fine, cherished personality -whom we know ourselves to be.</p> - -<p>To Philip, more than many others, was the preservation -of that secret personality essential. He was, this afternoon, -determined to live up to the full height of it.</p> - -<p>In the schools, at two long tables, the whole village was -feeding: the room was steaming with heat: huge urns at the -ends of the tables were pouring out tea with a fierce, scornful -indifference, as though they would show what they could do -but despised their company. The fishermen, farmers, their -wives and families, shining with soap, perspiration and excitement, -sat, packed so tightly together that eating seemed an -impossibility: there were plates of bread and butter, saffron -buns, seed-cake piled up and running over: there were the -ladies of the village, who said: “Now, Mr. Trefusis, do try -another,” or “Mary’s rather tired, I think, Mrs. Maxwell. -Shall I lift her down?” or “Well, Mrs. Pascoe, out and about -again, I see,” or “How’s the new cottage, Henry? Better than -the old one, I expect.”</p> - -<p>From the other side of the world came: “Aw, thank ’ee, -Ma’am—not so bad, thank ’ee. Up to Glossen’s Farm they -’ad it praper wild, so they tell me”—“Yes ... true enough. -All over spots ’er arms was, poor worm”—“Didn’t worry we, -thank ’ee, Miss. Marnin’ or evenin’ all the same to we ... -Ah, yes, poor Mr. Izards—’e did suffer terrible, poor -dear....”</p> - -<p>Philip perceived with a sense of irritated isolation how instantly -and how easily the other members of his party were -swallowed up by the Ceremony. He himself was introduced -to a prim young woman in a blue hat, who flung remarks to -him over a tea-tray and seemed to regard his well-cut clothes -with contempt. The fishermen did not look happy in their -stiff Sunday clothes, but he liked their faces. They reminded -him more of Russian peasants than any people whom he had -seen since his landing in England. No, he must not think -about that ... Russia was banished for ever.</p> - -<p>Uncle Timothy, Millie, even Lady Seddon were warmly -welcomed, but Katherine was adored. He understood, perhaps -for the first time, what that place must mean to her. -They called her ‘Miss Kathie’, they shouted to her across the -room, they cracked jokes with her; an old man, with a long -white beard like a prophet, stood up and put his hand on her -shoulder as he talked to her. Once she broke away from them -and came to him.</p> - -<p>“Phil, I want you to come and be introduced to a great -friend of mine,” she said.</p> - -<p>He followed her, feeling that all eyes watched him, with -criticism and even with hostility. A large, immensely broad -man, in a navy blue suit, with a red, laughing face, hair cut -very close to his head, and eyes of the honestest, stood up as -they came across. He looked at Katherine with the devotion -and confidence of a faithful dog.</p> - -<p>“This is Mr. Richard Curtis,” Katherine said. “He used -to pick up shells for me when I was three. He has a boat -here with his brother. He’s always in good spirits, aren’t you, -Dick, even when you scald your arm with boiling water?”</p> - -<p>This was an allusion to some confidence between them, and -as their eyes met, Philip felt a pang of ridiculous jealousy. -The man’s face was flaming, and his eyes were more devoted -than ever. He held out a large, horny hand to Philip. “Excuse -me, sir,” he said. “I’m proud to shake ’ands with the -man wot Miss Katherine is goin’ to marry. We thought, -once on a time, p’raps as she’d always be ’ere, along with we, -but wot we want most is fer ’er to be ’appy—and that we -knows now she will be. I ’ope you’ll be often down—along, -sir, in time to come—that is, sir, if you’re not goin’ to take -’er right away from us.”</p> - -<p>“Why, of course not, Dick,” said Katherine. “When -we’re married we’re going to live quite close. You’ve only -got to find us a house.”</p> - -<p>Philip knew that he should say something pleasant; he -could think of nothing; he muttered a few words and then -turned away, confused, irritated, embarrassed. What had -happened to him? He was always so pleasant with everyone, -especially with strangers; now, at every turn, he seemed compelled -by someone stronger than he to show his worst side. -“Oh, if I can only get Katherine out of all this,” he thought -passionately, “even for a little time. Then I’ll come back -another man. To have her to myself. Everything’s coming -between us. Everything’s coming between us....”</p> - -<p>At last he had his desire. They had left the others. She -had led him, out past the row of white cottages, to a rock on -the side of the hill, high over the sea, with the harbour below -them, the village, curved like a moon in the hills’ hollow, -behind the harbour, and a little cluster of trees at the hill top -striking the blue night sky: opposite them was the Peak rock, -black and jagged, lying out into the water like a dragon -couchant. They could see the plateau above the Peak where -the bonfire was to be, they could see the fish-market silver -grey in the evening light, and the harbour like a green square -handkerchief with the boats painted upon it. The houses, -like an amphitheatre of spectators, watched and waited, their -lights turning from pale yellow to flame as the evening colours -faded; crying, singing, laughing voices came up to their rock, -but they were utterly, finally remote. She leaned her head -against his shoulder, and they sat there in silence.</p> - -<p>At last, half-dreamily, gazing forward into the sea that, -stirred by no wind, heaved ever and again, with some sigh, -some tremor born of its own happiness, she talked. “You -can see the bonfire and the figures moving around it. Soon -the moon will be right above the Peak.... Isn’t everything -quiet? I never knew last year how different this one would -be from any that I had ever known before.” She turned half -towards him, caught his hand and held it. “Phil, you must -be very patient with me. I’ve felt so much that you were -part of me that I’ve expected you to see things always as I -do. Of course that was ridiculous of me. You <span class='it'>can’t</span> love -this place quite as I do—it must take time.... You aren’t -angry with me, are you?”</p> - -<p>“Angry?” he laughed.</p> - -<p>“Because the closer I get to you—the longer we’re engaged, -the less, in some ways, I seem to know you. I never realised -until you came how shut up as a family we’ve been, how -wrapt up in ourselves. That must be hard for you to understand....”</p> - -<p>“There it goes!” he broke in suddenly.</p> - -<p>The bonfire leapt into fire: instantly the village glowed -with flame, a golden pool burnt beneath the Peak, the houses -that had been blue-grey in the dusk now reflected a rosy glow, -and whirling, dancing sparks flew up to join the stars. Little -black figures were dancing round the blaze; down on the fish-market -other figures were moving, and the faint echo of a -fiddle and a horn was carried across the water.</p> - -<p>Something said to Philip, ‘Tell her—now.’</p> - -<p>He plunged with the same tightening of the heart that he -would have known had he sprung from their rock into the -pools of the sea below them. He put his arm more tightly -around her, and there was a desperate clutch in the pressure -of his fingers, as though he were afraid lest she should vanish -and he be left with sky, land and sea flaming and leaping beneath -the fire’s blaze.</p> - -<p>“Katie, I’ve something I must tell you,” he said. He felt -her body move under his arm, but she only said, very quietly: -“Yes, Phil?” Then in the little fragment of silence that followed -she said, very cosily and securely: “So long as it isn’t -to tell me that you don’t love me any more, I don’t mind what -it is?”</p> - -<p>“No—it isn’t that. It’s something I should have told you, -I suppose, long ago. I would have told you, only it was all -so over and done with for me that I couldn’t imagine its mattering -to anyone. I told your father that there was no complication -in my life, and that’s true—there is none. There’s -nothing I have nor think nor do that isn’t yours.”</p> - -<p>She said very quietly: “You were in love with someone -before you knew me?”</p> - -<p>He was surprised and immensely reassured by the quietness -and tranquillity of her voice.</p> - -<p>“That’s it—That’s it,” he said, eagerly, his heart bounding -with relief and happiness. “Look here, Katie. I must tell -you everything—<span class='it'>everything</span>, so that there can’t be anything -between us any more that you don’t know. You see, when I -went to Russia first I was very young—very young for my -age too. Russia isn’t much of a place when you don’t know -the language and the weather’s bad—and I’d gone expecting -too much. I’d heard so much about Russia’s hospitality and -kindness, but I was with English people at first, and most of -them were tired to death of Russia, and only saw its worst -side and didn’t paint it very cheerfully. Then the Russians -I did meet had to struggle along in bad French or English -(it’s all rot about Russians being great linguists), and if a -Russian isn’t spontaneous he isn’t anything at all. Then -when I did go to their houses their meals simply killed me. -They make one eat such a lot and drink such a lot and sit up -all night—I simply couldn’t stand it. So at first I was awfully -lonely and unhappy—awfully unhappy.”</p> - -<p>She sighed in sympathy and pressed closer to him.</p> - -<p>“I’m not the sort of man,” Philip went on, “to stand being -lonely. It’s bad for me. Some men like it. It simply <span class='it'>kills</span> -me. But after about six months or more I knew a little Russian, -and I got to know one or two Russians individually. -There’s one thing I can tell you—that until you know a Russian -personally, so that he feels that he’s got some kind of -personal part in you, you simply don’t know him at all. It’s -so easy to generalise about Russians. Wait until you’ve -made a friend.... I made a friend, several friends. I began -to be happier.”</p> - -<p>Katherine pressed his hand. The bonfire was towering -steadily now in a great golden pillar of smoke and flame to -heaven. The music of the fiddle and the horn, as though they -were its voice, trembled dimly in the air: all the stars were -shining, and a full moon, brittle like glass, flung a broad silver -road of light across the black Peak and the sea. There was -no breeze, but the scent of the flowers from the gardens on -the rocks mingled with the strong briny odour of the sea-pinks -that covered the ground at their feet.</p> - -<p>“The spring came all in a moment, like a new scene at the -play. I was introduced to some theatre people, who had a -house in the country near Moscow. You’ve no idea of the -slackness and ease of a Russian country house. People just -come and go—the doors are all open, meals are always going -on—there’s always a samovar, and sweets in little glass dishes, -and cold fish and meat and little hot pies. In the evening -there was dancing, and afterwards the men would just sleep -about anywhere. I met a girl there, the first Russian woman -who had attracted me. Her name was Anna Mihailovna, and -she was a dancer in the Moscow Ballet.”</p> - -<p>He paused, but Katherine said nothing nor did she move.</p> - -<p>“She attracted me because she had never known an Englishman -before, and I was exactly what she had always thought -an Englishman would be. That pleased me then—I wanted, -I even felt it my duty, to be the typical Englishman. It -wasn’t that she admired the typical Englishman altogether: -she laughed at me a great deal, she laughed at my having -everything so cut and dried, at my dogmatising so easily, at -my disliking Russian unpunctuality and lack of method.</p> - -<p>“She thought me rather ridiculous, I fancy, but she felt -motherly to me, and that’s what most Russian women feel to -most men. I was just beginning to love Russia then. I was -beginning to dream of its wonderful secrets, secrets that no -one ever discovers, secrets the pursuit of which make life one -long, restless search. Anna fascinated me—she let me do -always as I pleased. She seemed to me freedom itself: I fell -madly in love with her.”</p> - -<p>Katherine’s hand gave then a sudden leap in his; he felt -the ends of her fingers pressing against his palm. Some of his -confidence had left him: some of his confidence not only in -himself but in his assurance of the remoteness of his story and -the actors in it. He felt as though some hand were dragging -him back into scenes that he had abandoned, situations that -had been dead. The fire and the sea were veiled, and his -eyes, against their will, were fastened upon other visions.</p> - -<p>“That year was a very wonderful one for me. We took a -flat together, and life seemed to be realised quite completely -for me. This, I thought, was what I had always desired ... -and I grew slack and fat and lazy—outside my business—I -always worked at that decently. Early in the next year we -had a boy. Anna took him with the same happy indifference -that she had taken me: she loved him, I know, but she was -outside us all, speculating about impossibilities, then suddenly -coming to earth and startling one with her reality. I -loved her and I loved Moscow—although sometimes too I -hated it—but we used also to have the most awful quarrels; -I was angry with her, I remember, because I thought that she -would never take me seriously, and she would laugh at me for -wanting her to. I felt that Russia was doing me no good. -Our boy died, quite suddenly, of pneumonia, and then I -begged her to marry me and come and live in England. How -she laughed at the idea! She didn’t want to be married to -anyone. But she thought that perhaps England would be -better for me. She did not seem to mind at all if I went. -That piqued me, and I stayed on, trying to make myself essential -to her. I did not care for her then so much as for my -idea of myself, that she would break her heart if I went. But -she knew that—how she would laugh as she looked at me.... -She refused to take me seriously. Russia was doing me harm—I -got slack, sleepy, indifferent. I longed for England. -The chance came. Anna said that she was glad for me to go, -and laughed as she said it. I took my chance.... I’ve told -you everything,” he suddenly ended.</p> - -<p>He waited. The tune across the water went: ‘La-la-la, la, -la-la-la-la, la, la.’ Many, many little black figures were turning -on the fish-market. The blaze of the bonfire was low and -its reflection in the sea smoking red.</p> - -<p>When he had finished Katherine had very gently drawn -her hand away from his, then suddenly, with a little fierce -gesture, pushed it back again.</p> - -<p>“What was your boy’s name?” she asked, very quietly.</p> - -<p>“Paul.”</p> - -<p>“Poor little boy. Did you care for him very much?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, terribly.”</p> - -<p>“It must have been dreadful his dying.”</p> - -<p>He felt then a sudden dismay and fear. Perhaps, after all -she was going to dismiss him; he fancied that she was retreating -from him—he felt already that she was farther away from -him than she had ever been, and, with a desperate urgency, -his voice trembling, his hand pressing her arm, he said:</p> - -<p>“Katie—Katie—You’re disgusted with me. I can feel it. -But you must go on loving me—you <span class='it'>must</span>, you <span class='it'>must</span>. I don’t -care for anything but that. All men have had affairs with -women. It’s all dead with me, as though it had been another -man. There’s no one in the world but you. I—I—”</p> - -<p>His hand shook; his eyes, if she could have seen them, -were strained with terror.</p> - -<p>She turned to him, put her arms round his neck, drew his -head towards her, kissed him on his eyes, his mouth, his -cheeks.</p> - -<p>“Phil—Phil,” she whispered. “How little you understand. -My dear—my dear.”</p> - -<p>Then raising her eyes away from him and staring again in -front of her, she said:</p> - -<p>“But I want to know, Phil. I <span class='it'>must</span> know. What was she -like?”</p> - -<p>“Like?” he repeated, puzzled.</p> - -<p>“Yes. Her appearance, her clothes, her hair, <span class='it'>everything</span>. -I want to be able to see her—with my own eyes—as though -she were here....”</p> - -<p>He stared at her for a moment—then, very slowly, almost -reluctantly, he began his description....</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2 id='ch12'>CHAPTER VI<br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>SUNDAY</span></h2> - -<p>On no day of the year—spring, summer, autumn, or -winter, did any inhabitant of Garth House rise before -Rebekah. Grimly complete, starch and stiff and taciturn, she -would be about the dim house, feeling nothing of the cold -blackness of a winter morning, finding apparently no pleasure -in the beauty of a summer dawn. Her business was with the -House—human beings (yes, Trenchards as well as the rest) -she despised—for Houses she could feel reverence ... they -were stronger than she.</p> - -<p>Upon the Sunday morning that followed the “Feast” at -Rafiel, very early indeed, she was moving about the passages. -Looking out on to the lawn and bushes, wet with mist, she -knew that it would be a bad day.... Weather mattered to -her nothing: people (although the Trenchards might think -otherwise) mattered to her nothing. Her business was with -the House....</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>That Sunday began badly for Aunt Aggie—and, therefore, -for everyone else. Before she woke—in the dusty labyrinth -of her half-waking dreams—she knew that her tooth was -aching. In her dreams this tooth was of an enormous size, -holding, although it was in form and figure a veritable tooth, -a huge hammer that it brought down, with a regular beat, -upon Aunt Aggie’s jaw. She screamed, struggled, fought, -awoke—to find that the tooth had receded to its proper place -and size, was still faintly beating, but not aching—only -threatening. This threat was, in its way, more terrible than -a savage ache. When would the ache begin? Ah, here it -was!... no, only the throb.... Would hot or cold food -irritate it? Would the wind?... She got out of bed and -drew her blind. Her clock told her that the hour was seven. -Why had Annie not called her? Annie had overslept herself—what -was it to Annie if Aunt Aggie were late for Early -Service? But it must be something to Annie. Annie <span class='it'>must</span> -be warned. Annie ... Aunt Aggie was conscious that she -had a headache, that the weather was abominable, and that -crossing through the wood to the church would certainly start -the tooth. But she was resolved. Very grimly, her mouth -tightly closed, her heart beating because she was expecting -that, at every moment, that tooth.... Aunt Aggie had her -bath, dressed, informed Annie, who came, very greatly agitated, -at half-past seven, that this would not be the last she -heard of it, walked off to church. During the singing of the -collection hymn her tooth leapt upon her.... It came to her -like some malign and secret enemy, who would influence her -not so deeply through actual pain as through his insistence on -what, please God, he would do afterwards. She hurried -home to breakfast through the wet, grey morning, saying to -herself: “It shall not ache! I forbid it to ache! You hear -me! You shall not!” and always that sinister whisper replied -in her ear: “Wait. Just see what I’ll do to you in a moment.”</p> - -<p>In her bedroom some iodine, which she applied to her gum, -reduced the inside of her mouth to sawdust; through the -dried discomfort of it all her enemy still beat at her heart -ironically.</p> - -<p>She was determined that the tooth should not alter her day. -She knew how easily ordinary human beings succumbed—such -weakness should not be hers. Nevertheless her love of -honesty compelled her to admit that, this morning, the house -looked horrible. It had, as she had often told Harriet, been -always overcrowded with ‘things’—with mats and jars and -pots and photographs, old books, magazines, ink-bottles, china -ornaments, stones and shells, religious emblems, old calendars, -and again photographs, photographs, photographs.... It -was not that the house was definitely untidy, but that once a -thing was there, <span class='it'>there</span> it remained. The place looked like -home, because it was filled with properties that any newcomer -would instantly discard. Everything was dim and -faded—carpets, curtains, books, pictures; Katherine, Millie, -Henry could remember how the water-colour of “Rafiel -Beach,” the photograph of Trezent Head, the dining-room -marble clock, surmounted by the Goddess Diana minus her -right leg, the book-case in the drawing-room, with rows and -rows of the novels of Anthony Trollope (each in three volumes), -the cuckoo clock in the dark corner on the first landing, -the glass case with sea shells in the hall near the hat-rack, -the long row of faded Trenchard and Faunder photographs -in the drawing-room, the little corner cupboard with -the Sunday games in it—Bible Lotto, puzzle map of Palestine, -Bible Questions and Bible Answers—all these things had -been “first there” since the beginning of time, even as the oak -on the lawn, the rough grass meadows that ran to the very -posts of the house, the little wood and the tennis lawn with the -brown hole in the middle of it had always been ‘there.’ Aunt -Aggie herself had grown profoundly accustomed to it all—in -her heart she would not have had a shell nor a photograph -removed from its place. Nevertheless, upon this grey Sunday -morning she was oppressed, almost triumphantly, about her -sense of the dinginess and confusion of the house. It was -as though she said to herself: “There! it’s not my tooth at -all that makes me feel out of sorts with things. It’s simply -Harriet’s inability to put things straight.” She found then -that everyone was very quiet at breakfast—‘sulky’ one could -be justified in calling it. Moreover, there were ‘sausages -again!’ Harriet knew perfectly well that Aggie hated sausages—nevertheless -she persisted, with the devotion of a blind -slave to an august ritual, in having, always, sausages for -Sunday breakfast. Aggie was, in spite of her tooth, hungry -this morning, but when, with an unconscious self-consciousness, -during a silence, she said: “No sausage for me, thanks. -You know, Betty, that I never care for them.” No one said: -“Have an egg, Aggie: it can be boiled in a moment.”</p> - -<p>Only Harriet, with her attention obviously elsewhere, remarked -carelessly: “We can have the ham in, Aggie, if you -like”—to which Aggie could only reply: “You know I dislike -cold ham, Harriet.”</p> - -<p>But, indeed, Sunday breakfast was never a very jolly meal—how -could it be? The hour was throbbing with a consciousness -of the impending difficulties and problems of the day. -There was Church, there was Sunday School, there were -callers in the afternoon: there were meals, the very heavy -midday meal with roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, tea with -a great deal of stiff conversation, something in the manner of -Ollendorff, supper, when the chill on the food typified the -exhausted spirits of the tired company. During too many -years had Henry, Millie, Katherine, and still more Aggie, -Betty and Mrs. Trenchard worn Sunday clothes, eaten Sunday -meals, suffered Sunday restraint, known Sunday exhaustion -for it to be possible for any of them to regard Sunday -in a normal, easy fashion. Very right and proper that they -should so regard it. I would only observe that if there <span class='it'>is</span> to -be a thorough explosion of Trenchard, of Faunder tempers—if -there is to be, in any kind of way, a “family scene” Sunday -will be, almost certainly, the background selected for it. Aunt -Aggie, looking around her, on this morning, at her assembled -friends and relations, ‘thought them all very sulky indeed. -Wrapped up entirely in their own selfish thoughts’.... The -day began badly.</p> - -<p>Half an hour before church Rachel Seddon and Uncle Tim -were alone together in the drawing-room. She was standing, -prepared and waiting, staring through the windows at the -wild meadow that seemed now soaked with moisture, bent -before the dripping wind. She was thinking very deeply. -She did not at first hear Uncle Tim, and when, turning -suddenly, she saw him, she thought how exactly he suited the -day. By his appearance he instantly justified the atrocious -weather: he was wearing a rough grey suit and a low flannel -collar: his heard and hair glistened, as though the damp had -soaked through them, he carried a muddy trowel in his hand. -He came hurriedly into the room, as though he were searching -for something. Then when he saw Rachel he stopped, put -the trowel down on one of the drawing-room chairs, smiled -at her, and came across to her. She had never known him -very well, but she had always liked him—his genial aloofness, -the sense that he always gave of absolute independence, -cheerful but never dogmatic, pleased her. Now she was troubled, -and felt that he could help her.</p> - -<p>“What’s the matter with Katie?” she said, abruptly, looking -at him with sharp but deeply honest eyes.</p> - -<p>He felt in his tumbled pockets for his pipe and tobacco, -then slowly said:</p> - -<p>“I was just off for worms—I wanted Henry, but I suppose -he’s going to church.... Katie?... Why?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know why. I want to know. It’s been these last -few days—ever since—ever since—Saturday, Friday, Thursday—the -day at Rafiel. She’s unhappy.”</p> - -<p>“The lovers have had a quarrel.”</p> - -<p>“If it were only that!... no, that’s not Katie, and you -know it isn’t. Philip’s done something—told her something—”</p> - -<p>“Ah, you think that because you dislike him.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know that I do—now. I certainly did at first, but -now—here ... I don’t know. He’s so much younger than -I’d expected, and he is really trying his best to suit himself -to the family and the place. I’m sorry for him. I rather like -him after all. But <span class='it'>what</span> is the matter with everyone? Why -is the house so uncomfortable? Why can’t it all be just -smooth and easy? Of course we all hated Katie being engaged -at first—I suppose we thought that she might have -done better. But now everyone ought to be used to it: -instead of being used to it, it’s positively ‘nervy’ the atmosphere.”</p> - -<p>“It’s simply,” said Uncle Tim, pressing down his tobacco -into his pipe, “the attack by a Young Man with Imagination -upon a family without any. The Young Man’s weak of -course—people with imagination always are—he’s weak and -impatient, and insists upon everything being perfect. All -the family wants is to be let alone—but it will never be let -alone again. The break-up is beginning.”</p> - -<p>“The break-up?” said Rachel.</p> - -<p>“It’s like this. If Harriet catches me smoking here in the -morning there’ll be a row.” He picked up the trowel and -waved it. “Nearly the whole of our class in England has, -ever since the beginning of last century, been happily asleep. -It isn’t good for people to have a woman on the throne for -sixty years—bless her all the same, <span class='it'>and</span> her making a success -of it. So we’ve slept and slept and slept. The Old Lady -died. There was the Boer War: there were motorcars, flying -machines, telephones. Suddenly England was an island no -longer. She’s <span class='it'>got</span> to pay attention to other people, other -ideas, other customs. She’s <span class='it'>got</span> to look out of her window -instead of just snoozing on the sofa, surrounded by her mid-Victorian -furniture. Everything’s cracking: new classes are -coming up, old classes are going down. Birth is nothing: -autocracies are anachronisms.... A volcano’s coming. -Everything will be blown sky-high. Then the folk who are -left will build a new city—as bad, as stupid, as selfish as the -old one, perhaps—but different ... as different as Garth -from China and China from Paradise.”</p> - -<p>“And Katherine and Philip?” said Rachel.</p> - -<p>“Oh, young Mark’s just one of the advance-guard. He’s -smashing up the Trenchards with his hammer—the same way -that all the families like us up and down England are being -smashed up. If it isn’t a young man from abroad, it’s a letter -or a book or a telephone number or a photograph or a suicide -or a Lyceum melodrama. It doesn’t matter what it is. The -good old backbone of England has got spine disease. When -your good grandmother died <span class='it'>your</span> lot went; now <span class='it'>our</span> lot is -going.... When I say going I mean changing.”</p> - -<p>“There was a funny little man,” said Rachel, “whom Uncle -John used to know. I forget his name, but he talked in the -same way when grandmother died, and prophesied all kinds -of things. The world hasn’t seemed very different since then, -but grandmother was an impossible survival, and <span class='it'>her</span> lot went, -all of them, long before she did. All the same, if you’ll forgive -me, I don’t think that England and possible volcanoes -are the point for the moment. It’s Katie I’m thinking about. -If she’s unhappy now what will she be after she’s married to -him?—If Katie were to make an unhappy marriage, I think -it would be the greatest sorrow of my life. I know ... I’ve -known ... how easily things can go wrong.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, things won’t go wrong.” Uncle Tim smiled confidently. -“Young Mark’s a good fellow. He’ll make Katherine -happy all right. But she’ll have to change, and changing -hurts. She’s been asleep like the others.... Oh, yes! she -has! There’s no one loves her better than I, but she’s had, in -the past, as much imagination as that trowel there. Perhaps -now Philip will give her some. She’ll lose him if she doesn’t -wake up. He’s restive now under the heavy hands of my dear -relations—He’ll be gone one fine morning if they don’t take -care. Katie must look out....” He waved his trowel in -the direction of the garden. “All this is like a narcotic. It’s -so safe and easy and ordered. Philip knows he oughtn’t to -be comfortable here. Katie, Millie and Henry are beginning -to know it. Even Harriet, Aggie, Betty, George will get a -tiny glimmering of it one day. But they’re too old to change. -That’s their tragedy. All the same, you see, before this time -next year George will be proposing to take Harriet for a trip -abroad—Italy probably—a thing he’s never done since the -day of his marriage.”</p> - -<p>And at that very moment George entered, very smart and -big and red, with yellow gloves and a flower in his button-hole.</p> - -<p>“What’s that?” he cried, with his usual roar of laughter. -“Who says I’ll do what?”</p> - -<p>“Take Harriet abroad before this time next year,” said -Tim.</p> - -<p>“I?... Not much!... We know better than that. -England’s good enough for us. There isn’t a spot in the -world to touch this place in the summer—so why should we -stir? You’ll be saying we ought to go to Russia next, ... -smoking your beastly pipe in here too. Why don’t you dress -decently and go to church?”</p> - -<p>A Church Invasion followed. The Invasion rustled and -listened to the bell that called across the garden. ‘Com-ing?... -Com-ing?... Com-ing?’... Then ‘Come! Come! -Come!’ and said: “Where’s Katie?... It isn’t Litany to-day, -so there’ll be time before lunch. Where’s Henry?... -We’d better start, the bell’s stopping. Just hold my prayer-book -a minute, Millie dear, whilst I do this....”</p> - -<p>Finally the Invasion called: “Katie! Katie! Katherine!... -We’re going!” and a voice, very far away answered:</p> - -<p>“Yes.... I’ll catch you up! Go on!”</p> - -<p>The Invasion left, followed by Uncle Tim, smiling to himself, -the trowel in his hand. The house was very still then, -relapsing with a little sigh of content into its Sunday quiet: -a bird was chattering gently to itself in the wet garden.</p> - -<p>Katherine hurried into the drawing-room, her cheeks -flushed, buttoning her gloves, her prayer-book under her arm. -Her black dress, a little open at the front, had a stiff black -lace collar at the back, Elizabethan fashion; now, for the first -time in her life, she was wearing something that she had -herself thought about and planned. It was for Philip....</p> - -<p>She looked about the empty drawing-room, then hurried -away through the little wood. How unlike her to be late! -She was always the first of the party. But to-day she had -been dreaming in her bedroom, sitting, with her hands in her -lap, looking out of the window, wondering, longing to know ... -No, she was not jealous. Her curiosity had no tinge -of jealousy in it. Why should she be jealous? Was not the -thing over, closed? Had not the woman herself dismissed -him? That strange figure in that strange country! The -wild town, as he had described it, like a village with towers -and towers, gold and green and blue, and the carts with -painted roofs and the strange writing on the shop-walls ... -and the woman standing there, in the middle of it. This -woman, who had known Philip better than Katherine knew -him, whom Philip had madly loved, who had borne Philip a -son. She was still living there, loving, now, perhaps someone -else, looking back perhaps with some scorn and some pity -and some affection to the days when Philip had kissed her, to -the hour when their son had died, to that first meeting in the -strange country house, where everyone might come and go as -they pleased. No, there was no jealousy; but Katherine -wanted to have her there, standing in front of her, so that she -might study her clothes, her hair, her eyes. Here was a -woman whom Philip had madly loved—and he had ceased to -love her. Well, he might also cease to love Katherine. But -that other woman had dismissed him. Fancy dismissing him! -When one had shared with him such experiences how could -one ever let him go?... Ah, what, <span class='it'>what</span> was she like? -Was her voice soft or harsh? How did she look when Philip -made love to her? When Philip made love to her.... Yes, -there was pain in that.</p> - -<p>Katherine hurried under the low porch of the church. -She could hear the voice: ‘Wherefore I pray and beseech -you, as many as are here present, to accompany me with a -pure heart....’</p> - -<p>As the congregation knelt she slipped into a seat at the -back of the church. She had always loved the shabby, ugly -little place. It had, for one thing, nothing to boast about—had -no fine carvings like the Rafiel Church, no splendid -tombs like the two Dunstan St. Firths at Poloynt, no wonderful -glass like the Porthcullin memorial window at Borhaze; -frankly ugly, white-washed, with thin narrow grey -glass in the side-walls and a hideous purple Transfiguration -above the altar, with plain, ugly seats, a terrible modern lectern, -a shabby nondescript pulpit, a font like an expensive -white sweet, and the most shining and vulgar brass tablet -commemorating the Garth heroes of the Boer War.</p> - -<p>No other church could ever mean so much to Katherine -as this, her shabby friend. She was glad that it was no -show place for inquisitive tourists to come tramping over -with haughty eyes and scornful boasts. It was her own ... -she loved it because strangers would always say: “How -hideous!” because she could remember it on wonderful summer -evenings when through the open doors the congregation -could hear the tinkling sheep-bells and smell the pinks from -the Rectory garden, on wild nights when the sea gales howled -round its warm, happy security, on Christmases, on Easters, -on Harvest Festivals: she loved it on the evenings when, with -its lights covering its plainness, the Garth villagers would -shout their souls away over “Onward, Christian soldiers” or -“For all the Saints” or would sink into sentimental tenderness -over “Abide with me” and “Saviour, again to Thy dear -name”; she loved it because here she had been sad and happy, -frightened and secure, proud and humble, victorious and defeated ... -as this morning she sank on her knees, burying -her face in her hands, she felt at first as though her -Friend had found her, had encircled her with His arm, had -drawn her into safety....</p> - -<p>And yet, after a little while, her unrest returned. As -Mr. Smart and the congregation hurried through the psalms -for the day, trying, as it were, to beat one another in the -friendly race, Katherine felt again that insistent pressure -and pursuit. Her mind left the church: she was back again -with Philip at Rafiel ... and now she was searching that -mysterious town for that elusive, laughing figure. Katherine -had in her mind a clear picture; she saw a woman, tall and -thin, a dark face with black, ironical eyes, hair jet black, a -figure alert, independent, sometimes scornful, never tragic -or despairing. “If she knew me she would despise me” ... -this thought came flashing like a sudden stream of light across -the church. “If she knew me she’d despise me ... despise -me for everything, even perhaps for loving Philip”—and yet -she felt no hostility; of a certainty no jealousy, only a little -pain at her heart and a strange conviction that the world -was altered now simply because there was a new figure in it. -And there were so many things that she wanted to know. -Why had Anna dismissed Philip? Was it simply because -she was tired of him? Was it perhaps for his own sake, -because she thought that he was wasting his life and character -there. No, Anna probably did not think about his character.... -Did she still care for him and, now that he was gone, -long for him? Well, Katherine had him now, and no one -should take him.... Would she, perhaps, write to Philip -and try to compel him to return? Did she think of the son -who had died? Had she much heart or was she proud and -indifferent?</p> - -<p>“... grant that this day we fall into no sin, neither run -into any kind of danger: but that all our doings may be -ordered by Thy governance to do that which is right....” -Mr. Smart’s voice brought back the church, the choir with -two girls in large flowered hats, the little boys, Mr. Hart, the -butcher, and Mr. Swithan, the grocer, the broad backs in the -family pew. Aunt Aggie, Aunt Betty, Henry, Mrs. Trenchard, -Millie, Philip, George Trenchard, Rachel Seddon (the -family pew was a hideous box with a door to it, and you -could see only the top half of the Trenchards.... They, -however, could see everything: Mrs. Trenchard could see -the choir, and the choir knew it). Because Katherine was -never late, therefore was she denied the opportunity of studying -the Collective Trenchard Back. To-day she had it in -front of her, and it seemed, suddenly, to be something with -which she herself had no concern at all. For an amazing, -blinding, and most desolating moment she viewed the Trenchards -as a stranger might view them. Her loneliness was -appalling. She belonged to no one. She had no place nor -country: her mother and Philip had left her ... only a -strange woman, watching her to see what she would do, -laughed at her. As she stood up and Mr. Smart gave out the -hymn, she saw that there was a hole in her glove. She felt -shabby and hot, and covered the hole with her other hand, because -during that moment she was positively, actively conscious -of the other woman’s curious, hostile gaze; then, as -the hymn began, security came back to her—her heart beat -quietly again.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>“Why were you late, dear?” said Aunt Aggie, walking back -through the wood.</p> - -<p>“I dawdled.”</p> - -<p>“Dawdled! How unlike you, dear! I remember years -ago when I dawdled one Sunday mother saying ... Oh, -dear, there it begins again!”</p> - -<p>“Is your tooth bad?”</p> - -<p>“Never mind, dear, say nothing about it. The last thing -I should wish for would be a fuss. I thought poor Mr. Smart -at his very worst this morning. Since his last child was -born he’s never preached a good sermon. Really, it’s difficult -to be patient with him.”</p> - -<p>“Have you done anything for it, Aunt Aggie?”</p> - -<p>“Iodine. It comes and goes. If it were only steady....”</p> - -<p>Katherine knew that it was of the utmost importance to be -sympathetic, but all that she could think of in her head -was, “How silly to worry about a tooth! How silly to worry -about a tooth!...” She knew at once that Aunt Aggie -saw that she was unsympathetic, and that she resented it -deeply.</p> - -<p>“Mind you say nothing, dear,” she said, as they crossed -the lawn. “You know that I hate a fuss.” And Katherine, -who had stopped on the grass and was staring at the horizon, -did not even answer. Then Aunt Betty came up and said: -“What a delightful sermon! Mr. Smart gets better and -better.”</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie did not trust herself to speak.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile Philip also had been unhappy. He did frankly -hate an English Sunday, and to-day the damp-grey heaviness -overwhelmed him, so that he was almost melodramatic in his -resentment.</p> - -<p>Four days now had passed since the “Feast”, and he -thought that they had been the worst four days of his life. -He, positively, had not slept: he had been driven by a wild, -uncertain spirit, inspiring him now to this action and now -to that, making him cry out in the middle of the night. -“What is she thinking about it? Is it changing her love for -me?... Perhaps she doesn’t love me any more, and is -afraid to tell me. She didn’t seem angry then when I told -her, but she may not have realised—now—” He wanted her -to tell him everything, and he wanted her also never to allude -to the affair again. He had confessed to her, and there was -no more to be said—and yet she must say what now, after -four days, she felt about it. Meanwhile she said nothing and -he said nothing. There was constraint between them for -the only time since their first meeting. He had thought that -his confession would have smashed the cobwebs—it had only -made them the more blinding.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile it was all so desperately serious to him that -he simply could not endure the watching and waiting family. -His insistent desire that ‘things should be perfect’ had from -the beginning been balked by the family’s presence, now his -sense that they all wanted to take Katherine away from him -awoke in him a real hysterical nightmare of baffled impotence. -He would willingly have strangled Aunt Aggie, -Henry and Mrs. Trenchard, and then set fire to the house -and garden. Then, into the middle of it all, came this -impossible Sunday.</p> - -<p>He set his teeth over the roast beef, Aunt Aggie’s complaints -and George Trenchard’s hearty commonplace; -directly luncheon was over he seized Katherine.</p> - -<p>“Look here! we must go for a walk—now—at once!”</p> - -<p>“My dear Phil! I can’t—there’s my Sunday School at -three. I haven’t looked at anything.”</p> - -<p>“Sunday School! Oh, my God!... Sunday School! -Look here, Katie, if you don’t walk with me first I shall go -straight down to the village pond and drown myself.”</p> - -<p>“No, you mustn’t do that.” She seemed quite grave -about it. “All right—wait for me. I’ll be down in two minutes.”</p> - -<p>They set off along the road to Pelynt Cross, the thin sea -mist driving in their faces.</p> - -<p>He broke out: “I must go away from here. To-morrow, -at once—I simply can’t stand it any longer.”</p> - -<p>“Can’t stand what?”</p> - -<p>“Seeing you swallowed up by the family, who all hate -me and want to get rid of me. You yourself are changing—you -aren’t frank with me any longer. You don’t say what -you think. What use am I here anyway? What good is it -my hanging round doing nothing? I’m sick of it. I’m losing -you—I’m miserable. A Sunday like this is enough to -make one commit murder.”</p> - -<p>She put her hand inside his arm and drew him closer to -her.</p> - -<p>“I know what it is,” she said. “You’ve been wondering -why I haven’t spoken to you about what you told me the -other day. You’ve been thinking that I ought to, haven’t -you?”</p> - -<p>“No, it’s only that I’ve wondered whether perhaps you’ve -changed your mind since then. Then you didn’t seem to be -angry, but, thinking about it afterwards—”</p> - -<p>“Why, Phil,” she said, “how could there be anything different? -It’s all gone, finished. You don’t suppose that I -ever imagined that you’d never loved another woman before -you met me. I’m interested, that’s all. You’ve told me so -little about her. I’d like to know all sorts of things—even -quite little unimportant things—”</p> - -<p>“It would be much better,” he said slowly, “if we just -left it and didn’t talk about it.”</p> - -<p>“But I thought you wanted me to talk about it?” she -cried. “How funny you are!”</p> - -<p>“No, I didn’t <span class='it'>want</span> you to talk about it. It’s only that I -didn’t like there being constraint—I don’t see why you should -care. It’s like talking about someone who’s dead.”</p> - -<p>“But she isn’t dead. Do you suppose, Phil—would she, -do you think, like you to go back?”</p> - -<p>“No, I’m sure she wouldn’t—at least I don’t think so.”</p> - -<p>“Was she the kind of woman who forgets easily, who can -put people out of her life just as she wants to?”</p> - -<p>“Anna ...” His voice lingered over the name. “No, I -don’t think she ever forgot. She was simply independent.”</p> - -<p>“Would she think of your boy and want him back?”</p> - -<p>“She might.” He suddenly stopped. “She might. That -evening he was so ill she—”</p> - -<p>Katherine looked across the fields to Pelynt Cross, dim and -grey beneath the rain.</p> - -<p>“She had a heart, then,” she said slowly.</p> - -<p>He suddenly wheeled about with his face to Garth. He -spoke sharply and roughly in a voice that she had never heard -him use before.</p> - -<p>“Don’t, Katie—leave her alone. What do you go on about -her for?”</p> - -<p>“But if it’s all dead?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, drop it, I say! That’s enough.”</p> - -<p>She knew that she was a fool, but something—or was it -somebody?—drove her on.</p> - -<p>“But you said just now that you wanted me to be frank.”</p> - -<p>His voice was a cry.</p> - -<p>“You’ll drive me mad, Katie. You don’t seem to have any -conception—”</p> - -<p>“Very well. I won’t say anything.”</p> - -<p>They were quite silent after that: the silence swelled, like -a rising cloud, between them: it became impossible to break -it ... they were at Garth gates, and they had not spoken. -She would have said something, but he turned abruptly off -into the garden. She walked, with her head up, into the -house.</p> - -<p>She went up to her room, arranged her Sunday School -books, felt suddenly a grinding, hammering fatigue, as though -she had been walking all day; her knees were trembling and -her throat was dry. She sat by her window, looking down -on to the garden, where the sea mist drove in walls of thin -rain against the horizon. Behind the mist the trees seemed -to peer at her as though they were wondering who she was. -“I don’t care,” she thought, “he shouldn’t have spoken to me -like that.” But how had it happened? At one moment they -had been so close together that no force, no power, would -separate them—a word and they had been so far apart that -they could not see one another’s eyes.</p> - -<p>“I don’t care. He shouldn’t—”</p> - -<p>She got up, rubbed her cheeks with her hand because they -were burning, and, with a glance at Philip’s photograph -(someone she had known years ago and would never know -again), went out. The house was silent, and she met no one. -As she crossed the lawn she thought: “How absurd! We’ve -quarrelled—a real quarrel”—then—“It wasn’t my fault. He -shouldn’t—” She held her head very high indeed as she -walked down the road to the Bridge, but she saw no one, felt -no rain upon her cheek, was not conscious that she was moving. -At the door of the Schools she saw Mrs. Smart, and -heard someone say quite sensibly and happily:</p> - -<p>“We’re early. There won’t be many this afternoon, I -expect.”</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Douglas has told me that she won’t be able to come—I -wonder, Katie, whether you’d mind taking—”</p> - -<p>“Why, of course.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Smart was little and round and brown like a pippin. -She was always breathless from having more to wrestle with -than she could grasp. She was nervous, too, and short-sighted, -and the one governing motive of her life was to -bear her husband a son. She had now four daughters; she -knew that her husband felt it very deeply. She had once unburdened -herself to Katherine, but, after that, had been shyer -with her than before. Katherine, against her will, had been -often irritated by Mrs. Smart—she had wondered at her -restlessness and incapacity to keep up with the business in -hand, but to-day, out of the sinister gloom of that horrible -afternoon, the little woman seemed to Katie suddenly sympathetic, -eloquent, moving. Katie could hear her voice, -rather husky, rather uncertain, on that afternoon of her confession: -“... and we did really hope that Lucy would be a -boy, we really did. He would have been called Edward. -Harold has such plans for a son—we have often thought -together what we would do ... and now, I’m afraid....”</p> - -<p>Inside the schoolroom door Katie paused, looked at the -room with the bare benches arranged in squares, the shining -maps of the world and Europe, the case with beetles and -butterflies, the hideous harmonium.</p> - -<p>She suddenly caught Mrs. Smart’s hand and pressed it -through the damp little glove. She knew that Mrs. Smart -would be surprised—she had never been demonstrative to her -before.... She moved to her part of the room, three only -of her class were present, and to these were added two small -boys from another division.</p> - -<p>“Now, children,” said Mr. Smart’s cheerful voice (he -always spoke to boys as though he were luring animals into -a cage), “let us start with hymn No. 436, shall we?” After -the hymn, a prayer, and then, for an hour that subdued, restrained -hum which belongs to the Sunday School only; being -religious as well as disciplined, persuasive as well as obedient. -Katherine now was very proud—as she said: “Well, Robin, -and what did Moses do then?” she was thinking—“But he -must come to me—that’s fair. It was not my fault. He -blamed me first for not speaking, and afterwards when I -did speak.... Besides, if it’s all over and finished, why -should he mind?” She looked very young as she sat there, -her mouth hard and set and her eyes full of trouble. Her -sensation was as though she had been suddenly marooned; the -desolation, the terror, the awful loneliness came, as the evening -fell, creeping up towards her. “Suppose he never makes -it up—Suppose he goes away and leaves me.” She caught -her hands tightly together on her lap and her breath suddenly -left her.</p> - -<p>“Yes, Johnny. His name was Aaron. That’s right.”</p> - -<p>The ordeal was over; she was hurrying back through the -dusk to the lighted house. She went up again to her room, -and sat down again by the window. She listened. The -house was very still, but she thought that, perhaps, he would -guess that she was here, in her bedroom, and would come up. -She wished that her heart would stop beating so that she -might hear the better.</p> - -<p>She listened to every sound, to distant voices, to the whimper -of rain upon the window, to the sharp crack of some shutting -door. Her whole mind now was concentrated upon his -coming: her eyes left the window and turned to the door. -She waited....</p> - -<p>Quite suddenly, as though someone else had commanded -her, she began to cry. She did not move her hands to her -face, but little dry sobs shook her body. She hated herself -for her weakness, and then that very contempt broke her down -completely, so that with her hands pressed against her face, -desolately and almost, it might seem, ironically, she wept. -Through her crying she heard the door open, and, looking -up, saw her mother there. Mrs. Trenchard closed the door -very carefully. “Why, Katherine!” she said in a whisper, -as though this were a matter simply between the two of -them. “I came to see,” said Mrs. Trenchard, “whether you -weren’t coming in to tea. The Drakes are here.”</p> - -<p>It was no use to pretend that she had not been crying. -She rubbed her eyes with her handkerchief, turning her back -for a moment on her mother and gazing down on to the -dark lawn that had all melted now into the rain. Then, -when she had gained her control, she faced the room again.</p> - -<p>“It’s nothing, mother. I’ve had a headache. It’s better. -I’ll lie down a little and then come in. Is Agnes Drake -here?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. She wants to see you.”</p> - -<p>“Well. I’ll come.”</p> - -<p>But Mrs. Trenchard did not go away. Her large soft -eyes never left her daughter’s face.</p> - -<p>“What’s really the matter, dear?”</p> - -<p>“Really—a headache. This weather and then Sunday -School. I felt bad in church this morning.”</p> - -<p>“You’ve been unlike yourself, dear, for some days.”</p> - -<p>“No, mother—I’ve been just the same.”</p> - -<p>“You’ve been unhappy.”</p> - -<p>Katherine raised her head proudly and gave back her -mother’s gaze.</p> - -<p>“There’s been nothing—nothing at all—”</p> - -<p>But Mrs. Trenchard’s eyes never faltered. She suddenly, -with an action that was full of maternal love, but love restrained -by fear of its rejection, love that had tenderness -in its request to be accepted, raised her hands as though -she would take her daughter, and hold her safe and never -let her depart into danger again.</p> - -<p>“Katie—” her voice was soft, and she let her hands fall -again. “Give it up, dear. Break the engagement. Let him -go.”</p> - -<p>Katherine did not answer, but she raised her head higher -than it had been before, and then, suddenly, as though the -irony of her whole relationship with her mother, with Philip, -with the very world itself, had driven in upon her, she -smiled.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard went on: “You aren’t happy, Katie, -darling. We all notice it. It was so sudden, the engagement. -You couldn’t tell at the time. But now—I’ve never said -anything, have I? You’ve seen that I’ve been perfectly fair, -but you know that I’ve never liked him—I said give it its -chance. But now that he’s been down here, you can judge -how different we all are—it’s plain that it won’t do. Of -course you couldn’t tell at the time. But now—”</p> - -<p>“Ah,” Katherine said quietly, “that’s why you asked him -here. I wondered.”</p> - -<p>At the sudden hostility in Katherine’s voice Mrs. Trenchard -started. Then, quite timidly, as though she were asking -some great favour, she said:</p> - -<p>“You mustn’t be angry with me for that. I only care about -your happiness. I’m older—If I think that you are not going -to be happy I’m worried and distressed of course. What -can he be to me compared with you? And lately you yourself -have been different—different to all of us ... Yes ... -You know that if I thought that he would make you -happy....” Her voice was quickly sharp sounding on a -trembling, quivering note. “Katie—give him up. Give him -up. There’ll be somebody much better. There are all of us. -Give him up, darling. Tell him that you don’t love him as -you thought you did.”</p> - -<p>“No, I don’t,” said Katherine, her voice low. “I love -him more than ever I thought I could love anything or anyone. -I love him more every day of my life. Why you—all -of you—” She broke away from her fierceness. She was -gentle, putting her hand against her mother’s cheek, then -bending forward and kissing her.</p> - -<p>“You don’t understand, mother. I don’t understand myself, -I think. But it will be all right. I know that it -will.... You must be patient with me. It’s hard for him -as well as for you. But nothing—<span class='it'>nothing</span>—can change me. -If I loved him before, I have twice as much reason to love -him now.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard looked once more at Katherine, as though -she were seeing her for the last time, then, with a little -sigh, she went out, very carefully closing the door behind -her.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Meanwhile, another member of the Trenchard family, -namely Henry, had found this especial Sunday very difficult. -He always hated Sunday because, having very little to do -on ordinary days of the week, he had nothing at all to do -on Sunday. Never, moreover, in all his life before had -the passing of time been so intolerably slow as it had during -these last weeks. The matter with him, quite simply, was -that his imagination, which had been first stirred on that -afternoon of Philip’s appearance, was now as lively and hungry -as a starved beast in a jungle. Henry simply didn’t -know what to do with himself. Miserably uncertain as to -his right conduct in the matter of Philip and Katherine, -speculating now continually about adventures and experiences -in that wider world of which he had had a tiny glimpse, -needing desperately some definite business of preparation for -business that would fill his hours, and having nothing of the -sort, he was left to read old novels, moon about the fields -and roads, quarrel with Millie, gaze forebodingly at Katherine, -scowl at Philip, have some moments of clumsy sentiment -towards his mother, bite his nails and neglect his appearance. -He began to write a novel, a romantic novel with -three men asleep in a dark inn and a woman stealing up the -ricketty stairs with a knife in her hand. That was all that -he saw of the novel. He knew nothing at all about its time -nor place, its continuation nor conclusion. But he heard the -men breathing in their sleep, saw the moonshine on the -stairs, smelt the close, nasty, beery smell of the tap-room -below, saw the high cheek-bones and large nose of the woman -and the gleaming shine of the knife in her hand.</p> - -<p>He walked for many miles, to Rafiel, to St. Lowe, to -Dumin Head, inland beyond Rasselas, to Pendennis Woods, -to Polchester, to the further side of Pelynt—and always, as -he walked with his head in the air, his Imagination ran -before him like a leaping, towering flame. The visions before -his soul were great visions, but he could do nothing with -them. He thought that he would go forth and deliver the -world, would love all men, prostitutes, lepers, debauchers -(like Philip); he flung his arms about, tumbled over his -untidy boot laces, saw life as a gorgeous-tinted plain, with -fame and glory awaiting him—then returned to Garth, quarrelled -with Millie, sulked and bit his nails.</p> - -<p>This was a hard time for Henry.</p> - -<p>He had determined that he would not present himself in -the drawing-room at tea-time, but when half-past four arrived, -the afternoon had already stretched to such ghastly -lengths that something had to be done. He came slipping, -stumbling downstairs, and found Philip, with a waterproof -turned up over his ears and every sign of the challenger of -wild weather, standing in the hall. Henry would have passed -him in silence, but Philip stopped him.</p> - -<p>“Look here,” he said, in a low mysterious voice, “will you -do something for me?”</p> - -<p>“What?” said Henry, suspiciously.</p> - -<p>“I’m going out for a long walk. Shan’t be back until supper. -Give this letter to Katherine, and tell her I want her -to read it before I get back.”</p> - -<p>“Why don’t you give it to her yourself? She’s up in her -room.”</p> - -<p>“Because I want you to.”</p> - -<p>Henry took the letter, and Philip was gone, sending into -the house a little gust of cold wind and rain as he plunged -through the door. Henry looked after him, shook his head as -though the destinies of the world were on his shoulders, put -the letter into his pocket and went into the drawing-room. -The Drake family was calling. There were Mrs. Drake, old -and sharp and weather-beaten, like a sign post on the top -of a hill; her son, Francis Drake, who, unlike his famous -namesake, seemed unable to make up his mind about -anything, was thin and weedy, with staring eyes, and continually -trying to swallow his fist; and little Lettice Drake, aged -seven, fifteen years younger than any other in the family; -her parents had never entirely got over their surprise at her -appearance: she was sharp and bony, like her mother. Mrs. -Trenchard, Aunt Aggie and Millie were entertaining; Great-Aunt -Sarah was seated in state, in black silk and white cap, -and her stern eye was fixed upon Mr. Drake, whose appearance -she did not like. This made Mr. Drake very nervous.</p> - -<p>Afternoon-tea on Sunday comes at the very moment when -the day seems most unbearable—Later, at about six o’clock, -Sunday fatigue will happily begin to descend and envelop its -victims, but at half-past four one is only able to remember -that it is a mistake to have so large a meal in the middle of -the day, that Sunday clothes are chill and uncomfortable, and -that all the people in whom one has the least interest in life -will shortly make their appearance.</p> - -<p>There is also the prospect of evening service, followed by -cold supper: the earlier hours of the day stretch now behind -one at so vast and unwieldy a length that it seems impossible -that one will ever reach the end of the day alive. Aunt -Aggie felt all this—she also hated the Drakes. She saw that -Henry, moody in a corner by himself, regarded her with a -cynical eye: her tooth, which had been quiet since luncheon, -was throbbing again. She endeavoured to be pleasant to -little Lettice, although she hated children, and she knew -that children knew it.</p> - -<p>“Wonderfully she’s grown!” she said, bending down towards -the child, who watched her with cold curiosity. “And -what’s your favourite game now, Lettice? Too old for dolls, -I expect.”</p> - -<p>There was no reply.</p> - -<p>“Tell Miss Trenchard about your games, dear,” said Mrs. -Drake.</p> - -<p>There was no reply.</p> - -<p>“You must come and play here one day, dear,” said Aunt -Aggie. “Such a big room as we’ve got upstairs—and lots -of toys. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”</p> - -<p>There was no reply.</p> - -<p>“She’s shy, I expect,” said Mrs. Drake. “So many children -are.”</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie drew nearer to Lettice.</p> - -<p>“You mustn’t be shy with me, dear. I’m so proud of children. -You shall have <span class='it'>such</span> a piece of cake in a minute!”</p> - -<p>But with a little movement of her bony fingers Lettice -Drake, in a voice of chill detachment, said:</p> - -<p>“You’ve got a thpot on your faith,” referring to a little -black mole on Aunt Aggie’s right cheek. The voice was so -chill, the indifference so complete that the failure of Aunt -Aggie’s tactics was obvious to the dullest onlooker. Unfortunately -Henry laughed; he had not intended to laugh: he -did not feel at all in a humorous mood—but he laughed from -nervousness, discomfort and disgust. He knew that Aunt -Aggie would not forgive this ... he hated quarrels with -Aunt Aggie. She did not look at him, but her back told him -what she was thinking. He wished, bitterly, that he had -more self-control; he knew that, of all possible insults, Aunt -Aggie would regard most bitterly a mock at her appearance -in a public place. The Drakes might be considered a public -place.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard said: “Where’s Katie? You’d like to see -her, Agnes, I’m sure. Perhaps she doesn’t know you’re here. -I’ll see. I know you’d like to see her.” Mrs. Trenchard went -away. Then Aunt Sarah, who had been hitherto absolutely -silent, began, her eye never leaving Mrs. Drake’s face.</p> - -<p>“You’re the daughter of Aggie Mummings, whom I used -to know. You must be. Poor Aggie ... I remember your -mother quite well—a feeble thing always, never knowing -her mind and always wanted people’s advice. I used to say -to her: ‘Aggie, if you let men see how feeble you are you’ll -never get married’—but she did after all—which shows you -never can tell—I think, Millie, I’ll have some more hot in -this ... yes, I remember your mother very well, poor -thing.”</p> - -<p>“I’ve heard her speak of you, Miss Trenchard,” said Mrs. -Drake.</p> - -<p>Mr. Drake suddenly attacked Millie.</p> - -<p>“Well now—about Paris—you know—very different from -this hole, ain’t it?”</p> - -<p>“Very different,” said Millie. “But I don’t consider this -‘a hole’.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t you now? Well—that’s very interesting. Don’t -you?... <span class='it'>I</span> do.”</p> - -<p>Millie had nothing to say.</p> - -<p>“It’s slow, you know—horrid slow—just weather, <span class='it'>I</span> call it. -Whether it’s raining or not, you know—. Yes ... I wonder -you don’t find it slow after Paris.”</p> - -<p>“I was at school there, you see,” said Millie. “It’s different -when you’re at school.”</p> - -<p>“I suppose it is. Yes, I s’pose so.” He began to cram -his fist into his mouth, was surprised at its boniness, regarded -it gravely, said: “Well, yes ... I s’pose so ... Yes ... -Well ...” and was silent.</p> - -<p>Then Mrs. Trenchard at last returned: Katherine was -with her. Henry at once saw that Katherine had been crying. -The effect of this discovery upon Henry was elemental -in its force. He had, during all his life, regarded Katherine -as almost omnipotent in her strength and wisdom. He -had, moreover, always thought to himself: “One day she -will have her reward,” and his vision of Katherine’s future -happiness and glory had been one of his favourite dreams. -Now that cad had been making her cry.... He was, at -that moment, on the very edge of making a scene ... he -would fling Philip’s letter down there, in front of them, -Drakes and all. He would cry: “There! that’s from the -beast who’s been making her cry—and I tell you he’s a cad. -He had a woman for years in Russia and had a son too—that’s -the kind of fellow he is.” But Katherine was smiling -and laughing. The Drakes certainly would not see that she -had been crying: even Millie did not, apparently, notice it; -Millie, having done her duty by the Drakes, was going upstairs -to write letters. She said good-bye and left the room ... -two minutes later Henry slipped out after her.</p> - -<p>He caught her at the top of the stairs.</p> - -<p>“I say,” he said. “Come into my room for a minute. I’ve -got something to tell you.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, bother,” answered Millie. “I want to write letters.”</p> - -<p>“Never mind. You must. It’s important.”</p> - -<p>“Aren’t the Drakes awful?” she said, standing inside his -door and observing the disorder of his room with a scornful -lip.</p> - -<p>“Yes, they are,” said Henry. “Wasn’t Aunt Aggie angry -when I laughed?”</p> - -<p>“A silly sort of thing to do anyway. <span class='it'>What</span> a room! You -might put those clothes away, and why can’t you have another -shelf for the books? That table—”</p> - -<p>“Oh, rot! Dry up!” Henry moved about uneasily, kicking -a book along the floor. “I’ve got something I want to—I -can’t keep it to myself any longer.”</p> - -<p>“What is it? About Philip and Katie?”</p> - -<p>“No, not about Katie. At least—not unless he’s told her. -It’s about Philip.”</p> - -<p>“What is it?” Millie said again.</p> - -<p>“He’s the most awful cad—an absolute outsider. I’ve -known it for weeks, only I haven’t decided what to do.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t believe it,” Millie said, slowly. “You don’t know -enough about men to tell whether a man’s an outsider or -not.... What’s he done?”</p> - -<p>“In Russia—in Moscow—he had a mistress for years—and -they had a son. He’s never said anything about it, but -it’s true. They say he had an awful reputation in Moscow.”</p> - -<p>“Who’s ‘they’?” said Millie, slowly. The colour mounted -into her cheeks.</p> - -<p>“A man I know—a friend of Seymour’s. Oh! I know it’s -true. There isn’t any sort of doubt about it.”</p> - -<p>“I daresay it is. Men are like that,” Millie said, with -profundity.</p> - -<p>“Decent men aren’t. Not the sort of man who will marry -Katie.”</p> - -<p>Millie said nothing, and there was a long silence in the -room. Then, with a deep sigh, Millie said:</p> - -<p>“If it <span class='it'>is</span> true what does it matter if it’s all over?”</p> - -<p>“Perhaps it isn’t. Besides, if he’s that kind of man he’ll -do it again. And anyway, if Katie were to know—”</p> - -<p>“Ah! if Katie were to know—”</p> - -<p>They stood there, young (very young) defenders of Katherine. -They would both of them, always, afterwards remember -that moment, that hour, that Sunday. There came for -both of them, suddenly, an active, urgent demand on their -participation in a sudden adventure, a real, serious adventure, -and they simply did not know what to do with it. With -neither of them was their apprehension, disgust, dismay so -great as their curiosity. The first thing, after the pause, that -Millie said was:</p> - -<p>“I wonder what she’s like, that other woman I mean.”</p> - -<p>Henry had been wondering for weeks. He now produced -his conclusions.</p> - -<p>“It’s my idea,” he said, “that she was simply bored with -him, couldn’t endure him any longer. I expect they had -awful rows—Russians do, you know, and Philip’s got a temper -I should think. Then he came home, and—sort of to save -his pride because the other woman had kicked him out—made -love to the first woman he saw. Katherine <span class='it'>was</span> the -first, you know.”</p> - -<p>Millie felt a momentary surprise at her brother’s unexpected -cleverness. Then she shook her head: “No, I’m sure -it’s not that. He loves Katherine, I know, anyone can see -it.”</p> - -<p>“Well, then,” said Henry, with sudden volcanic happiness, -“he’s making her awfully miserable. She was crying this -afternoon, and I’ve got a letter in my pocket now that he -told me to give to her for her to read while he was out.... -They’ve had a quarrel.”</p> - -<p>“Perhaps he’s told her.”</p> - -<p>“If he’s making her unhappy—”</p> - -<p>“I wonder what she thinks about it—”</p> - -<p>Henry’s thought, with all the simplicity that was in his -real nature, was only of Katherine. Millie, although she -loved her sister, was absorbed by the vision of life—dramatic, -tragic, gay, sinister, rapturous—that was slowly being unfolded -before her. What she would have liked would have -been for both Philip and Katherine to have told her, minutely -and precisely, how the affair appeared to them. How she -could listen to them if they made her their confidante! Meanwhile -she must content herself with Henry.</p> - -<p>“What are you going to do?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“Do!... There are things I can do,” he hinted darkly. -“Meanwhile, you just keep your eyes open and see whether -he’s bad to Katherine. If he is we must stop it. That’s all -that matters.”</p> - -<p>“I wonder what she was like—that other woman,” Millie -said, not looking at Henry, but at her own reflection in his -looking-glass, then, without another word to him, she turned -and left the room.</p> - -<p>After she had gone he wondered whether he’d been wise to -tell her. She had offered no advice, she had not even, he -thought, been immensely interested, she had certainly been, in -no way, shocked.</p> - -<p>“Girls <span class='it'>are</span> queer” was his final reflection. When the bell -began to ring, with its strange little questioning invitation, -he suddenly thought that he would go to church. He sometimes -found evening service, with its candles and old familiar -tunes and star-lit sky, romantic and moving: to-night he felt -that his restlessness and indecision must be influenced. He -came downstairs, and found Katherine standing and staring -through the little window to the left of the hall door. She -started when she heard his voice, as though she had been lost -in her own company.</p> - -<p>“I’ve got a letter for you,” he said, roughly. “From -Philip. He’s gone out for a long walk until supper, and -he said you were to read it before he came back.”</p> - -<p>He gave it her. She said nothing. He turned abruptly -away, and faced his mother.</p> - -<p>She had on her black Sunday hat and was buttoning her -gloves.</p> - -<p>“I’m going to church.”</p> - -<p>“Well,” said Mrs. Trenchard, “I think we shall be the only -ones. Unless Katherine’s coming.”</p> - -<p>“No, I’m not coming,” said Katherine.</p> - -<p>He walked away with his mother, feeling self-conscious -with her, as he always did, but to-night, whether from some -especial sense of gloom, of dripping, wet trees, of wind and -rain, or from some real perception of agitation in his mother, -he felt a strong impulse of protection towards her. He -would have liked to have put his arm through hers, to have -defied the world to harm her, to run and fetch and carry for -her, to help her in any possible way. He had felt this before, -but he had never known how to begin, and he knew that any -demonstration of any kind would embarrass them both terribly.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard said things like:</p> - -<p>“Those two shirts of yours, Henry—those last two blue -ones—have shrunk terribly. I’ll never go to that place in -Oxford Street again. They’ve shrunk so dreadfully,” or “If -you think you’d rather have those thicker socks next time you -must tell me.... Do you like them better?”</p> - -<p>Henry was always vexed by such questions. He thought -that he should have been managing his own clothes at his -age, and he also could not be bothered to give his mind -seriously to socks.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know, mother.”</p> - -<p>“But you must care for one or the other.”</p> - -<p>“No, I don’t.”</p> - -<p>“I think the thick ones are better. They don’t feel quite -so comfortable perhaps.... Ah! there’s the bell stopping. -We shall be late.”</p> - -<p>In church, influenced by the flickering candles, the familiar -chants, the sense of a cosy and intimate trust in a Power who -would see one safely through the night, just as one’s burning -night-light had guarded one when one had been very small, -Henry became sentimental and happy. He looked out of the -corner of his eye at his mother, at the so familiar wave of -her hair, the colour and shape of her cheek, the solid comfort -of her figure, and suddenly thought how old she was looking. -This came as a revelation to him: he fancied that even in the -last week there had been a little change. He moved closer to -her: then he saw that her eye was fixed upon a small choir-boy -who had been eating sweets. The eye was stern and so -full of command and assurance that Henry’s sentiment suddenly -shrivelled into nothing. His mother wanted nobody’s -help—he sighed and thought about other things. Soon he -was singing “Abide with me” in his ugly, untuneful voice, -pleased that the choir lingered over it in an abominable fashion, -trying now and then to sing ‘second’, and miserably failing.</p> - -<p>But, although he did not know it, Mrs. Trenchard had -realised her son’s mood....</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>So, at last, tired, a little hysterical, feeling as though heavy -steam rollers had, during the day, passed over their bodies, -they were all assembled for supper. Sunday supper should -be surely a meal very hot and very quickly over: instead it -is, in all really proper English families, very cold and quite -interminable. There were, to-night, seated round the enormous -table Mrs. Trenchard, Aunt Betty, Aunt Aggie, Katherine, -Millie and Henry. George Trenchard and Rachel -Seddon were spending the evening with Timothy Faunder: -Philip had not yet returned from his walk. A tremendous -piece of cold roast beef was in front of Mrs. Trenchard; -in front of Henry were two cold chickens. There was a -salad in a huge glass dish, it looked very cold indeed. -There was a smaller glass dish with beetroot. There -was a large apple-tart, a white blancmange, with little “dobs” -of raspberry jam round the side of the dish. There was a -plate of stiff and unfriendly celery—item a gorgonzola -cheese, item a family of little woolly biscuits, clustered -together for warmth, item a large “bought” cake that had not -been cut yet and was grimly determined that it never should -be, item what was known as “Toasted Water” (a grim family -mixture of no colour and a faded, melancholy taste) in a vast -jug, item, silver, white table-cloth, napkin-rings quite without -end. Everything seemed to shiver as they sat down.</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie, as she saw the blancmange shaking its sides -at her, thought that she would have been wiser to have gone -straight upstairs instead of coming in to supper. She knew -that her tooth would begin again as soon as she saw this -food. She had had a wretched day. Katherine, before luncheon, -had been utterly unsympathetic, Henry at tea-time had -laughed at her.... At any rate, in a minute, there would -be soup. On Sunday evening, in order to give the servants -freedom, they waited upon themselves, but soup was the -one concession to comfort. Aunt Aggie thought she would -have her soup and then go up quietly to bed. One eye was -upon the door, looking for Rocket. Her tooth seemed to -promise her: “If you give me soup I won’t ache.”</p> - -<p>“Beef, Aggie—or chicken,” said Mrs. Trenchard. “No -soup to-night, I’m afraid. They’ve all got leave to-night, -even Rocket and Rebekah. There’s a meeting at the Chapel -that seemed important ... yes ... beef or chicken, -Aggie?”</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie, pulling all her self-control together, said: -“Beef, please.” Her tooth, savage at so direct an insult, -leapt upon her.</p> - -<p>Aunt Betty, in her pleasant voice, began a story. “I must -say I call it strange. In the ‘Church Times’ for this week -there’s a letter about ‘Church-Kneelers’ by ‘A Vicar’—complaining, -you know ... Well—”</p> - -<p>“Beef or chicken, Millie?” said Mrs. Trenchard.</p> - -<p>“Chicken, please,” said Millie. “Shall I cut the bread?”</p> - -<p>“White, please,” said Henry.</p> - -<p>“Well—” went on Aunt Betty. “As I was saying, on -‘Church-Kneelers’ signed by ‘A Vicar’. Well, it’s a very curious -thing, but you remember, Harriet, that nice Mr. Redpath—”</p> - -<p>“One moment, Betty, please,” said Mrs. Trenchard.</p> - -<p>“Not so much as that, Harry. Simply the leg. Thank -you, dear. <span class='it'>Simply</span> the leg. That nice Mr. Redpath—with -the nice wife and so many dear little children—he was curate -to Mr. Williams of St. Clemens for years. Harriet, <span class='it'>you’ll</span> -remember—one year all the children had scarlet fever together, -and two of the poor little things died, although I -couldn’t help thinking that really it was rather a mercy—”</p> - -<p>“Mustard, please,” said Henry.</p> - -<p>“More beef, Aggie?” said Mrs. Trenchard.</p> - -<p>“No, <span class='it'>thank</span> you,” said Aggie, snapping her teeth upon a -piece of bread. She was thinking: “How selfish they all -are! They can’t see how I’m suffering!”</p> - -<p>“Well, <span class='it'>that</span> Mr. Redpath—You <span class='it'>must</span> remember him, Harriet, -because he had a red moustache and a rather fine white -forehead—when he left Mr. Williams got a living somewhere -in Yorkshire, near York, I think, or was it Scarborough? -Scarborough, because I remember when I wrote to -congratulate him he answered me in such a nice letter, and -said that it would be just the place for the children. <span class='it'>You</span> -remember, Katherine, I showed it you.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Katherine.</p> - -<p>Henry, hearing her voice, looked across at her and then -dropped his eyes upon his plate.</p> - -<p>She seemed herself again. Had her letter made her -happy? With a sudden start he realised that Millie also was -watching her....</p> - -<p>“Well, it must have been about 1900 that Mr. Redpath -went to Scarborough. I remember it was the year before that -dreadful wet school treat here, when we didn’t know where -to put all the children. I know the year after he went -there poor Mrs. Redpath died and left him with all those -little children—”</p> - -<p>Just at that moment Philip came in. He came with -the spray of the sea still wet upon his cheeks, his hair shining -with it. His colour flaming, his eyes on fire. He had been, -in the wind and darkness, down the Rafiel Road to the point -above Tredden Cove where the sea broke inland. Here, deafened -by the wind, blinded by the night, the sea-mist, now -lashing his face, now stroking it softly with gentle fingers, -he had stood on the edge of the world and heard the waters -that are beyond the world exult in their freedom and scorn -for men. He, too, standing there, had had scorn for himself. -He had seen Katherine’s eyes as she turned from him -in the garden, he had seen his own wretched impatience and -temper and selfishness. “By heaven,” he thought, as he -strode back, “I’ll never be so contemptible again. I’ll make -them all trust me and like me. As for Katherine ...” and -so he burst in upon them, without even brushing his hair -first. Also, the only vacant chair was next to Aunt Aggie....</p> - -<p>Aunt Betty, who thought that Philip’s entry had been a -little violent and abrupt, felt that she had better cover it with -the continuation of her story.</p> - -<p>“And so the next year Mr. Redpath married again—quite -a young woman. I never saw her, but Nelly Hickling knew -her quite well. She always said that she reminded her of -Clara Foster. You know, Harriet, the younger one with -the dark hair and pretty eyes.”</p> - -<p>But Philip had looked across at Katherine, her eyes had -met his, and very faintly, as it were secretly, she smiled: -the whirl of that encounter had hidden Aunt Betty’s voice -from him. He did not know that he was interrupting her.</p> - -<p>“It was a good walk, and it’s raining like anything. The -sea was coming in over the Cove like thunder.”</p> - -<p>No one answered him, and he realised suddenly that all -the food was cold. No matter: he was used to Sunday supper -by this time, and he was of a ferocious hunger. “Lots -of beef, please,” he said, with a laugh.</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie shuddered. Her tooth was in her eye and -her toes at the same moment; Annie had forgotten to call -her, there had been no eggs for breakfast, Katherine at -luncheon had been unsympathetic, at tea, before strangers -(or nearly strangers), Henry had laughed at her, at supper -there had been no soup, Betty, who in the morning had -been idiotic enough to think Mr. Smart’s sermon a good -one, in the evening had been idiotic enough to commence one -of her interminable stories, the day had as usual been dreary -and heavy and slow, and now that terrible young man, whom -she had always hated, must come in, late and dripping, -without even washing his hands, makes no apologies, demands -food as though he were a butcher, smiles upon everyone -with perfect complacency, is not apparently in the least -aware of other people’s feelings—this horrible young man, -who had already made everyone about him miserable and -cross and restless: no, deeply though Aunt Aggie had always -disliked Philip, she had never really hated him until this -evening.</p> - -<p>Although he was sitting next to her, he could not possibly -have been more unconscious of her....</p> - -<p>“You are interrupting my sister,” she said.</p> - -<p>He started and flushed. “Oh! I beg your pardon,” he -stammered.</p> - -<p>“No, please, it’s nothing,” said Aunt Betty.</p> - -<p>“You were saying something about Mr. Williams, Betty -dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard.</p> - -<p>“No, please, it’s nothing,” said Aunt Betty.</p> - -<p>There was silence after that. Philip waited, and then, -feeling that something must be done, said: “Well, Henry, -I wish you’d been out with me. You’d have loved it. Why -didn’t you come?”</p> - -<p>“I’m sure he was better at church,” said Aunt Aggie. Her -tooth said to her: “Go for him! Go for him! Go for him!”</p> - -<p>Philip realised then her hostility. His face hardened. -What a tiresome old woman she was, always cross and restless -and wanting attention! He kept silent. That annoyed -her: he seemed so big and overbearing when he sat so close -to her.</p> - -<p>“And I don’t know,” she went on, “whether you are really -the best companion for Henry.”</p> - -<p>Everyone looked up then at the bitterness in Aunt Aggie’s -voice; no one heard Mrs. Trenchard say:</p> - -<p>“Do have some tart, Henry.”</p> - -<p>“What do you mean?” said Philip sharply. His proximity -to her made in some way the anger between them absurd: -they were so close that they could not look at one another.</p> - -<p>“Oh, nothing ... nothing....” She closed her lips.</p> - -<p>“Please ...” Philip insisted. “Why am I a bad companion -for Henry?”</p> - -<p>“Because you make him drink ... disgusting!” she -brought out furiously: when she had spoken her eyes went to -Katherine’s face—then, as she saw Katherine’s eyes fixed on -Philip’s, her face hardened. “Yes. You know it’s true,” -she repeated.</p> - -<p>Henry broke in. “What do you say, Aunt Aggie? What -do you mean? Drink—I—what?”</p> - -<p>“You know that it’s true, Henry. That night that you -dined with Philip in London—You came back—disgraceful. -Philip had to carry you. You fell on the top of the stairs. -He had to lift you up and carry you into your room. I -watched it all. Well—I didn’t mean to say anything. I’m -sorry, Harriet, if I—perhaps not quite the right time—but -I—I—”</p> - -<p>Her voice sank to muttering; her hands shook like leaves -on the table-cloth and her tooth was saying: “Go for him! -Go for him! Go for him!”</p> - -<p>And for Philip it was as though, after all these weeks -of waiting, not only the family but the whole place had at -last broken into its definite challenge.</p> - -<p>Beyond the room he could feel the garden, the lawn, the -oak, the sea-road, the moor, even Rafiel itself, with its little -square window-pane harbour, crowding up to the window, -listening, crying to him: “You’ve got to be broken! You’ve -got to go or be broken!...” The definite moment had come -at last.</p> - -<p>His eyes never left Katherine’s face as he answered:</p> - -<p>“It’s perfectly true. I don’t know how it happened, but -we had been having supper quite soberly together, and then -Henry was suddenly drunk. I swear he’d had simply nothing -to drink. He was quite suddenly drunk, all in a moment. -I was never more surprised in my life. I suppose -I should have prevented it, but I swear to you it would -have surprised anyone—really, you would have been surprised, -Mrs. Trenchard.”</p> - -<p>Henry, whose face was first flaming, then white, said, -sulkily: “It wasn’t Philip’s fault.... I wasn’t used to it. -Anyway, I don’t see why there need be such a fuss about it. -What Aunt Aggie wants to drag it in now for just when -everyone’s tired after Sunday. It isn’t as though I were -<span class='it'>always</span> drunk—just once—everyone’s drunk sometime.”</p> - -<p>“I’ve never said anything,” Aunt Aggie began.</p> - -<p>“No, that’s just it,” Philip broke in, suddenly flashing -round upon her. “That’s just it. You’ve never said anything -until now. Why haven’t you? Why, all this time, -have you kept it, hugging it to yourself?... That’s what -you’ve all been doing. You never tell me anything. You -never treat me really frankly, but if you’ve got something -you think will do damage you keep it carefully until the best -moment for letting it go off. You’re all as secret with me -as though I were a criminal. You ask me down here, and -then keep me out of everything. I know you dislike me -and think I oughtn’t to marry Katherine—but why can’t you -say so instead of keeping so quiet! You think I shouldn’t -have Katherine—but you can’t stop it, and you know you -can’t.... I’m sorry.” He was conscious of the silence -and many pairs of eyes and of much quivering cold food -and the ticking of a large grandfather’s clock saying: ‘You -are rude. You <span class='it'>are</span> rude—You <span class='it'>shouldn’t</span>—do it—You -<span class='it'>shouldn’t</span>—do it.’</p> - -<p>But he was also conscious of a quivering life that ran, like -quicksilver, through the world outside, through all the -streams, woods, paths, into the very heart of the sea. His -eyes were on Mrs. Trenchard’s face.</p> - -<p>“I apologise if I’ve been rude, but to-day—a day like this—awful—” -He broke off abruptly, and moved as though he -would get up. It was then that the Dreadful Thing occurred.</p> - -<p>He pushed his chair, and it knocked against Aunt Aggie’s, -jolting her. She, conscious that she was responsible for an -abominable scene, conscious that she had lost all that fine -dignity and self-command in which, through her lifetime, she -had seen herself arrayed, conscious of her tooth, of a horrible -Sunday, of many Sundays in front of her equally horrible -(conscious, above all, of some doubt as to whether she <span class='it'>were</span> -a fine figure, whether the world would be very different without -her, conscious of the menace of her own cherished personal -allusion), driven forward, moreover, by the individual -experiences that Mrs. Trenchard, Millie, Henry, Katherine -had had that day (because all their experiences were now in -the room, crowding and pressing against their victims), seeing -simply Philip, an abominable intrusion into what had -formerly been a peaceful and honourable life, Philip, now and -always her enemy ... at the impact of his chair against -hers, her tooth said “Go!”</p> - -<p>She raised her thin hand and slapped him. Her two rings -cut his cheek.</p> - -<p>When the House was finally quiet and dark again, Rebekah -alone was left. Stiff, solemn, slow, she searched the rooms, -tried the doors, fastened the windows, marched with her -candle up the back stairs into the heart of the house.</p> - -<p>It had been a dull, uneventful Sunday. Nothing had -occurred.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2 id='ch13'>CHAPTER VII<br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>ROCHE ST. MARY MOOR</span></h2> - -<p>Terror is a tall word; it should not, perhaps, be used, -in this trivial history, in connection with the feelings -and motives of so youthfully comfortable a character as -Philip—nevertheless very nearly akin to terror itself was -Philip’s emotion on discovering the results of his disgraceful -encounter with Aunt Aggie ... because there were no results.</p> - -<p>As he had watched Aunt Aggie trembling, silent, emotional, -retreat (after striking Philip she had risen and, without -a word, left the room), he had thought that the moment -for all his cards to be placed dramatically upon the Trenchard -table had at last come. Perhaps they would tell him -that he must go; they would openly urge Katherine to abandon -him, and then, faced, with force and violence, by the -two alternatives, he was assured, absolutely assured, of her -loyalty to himself. He saw her, protesting that she would -love them all, reminded that (Philip being proved an -abomination) she must now choose, finally going out into -the world with Philip.</p> - -<p>He went to his room that Sunday evening triumphant. No -more Trenchard secrets and mysteries—thanks to that horrible -old woman, the way was clear. He came down the -next morning to breakfast expecting to be treated with chilly -politeness, to be asked to interview George Trenchard in his -study, to hear Trenchard say: “Well, my dear boy—I’m -very sorry of course—but you must see with me that it’s -better to break off ...” and then his reply.</p> - -<p>“That, sir, must remain with Katherine. I am bound to -her....” No, he had no fear of the result. As he came -down the stairs on that Monday morning, a fine hot spring -day, with the mist of the spring heat hazy above the shining -grass, his eyes were lighter, his spirits higher than they had -been since his first coming to Garth. He entered the dining-room, -and thought that he had dreamt yesterday’s incidents.</p> - -<p>Millie cried—“Hullo, Phil! Late as usual.”</p> - -<p>George Trenchard said: “Philip, what do you say to a -drive over to Trezent? It’s a good day and I’ve some business -there.”</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie gave him her withered hand to shake with -exactly the proud, peevish air that she always used to him. -There was a scratch on his face where her rings had cut -him; he looked at her rings ... yes, he was surely dreaming. -Then there crept to him the conviction that the plot—the -family plot—seen before vaguely, mysteriously and uncertainly—was -now developing before his eyes as something -far deeper, far more soundless, far more determined than he -had ever conceived. Mrs. Trenchard, smiling there at the -head of the table, knew what she was about. That outburst -of Aunt Aggie’s last night had been a slip—They would make -no more.</p> - -<p>His little quarrel with Katherine had needed no words to -mark its conclusion. He loved her, he felt, just twice as -deeply as he had loved her before ... he was not sure, -though, that he was not now a little—a very little—afraid -of her....</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>In the middle of the week, waking, very early on the -most wonderful of all spring mornings, his inspiration came -to him.</p> - -<p>He got up, and about half-past seven was knocking on -Katherine’s door. She spoke to him from within the room.</p> - -<p>“Katie!”</p> - -<p>“Yes!”</p> - -<p>He whispered to her in the half-lit house, across whose -floors the light, carrying the scent of the garden-flowers, shook -and trembled; he felt a conspirator.</p> - -<p>“Look here! You’ve got to dress at once and come off -with me somewhere.”</p> - -<p>“Go off!”</p> - -<p>“Yes, for the day! I’ve thought it all out. We can take -the pony-cart and just catch the nine o’clock at Rasselas. -That’ll get us to Clinton by ten. We’ll be down in Roche -Cove by eleven—spend the day there, catch the eight-thirty -back and be in the house again by half-past ten to-night.”</p> - -<p>There was a pause, filled with the delighted twittering of a -company of sparrows beyond the open passage-window.</p> - -<p>At last her voice:</p> - -<p>“Yes. I’ll come.”</p> - -<p>“Good.... Hurry!... I’ll tell them downstairs.”</p> - -<p>When the family assembled for breakfast and he told them, -his eyes challenged Mrs. Trenchard’s.</p> - -<p>“Now, look here,” his eyes said, “I’m the dreadful young -man who is teaching your boy Henry to drink, who’s ruining -your domestic peace—surely you’re not, without protest, going -to allow me a whole day with Katherine!”</p> - -<p>And her eyes answered him.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I’m not afraid.... You’ll come back. You’re a -weak young man.”</p> - -<p>In the train he considered, with a beating heart, his project. -The day encouraged adventure, boldness, romance; he -was still young enough to believe in the intangible illusion -of a Deity Who hangs His signs and colours upon the sky -to signify His approval of one bold mortal’s projects, and -no ironic sense of contrast attacked, as yet, his belief. If -the Trenchards refused to make the incident of Sunday night -a crisis, he would, himself, force them to recognise it. He -had been passive long enough ... he did not know that, -all his life, he had never been anything else.</p> - -<p>In the train they talked to one another very little. He -watched her and was bewildered, as are all lovers, by her -proximity and her remoteness. The very love that brought -her so close to him made her the more remote because it -clothed her in strange mystery.</p> - -<p>She was further from him than Anna had ever been, because -he loved her more deeply ... and at the thought of -Anna—so constant now and so sinister—he had a sudden -fear of the success of his project....</p> - -<p>Clinton St. Mary is a village, with one ugly street, on the -very edge of Roche St. Mary Moor. It has visitors from -the outside world because, in a hollow in the moor, lie the -remains of St. Arthe Church, one of the earliest Christian -buildings in Great Britain, ‘buried until lately in the sand, -but recently excavated through the kind generosity of Sir -John Porthcullis, Bart., of Borhaze, and shown to visitors, -6d. a head—Wednesday and Saturday afternoons free.’ Tourists -therefore continually patronise ‘The Hearty Cow’ in Clinton, -where there is every day a cold luncheon—ham, chicken, -beef, tart, junket, cheese—for half-a-crown a-head. Katherine -also had relations here, the Vicar, the Rev. James Trenchard, -being a cousin ‘and a dear old man’. However, to-day -the world should be for themselves alone. In the village they -bought ginger-beer, ham-sandwiches, saffron buns, chocolate. -They set off across the Moor.</p> - -<p>When they had walked a very little way they were suddenly -engulfed. Behind them the road, the trees, the village -were wrapped in blue haze: to the right, very faintly the -yellow sand-hills hovered. In the sandy ground at their feet -little pools that caught blue fragments of sky shone like -squares of marble: out of the tufts of coarse grass larks rose, -circling, like sudden sprays of some flashing into the air -as a fountain flashes: no mortal being was visible in this -world.</p> - -<p>They walked for two hours and exchanged scarcely a word. -Philip felt as though he had never had Katherine alone with -him before since the day of their engagement—always there -had been people between them, and, if not people, then his -own silly fancies and imaginations. As he looked his love -was now neither reasoning nor hesitating. “I am stronger -than you all,” he could shout to the ironical heavens, for -the first time in all his days. Then she spoke to him, and -her voice reminded him of his desperate plans.... His -confidence left him. It was his great misfortune that he -never believed in himself.</p> - -<p>Very little, this morning, was Katherine troubled about -dreams or fancies. She was happy, as she had always been -happy, with absolute simplicity, her trust in the ultimate perfection -of the world being so strong in her that a fine day, her -closeness to Philip, her own bodily health and fitness were -enough to sweep all morbidities far away. She had not been -happy lately—some new force had been stirring in her that -was strange to her and unreal, like a bad dream.</p> - -<p>But now her unhappiness of the last weeks was as faint -as the hazy mist, as shadowy as the thin curtain of sea that -now spread before them, hung like gauze between two humped -and staring sand-hills. They rushed down the deep cup of -the sand-valley and up, through the thin wiry grass, to -the top, then down again, then up once more to be perched -on the very edge of the path that twisted down to their -Cove. The sea-breeze, warm and soft, invited them.... -Down they went.</p> - -<p>The Cove was hidden by black rocks, piled together, seeming, -through the mist, to be animals herded together to -guard its sanctity. Under the rocks the Cove lay, curved like -a small golden saucer, the sea forming here a thin glassy -lake, protected by a further range of rocks that extended, as -though placed there by human agency, across the mouth of -the tiny circle. The water within the rocks was utterly clear, -the seaweed, red-gold and green, covering the inside of the -cup: when the waves broke beyond the barrier they were -echoed here by a faint ripple that trembled, in green shadows, -like a happy sigh across the surface, and, with this ripple, -came the echo of the dull boom that the surging tide was -making in the distant caves: this echo was a giant’s chuckle, -sinister, malevolent, but filtered. When the tide was coming -in, the ripples, running in faint lines from side to side, covered -the shining surface of the rocks and stones, with layers -of water, thin and fine like silk, now purple, now golden, -now white and grey.</p> - -<p>The silk stretched over the rocks, drew itself taut, then -spilt itself suddenly, with a delighted ecstasy, in cascades -of shining water, into the breast of the retreating tide. As -the tide went out, very reluctantly the colour withdrew from -the rocks, leaving them, at last, hard and dry beneath the -sun ... but at the heart of the smooth, glassy cup, on these -warm spring days, there was a great peace and content: birds, -sea-gulls, sparrows, thrushes, came to the edge of the golden -sand, and with trembling, twittering happiness listened to the -hollow booming in the distant caves.</p> - -<p>Lying there, on the little beach, upon such a spring day as -this, man might be assured that the world had been made only -for his especial comfort and safety. The intense blue of the -sky, the green wall of hill behind him, these things could not -change: for an hour of his journey, life, gay rather than -solemn, humorous rather than ironic, satisfying and complete, -would seem to be revealed to him. He would wonder that he -had ever doubted it....</p> - -<p>Katherine and Philip lay, for a long time, saying very -little, listening to the gentle hiss of the water, watching the -line, beyond the rocks, where the sea was suddenly deep blue, -feeling the sun upon their faces, and the little breeze that, -once and again, with a sudden gesture of merriment ruffled -the faces of the golden pools with a flurry of grey splashes -and shadows. They ate their sandwiches and saffron buns -and drank their ginger-beer, which resembled hot-soap-and-water: -Katherine waited. She knew that Philip had something -to say to her, that he had brought her here with some -purpose, and she seemed to know also that that gentle sunny -hour of the late morning was to be the last moment in some -stage in her life. Her first meeting with him, his proposal -to her, her talk afterwards with her mother, her coming to -Garth with him, his confession at Rafiel, their first quarrel -yesterday—all these had been stages in her growth. She -waited now with a struggle, a maturity that had been far -from her experience a year ago.</p> - -<p>He began at last, holding her hand covered by both of his, -searching her eyes with his, very grave; she saw with a -little loving smile to herself that he intended to be of an -immense seriousness, that his sense of humour was very -far away. He began as though he were carrying through -the most tremendous business of his life—and a sparrow, -perched on the water’s edge, seemed to watch his gravity with -a twitter of superior amusement.</p> - -<p>“Do you mind my talking now a little? There’s something -I’ve got to say.”</p> - -<p>“It’s a beautiful place for talking. There’s no Aunt Aggie ... -only one sparrow to overhear us.”</p> - -<p>“But it’s really important—terribly important. It’s simply -this—that last night was a crisis. I’m never going back to -Garth again.”</p> - -<p>Katherine laughed, but her eyes were suddenly frightened.</p> - -<p>“My dear Phil ... What do you mean?”</p> - -<p>“No, I’m not—I mean—at least not until certain things -have happened. You’re not going back either—”</p> - -<p>“<span class='it'>I’m</span> not going back?”</p> - -<p>“No, not as Miss Katherine Trenchard—one day as Mrs. -Philip Mark, perhaps.”</p> - -<p>Katherine drew her hand from his, sat up, looked out -to the deep blue line of sea, said, at last, quietly:</p> - -<p>“Now please, Philip, explain the joke. The afternoon’s -too lovely to be wasted.”</p> - -<p>“There is no joke. I’m perfectly serious. I can’t stand -it any longer. <span class='it'>I cannot stand it</span>—and when I say ‘it’ I mean -the family, their treatment of me, their dislike of me, their -determination to swallow me up in their feather-bed and make -an end of me—the whole long engagement; <span class='it'>you’re</span> suffering. -<span class='it'>I’m</span> suffering. You were wretched yesterday—so was I. -When you’re wretched I could burn the whole family, Garth -and Glebeshire and all included and waste no pity whatever.”</p> - -<p>But Katherine only laughed:</p> - -<p>“Do you know, Phil, you’re exaggerating the whole thing -in the most ridiculous manner. It’s quite natural—it’s because -you don’t know our habits and manners. Aunt Aggie -lost her temper last night—we were all rather worked up—Sunday -can be awful. She won’t lose her temper again. We -had a quarrel. Well, I suppose all lovers have quarrels. You -think they’ll all be terribly shocked because you let Henry -drink too much that night in London. That shows that you -simply don’t know the family at all, because if you did you’d -know that it’s never shocked at anything that it hasn’t seen -with its own eyes. Aunt Aggie <span class='it'>saw</span> Henry, so she <span class='it'>was</span> -shocked—but for the others.... If they were to know—well, -what you told me at Rafiel—then—perhaps—”</p> - -<p>“Then?” Philip cried eagerly.</p> - -<p>“They might be—I don’t know what they’d do.” She -turned her eyes to his face again. “But you’re so impatient, -Phil. You want everything to happen in a minute—You’re -discontented because they all have their own lives, which you -can’t share. But you’re so strange. <span class='it'>I’m</span> the person whose -life you ought to share, and yet you don’t. You’ve hardly -looked at all this. You’ve taken no interest at all in the fishermen -or the villagers. Garth is nothing to you—”</p> - -<p>“I <span class='it'>hate</span> Garth!” he broke out furiously. “I—” Then he -dropped his voice. “That’ll all come later.... I’ll just say -this about myself. It’s only what I’ve always told you, that -I’m simply not worthy for you to care about me. You may -have had some illusions about me at first. You can’t have -any now. I’m weak and backboneless, always wanting things -better than I can have them, ready to be influenced by simply -anyone if they’re nice to me, hating it when people aren’t nice. -I’m no good at all, except for one thing—my love for you.”</p> - -<p>He bent forward and drew her towards him.</p> - -<p>“I have never known anything like it before. I shall never -know anything like it again—and just because I do know -myself so well I’m going to hold on to it and let nothing take -it from me. They, all of them—are doing their best to take it -from me. Your mother knows me much better than you do.... -She despises me completely and she knows the way to -influence me.”</p> - -<p>Katherine would have spoken, but he stopped her.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, she does. Have you noticed that she and I are -never alone together, that we never have talks nor walks nor -anything? She is always perfectly kind, but she knows, and I -know that she knows, that if I were once to get really intimate -with her I might overcome my fright of her, that it’s by my -imagination of her that she’s influencing me. And she is ... -she is ... she is.” His hand trembled against Katherine. -“You don’t know. You don’t see! You love her and think -that she’s simply your mother. But you don’t know.... -Already she can get me to do anything she likes. If she wants -me to waste every day doing nothing, thinking nothing, becoming -a stupid bore, with no ambitions, no lips of his own, -no energy—and that’s what she <span class='it'>does</span> want—she’s making me -exactly that. I feel her when she’s not there—all over the -house, in the garden, in the roads. I can’t escape her. In -half a year’s time, when the wedding day comes, all I shall -want is to be allowed to cut the flowers for the dinner-table -and to hold your mother’s wool when she’s winding it.”</p> - -<p>He paused, stood suddenly upon his feet: “It’s like my -own mother over again—only Mrs. Trenchard’s cleverer ... -but I tell you, Katie, you shan’t marry a man like that. If -you marry me down there, and we’re to spend all our lives -there, a year after marriage you’ll despise me, hate me for the -thing I’ve become.... I’ve thought it all out. That scene -last night decided me. You shan’t go back—not until we’re -married.”</p> - -<p>He stood proudly facing her, his whole body stirred to his -decision. But even then, as she looked at him she saw that -his upper lip trembled a little—his upper lip had always -been weak. He looked down at her, then sat very close to her, -leaning towards her as though he were pleading with her.</p> - -<p>“I know that ever since our engagement you’ve been thinking -that I’ve imagined things. Perhaps I have. Perhaps -that’s my way, and always has been. And Russia increased -my tendency. But if <span class='it'>that’s</span> true then it ought to be taken -into account just as much as though I’d got a game leg or was -blind of one eye. You can’t just dismiss it and say: ‘He’s -a silly ass—he oughtn’t to imagine things’. I know that if I -were sensible I should just hang on for six months more, -marry you and then take you right off. But I know myself—by -that time I shall simply do exactly what your mother -tells me—and she’ll tell me to dig potatoes in the garden.”</p> - -<p>“You’re unjust to yourself, Phil,” looking up at him. -“You’re not so weak ... and soon you’ll love Garth. You’ll -understand the family, even perhaps mother. It must come—it -<span class='it'>must</span>. I want it so.”</p> - -<p>“It will never come,” he answered her firmly. “You -can make up your mind to that now for ever. The only way -we can live altogether like a happy family in the future is for -me to become a chair or table or one of your aunt’s green -cushions. That’s what I shall become if I don’t do something -now.”</p> - -<p>She waited because she saw that he had more to say.</p> - -<p>“And do you suppose that even then any of us would be -happy? See already how everyone is changed! Millie, -Henry, Aunt Aggie, you, even your father. Isn’t he always -wondering now what’s come over everyone? There’s a surprised -look in his eyes. And it’s I!... I!... I! It’s -like a pebble in your shoe that you can’t find. I’m the pebble, -and they’ll never be comfortable so long as I’m here. -They’re not only threatened with losing you, they’re threatened -with losing their confidence, their trust, their superstitions.”</p> - -<p>“I’m one of them,” Katherine said. “You forget that. -We may be slow and stupid and unimaginative, as you say, -but we <span class='it'>are</span> fond of one another. You’re impatient, Phil. I -tell you to wait ... wait!”</p> - -<p>“Wait!” He looked out to sea, where the bar of blue was -now sown with white dancing feathers. “I can’t wait ... -there’s something else. There’s Anna.”</p> - -<p>Katherine nodded her head as though she had known that -this would come.</p> - -<p>“Ever since that day at Rafiel she’s been between us; -you’ve known it as well as I. It hasn’t been quite as I’d -expected. I thought perhaps that you’d be shocked. You -weren’t shocked. I thought that I’d be confused myself. I -haven’t been confused. You’ve wanted to know about her—anything -I could tell you. You’ve simply been curious, as -you might, about anyone I’d known before I met you—but -the business has been this, that the more you’ve asked the -more I’ve thought about her. The more she’s come back to -me. It hasn’t been that I’ve wanted her, even that I’ve -thought tenderly about her, only that your curiosity has revived -all that life as though I were back in it all again. I’ve -remembered so much that I’d forgotten.”</p> - -<p>Katherine took his hand and came close to him. “Yes. -I knew that it was like that,” she said. “I knew that it was -foolish of me to ask questions, to make you talk about her, -and I couldn’t help myself—I knew that it was foolish, and -I couldn’t help myself. And the strange thing is that I don’t -suppose I’ve ever wondered about anyone whom I didn’t -know in my life before. I’ve never been able to imagine -people unless I had pictures or something to help me. But -now—I seem to see her as though I’d known her all my days. -And I’m not jealous—no, truly, truly, I’m not jealous. And -yet I don’t like her—I grudge—I grudge—”</p> - -<p>She suddenly hid her face in the sleeve of his coat and her -hand went up to his cheek.</p> - -<p>Philip, holding her with his arm as though he were protecting -her, went on: “And you’ve felt that I didn’t want -you to ask me questions about her—and you’ve been silent. -I knew that you were silent because you were afraid of my -restlessness, and that has made restraint between us. You -wouldn’t speak and I wouldn’t speak, and we’ve both been -thinking of Anna until we’ve created her between us. It’s so -like her—<span class='it'>so like</span> her. Why,” he went on, “you’ll think this -absurd perhaps—but I don’t know—it’s not so absurd when -you’ve lived with her. I wrote and told her about us—about -our engagement. I’ve never had an answer from her, but I -can fancy her saying to herself: ‘It would be amusing to -bring him back to me—not that I want him. I should be -bored to death if I had to live with him again—but just for -the humour of it. He was always so weak. He’ll come if I -ask him.’</p> - -<p>“I can imagine her saying that, and then I can imagine -her just projecting herself over here into the middle of us—simply -for the fun of it. I can see her laughing to herself in -the way she used to when she saw people behaving in what -she thought was a childish fashion. So now she’ll think us all -childish, and she’ll simply come here, her laughing, mocking -spirit—and do her best to break us all up.”</p> - -<p>“You’re afraid of her!” Katherine cried, as though she -were challenging him.</p> - -<p>“Yes. I’m afraid of her,” he acknowledged.</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m not,” she answered. “She can do her utmost. -She can laugh as much as she pleases.”</p> - -<p>“She shall be given no chance,” he answered eagerly. -“See, Katherine! Listen!... All that matters is that we -should be married. She can’t touch us then—Garth can’t -touch us, the family can’t touch us. I suddenly saw it as an -inspiration—that you’ve got to come up with me now—to -London. We’ll get a special licence. We’ll be married to-morrow. -If we catch the five-thirty from Truxe we’ll be up -there soon after midnight. We can get a trap in Clinton to -drive us over. It’s got to be. It’s just got to be. There can -be no alternative.”</p> - -<p>She shook her head smiling. “What a baby you are, Phil! -Just because Aunt Aggie lost her temper last night we’ve got -to be married in half an hour. And what about our promise -to father of a year’s engagement?”</p> - -<p>“That’s all right,” he answered eagerly. “If your father -had wanted to break off the engagement before the year’s up -he’d have done so, you can be sure.”</p> - -<p>She laughed. “But I don’t want to be married all in a -minute. You don’t know how women care about trousseaux -and presents and bells and—”</p> - -<p>“Ah! Please, Katie!... It’s most awfully serious! -Please—”</p> - -<p>She was grave then. They stood up together on the little -beach, her arm round his neck.</p> - -<p>“Phil. I do understand better than you think. But do -you know what it would mean if we were to run away now -like this? My mother would never forgive me. It would -mean that I was throwing off everything—the place, mother, -all my life.... Of course I would throw it away for you -if that were the only course to take. But it isn’t the only -course. You see life exaggerated, Phil. Everything that -happened yesterday has irritated you. To-morrow—”</p> - -<p>“To-morrow may be too late,” he answered her. “At least -give my idea half an hour, I’ll go off now for a walk by myself. -In half an hour’s time I’ll be back. Do your best -for me.”</p> - -<p>She looked at him, bent forward and kissed him.</p> - -<p>“Yes, go—Come back in half an hour.”</p> - -<p>She watched him climb the rocks, wind up the path, turn -at the bend and look back to her, then disappear. She sat -down on the beach, rested her elbows on her knees and looked -out to sea. She was utterly alone: the pool, now spun gold, -beneath a sun that was slowly sinking to bars of saffron, -quivered only with the reaction of the retreating tide; the -rocks were black and sharp against the evening sky.</p> - -<p>Katherine, as she sat there, had, at first, a desperate wish -for the help of some older person’s advice. It was not that -she could, for an instant, seriously contemplate this mad proposal -of Philip’s—and yet he had imparted to her some of -his own fear and distrust of the possible machinations of -heaven. What he had said was true—that ever since he had -told her about Anna it had been as though they had taken -some third person into their lives—taken her unwillingly, -almost unconsciously, but nevertheless destructively. Then -also, although Katherine had denied it, she knew now that -what he had said about the family was true. She not only -could not hope now that they and Philip would ever live happily -together—it was also the fact that they had changed. -Her mother had changed—her Aunts, her father, Millie, -Henry—they had all changed—changed to her and changed -to themselves.</p> - -<p>Katherine, moreover, now for the first time in her life -criticised her family—even her mother. She felt as though -she and Philip had needed help, and that the family, instead -of giving it, had made difficulties and trouble. Her mother -had, deliberately, made trouble—had been hard and unkind -to Philip, had brought him to Garth that he might seem to -Katherine unsuited there, had put him into impossible positions -and then laughed at him. Her mother had come to her -and asked her to give Philip up; in retrospect that scene of -yesterday afternoon seemed a deliberate challenge—but a -challenge offered behind Philip’s back.</p> - -<p>Now her whole impulse was that Philip must at all costs be -protected and defended, and, for the first time, this afternoon, -sitting there alone with the world all hers, she realised -how her feeling for him had changed. When she had first -known him she had fallen in love with him because she had -thought him the strongest, most adventurous, most fearless of -mortal souls. Now—she knew that he was weak, afraid of -himself, unbalanced, a prey to moods, impulses, terrors—and -with that knowledge of him her love had grown, had flung its -wide arm about him, had caught him to her heart with a -fierce protection that the attraction for his strength had never -given her.</p> - -<p>With her new knowledge of him came also her direct antagonism -with that other woman. She knew that what Philip -had said was true, that her curiosity had increased for them -both the live actuality of that figure. Katherine had always -been afraid of cynical people, who must, always, she felt, despise -her for the simplicity of her beliefs, the confidence of -her trust. She remembered a woman who had, at one time, -been a close friend of Aunt Aggie’s, a sharp, masculine -woman with pincenez, who, when Katherine had said anything, -had looked at her sharply through her glasses, laughed -as though she were ringing a coin to see whether it were good -metal, and said: ‘Do you think so?’</p> - -<p>Katherine had hated her and been always helpless before -her, clumsy, awkward and tongue-tied. Now it was a woman -of that kind whom she was called out to challenge. Her -thought in church yesterday was with her now more strongly -than ever. “How she would despise me if she knew me!...” -and then, “what a power she must have if she can come -back like this into Philip’s life.”</p> - -<p>And yet not such a power! Always before him was that -world where he was not: his fancy, running before him, cried -to him: “Yes. There! There! was happiness,” or “In -such a fashion happiness will come to you”—as though the -only end of life was happiness, the security of the ideal moment. -Yes, Katherine knew why Anna had laughed at -Philip.</p> - -<p>Her thoughts turned back again then to his mad idea of -their escape to London, and, suddenly, as though some woman -were with her whom she had never seen before, some voice -within her cried: “Ah! I wish he’d make me go! simply -take me prisoner, force me by brutal strength, leave me no -will nor power.” Her imagination, excited, almost breathless, -began to play round this. She saw his return, heard him -ask her whether she would go with him, heard her answer -that she would not, heard him say: “But you are in my -power now. I have arranged everything. Whether you like -it or not we go....”</p> - -<p>She would protest, but in her surrender, triumphant at -heart, she would see her utter defeat of that other woman, -whose baffled ghost might whistle across the dark moor back -to its own country to find other humours for its decision.</p> - -<p>“Poor Ghost,” she might cry after it, “you did not know -that he would prove so strong!” Nor would he.... Her -dream faded like the trembling colours in the evening sea.</p> - -<p>And otherwise, unless that were so, she could not go. She -had no illusions as to what her escape with him would mean. -There would be no return for her to Garth—even Glebeshire -itself would cast her out. As she thought of all her days, of -her babyhood, when the world had been the green lawn and -the old oak, of her girlhood, when Rafiel and Polchester had -been the farthest bounds, of all the fair days and the wild -days, of the scents and the sounds and the cries and the -laughter, it seemed that the little cove itself came close to her, -pressing up to her, touching her cheek, whispering to her: -“You will not go!... You will not go!... You will not -go!” No, of her own will she could not go. The golden pool -was very full, swelling with a lift and fall that caught the -light of the sun as though the evening itself were rocking it. -Against the far band of rocks the tide was breaking with a -white flash of colour, and the distant caves boomed like -drums. But the peace was undisturbed; birds slowly, with a -dreamy beat of wings, vanished into a sky that was almost -radiant white ... and behind her, the dark rocks, more -than ever watching, guarding beasts that loved her, waited for -her decision.</p> - -<p>Then all things faded before her vision of her mother. -That so familiar figure seemed to come towards her with a -freshness, a piquancy, as though mother and daughter had -been parted for years. “We’ve misunderstood one another,” -the figure seemed to say: “there shall never be misunderstanding -again.” There seemed, at that moment, to be no -one else in Katherine’s world: looking back she could see, in -all her past life, only her mother’s face, could hear only her -mother’s voice.</p> - -<p>She remembered the day when she had told her about the -engagement, the day when she had forgotten about the Stores, -yesterday in her bedroom....</p> - -<p>She buried her face in her hands, feeling a wild, desperate -despair—as though life were too strong for her and her will -too weak.</p> - -<p>She felt a touch on her shoulder, and saw that Philip had -returned, his face in the dusk was pale like the white sky.</p> - -<p>“Well?” he said.</p> - -<p>She shook her head, smiling a dismal little smile. “I can’t -go.... You know that I can’t.”</p> - -<p>(That other woman in her whispered: ‘Now he must -compel you.’)</p> - -<p>Philip looked out to sea.</p> - -<p>“I can’t,” she repeated. “I can’t leave it all.”</p> - -<p>(‘Ah! make me go!’ that other whispered.)</p> - -<p>He turned away from her and looked back at the rocks.</p> - -<p>“You care for all this more than for me.”</p> - -<p>“You know that that is not true. I care for you more -than anyone or anything in the world. But these have all -been fancies of yours, Phil. In six months time—” she broke -off.</p> - -<p>(‘Force me, compel me to go with you,’ the other woman -whispered to him. But he did not hear.)</p> - -<p>“Yes. We’ll go back,” he said.</p> - -<p>They were silent. Suddenly he gripped her shoulder, and -they both turned and looked behind them.</p> - -<p>“I thought I heard someone laugh,” he whispered.</p> - -<p>She rose, then before they moved away, put her arm round -him with a close, maternal gesture that she had never used -to him before.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div><h1 id='t11638'>BOOK III<br/> KATHERINE AND ANNA</h1></div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2 id='ch14'>CHAPTER I<br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>KATHERINE ALONE</span></h2> - -<p>It happened that in the middle of July there was to be a -Trenchard-Faunder wedding in London. It was to be a -quite especial Trenchard-Faunder wedding that no Trenchard -or Faunder must miss. A Miss Dorothy Faunder, daughter -of Colonel Faunder of Foxley Park, Wilts, was to marry her -cousin Humphrey Trenchard, second son of Sir Geoffrey -Trenchard of Tredent Hall, Truxe, in Glebeshire, and 22 -Bryanston Square, W....</p> - -<p>The wedding was to be towards the end of the season, before -Goodwood and Cowes; and St. Margaret’s, Westminster, -was to be the scene of the Ceremony. Of course the George -Trenchards of Garth would be present—there was never any -question of that—but at the same time it was an inconvenient -interference with normal life. Trenchards and -Faunders saw, as a rule, little of London in the season unless -there was a daughter coming out or a wedding or a Presentation -at Court. George Trenchard greatly disliked being -torn from Garth during July and August, and it was only -an exceptional demand that could uproot him.</p> - -<p>This demand <span class='it'>was</span> exceptional. Of course they must all be -there.</p> - -<p>On the evening before the departure for London Katherine -sat alone in her bedroom looking through her bright window -on to the garden beneath her. The July evening was close -and oppressive—the garden was almost black, with a strange -quivering bar of pale yellow light behind the trees. The -scents came up to the open window heavily—there was no -breeze. Now and then a dog barked as though it were challenging -someone. Although there was no breeze, the trees -sometimes shivered very faintly.</p> - -<p>One star glittered between the black clouds.</p> - -<p>Katherine sat at the open window smelling the pinks and -the roses, her room dim behind her with a pale metallic glow. -She felt oppressed by the evening, and at the same time -strangely excited, as though something was about to happen. -But beyond this she was conscious of a curious combative -loneliness that should have been a miserable thing, but was in -reality something challenging and almost defiant. Defiant -of what? Defiant of whom? She thought of it as she sat -there.</p> - -<p>Her thoughts went back to that day that she had spent with -Philip at Roche St. Mary Moor. Her loneliness had begun -quite definitely from that day. Only a fortnight later Philip -had departed. She had not seen him since then. But even -had he been with her she thought that he would not, very -greatly, have affected her loneliness. He might even have -accentuated it. For Philip had behaved very strangely since -that afternoon at Roche St. Mary. It was, Katherine thought, -as though, having made his bolt for freedom and failed, he -simply resigned himself. He only once afterwards alluded -to the affair. One day he said to her quite suddenly: “After -all, it’s worth it—so long as you’re there.”</p> - -<p>“What’s worth it?” she had asked him.</p> - -<p>“But if you were to leave me,” he went on, and stopped -and looked at her.</p> - -<p>“What’s worth it?” she had repeated.</p> - -<p>“Being swallowed up,” he had answered her. “Your -mother and I are going to pay calls together this afternoon.”</p> - -<p>He had during these last weeks been wonderful about her -mother; he had agreed to everything that she proposed, had -run errands for her, supported her opinions, “been quite a son -to her,” Aunt Betty, happy at this transformation, had -declared—and he had been perfectly miserable. Katherine -knew that.</p> - -<p>And his misery had kept them apart. Katherine had -never loved him so intensely as she did during those last -days, and he had loved her with a kind of passionate, almost -desperate, intensity. But their love had never brought them -together. There had always been someone between.</p> - -<p>It was as good as though he had said to her: “We have -still another six months before our marriage. You have told -me definitely that you will not give up the family. Your -mother is determined not to surrender a bit of you to me, -therefore I am to be surrendered to your mother. I am willing -that this should be so because I love you, but if I change, -if I am dull and lifeless you mustn’t be surprised.</p> - -<p>“There’s the earlier life, which one can’t forget all at once, -however deeply one wants to. Meanwhile, I hate your mother -and your mother hates me. But she’ll never let me go unless -you force her to. She knows that I can’t break away so -long as you’re here. And she means you to be here always. -What would a strong man do? Forget the earlier life, I -suppose. So would I if I had you all to myself. But I have -to share you—and that gives the earlier life a chance.”</p> - -<p>Although he had never opened his lips, Katherine heard -him saying all this as though he were there in front of her, -there with his charm and his hopeless humours about himself, -his weakness that she had once thought was strength, -and for which now she only loved him all the more.</p> - -<p>But the terrible thing about those last weeks had been -that, although she knew exactly what he was thinking, they -had simply avoided all open and direct discussion. She had -wished for it, but what could she say? Only the same things -again—that it would be all right when they were married, -that he would love the family then, that she would be <span class='it'>his</span> -then and not the <span class='it'>family’s</span>.... Always at this point in her -argument she was pulled up sharply, because that was a lie. -She would not be <span class='it'>his</span> when they were married. She knew -now, quite definitely, that her mother was utterly, absolutely -resolved never to let her go.</p> - -<p>And meanwhile there was Anna....</p> - -<p>Katherine, putting Philip aside for a moment, thought of -the members of the family one by one. They were all separated -from her. She summoned this ghostly truth before -her, there in her dim room with the hot scented air surrounding -her, quite calmly without a shudder or a qualm. Her -mother was separated from her because, during the last six -months, they had never, with one exception, spoken the truth -to one another. Aunt Aggie was separated from her because, -quite definitely, ever since that horrible Sunday night, she -hated Aunt Aggie. Henry was separated from her because -during these last months he had been so strange with his -alternate moods of affection and abrupt rudeness that she now -deliberately avoided him. Aunt Betty was separated from -her because she simply didn’t see things in the least as they -were. Her father was separated from her because he laughed -at the situation and refused to consider it at all. Millie—ah! -Millie, the friend of all her life!—was separated from -her because they were concealing things the one from the -other as they had never done in all their days before.</p> - -<p>Katherine faced these facts. She had an illusion about her -life that she had always been right in the very heart of her -family. She did not know that it had been their need of her -that had put her there, and that now that she was turning -away from them to someone else, they were all rejecting her. -They also were unaware of this. They thought and she -thought that it had been always a matter of Love between -them all—but of course Love in most cases is only a handsome -name for selfishness.</p> - -<p>So Katherine sat alone in her room and waited for the -thunder to come. Meanwhile she was immensely surprised -that this discovery of her loneliness did not immediately depress -her, but rather aroused in her a pugnacity and an independence -that seemed to her to be quite new qualities. And -then, following immediately upon her pugnacity, came an -overwhelming desire to kiss them all, to do anything in the -world that they wished, to love them all more than she had -ever done before. And following upon that came an aching, -aching desire for Philip, for his presence, his eyes, his hair, -his neck, his hands, his voice....</p> - -<p>And following upon that came Anna. Anna had become -an obsession to Katherine. If, in her earlier life, she had -thought very intently of persons or countries remote from -her, she would, perhaps, have known how to deal with the -woman, but never before, in any crisis or impulse, had her -imagination been stirred. If she had ever thought about -imagination, she had decided that Rachel Seddon’s “Imagination!... -you haven’t got a scrap, my dear!” hurled at her -once in the middle of some dispute, was absolutely true. But -her love for Philip had proved its preserver, had proved it, -roused it, stirred it into a fierce, tramping monster, with -whom she was simply unable to deal.</p> - -<p>If only, she felt, she had been able to speak of her to -Philip! Surely then the questions and the answers would -have stripped Anna of her romance, would have shown her to -be the most ordinary of ordinary women, someone unworthy -of Philip, unworthy of anyone’s dreams. But bringing Anna -into the air had been forbidden—anything better than to -start Philip thinking of her—so that there she had lingered, -somewhere in the shadow, romantic, provoking, mocking, -dangerous, coloured with all the show of her foreign land, -with the towers and plains and rivers of romance.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless it had not been all Katherine’s imagination. -There had been in the affair some other agency. Again and -again Katherine had been conscious that, in opposition to her -will, she was being driven to hunt for that figure. In the -middle of some work or pleasure she would start, half frightened, -half excited, conscious that someone was behind her, -watching her. She would turn, and in the first flash of her -glance it would seem to her that she caught some vanishing -figure, the black hair, the thin, tall body, the laughing, mocking -eyes.</p> - -<p>It was simply, she would tell herself, that her curiosity refused -to be quiet. If only she might have known whether -Philip thought of Anna, whether Anna thought of Philip, -whether Anna wanted Philip to return to her, whether Anna -really despised him, whether ... and then with a little -shudder of dismissal, she would banish the Phantom, summoning -all her admirable Trenchard common-sense to her aid.... -“That was past, that was gone, that was dead.”</p> - -<p>She was, upon this afternoon, at the point of summoning -this resolution when the door opened and Millie came in. -For a moment so dark was the room that she could not see, -and cried: “Katie, are you there?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Here by the window.”</p> - -<p>Millie came across the room and stood by Katherine’s chair. -In her voice there was the shadow of that restraint that there -had been now between them ever since the Sunday with the -Awful Supper.</p> - -<p>“It’s only the Post. It’s just come. Two letters for you—one -from Philip that I thought that you’d like to have.”</p> - -<p>Katherine took the letters, laid them on her lap, looking -up at her sister with a little smile.</p> - -<p>“Well ...” said Millie, hesitating, then, half turning, -“I must go back to Aunt Betty—I’m helping her with the -things.”</p> - -<p>“No. Don’t go.” Katherine, who was staring in front of -her now into the black well of a garden, lit by the quivering, -shaking light, put out her hand and touched Millie’s sleeve. -Millie stood there, awkwardly, her white cotton dress shining -against the darkness, her eyes uncertain and a little timid.</p> - -<p>“I ought to go, Katie dear.... Aunt Betty—”</p> - -<p>“Aunt Betty can wait. Millie, what’s the matter?”</p> - -<p>“What’s the matter?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, between us. For a long time it’s been—and worse -since Philip went away.”</p> - -<p>“Nothing,” said Millie, slowly, then, quite suddenly, with -one of those movements so characteristic of her, she flung herself -on to her knees, caught Katherine’s hands, then stretched -forward and pulled Katherine’s head down to hers—then -kissed her again and again. The two sisters held one another -in a close embrace, cheek against cheek, breast to breast. So -they stayed for some time.</p> - -<p>At last Millie slid down on to the floor and rested there, -her head, with all its fair hair ruffled and disordered, on -Katherine’s lap.</p> - -<p>“Well ...” said Katherine at last, her head against her -sister’s cheek. “Why, all this time, have you been so queer? -Is it because you hate Philip?”</p> - -<p>“No, I like him.”</p> - -<p>“Is it because you hate me?”</p> - -<p>“No, I love <span class='it'>you</span>.”</p> - -<p>“Is it because you hate my marrying Philip?”</p> - -<p>“No—if you’d do it at once.”</p> - -<p>“Do it at once?”</p> - -<p>“Yes—now—go up to London—Marry him to-morrow—”</p> - -<p>“My <span class='it'>dear</span> Millie!... our year isn’t up—nearly.”</p> - -<p>“What does it matter about your year? Better to break -your year than to have us all at one another’s throats—miserable. -And then perhaps after all to lose Philip.”</p> - -<p>“Lose Philip?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. He’ll go back to Russia.”</p> - -<p>The words flashed before Katherine’s eyes like lightning -through the garden. Her heart gave a furious jump and -then stopped.</p> - -<p>“Why do you think he’d do that?” she asked at last. “Do -you think he doesn’t love me?”</p> - -<p>“No, it’s because he loves you so much that he’d do it. -Because he’d rather have none of you than only a bit of you, -rather have none of you than share you with us.” She turned -round, staring into Katherine’s eyes. “Oh, I understand -him so well! I believe I’m the only one in all the family who -does! You think that I’m not grown up yet, that I know -nothing about life, that I don’t know what people do or think, -but I believe that I do know better than anyone! And, after -all, it’s Philip himself that’s made me see! He understands -now what he’s got to give up if he marries you—all his -dreams, all his fun, all his travels, all his imagination. <span class='it'>You</span> -don’t want to give up anything, Katie. You want to keep -all this, Garth and the sea, even the oldest old man and -woman in the place, above all, you want to keep all of us, -mother most of all. You know that mother hates Philip and -will always make him unhappy, but still you think that it’s -fair that you should give up nothing and he everything. But -you’re up against more than Philip, Katie—you’re up against -all his imagination that won’t let him alone however much -he wants it to—and then,” Millie finally added, turning her -eyes back to the other garden—“There’s the other woman.”</p> - -<p>“Why!” Katherine cried—“You know?... Who told -you?”</p> - -<p>“And <span class='it'>you</span> know?” cried Millie. “He told you after all?”</p> - -<p>“But who told you?” Katherine insisted, her hand on Millie’s -shoulder.</p> - -<p>“Henry.”</p> - -<p>“Then <span class='it'>he</span> knows. Who else?”</p> - -<p>“None of the family, I think, unless Henry’s told the -others. I’ve never said a word.”</p> - -<p>“Who told <span class='it'>him</span>?”</p> - -<p>“A man at his Club.”</p> - -<p>There was silence. Then Katherine said:</p> - -<p>“So <span class='it'>that’s</span> why you’ve been so queer?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. I didn’t know whether he’d told you or no. I was -afraid to say anything. I thought perhaps he’d told you and -it was making you miserable. Then I thought that you ought -to know. I thought sometimes that I’d speak to Philip, and -then I was afraid of Henry doing something awful, blurting -it all out to everybody. I haven’t known what to do. But, -Katie darling, you aren’t unhappy about it, are you?”</p> - -<p>“No—not unhappy,” said Katherine.</p> - -<p>“Because you mustn’t be. What does it matter what Phil -did before he loved you, whom he knew? What <span class='it'>does</span> it matter -so long as you take her place? If ever anybody loved -anybody, Philip loves you....” Then she said quickly, -eagerly: “What was she like, Katie? Did he tell you? -Did he describe her? Was she lovely, clever? What was her -name?”</p> - -<p>“Anna,” Katie said.</p> - -<p>“Does he think of her still? Does he want to see her -again?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know,” Katherine said slowly. “That’s what’s -been so hard all these months. We simply don’t talk of her. -He doesn’t want to think of her, nor of Russia, nor of any of -that past life. He says it’s all dead—”</p> - -<p>“Well,” said Millie, eagerly.</p> - -<p>“But it isn’t to me. I don’t hate her, I’m not jealous, it -doesn’t alter one scrap of my love for Phil, but—I don’t -know—I feel as though if we talked about it everything -would clear away. I’d see then that she was just an ordinary -person like anyone else, and I wouldn’t bother about her any -more, as it is, simply because I don’t know anything, I -imagine things. I don’t know whether Philip thinks of her -or not, but I expect that he does, or thinks of my thinking -of her, which is the same thing.”</p> - -<p>“Well, <span class='it'>I’ve</span> thought of her!” Millie declared, “again and -again. I’ve wondered a thousand things, why she gave Philip -up, whether she loves him still, whether she hates his being -in love with someone else, whether she writes to him, what -she’s like, what she wears.... Doesn’t it prove, Katie, how -shut up we’ve always been? Why, even in Paris I never -really thought about anybody whom I couldn’t actually see, -and life used to seem too simple if you just did the things in -front of your nose—and now it’s only the things that aren’t -anywhere near you that seem to matter.” Millie said all -this as though she were fifty years old at least. It was indeed -a real crisis that she should be admitted into the very heart -of all this thrilling affair; she was rewarded at last with her -flaming desire, that ‘she should share in life.’ It was almost -as though she herself had a lover.</p> - -<p>Katherine waited, then she broke out suddenly: “But it’s -all so stupid this. Why can’t things be perfectly simple? -Why can’t Philip like them and they like Philip? Why can’t -Philip and I marry and spend part of the year here and part -of the year away?”</p> - -<p>“You’ve got to choose,” Millie said, “Mother or Philip—Philip -or the family—Philip or Glebeshire. The old life or -the new one. You’ve tried to mix it all up. You can’t. -Philip can change us. He <span class='it'>is</span> changing us all, but mix with us -never. If he is forced to, he’ll simply disappear.”</p> - -<p>“My dear, what’s happened to you?” Katherine cried. -“How wise you’ve become! How you’ve grown up!”</p> - -<p>“I am,” said Millie, with a solemnity that proved that -‘grown-up’ was the last thing that she really was. She sprang -to her feet. She spoke as though she were delivering a challenge.</p> - -<p>“Katie, if you let things go, if you let Mother have her -way, one of two things will happen; either Philip won’t be -able to stand it and will vanish to Russia, or he’ll endure it, -will be smothered by us all, and there’ll only be the corpse -left for your enjoyment.</p> - -<p>“Katie!” Her eyes shone with excitement, her voice quivered -with the thrill of her intensity. “You must marry -him <span class='it'>now</span>—whilst you’re in London. You must chuck us all, -show Mother that Philip comes before everything, take it into -your own hands, send that Russian woman’s ghost back to -Russia ... just as Browning and Mrs. Browning did, slip -off one day, buy some smelling-salts at the chemist’s and be -married!”</p> - -<p>She laughed. She clapped her hands.</p> - -<p>“Oh! Katie! Katie!... It’s the only way, the only possible -way!”</p> - -<p>But Katherine replied: “You’re wrong, Millie. I can -keep it all. I <span class='it'>will</span> keep it all. I love Phil, but I love Mother -and you and Henry and This—This—all of it. If I were to -marry Phil now Mother would never forgive me—you know -that she would not. I could never come back. I must lose -it all.”</p> - -<p>“You’d rather lose Philip then?”</p> - -<p>“No. <span class='it'>That</span> never!”</p> - -<p>“Well—Anna’s after him, Katie. Russia’s after him. -He’s awfully unhappy—and you’re unfair. You’re giving -him nothing, not even himself. You say that you love him, -but you want things all your way. I tell you you deserve to -lose ...” then suddenly softening again: “But I’ll help -you, Katie dear, whatever way it is. Oh! I’m so glad that -we’ve spoken. We’re together now, and nothing can part us.”</p> - -<p>Katherine caught her hand and held her close. “What -would Mother do, do you think, if she knew about Anna?” -she said, at last.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know,” Millie answered, “Mother’s so strange. I -believe she’d do nothing. She’d know that if she dismissed -him she’d lose you.”</p> - -<p>Then Katherine suddenly, holding Millie so close to her -that their hearts beat as one, said: “I love him so. I love -him so.... Everything must go if he wants it to.”</p> - -<p>And then, as though the house, the land, the place that had -always been hers, answered her challenge, a lightning flash -struck the darkness and the rain broke in a thunder of sound.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>All through the wedding-ceremony Katherine felt insanely -that she was no longer a Trenchard—insanely because if she -was not a Trenchard what was she? Always before in these -Trenchard gatherings she had known herself wonderfully at -home, sinking down with the kind of cosy security that one -greets as one drops into a soft, familiar bed. Every Trenchard -was, in one way or another, so like every other Trenchard -that a Trenchard gathering was in the most intimate -sense of the word a family party. At a Beaminster gathering -you were always aware of a spirit of haughty contempt for -the people who were still outside, but at a Trenchard or Faunder -assembly the people outside did not exist at all. “They -were not there.” The Beaminsters said: “Those we don’t -know are not worth knowing.” The Trenchards said: “Those -we can’t see don’t exist”—and they could only see one another. -All this did not mean that the Trenchards were not -very kind to the human beings in the villages and towns -under their care. But then these dependents <span class='it'>were</span> Trenchards, -just as old Trenchard chairs and tables in old Trenchard -houses were Trenchards.</p> - -<p>The Beaminsters had been broken all in a moment because -they had tried to do something that their Age no longer permitted -them to do. The Trenchards were much more difficult -to break, because they were not trying to do anything at all. -There was no need for them to be “Positive” about anything....</p> - -<p>As old Mrs. Trenchard, mother of Canon Trenchard of -Polchester, once said to a rebellious daughter: “My dear, -it’s no use your trying to do anything. People say that new -generations have come and that we shall see great changes. -For myself, I don’t believe it. England, thank God, is not -like one of those foreign countries. England never changes -about the Real Things,” and by ‘England’ of course she meant -‘Trenchards.’</p> - -<p>Katherine knew exactly whom she would see at St. Margaret’s, -Westminster. From Glebeshire there would be -Canon Trenchard, his wife and his two girls, also the Trenchards -of Rothin Place, Polchester. There would be Sir -Guy Trenchard from Truxe, and Miss Penelope Trenchard -from Rasselas. There would be the head of all the Trenchards—Sir -Henry Trenchard of Ruston Hall, in Norfolk, -and there would be Garth Trenchard, Esq., from Bambury -Towers, in Northumberland. There would be the Medlicott -Trenchards of South Audley Street, the Robert Trenchards -from somewhere in South Kensington (he was a novelist), -and the Ruston Trenchards from Portland Place. Of the -Faunders there was no end—Hylton Faunder, the famous -painter, one of the props of the Royal Academy, the Rev. -William Faunder of St. Mary’s, Monkston, one of the best -of London’s preachers, the Misses Faunder of Hampstead, -known for their good work, and others, others ... from -Hampshire, Wiltshire, Kent, Suffolk, Durham, Cumberland, -every county in England.</p> - -<p>Well, there they all were in rows; again and again you beheld -the same white high forehead, the same thin and polished -nose, the same mild, agreeable, well-fed, uncritical eyes. How -well Katherine knew those eyes! She herself had them, of -course, but her mother had them so completely, so magnificently, -that once you had seen Mrs. Trenchard’s eyes you -would be able, afterwards, to recognise a Trenchard anywhere. -But now, as Katherine looked about the church, it -suddenly struck her, with a little shiver of alarm, that all the -eyes were blind. She was sitting with her mother and Millie, -and she looked at them quickly to see whether they’d noticed -anything strange or unusual—but no, very placidly and -agreeably, they were enjoying the comfort and ‘rightness’ of -the whole affair....</p> - -<p>She was lonely, then, with a sudden shock of acute distress. -She felt suddenly, with positive terror, that she did -not belong to anyone at all. Philip was miles and miles -away; as though it were the voice of prophecy, something -seemed to tell her that she would never see him again. The -service then seemed endless—she waited desperately for it to -close. At last, when they all moved on to 22 Bryanston -Square, her impatience simply seemed more than she could -control. The presents were there, and many, many beautiful -clothes and shining collars and cakes that no one wanted to -eat, and over and over again, a voice (it seemed always the -same voice) saying: “How nice! How delightful!... so -glad ... so fortunate....” At last she was on her way -back to Westminster. She had now only this one thought, -that unless she were very quick she would never see Philip -again. He had said that he would come to her for a moment -after the wedding, and, when at the doorway of the drawing-room -she caught a reflection of his figure in the mirror, her -heart bounded with relief. How silly of her. What had she -supposed? Nevertheless, quite breathlessly, she caught his -hand.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Phil! I’m so glad!... Come up to the schoolroom. -We shall be alone there!”</p> - -<p>The schoolroom, that had once been the nursery, packed -away at the very top of the house, was bathed with the rich -evening glow. He caught her in his arms, held her, and she -kissed him, passionately, with clinging, eager kisses. Then, -with a little happy sigh, she released him.</p> - -<p>The old shabby room, with its old shabby books, Charlotte -Mary Yonge and Mrs. Ewing and Henry, and the Christmas -Supplements on the walls and the old grate that seemed still -to be sunk in happy reveries of roasted chestnuts and toffee -and toast, reassured her.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Phil!” she cried. “I thought I was never going to -get to you!”</p> - -<p>She looked at him, carefully, luxuriously, with all the happiness -of possessing something known and proved and loved. -Why, were it the ugliest face in the world, the oldest, shabbiest -body, nothing now could change her attachment. That -was why, with true love, old age and decay did not, could not -matter—and here, after all, was <span class='it'>her</span> possession, as far from -old age as anyone could be, strong and thick-set and with the -whole of life before it! But he seemed tired and depressed. -He was very quiet, and sat there close to her, holding her -hand, loving her, but subdued, saying very little. He <span class='it'>had</span> -changed. He was not now that eager, voluble figure that had -burst through the fog on that first wonderful evening so long -ago.</p> - -<p>“Phil—you’re tired!” she said quickly, looking up into -his eyes.</p> - -<p>“Yes. I am rather,” he answered. “It’s been awfully hot. -Was it very splendid?”</p> - -<p>“The wedding?... No, horrid.... Just like any -other, and I can’t tell you anything about it, because I didn’t -notice a thing.”</p> - -<p>But he didn’t ask her. He didn’t want to know anything -about it. He only wanted to have her there. They sat -quietly, very close to one another. Her terror and her loneliness -left her. The Abbey clock boomed the hour, and a little -clock in the room gave a friendly, intimate echo.</p> - -<p>“Your mother’s asked me to go back to Garth with you,” -he suddenly said.</p> - -<p>Katherine remembered how triumphant she had been when, -upon a certain earlier occasion, he had told her that. Now -her alarm returned; her hand trembled on his knee.</p> - -<p>“What did you say?”</p> - -<p>“Oh! I’m going of course. You’ll be there, and I want -to do what your mother wishes.”</p> - -<p>He said this very quietly, and looked at her with a little -smile.</p> - -<p>“Phil, don’t go!” she said suddenly. “You’re happier -here. We’ll be up in October.”</p> - -<p>“October!” he answered, still very quietly, “that’s a long -time to wait—and I haven’t had very much of you lately. -It won’t help things very much my staying here—and I want -to please your mother,” he ended. “I’ve a kind of idea,” he -went on, “that she’ll get to like me later, when she really gets -to know me. I’ve been thinking all this time in London that -I behaved very badly when I was down there before. Wanted -everything my own way.”</p> - -<p>Katherine could say nothing. In between them once more -was that shadow. To speak right out would mean the old -business all over again, the business that they had both resolutely -dismissed. To speak out would mean Anna and the -family, and that same demand once more—that Katherine -should choose. One word and she knew that he would be -pleading with all his force: “Marry me now! Come off with -me! Slip out of the house and have it over.”</p> - -<p>But she could not—she was not ready. Give them all up, -cut her life in half, fling them all away? No, still she clung -desperately to the belief that she would keep them both, the -family and Philip, the old life and the new. She heard -Millie urging her, she saw Philip quietly determined to say -nothing now until she led the way—but she could not do it, -she could not, <span class='it'>could</span> not do it!</p> - -<p>So they sat there, holding hands, his shoulder against hers, -until at last it was time for him to go. After he had left her, -whilst she was dressing for dinner, she had a moment of -panic and almost ran out of the house, just as she was, to find -him. But the Trenchard blood reasserted itself; she went -down to dinner calm and apparently at ease.</p> - -<p>That night, when they had all gone up to their rooms, she -stood for a moment waiting outside her bedroom door, then, -as though some sudden resolve had come to her, turned and -walked to her mother’s door. She knocked, entered and found -her mother standing in front of her looking-glass. She had -slipped off her evening dress, there with her short white -sleeves, from which her stout, firm, bare arms stood out strong -and reliant, with her thick neck, her sturdy legs, she seemed, -in spite of her grey hair, in the very plenitude of her -strength. Her mild eyes, large and calm, her high white forehead, -the whole poise of her broad, resolute back seemed to -Katherine to have something defiant and challenging in it. -Her mouth was full of hair-pins, but she nodded and smiled -to her daughter.</p> - -<p>“May I come in, Mother,” said Katherine, “I want to -speak to you.”</p> - -<p>Katherine thought of that earlier occasion in that same -room when she had first spoken of her engagement. How far -apart since then they had grown! It seemed to her to-night, -as she looked at that broad white back, that she was looking -at a stranger.... Yes, but an extraordinary stranger, a -really marvellous woman. How curious that Katherine -should have been living during all those years of intimate -affection with her mother and have thought of her never—no, -never at all. She had taken her, her love, her little habits, -her slow voice, her relentless determination, her ‘managing’—all -these things and many more—as though they had been inevitably -outside argument, statement or gratitude. But now, -simply because of the division that there was between them, -she saw her as a marvellous woman, the strangest mingling -of sweetness and bitterness, of tenderness and hardness, of -unselfishness and relentless egotism. She saw this, suddenly, -standing there in the doorway, and the imminent flash of it -struck her for an instant with great fear. Then she saw -Philip and gained her courage.</p> - -<p>“I want to speak to you, Mother,” she repeated, moving -into the middle of the room.</p> - -<p>“Well, dear ...” said Mrs. Trenchard, through the hair-pins. -She did not let down her hair, but after another glance -into the mirror, moved away, found a pink woolly dressing-gown, -which she put on. Then sat down on the old sofa, taking -up, as she always did, a little piece of work—this time it -was some long red worsted that she was knitting. It curled -away from her, like a scarlet snake, under the flickering light -of the candles on her dressing-table, disappearing into darkness.</p> - -<p>Katherine stood in front of her mother, with her hands -behind her, as she had done when she was a very little girl.</p> - -<p>“Well, dear, what is it?” said Mrs. Trenchard again.</p> - -<p>“Mother—I don’t want you to have Philip down at Garth.”</p> - -<p>“Why not, dear? I thought you would like it.”</p> - -<p>“He isn’t happy there.”</p> - -<p>“Well, he’s only got to say so.... He needn’t come.”</p> - -<p>“If he doesn’t—he’s afraid.”</p> - -<p>“Afraid of what?”</p> - -<p>“Afraid of losing me.” Katherine, as she said this, made -a little forward movement with her hand as though she were -asking for help, but Mrs. Trenchard’s eyes were wide and -cold.</p> - -<p>“Afraid of losing you?... My dear, he can’t trust you -very much!”</p> - -<p>“No, no, it isn’t that!... He knows that you, the others -don’t like him. He hates Garth—at least he hates it if he’s -always got to live there. If he’s alone here in London he -thinks that you’ll persuade me never to leave you, that you’ll -get the tighter hold of me, that—Oh! I can’t explain it all!” -she broke off quite desperately. “But it isn’t good for him to -be there, he’s unhappy, he’s depressed. Mother, <span class='it'>why</span> do you -hate him?” she cried, suddenly challenging the whole room, -with its old familiar pictures, its books and furniture to -answer her.</p> - -<p>“I think,” said Mrs. Trenchard, very quietly, counting -her stitches and nodding her head at her stocking, “that -you’re taking all this in a very exaggerated fashion—and you -never used to be exaggerated, Katie, my dear—no, you never -used to be. I often used to say what a comfort and help I -always found you, because you saw things as they were—not -like Millie and Henry, who would get excited sometimes over -very little. But your engagement’s changed you, Katie dear—it -really has—more than I should have expected.”</p> - -<p>Katherine, during this speech, had summoned her control. -She spoke now with a voice low and quiet—ridiculously like -her mother’s an observer might have thought.</p> - -<p>“Mother, I don’t want to be exaggerated—I don’t indeed. -But, all these last six months, we’ve never said to one another -what we’ve thought, have never spoken openly about anything—and -now we must. It <span class='it'>can’t</span> go on like this.”</p> - -<p>“Like what, Katie dear?”</p> - -<p>“Never knowing what we’re really thinking. We’ve become -a dreadful family—even father’s noticed it.”</p> - -<p>“Certainly,” said Mrs. Trenchard slowly. “We were all -happier before Philip came.”</p> - -<p>Katherine’s cheeks flushed. “That’s unkind, Mother!” she -cried. Her voice grew harder. “Please don’t say anything -about Philip unless you must. It makes everything very -difficult. I know that you don’t like him. You see him -strangely, you put him in the wrong whatever he does. But, -Mother,” her voice softened again. “It isn’t that. We can’t -alter that. Phil will never be at his best at Garth—not as -things are now. But if we were married. Oh! you would -see how fine things would be!” Her voice was eager, excited -now. “He would be happy and quite, quite different with -everyone. I know him. He depends so much—too much—on -what people think of him. He knows that you don’t like -him, and that makes him embarrassed and cross—at his worst. -But he’s splendid, really, he is, indeed, and you’d see it if we -were married and this horrid engagement were over. He’s -fine in every way, but he’s different from us—he’s seen so -much more, knows life that we can’t know, has other standards -and judgments. Everyone can’t be like us, Mother. -There <span class='it'>must</span> be people who want different things and think -different things. Why should he be made into something like -us, forced to think as we do?... Mother, let us be married -soon, at once, perhaps, and then everything will be right—” -She stopped, breathless then, in her eagerness, bent down and -kissed her mother’s cheek.</p> - -<p>But Mrs. Trenchard’s cheek was very cold.</p> - -<p>“Your father said a year,” she answered, counting her -stitches, “four, five, six—Yes, a year. And you agreed to -that, you know.”</p> - -<p>Katherine turned, with a sharp movement, away, clenching -her hands. At that moment she hated her mother, hated with -a hot, fiery impulse that urged her to leave the room, the -house, the family at that very instant, flinging out, banging -the door, and so settle the whole affair for ever.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard made no sound. Her needles clicked. -Then she said, as though she had been looking things over:</p> - -<p>“Do you think it’s good of you, Katherine, considering -how much all these years we’ve all been to one another, to -persist in marrying a man whom, after really doing our best, -we all of us—yes, all of us—dislike? You’re of age, my -dear—you can do as you please. It was your father who consented -to this engagement, I was not asked. And now, after -all these months, it is hardly a success, is it? You are losing -us all—and I believe we still mean something to you. And -Philip. How can you know about him, my dear? You are -in love now, but that—that first illusion goes very quickly -after marriage. And then—when it has gone—do you think -that he will be a good companion for you, so different from -us all, with such strange ideas picked up in foreign countries? -You don’t know what he may have done before he -met you.... I don’t appeal to your love for us, as once I -might have done, but to your common-sense—your common-sense. -Is it worth while to lose us, whom you know, in exchange -for a man of whom you can know nothing at all?... -Just give me those scissors off the dressing-table. The little -ones, dear.”</p> - -<p>Katherine turned at the dressing-table. “But,” she cried, -her voice full of passionate entreaty, “<span class='it'>why</span> must I give you -up because I marry him? Why can’t I have you—all of you—and -him as well? <span class='it'>Why</span> must I choose?” Then she added -defiantly: “Millie doesn’t dislike him—nor Aunt Betty.”</p> - -<p>“Millie’s very young,” answered her mother. “Thank you, -my dear, and <span class='it'>as</span> you <span class='it'>are</span> there, just that thimble. Thank -you ... and your Aunt Betty likes everyone.”</p> - -<p>“And then,” Katherine went on, “why do you see it from -everyone’s point of view except mine? It’s my life, my future. -You’re settled—all of you, you, father, Aunt Aggie, -Aunt Betty—but with Millie and Henry and I everything’s -to come. And yet you expect us to do all the things, think all -the things that you’ve done and thought. We’re different, -we’re another generation. If we weren’t behind everyone else -there wouldn’t be anything to talk about at all. All parents -now,” Katherine ended, with an air of profound knowledge, -“think of their children. Life isn’t what it was fifty years -ago.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard smiled a grim little smile. “These are the -things, my dear, I suppose, that Philip’s been telling you. -You must remember that he’s been living for years in a country -where one can apparently do anything one pleases without -being thought wicked, and where you’re put in prison a great -deal, but only for rather innocent crimes. I don’t pretend -to understand all that. We may be—perhaps we are—an -old-fashioned family, but the fact remains that we were all -happy enough a year ago.”</p> - -<p>She picked up the long trailing serpent, then concluded: -“But you’re free, Katie dear. Perfectly free.”</p> - -<p>“If I were to go,” said Katie, staring at her mother’s face, -so like that of an uneloquent baby, “if I were to go off now. -If we were to be married at once—would you—would you—turn -us out—have no more to do with us?”</p> - -<p>She waited as though her whole life hung on her mother’s -answer.</p> - -<p>“I really don’t know what’s happened to you, Katie,” Mrs. -Trenchard answered very quietly. “You’re like a young -woman in a play—and you used to be so sensible. Just give -me those scissors again, dear. Certainly if you were to marry -Philip to-morrow, without waiting until the end of the year, -as you promised, I should feel—we should all feel—that you -had given us up. It would be difficult not to feel that.”</p> - -<p>“And if we wait until the end of the year and then marry -and don’t live in Glebeshire but somewhere else—will you -give us up <span class='it'>then</span>?”</p> - -<p>“My dear, isn’t it quite simple? We’ve given Philip every -opportunity of knowing us—we’re now just going to give him -another. If he loves you he will not want to take you away -from all of us who love you also. He’ll do his best to like us—to -settle—”</p> - -<p>“To settle!” Katherine cried. “Don’t you see that that’s -what he’s tried to do—and he can’t—he can’t! It’s killing -him—and you want him to be killed!... You’d like him -to leave me, and if he won’t do that you’ll break his will, keep -him under you, ruin his spirit.... Mother, let him alone—If -we marry, after six months, let us lead our own lives. -You’ll see I shall be as much yours as ever, more than ever. -It will be all right. It must be!”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard said then her final word.</p> - -<p>“If you leave us for Philip that is your affair. I do my -best to keep you both. You’ve talked much, Katie dear, about -our dislike of Philip—what of his dislike of us? Is that -nothing? Doesn’t he show it every moment of the day? Unless -he hates us less you’ll have to choose. You’ll have to -choose—let him come down to Garth then—we’ll do everything -for him.”</p> - -<p>Katherine would have answered, but a sudden catch in her -mother’s voice, a sudden, involuntary closing of the eyes, -made her dart forward.</p> - -<p>“Mother, you’re tired.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, my dear, very.”</p> - -<p>They sat down on the old sofa together. Mrs. Trenchard, -her arms folded, leant back against her daughter’s shoulder.</p> - -<p>“Just a moment, Katie dear,” she murmured, “before I -undress.”</p> - -<p>Suddenly she was asleep.</p> - -<p>Katherine sat stiffly, staring before her into the room. Her -arm was round her mother, and with the pressure of her hand -she felt the soft firmness of the shoulder beneath the dressing-gown. -Often in the old days her mother had thus leant -against her. The brushing of her hair against Katherine’s -cheek brought back to the girl thronging memories of happy, -tranquil hours. Those memories flung before her, like reproaching, -haunting ghosts, her present unhappiness. Her -love for her mother filled her heart; her body thrilled with -the sense of it. And so, there in the clumsy, familiar room, -the loneliest hour of all life came to her.</p> - -<p>She was separated from them all. She seemed to know -that she was holding her mother thus for the last time.... -Then as her hands tightened, in very protest, about the slumbering -body, she was conscious of the presence, behind her, -just then where she could not see, of the taunting, laughing -figure. She could catch the eyes, the scornful lips, the thin, -defiant attitude.</p> - -<p>“I’ll take him back! I’ll take him back!” the laughing -figure cried.</p> - -<p>But Katherine had her bravery. She summoned it all.</p> - -<p>“I’ll beat you!” she answered, her arms tight around her -mother. “I’ve made my choice. He’s mine now whatever -you try!”</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2 id='ch15'>CHAPTER II<br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>THE MIRROR</span></h2> - -<p>Philip had never had any conceit of himself—that is, -he could not remember the time when he had been satisfied -with what he had done, or pleased with the figure that he -presented. The selfish actions in his life had always arisen -from unselfish motives, because he had been afraid of hurting -or vexing other people, because he thought other people finer -than himself. Even when, as in the case of Seymour, he -burst out in indignation at something that he felt to be pretentious -and false, he, afterwards, on thinking it over, wondered -whether the man hadn’t after all been right ‘from his -point of view.’ It was this ability to see the other person’s -point of view that had been, and would always be, the curse -of his life.</p> - -<p>Such men as Philip are not among the fine creatures of the -world. Very rightly they are despised for their weakness, -their lack of resistance, their inability to stand up for themselves. -It is possible, nevertheless, that in heaven they will -find that they, too, have their fine side. And this possibility -of an ultimate divine comprehension irritates, very naturally, -their fellow human beings who resent any defence of weakness. -Philip himself would have been the first to resent it. -He never consoled himself with thought of heaven, but took, -now and then, a half-humorous, half-despairing glance at himself, -swore, as he had in those long-ago days sworn about his -mother, ‘how this shall never happen again’, and then once -more was defeated by his imagination.</p> - -<p>In this matter of the Trenchards he saw only too plainly, -everyone’s point of view; even with Aunt Aggie he saw that -she was an old disappointed woman who disliked change and -loved power so long as she need not struggle for it. Mrs. -Trenchard he did not understand, because he was afraid of -her. His fear of her had grown and grown and grown, and -in that fear was fascination, hatred, and admiration. He -felt now quite definitely that he was beaten by her. He had -felt that, after she had taken no notice whatever of his public -scene with Aunt Aggie. She would now, he believed, take no -notice of anything. He knew also, now, of her hold over -Katherine. He must stay with Katherine because he loved -her. Therefore he must submit to Mrs. Trenchard ... it -was all quite simple.—Meanwhile to submit to Mrs. Trenchard -meant, he knew, to such a character as his, extinction. -He knew. Oh!... better than anyone else in the world—the -kind of creature that, under her influence, he would become. -He saw the others under her influence, the men and -women of the village, the very chickens and pigs in the neighbouring -farms. He knew what he had been under his mother, -he knew what he had been under Anna, he knew what now he -would be under Mrs. Trenchard. Well, extinction was a simple -thing enough if you made up your mind to it—why -struggle any further?</p> - -<p>But day and night, increasingly, as the weeks passed, he -was being urged to escape. All this summer, Anna, no longer -a suggestion, no longer a memory, but now a vital, bodily -presence, was urging him. Her power over him was not in -the least because he was still in love with her—he loved only -Katherine in all the world—but because of the damnable -common-sense of what she said. What she said was this:</p> - -<p>“Here you are amongst all these funny people. You are -too much in the middle of them to see it plainly for yourself, -but I’m a ghost and can see everything quite clearly; I know -you—better than you know yourself. This Mrs. Trenchard is -determined never to let her daughter go. You say that you -love this young woman, although what you can see in her -stupid English solidity I can’t imagine. However, you were -always a fool.... All the same, if you love her it’s for <span class='it'>her</span> -sake that you must escape. You know the kind of creature -you’re going to be if you stay. What does she want with -such a man? When she wakes up, about a week after marriage, -and finds you under the thumb of her mother, what will -happen to her love? She may continue to love you—English -women are so stupid—but she’ll certainly despise you. Come -back to Russia. It isn’t that I want you, or will take you -back into my life, but she’ll find out what you’re worth then. -If she really loves you she’ll have to come after you. <span class='it'>Then</span> -you’ll have broken with the family and will be free. Run -away, I tell you. It’s the only thing to do.”</p> - -<p>All this he heard during a terribly heavy three weeks with -relatives in the North, during a hot and glittering July in -London when the world seemed to gyrate with the flashing -cabs, the seething crowds, the glass and flowers and scents of -a London season. Katherine seemed dreadfully far away -from him. He was aware very vividly how bad it was for a -healthy young man of his age to have no definite occupation. -The men whom he knew in town seemed to him both uninteresting -and preoccupied. A day in England seemed of so vast -a length. In Russia time had been of no importance at all, -and one day had vanished into another without any sound or -sign. Here every clock in the town seemed to scream to him -that he must take care to make the most of every second. -This practical English world, moreover, could offer no -friendly solution for the troubles that beset him.</p> - -<p>He knew very well that if he asked any man at the club -for advice he would be frankly dismissed for a fool. “What! -You like the girl but can’t bear the Mother-in-law! My dear -boy, any music hall will tell you how common that is. Wait -till you’re married, then you can clear off all right—let the -old woman scream as much as you like. What! the girl wants -to stay with the mother? Well, again, wait till you’re married. -The girl will follow you fast enough then!”</p> - -<p>How could he expect that any ordinary healthy Englishman -would understand the soft, billowy, strangling web that -the Trenchard family had, by this time, wound about him? -Yes, another six months would complete the business....</p> - -<p>One hope remained to him—that when they knew of his -immoral life in Moscow they would definitely insist on Katherine’s -leaving him—and, if it came to that, she would stand -by him. He knew that she would stand by him. He would -himself long ago have told Trenchard had he not been sure -that someone else would do that for him, and that then the -sense of his own subterfuge and concealment would add to -their horror and disgust.</p> - -<p>The stronger their disgust the better for him.</p> - -<p>The day of that disclosure seemed now his only hope. Let -them fling him off and he knew what Katherine would do!...</p> - -<p>Upon a torrid afternoon, two days after the Trenchard-Faunder -wedding, an irresistible desire to see Katherine -drove him to the Westminster house. He rang the bell, and -was told by Rocket, who always treated him with an air of -polite distrust, that the ladies were out, but might be in at -any time.</p> - -<p>“I will wait,” said Philip.</p> - -<p>“Very good, sir,” said Rocket reluctantly, and showed him -into the drawing-room, cool and damp like a green cave. To -Rocket’s own restrained surprise, old Mr. Trenchard was -there sitting quite alone, with a shawl covering his knees, in -a large arm-chair near the empty fireplace.</p> - -<p>The old gentleman showed no interest whatever in the -opening of the door, and continued to stare in front of him -through his gold-rimmed eye-glasses, his hands pressed fiercely -into his knees. Rocket hesitated a moment, then withdrew, -closing the door behind him.</p> - -<p>Philip advanced slowly into the room. One of his difficulties -with old Mr. Trenchard had always been that he was -not sure whether he were truly deaf or no. On certain occasions -there had been no question old Mr. Trenchard was not -at all deaf, and then again on others deaf as a crab! He had -never shown any marked signs of being aware of Philip’s -existence. There were many weeks that he spent in his own -room, and he could not be said to show a very active consciousness -of anyone except Katherine, whom he adored, and Aunt -Aggie, whom he hated.</p> - -<p>But, altogether, he was to Philip a terrible old man. Like -a silver-grey shadow, beautiful perhaps, with the silver -buckles on his shoes, his delicate hands and his snow-white -hair, but emphatically terrible to Philip, who throve and blossomed -under warm human intercourse, and shrivelled into -nothing at all under a silent and ghostly disapproval.</p> - -<p>But to-day Philip was desperate and defiant. This old -man would never die any more than this old drawing-room, -reflected in the green mirror, would ever change.</p> - -<p>“I’d like to smash that mirror,” thought Philip, “smash it -into pieces. That would change the room if anything would. -Why, I believe the whole family would tumble like a pack of -cards if I smashed that mirror. I believe the old man himself -would vanish into thin air.”</p> - -<p>“Good afternoon, sir,” Philip said—and then thought to -himself: “Why should I be afraid of the old image? He -can’t eat me!”</p> - -<p>He walked over, close to him, and shouted:</p> - -<p>“Good afternoon, sir.”</p> - -<p>The old man never stirred, not an eyelid quivered, but he -replied in his clear, silvery voice, “Good afternoon to you.”</p> - -<p>He might indeed have been an Idol in his old particular -temple—the old green room waited around him with the -patient austerity that a shrine pays to its deity. The lamp -on a distant table flung a mild and decent glow.</p> - -<p>“I’m damned if I’m going to be afraid of him,” thought -Philip, and, taking a chair, he dragged it very close to the -other’s throne. Sitting there, near to him, it seemed to him -that the light, mild though it was, really did go right through -the old fellow, his cheeks, like the finest egg-shell china, -seemed to catch the glow, store it for an instant in some fine -inner receptacle and then pass it out on the other side. It -was only the eyes that were not fine. They were true Trenchard -eyes, and now, in old age, they were dull and almost -dead.</p> - -<p>They, ever so faintly, hinted that the beauty, fine as the -present glass, was of the surface only, and had, behind it, -no soul.</p> - -<p>“It’s a very hot day,” said Philip, in a voice that was intended -for a shout if the old man were really deaf and pleasant -cheerfulness if he were not, “really very hot indeed. But -this room’s so very cool. Delightful.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Trenchard did then very slowly raise his head and look -at Philip through his glasses. Then very slowly lowered his -eyes again.</p> - -<p>“My daughter will be here very shortly to receive you,” -he said.</p> - -<p>“I’d like to talk to <span class='it'>you</span>,” Philip said, still very cheerfully. -“We’ve not had many talks together, have we? and that really -isn’t right, considering that I’m engaged to your grand-daughter.”</p> - -<p>The old man picked up a magazine that lay on the little -table that was in front of him. “Do you ever see Blackwood?” -he said, as though he were very politely making conversation -for a complete stranger. “It’s a magazine for -which I have a great liking. It seems to me to keep up its -character wonderfully—most agreeable reading—most agreeable -reading.”</p> - -<p>It was then that Philip, looking up, caught a reflection of -Mr. Trenchard’s face in the Mirror. It may have been imagination -or it may have been the effect of shadow, or again it -may have been nothing but truth—in any case it seemed to -Philip that the old man’s expression was an amazing mixture -of pathos and wickedness—a quite intolerable expression. -Philip made a movement with his hands as though he were -brushing away a confusion of cobwebs, then burst out: “Look -here, I don’t know whether you’re deaf or not—if you are it -won’t matter, and if you aren’t we’ll have a straight talk at -last. You can’t move until someone comes in to move you, -and that may be a long while yet. You aren’t strong enough -to knock me down, so that I’m afraid you’ll just have to stay -here for a while and listen.... Of course you know by this -time who I am. It’s no use your pretending.”</p> - -<p>Philip paused and looked, but the old man had not stirred -at all. His hands were still pressed into his knees, his eyes -staring through his glasses, and, as his delicate breathing rose -and fell, one black button shone in the lamplight and faded -again. This immobility seemed to stir more profoundly -Philip’s anger.</p> - -<p>“I’m going to marry your grand-daughter Katherine, and -of course you hate it and me too. You’re just as selfish as all -the others, and more too, I daresay. And you think you can -frighten me by just doing nothing except showing you dislike -me. But you won’t frighten me—no, never—so you needn’t -expect it. I’m going to marry Katherine and take her right -away from you all, so you may as well make up your mind -to it.”</p> - -<p>Philip, flushed in the face and half expecting that the walls -of the house would fall in upon him, paused—but there was -no change at all in Mr. Trenchard’s attitude, unless possibly -one shining hand was driven a little more deeply into the -knee. There was perhaps some unexpected pathos in the intensity -of those pressing fingers, or, perhaps, Philip’s desperate -challenge was, already, forsaking him. At any rate -he went on.</p> - -<p>“Why can’t you like me? I’m ready enough to like you. -I’m not a bad kind of man, and I’ll be very good to Katherine, -no one could ever be better to anyone than I’ll be to her. -But why can’t we lead our own life? You’re an old man—you -must have seen a lot in your time—you must know how -times alter and one way of thinking gives way to another. -You can’t keep a family together by just refusing to listen to -anything or anybody. I know that you love Katherine, and -if you love her really, surely you’ll want her to lead her own -life. Your life’s nearly over—why should you spoil hers -for her?”</p> - -<p>He paused again, but now he could not tell whether the -eyes were closed or no. Was the old man sleeping? or was -he fiercely indignant? or was he satirical and smiling? or was -he suddenly going to cry aloud for Rocket?</p> - -<p>The uncertainty and the silence of the room worked terribly -upon Philip’s nerves. He had begun courageously, but -the sound of his voice in all that damp stillness was most unpleasant. -Moreover, he was a poor kind of fellow, because he -always, even in the heat of anger, thought a friend better than -an enemy. He was too soft to carry things through.</p> - -<p>“He really does look very old,” he thought now, looking -at the thin legs, the bones in the neck, the lines on the forehead -of the poor gentleman, “and after all it can’t be pleasant -to lose Katherine.”</p> - -<p>“If you’d only,” he went on in a milder voice, “give me a -chance. Katherine’s much too fond of all of you to give you -up simply because she’s married. She isn’t that sort at all. -You knew that she’d marry some day. All the trouble has -come because you don’t like me. But have you ever tried to? -I’m the sort of man that you’ve got to like if you’re to see the -best of me. I know that’s my fault, but everyone has to have -allowances made for them.”</p> - -<p>Philip paused. There was a most deadly stillness in the -room. Philip felt that even the calf-bound Thackeray and the -calf-bound Waverley novels behind the glass screens in the -large book-case near the door were listening with all their -covers.</p> - -<p>Not a movement came from the old man. Philip felt as -though he were addressing the whole house—</p> - -<p>He went on. “When you were young you wanted to go -on with your generation just as we do now. You believed -that there was a splendid time coming, and that none of the -times that had ever been would be so fine as the new one. <span class='it'>You</span> -didn’t want to think the same as your grandfather and be -tied to the same things. Can’t you remember? <span class='it'>Can’t</span> you -remember? Don’t you <span class='it'>see</span> that it’s just the same for us?”</p> - -<p>Still no movement, no sound, no quiver of a shadow in the -Mirror.</p> - -<p>“I’ll be good to her, I swear to you, I don’t want to do -anyone any harm. And after all, what have I done? I was -rude one Sunday night, Henry drank too much once, I don’t -always go to church, I don’t like the same books—but what’s -all that? isn’t everyone different, and isn’t it a good thing -that they are?”</p> - -<p>He bent forward—“I know that you can do a lot with them -all. Just persuade them to help, and be agreeable about -it. That’s all that’s wanted—just for everyone to be agreeable. -It’s such a simple thing, really.”</p> - -<p>He had touched Mr. Trenchard’s knee. With that touch -the whole room seemed to leap into hostile activity. He had, -quite definitely, the impression of having with one step -plunged into a country that bristled with foes behind every -bush and tree. The warmth of the old man’s knees seemed -to fling him off and cast him out.</p> - -<p>Old Mr. Trenchard raised his head with a fierce, furious -gesture like the action of a snake striking.</p> - -<p>In a voice that was not silvery nor clear, but shaking and -thick with emotion, he said:</p> - -<p>“I warn you, young man—if you dare to take my grand-daughter -away—you’ll kill me!”</p> - -<p>Before Philip could do more than start back with a gesture -of dismay, the door had opened and Mrs. Trenchard and -Aunt Aggie had entered.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Meanwhile there was Henry.</p> - -<p>Important events had occurred in Henry’s life since that -Sunday when he had told Millie about Philip’s terrible past -and had shared in that disastrous supper. He was to go to -Cambridge.</p> - -<p>This important decision had apparently followed on Aunt -Aggie’s disclosure of his evil courses, therefore it may be -considered that Philip was, in this as in the other recent -events in the Trenchard history, responsible. Quite suddenly -George Trenchard had lifted up his head and said: “Henry, -you’re to go to Cambridge next October. I think that Jesus -College shall bear the burden of your company. I believe -that there are examinations of a kind that you must pass -before they will admit you. I have written for papers.”</p> - -<p>This declaration should, of course, have been enough to -fling Henry into a wild ecstasy. Before the arrival of -Philip it would undoubtedly have done so. Now, however, -he seemed to himself to have progressed already so far -beyond Jesus College, Cambridge. To have troubles and -experiences so deep and weighty as compared with anything -that anyone at Cambridge could possibly have known, and -that to propose that he should go there was very little less -than an insult.... And for this he blamed Philip.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless the papers arrived. He was, in reality, no -fool, and the Cambridge ‘Little Go’ is not the most difficult -examination under the sun. At the end of May he went up -to Cambridge. If one may judge by certain picturesque -romances concerned with University life and recently popular -amongst us, one is to understand that that first vision of a -University thrills with all the passion of one’s first pipe, -one’s first beer and one’s first bedmaker or scout, as the case -may be. The weather was chill and damp. He was placed -in a tiny room, where he knocked his head against the fine -old rafters and listened to mice behind the wainscot. His -food was horrible, his bedmaker a repulsive old woman, and -the streets were filled with young men, who knew not Henry -and pushed him into the gutter. He hated everyone whom -he saw at the examination, from the large, red-faced gentleman -who watched him as he wrote, down to the thin and -uncleanly youth who bit his nails at the seat next to his own. -He walked down Petty Cury and hated it; he strolled tip -the King’s Parade and hated that too. He went to King’s -College Chapel and heard a dull anthem, was spoken to by -an enormous porter for walking on the grass and fell over -the raised step in the gateway. He was conceited and lonely -and hungry. He despised all the world, and would have given -his eyes for a friend. He looked forward to his three years -in this city (“The best time of your life, my boy. What I -would give to have those dear old days over again”) with inexpressible -loathing.</p> - -<p>He knew, however, three hours of happiness and exultation. -This joy came to him during the English Essay—the -last paper of the examination. There were four subjects -from which he might choose, and he selected something that -had to do with ‘The Connection between English History -and English Literature.’ Of facts he had really the vaguest -notion. He seemed to know, through hearsay rather than personal -examination, that Oliver Cromwell was something -responsible for ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’, that that dissolute -monarch Charles II. had to do with the brilliance and audacity -of Mr. Congreve and Mr. Wycherley, that Queen Anne in -some way produced Pope and Robespierre, Wordsworth, and -Queen Victoria, Charlotte Mary Yonge (he had cared very -deeply for ‘The Daisy Chain’), and our Indian Empire Mr. -Rudyard Kipling. He knew it all as vaguely as this, but he -wrote—he wrote divinely, gloriously ecstatically, so that the -three hours were but as one moment and the grim nudity of -the examination-room as the marbled palaces of his own fantastic -dreams. Such ecstasy had he known when he began -that story about the man who climbed the ricketty stairs. -Such ecstasy had been born on that day when he had read the -first page of the novel about Forests—such ecstasy had, he -knew in spite of itself, received true nourishment from that -enemy of their house, Philip.</p> - -<p>His spirits fell when he came to himself, saw how many -other gentlemen had also written essays and with what indifference -and languor the red-faced gentleman hustled his -pages in amongst all the others. Nevertheless, he did come -out of that examination-room with some conviction as to the -course that his future life would take, and with a kindness, -almost a tenderness, towards this grey town that was going -to allow him, even to command him, to write essays for the -next three years. With Henry one mood succeeded another -as rapidly as, in his country, wet weather succeeds fine.</p> - -<p>He returned to Garth in an outrageous temper. His main -feeling now was that Philip had spoiled Cambridge for him. -Philip and his immoral life ‘got in’ between all that he saw -and dropped a misty veil, so that he could think of nothing -in the way that tradition had taught him. He had always -had a great respect for tradition.</p> - -<p>Then as the weeks passed by he was made increasingly -unhappy by the strange condition in which he found the -family. He was, at heart, the crudest sentimentalist, and his -sentimentalism had been fed by nothing so richly as by the -cherished conviction that the George Trenchards were the -most united family in England. He had always believed this; -and had never, until now, considered the possibility of any -division. But what now did he find? His mother stern, -remote, silent, Millie irritable, uneasy and critical, Aunt -Aggie always out of temper, Aunt Betty bewildered and tactless, -even his father disturbed and unlike himself. And -Katie?... He could not have believed that six months -would change anyone so utterly.</p> - -<p>Instead of the reliable, affectionate and stolid sister who -had shared with him all her intimacies, her plans, her regrets, -her anticipations, he beheld now a stranger who gave him -no intimacies at all, avoided him and hid from him her undoubted -unhappiness. It was true of him now as it had ever -been that ‘he would give his life to make Katherine happy,’ -but how was he to do anything for her when she would tell -him nothing, when she treated him like a stranger, and then -blamed him for his hostilities.</p> - -<p>If it had been clear that now, after these months of her -engagement, she no longer loved Philip, the matter would -have been simple. He would have proceeded at once to his -father and told him all that he knew about Philip’s Moscow -life. But she <span class='it'>did</span> love Philip—more, yes, far more, than -ever—nothing could be clearer than that. This love of -Katherine’s burned, unceasingly, in Henry’s brain. With -no other human being could he have felt, so urgently, the -flame of it but Katherine, whom he had known as he had -known himself, so sure, so undramatic, so happily sexless, as -she had always seemed to him, that it should be she whom -this passion had transformed! From that moment when he -had seen her embrace of Philip, his imagination had harried -him as a dog harries a rabbit, over the whole scale of the -world.... Love, too, that he had believed was calm, -domestic, friendly, reassuring, was in truth unhappy, rebellious, -devastating. In the very hearty of her unhappiness -seemed to be the fire of her love. This removed her from -him as though he had been flung by it into a distant world. -And, on every side, he was attacked by this same thing. -There were the women whom he had seen that night with -Philip, there was the woman who had given Philip a son -in Russia, there was here a life, dancing before him, now near -him, now far away from him, intriguing him, shaming him, -stirring him, revolting him, removing him from all his -family, isolating him and yet besetting him with the company -of wild, fantastic figures.</p> - -<p>He walked the Glebeshire roads, spoke to no one, hated -himself, loathed Philip, was lashed by his imagination, -aroused at last to stinging vitality, until he did not know -whither to turn for safety.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>He came up to London for the Faunder-Trenchard wedding. -Late in the afternoon that had seen Philip’s conversation -with old Mr. Trenchard Henry came into the drawing-room -to discover that tea was over and no one was there. -He looked into the tea-pot and saw that there was nothing -there to cheer him. For a moment he thought of Russia, in -which country there were apparently perpetual samovars boiling -upon ever-ready tables. This made him think of Philip—then, -turning at some sudden sound, there was Aunt Aggie -in the doorway.</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie looked cold in spite of the warm weather, and -she held her knitting-needles in her hand defiantly, as though -she were carrying them to reassure a world that had unjustly -accused her of riotous living.</p> - -<p>“It’s simply rotten,” said Henry, crossly. “One comes in -expecting tea and it’s all over. Why can’t they have tea at -the ordinary time?”</p> - -<p>“That’s it,” said Aunt Aggie, settling herself comfortably -into the large arm-chair near the fireplace. “Thinking of -yourself, Henry, of course. Learn to be unselfish or you’ll -never be happy in <span class='it'>this</span> world. I remember when I was a -girl—”</p> - -<p>“Look here!” Henry interrupted. “Has Philip been here -this afternoon?”</p> - -<p>“Mr. Mark? Yes, he has.”</p> - -<p>“Did he come to tea?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>She dug her needles viciously into an innocent ball of -wool.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Henry fiercely, “that’s why they had it early, -I suppose—and why I don’t get any—<span class='it'>of</span> course.”</p> - -<p>“All I know is,” continued Aunt Aggie, “that he’s put your -grandfather into the most dreadful state. He was alone in -here with him it seems, and I’m sure I don’t know what he’s -said to him, but it upset him dreadfully. I’ve not been well -myself to-day, and to have your grandfather—”</p> - -<p>But Henry again interrupted.</p> - -<p>“What did he want coming to-day at all for? He might -have waited.”</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie, however, did not like to be interrupted when -she was discussing her health, so she said now sharply: “Just -look at your hands, Henry—Why <span class='it'>can’t</span> you keep them clean. -I should have thought going up to Cambridge—”</p> - -<p>“Oh! I’m all right,” he answered, impatiently. “Anyway, -I wonder what he told grandfather.”</p> - -<p>“Why, what <span class='it'>could</span> he have told him?” said Aunt Aggie, -eagerly, looking up.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I don’t know—nothing—Only ... Oh, Rocket, ask -them to make some fresh tea. Let me have it in here.”</p> - -<p>“Certainly, Mr. Henry,” said Rocket, removing the tea-pot -with an air of strong disapproval.</p> - -<p>“Really, Henry!” Aunt Aggie exclaimed. “And simply -for yourself! Why, even though I’ve had the most trying -headache all day, I’d never venture to give so much trouble -simply for myself.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I daresay you’ll have some when it comes,” Henry answered, -carelessly—then, pursuing his thoughts, he continued: -“Well, he won’t be coming back to Garth with us—that’s one -comfort.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, but he is!” cried Aunt Aggie, excitedly. “He is! -Your mother’s <span class='it'>asked</span> him to come back with us, and he’s accepted. -I simply don’t understand it. Your mother dislikes -him as much as the rest of us do, and why she should <span class='it'>ask</span> -him! It can’t be for poor Katie’s sake. She’s miserable -enough when he’s at Garth. I’m sure if things go on like this -much longer I shall go and take a little house by myself and -live alone. I’d really rather than all this unpleasantness.”</p> - -<p>This threat did not apparently alarm Henry very greatly, -for, bursting out suddenly, he cried: “It’s beastly! perfectly -beastly! There we’ve all got to sit watching him make Katie -miserable. I won’t stand it! I <span class='it'>won’t</span> stand it!”</p> - -<p>“Why you!” said Aunt Aggie, scornfully. “How can you -prevent it! You’re only a boy!”</p> - -<p>This epithet stung Henry to madness. Ah, if Aunt Aggie -only knew all, she’d see that he was very far from being ‘only -a boy’—if she only knew the burden of secret responsibility -that he’d been bearing during all these weeks. He’d keep -secret no longer—it was time that everyone should know the -kind of man to whom Katherine was being sacrificed. He -turned round to his aunt, trembling with anger and excitement.</p> - -<p>“You talk like that!” he cried, “but you don’t know what I -know!”</p> - -<p>“What don’t I know?” she asked eagerly.</p> - -<p>“About Philip—this man Mark—He’s wicked, he’s awful, -he’s—abominable!”</p> - -<p>“Well,” said Aunt Aggie, dropping her needles. “What’s -he done?”</p> - -<p>“Done!” Henry exclaimed, sinking his voice into a horrified -and confidential whisper. “He’s been a dreadful man. -Before, in Russia, there’s nothing he didn’t do. I know, because -there’s a friend of mine who knew him very well out -there. He lived a terribly immoral life. He was notorious. -He lived with a woman for years who wasn’t his wife, and -they had a baby. There’s nothing he didn’t do—and he never -told father a word.” Henry paused for breath.</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie’s cheeks flushed crimson, as they always did -when anyone spoke, before her, of sexual matters.</p> - -<p>At last she said, as though to herself: “I always knew it—I -always knew it. You could see it in his face. I warned -them, but they wouldn’t listen.”</p> - -<p>Henry meanwhile had recovered himself. He stood there -looking into the Mirror. It was a tragic moment. He had -done, after all, what, all these months, he had determined to -prevent himself from doing. He saw now, in a flash of accusing -anger, what would most certainly follow. Aunt Aggie -would tell everyone. Philip would be dismissed—Katherine’s -heart would be broken.</p> - -<p>He saw nothing but Katherine, Katherine whom he loved -with all the ardour of his strange undisciplined quixotic soul. -He saw Katherine turning to him, reproaching him, then, hiding -her grief, pursuing her old life, unhappy for ever and -ever. (At this stage in his development, he saw everything -in terms of ‘for ever and for ever’.) It never occurred to him -that if Philip were expelled out of the Trenchard Eden Katherine -might accompany him. No, she would remain, a heart-broken -monument to Henry’s lack of character.</p> - -<p>He scowled at his aunt, who sat there thrilled and indignant -and happy.</p> - -<p>“I say!” he burst out. “Of course you mustn’t tell anybody!”</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie nodded her head and her needles clicked.</p> - -<p>“It must remain with wiser and older heads than yours, -Henry, as to what ought to be done ...” then to herself -again: “Ah, they’ll wish they’d listened to me now.”</p> - -<p>“But I say,” repeated Henry, red in the face, standing in -front of her, “you really mustn’t. I told it you as a secret.”</p> - -<p>“A secret! When everyone in London knows! A nice -thing they’ll all think—letting Katherine marry a man with -such a reputation!”</p> - -<p>“No, but look here—<span class='it'>you</span> wouldn’t have known anything if -I hadn’t told you—and you mustn’t do anything—you mustn’t -really. Katie loves him—more than ever—and if she were to -lose him—”</p> - -<p>“Much better for her to lose him,” said Aunt Aggie firmly, -“than for her to be miserable for life—much better. Besides, -think of the abominable way the man’s deceived us! Why, -he’s no better than a common thief! He—”</p> - -<p>“Perhaps he hasn’t deceived her,” interrupted Henry. -“Perhaps he’s told her—”</p> - -<p>“Told her!” cried his aunt. “And do you really suppose -that Katherine would stay for one moment with a man whose -life—My dear Henry, how little you know your sister. She -certainly has changed lately under that dreadful man’s -influence, but she’s not changed so fundamentally as to forget -all principles of right and wrong, all delicate feeling.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know,” said Henry slowly, “I don’t believe we do -know Katie a bit. Girls are so queer. You think they don’t -know a thing about anything, and really they know more than -you do.... Anyway,” he went on eagerly, “you mustn’t -say a word. You mustn’t really. You must give me your -promise.”</p> - -<p>But before Aunt Aggie could do more than shake her head -there was an interruption. The door opened and Philip entered. -Aunt Aggie at once rose from her chair, and, with a -rustle and a quiver, without looking at the young man, without -speaking left the room.</p> - -<p>Henry remained, staring at Philip, confused and bewildered, -furious with himself, furious with Aunt Aggie, -furious with Philip. Yes, now he had ruined Katherine’s -life—he and Philip between them. That he should not consider -it possible that Katherine should have her life in her -own hands to make or mar was characteristic of the Trenchard -point of view.</p> - -<p>Philip, conscious of Aunt Aggie’s exit, said: “I was just -going—I came back to fetch a book that I left here—one that -Katherine lent me.”</p> - -<p>Henry made his usual lurching movement, as though he -would like to move across the room and behave naturally, but -was afraid to trust himself.</p> - -<p>“That it?” he asked, pointing gloomily to a novel on the -table near him.</p> - -<p>“That’s it,” said Philip.</p> - -<p>“Hullo!” cried Henry, looking at it more closely. “That’s -mine!” It was indeed the novel that had to do with forests -and the sea and the liberty of the human soul, the novel that -had been to Henry the first true gospel of his life and that -had bred in him all the troubles, distrusts and fears that a -true gospel is sure to breed. Henry, when the original book -had been delivered back to Mudie’s had with ceremony and -worship bought a copy for himself. This was his copy.</p> - -<p>“It’s my book,” Henry repeated, picking it up and holding -it defiantly.</p> - -<p>“I’m very sorry,” said Philip stiffly. “Of course I didn’t -know. Katherine spoke as though it were hers.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you can take it,” Henry said, frowning and throwing -it back on the table.</p> - -<p>Philip looked at him, then suddenly, laughing, walked over -to him, “What’s the matter, Henry?” he said catching his -arm. “I’ll have it out with the lot of you, I swear I will. -You, none of you, say anything—you all just look as though -you didn’t know me. You yourself, these last months, have -looked as though you’d like to stick a dagger into my back. -Now, really, upon my word, I don’t know what I’ve done. -I’m engaged to Katherine, but I’ve behaved as decently about -it as I can. I’m not going to take her away from you all if I -can help it. I’ve made up my mind to that, now that I see -how much she cares for you all. I’ve done my best ... I -really have. Now, what is it?”</p> - -<p>Henry was, in spite of himself, touched by this appeal. He -glanced at Philip’s face and thought, again in spite of himself, -what a nice one it was. A horrible suspicion came to -him that he liked Philip, had always liked him, and this -abominable whisper, revealing treachery to all his principles, -to all his traditions, to all his moral code, above all to Katherine, -infuriated him. He tore his arm away.</p> - -<p>“If you want to know,” he cried, “it’s because I think -you’re a beast, because you’re not fit to touch Katie—because—because—I -know all about you!”</p> - -<p>Philip stood there; for a moment a smile trembled to his -lips, then was dismissed.</p> - -<p>“What do you mean?” he said, sternly.</p> - -<p>“Mean?” cried Henry, allowing himself to be carried along -on a tide of indignation that seemed, in some way, in spite of -itself, to be quite genuine. “Mean? I mean that I’ve known -for weeks and weeks the kind of man <span class='it'>you</span> are! I know what -you did in Moscow for years and years, although you may -look so quiet. Do you think you’re the sort of man to marry -Katherine? Why, you aren’t fit to touch her hand.”</p> - -<p>“Would you mind,” said Philip quietly, “just telling me -exactly to what you are referring?”</p> - -<p>“Why,” said Henry, dropping his voice and beginning to -mumble, “you had—you had a mistress—in Moscow for years, -and everyone knew it—and you had a baby—and it died. -Everyone knows it.”</p> - -<p>“Well,” said Philip quietly, “and what then?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you’re going to deny it, I suppose,” said Henry, “but -I tell you—”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Philip, “I’m not going to think of denying it. -I don’t know where you got your information from, but it’s -perfectly true. At the same time I can’t see that it’s your -particular business or, indeed, anyone’s. The affair’s absolutely -done with—old history.”</p> - -<p>“No, I suppose,” cried Henry, “it doesn’t seem to be anything -to you. You don’t know what a decent family thinks -of such things. It’s nothing to you, of course. But we happen -to care for Katherine more than—more than—you seem -to know. And—and she’s everything to us. And we’re not -going to let her—to let her marry someone who’s notoriously -a—a bad man. No, we’re not. It may seem odd to you, but -we’re <span class='it'>not</span>.”</p> - -<p>Philip was standing now beneath the Mirror, in front of -the fireplace, his hands behind his back.</p> - -<p>“My dear Henry,” he said, “it’s extremely pleasant to me -to hear that you’re so fond of Katherine—but has it ever occurred -to any of you that she may possibly have a life of her -own, that she isn’t going to be dependent on all of you for -ever?... And as for you, Henry, my boy, you’re a nice -character, with charming possibilities in it, but I’m afraid -that it can’t be denied that you’re a bit of a prig—and I don’t -know that Cambridge is exactly the place to improve that -defect.”</p> - -<p>Philip could have said nothing more insulting. Henry’s -face grew white and his hands trembled.</p> - -<p>His voice shaking, he answered: “You can say what you -like. All I can tell you is that if you don’t give up Katherine -I’ll tell Father at once the sort of man you are—tell them all. -And then you’ll have to go.”</p> - -<p>At Philip’s heart there was triumph. At last the crisis -was threatened for which he had, all this time, been longing. -He did not for an instant doubt what Katherine would do. -Ah! if they drove him away she was his, his for ever! and, -please God, they would never see Glebeshire again!</p> - -<p>He was triumphant, but he did not give Henry his mood.</p> - -<p>“You can do what you please, my son,” he answered, scornfully. -“Tell ’em all. But brush your hair next time you -come down to the drawing-room for tea. Even in Russia we -do that. You don’t know how wild it looks.... Now, just -hand me that book and I’ll clear out. Meanwhile don’t be so -childish. You’re going to Cambridge, and really <span class='it'>must</span> grow -up. Take my advice. Brush your hair, put on a clean collar, -and don’t be a prig.”</p> - -<p>Henry, white with passion, saw nothing but Philip’s face. -Philip the enemy and scorn of the house, Philip the ravisher -of Katherine, Philip author of all evil and instigator of all -wickedness.</p> - -<p>He picked up the book and flung it at Philip’s head.</p> - -<p>“There’s your book!” he screamed. “Take it!... You—you -cad!”</p> - -<p>The book crashed into the centre of the mirror.</p> - -<p>There was a tinkle of falling glass, and instantly the whole -room seemed to tumble into pieces, the old walls, the old -prints and water-colours, the green carpet, the solemn book-cases, -the large arm-chairs—and with the room, the house, and -with the house Westminster, Garth, Glebeshire, Trenchard -and Trenchard tradition—all represented now by splinters -and fragments of glass, by broken reflections of squares and -stars of green light, old faded colours, deep retreating -shadows.</p> - -<p>“Oh!” cried Henry! “Oh!”</p> - -<p>“Thank Heaven!” laughed Philip triumphantly. “One of -you’ve done something at last!”</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2 id='ch16'>CHAPTER III<br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>ANNA AND MRS. TRENCHARD</span></h2> - -<p>That return to Garth was, for everyone concerned, a -miserable affair. It happened that the fine summer -weather broke into torrents of rain. As they drove up to the -old house they could hear the dripping of water from every -nook and corner. As Henry lay awake that first night the -hiss and spatter of the rain against his window seemed to have -a personal grudge against him. “Ah—you fool—s-s-s—you -s-s-s-illy a-s-s-s. <span class='it'>Put</span> your <span class='it'>pride</span> in your <span class='it'>pocket</span>—s-s-s-illy -a-s-s.”</p> - -<p>When he slept he dreamt that a deluge had descended upon -the earth, that all were drowned save he, and that he was supported -against the flood only by the floor of the house that -swayed and swayed. Suddenly with a crash in it fell—he -awoke to find that he had tumbled out of bed on to the carpet.</p> - -<p>For days a steaming, clammy mist, with a weight and a -melancholy peculiar to Glebeshire, hung over the world.</p> - -<p>They lived in hot steam, their hair was damp and their -hands chill. It was poor days for the beginning of August. -Rebekah was in a bad temper; no one knew what it was that -had displeased her, but she had a wicked nephew who wrote, -at certain times, to plead for money, and always for many -days after receiving a letter from him she was displeased with -everyone. She walked now like a tragedy queen in her tall -white cap and stiff white apron; only Mrs. Trenchard could -be expected to deal with her, and Mrs. Trenchard had other -things that occupied her mind.</p> - -<p>Henry’s eye was now forever on his mother. He waited -for the moment when Aunt Aggie would speak, that quite -inevitable moment.</p> - -<p>He thought that he had never truly seen his mother before. -In old days, in that strange, dim world before Philip’s -arrival, she had seemed to him someone to be cherished, to be -protected, someone growing a little old, a little cheerless, a -little lonely. Now she was full of vigour and dominion. -When she said to him: “Did you put on that clean under-clothing -this morning, Henry?” instead of sulking and answering -her question with an obvious disgust, he assured her -earnestly that he had done so. He admired now her strong -figure, her pouring of tea at breakfast, her sharp rebukes to -the gardener, and her chiding of Uncle Tim when he entered -the drawing-room wearing muddy boots. Yes, he admired his -mother. So he trembled at the thought of her cold, ironic -anger when she heard of Philip’s past.</p> - -<p>On the day after their arrival at Garth he told Millie what -he had done. He had long ago realised that, since her return -from Paris, Millie had been a quite unaccountable -creature. It was not only her French education. He attributed -this change also to the dire influence of Philip. He -noticed with disgust that she behaved now as though she were -a woman of the world, implying, at the same time, that he -was still an uncleanly and ignorant schoolboy. He knew that -she would be indignant and scornful at his indiscretion, -nevertheless he was driven by loneliness to confide in her.</p> - -<p>They walked together to the village that they might fetch -the afternoon post, otherwise unrescued until the following -morning.</p> - -<p>Millie was in a bad temper.</p> - -<p>“I never knew anyone walk in the mud as you do, Henry. -Your boots are filthy in a minute. You walk into every puddle -you can see. You always did.”</p> - -<p>The trees hung ghostly out of the mist like mocking -scarecrows. Every once and again moisture from somewhere -trickled down between Henry’s neck and collar.</p> - -<p>“Look here, Millie,” he said gloomily, “I want your -advice.”</p> - -<p>“You’ve done something silly again, I suppose,” she answered -loftily.</p> - -<p>Glancing shyly at her, he thought that she was looking very -pretty. Strange, the number of new things that he was noticing -now about the family. But she <span class='it'>was</span> pretty—a great -deal prettier than Katherine; in fact, the only pretty one of -the family. He liked her soft hair, so charming under her -large flopping garden-hat, her little nose, her eyes black and -sparkling, the colour of her cheeks, her tall and slim body -that carried her old cotton dress so gracefully. Everything -about her was right and beautiful in a way that no other -members of the family could achieve. Katherine was always -a little clumsy, although since her engagement to Philip -she had taken more care.... There was something light -and lovely about Millie that no care would produce if you -had not got it. He was proud of her, and would have -liked that she should be nice to him.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” he said, “I’ve been an awful fool.... I’ve told -Aunt Aggie about Philip.”</p> - -<p>Millie stopped and stood, staring at him.</p> - -<p>“You’ve told Aunt Aggie?” she cried furiously.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” he repeated, blushing, as he always did when he -was scolded.</p> - -<p>“Oh! you <span class='it'>silly</span> ass!” She was so deeply exasperated that -she could scarcely speak.</p> - -<p>“You <span class='sc'>SILLY</span> ass! I might have guessed it—And yet all -the time I’d hoped that at least.... And Aunt Aggie of all -people!... and now Katherine and mother!</p> - -<p>“Oh, you chattering, blundering idiot!”</p> - -<p>She walked forward at a furious pace; he plunged after -her.</p> - -<p>“That’s all right,” he said, “when you’ve done cursing -you’ll be cooler. I <span class='it'>know</span> I’m an ass, but Aunt Aggie irritated -me and got it all out of me. Aunt Aggie’s the devil!”</p> - -<p>“Of course she is, and <span class='it'>of course</span> you’ll choose her out of -everyone, when she <span class='it'>hates</span> Philip and would wring his neck -to-morrow if her hands were strong enough.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I hate him too,” said Henry.</p> - -<p>“Oh, no you don’t,” answered Millie, “you think you do. -You’re proud of thinking you hate him, and you lose your -temper because he laughs at you, and then you throw books -at his head, but you don’t really hate him.”</p> - -<p>“How do you know I throw books at his head?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you don’t suppose we, any of us, believed that story -about you and Philip having a kind of game in the drawing-room -just for fun.... Father was furious about it, and said -the mirror was unreplaceable, and the sooner you went to -Cambridge and stopped there the better—and I think so -too. Oh! you’ve just spoilt everything!”</p> - -<p>“It’s only about Katie I’m thinking,” he answered doggedly. -“It may, after all, be true what Aunt Aggie said, -that it will be much better for her in the end for the thing -to be broken off, even though it hurts her now.”</p> - -<p>“Better for her!” cried Millie scornfully. “Don’t you -know that, however deeply she loved Philip when it all began, -it’s nothing to the way that she loves him now?... -Of course now there’ll be a scene. Philip will be turned off -for ever and—” She broke off, then said, staring at Henry: -“Supposing, after all, Katie were to go with him!”</p> - -<p>Henry shook his head. “She’d never do that, however -much Philip is to her. Why, it would mean giving up Garth -and us for ever! Mother would never forgive her! After -all, she’s only known Philip six months, and I heard her say -the other day in London she loves Garth more than ever. -And even if Mother <span class='it'>did</span> forgive her, in the end she’d never -be able to come back here as one of us again. You and I -will love her whatever she does, but Mother and Father and -the aunts ... I believe it would simply kill them—”</p> - -<p>“I’m not so sure,” said Millie slowly, “that Mother thinks -that. I believe she’s half afraid of Philip running off and -then Katie following him. That’s why she’s been so nice to -him lately, although she can’t bear him. Of course if she -knew all this that we know he’d <span class='it'>have</span> to go—she wouldn’t -have him in the house five minutes, and Father would do -what Mother told him of course. And now that you’ve been -an idiot enough to tell Aunt Aggie, it’s all up.... The -only hope is that Katie will chuck it all and follow him!”</p> - -<p>“What!” cried Henry aghast. “You’d like her to!”</p> - -<p>“Why, of course,” said Millie, “there isn’t anything compared -with the sort of thing Katie feels for Philip—Home -and the family? Why, they’ve all <span class='it'>got</span> to go in these days! -That’s what people like the aunts and fathers and the rest -of the old fogeys round here don’t see. But they’ll <span class='it'>have</span> to -see soon.... But mother’s cleverer than they are. At -least she is about Katie, because she loves her so much.”</p> - -<p>“My word!” said Henry, in the husky voice that always -came when he admired anybody. “You’ve changed an awful -lot lately, Millie.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I suppose I have,” she answered, complacently.</p> - -<p>They talked very little after that, for the reason that in -the village Henry bought Millie some bulls-eyes, because he -felt in a confused kind of way that he admired her more than -he had ever done.</p> - -<p>Millie had also another reason for silence; she was thinking -very hard. During those few days in London she had lived -in a world of thrilling expectation. She hoped that every -moment would announce the elopement of Katherine and -Philip. After her conversation with her sister, it had -seemed to her that this elopement was inevitable. On every -occasion of the opening of a door in the London house her -heart had leapt in her breast. She had watched the lovers -with eyes that were absorbed. Ah! if only they would take -her more thoroughly into their confidence, would put themselves -into her hands. She’d manage for them—she’d arrange -everything most beautifully. This was the most romantic -hour of her life....</p> - -<p>But now, after Henry’s revelation, Millie’s thoughts were -turned upon her mother. Of course her mother would expel -Philip—then there was a danger that Philip would return -to that living, fascinating creature in Russia, the mysterious, -smiling Anna. Millie had created that figure for herself -now, had thought and wondered and dreamed of her so -often that she saw her bright and vivid and desperately dangerous, -thin and dark and beautiful against a background -of eternal snow.</p> - -<p>There they were—her mother and Anna and Katherine, -with Philip, poor Philip, in between them all. It was truly -a wonderful time for Millie, who regarded all this as a prologue -to her own later dazzling history. She did not know -that, after all, she blamed Henry very desperately for his -foolishness. The thrilling crisis was but brought the nearer.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile the first thing that she did was to inform Katherine -of Henry’s treachery.</p> - -<p>Katherine received the news very quietly.</p> - -<p>“And now,” said Millie eagerly, “what will you do, Katie -darling?”</p> - -<p>“Wait and see what Mother does,” said Katie.</p> - -<p>“She’ll be simply horrified,” said Millie. “If she sends -Philip away and forbids you ever to see him again, what will -you do?”</p> - -<p>But Katherine would not answer that.</p> - -<p>“Let’s wait, Millie dear,” she said gently.</p> - -<p>“But you wouldn’t let him <span class='it'>go</span>?” Millie pursued, “not back -to Russia and that awful woman.”</p> - -<p>“I trust Philip,” Katherine said.</p> - -<p>“You can never trust a man,” Millie said gravely. “I -know. One of our girls in Paris was let in terribly. She—”</p> - -<p>Katherine interrupted her.</p> - -<p>“Philip isn’t like anyone else,” she said.</p> - -<p>And Millie was dismissed.</p> - -<p>But when Katherine was alone she sat down and wrote a -letter. This was it:</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:1em;'><span class='sc'>My darling Rachel</span>,</p> - -<p>Do you remember that a long time ago, one day when -I came to see you in London, you said that if I were ever in -trouble I was to tell you and you’d understand <span class='it'>anything</span>? -Well, I’m in trouble now—bad trouble. Things are growing -worse and worse, and it seems now that whichever way I -act, something’s got to be hopelessly spoiled. To any ordinary -outsider it would mean such a small business, but -really it’s the <span class='it'>whole</span> of my life and of other people’s too. -You’re <span class='it'>not</span> an outsider, and so I know that you’ll understand. -I can’t tell you more now—I don’t know what -will happen, how I’ll act, or anything. But I shall know -soon, and then I shall want your help, dreadfully. I’m -sure you’ll help me when I ask you to.</p> - -<p>You do like Philip better now, don’t you? I know that -you didn’t at first, but that was because you didn’t really -know him. <span class='it'>I</span> didn’t really know him either then, but I -know him now, and I love him twice as much as ever I -did.</p> - -<p>This will seem a silly letter to you, but I want to feel -that I’ve got someone behind me. Millie’s a dear, but she -isn’t old enough to understand. Don’t be frightened by -this. If anything happens I’ll write at once.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:5em;'>Your loving</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:1em;'>K.</p> - -</div> - -<p>Meanwhile the family life proceeded, outwardly, on its -normal way. August was always a month of incident—picnics -to Rafiel and St. Lowe and Damen Head, sometimes long -expeditions to Borhaze or Pelynt, sometimes afternoons in -Pendennis or Rothin Woods. There were expeditions in -which relations from Polchester or Clinton, or friends from -Liskane and Polewint shared, and, in the cover of them, the -family supported quite successfully the Trenchard tradition -of good manners, unruffled composure, and abundant leisure. -As members of a clan so ancient and self-reliant that no -enemy, however strong, however confident, could touch them, -they sat about their luncheon baskets on the burning sand, -whilst the fat pony cropped in the dark hedges above the -beach and the gulls wheeled and hovered close at hand.</p> - -<p>This was well enough, but the long summer evenings betrayed -them. In earlier days, when relationships were so sure -and so pleasant that the world swept by in a happy silence, -those summer evenings had been lazy, intimate prologues to -long nights of undisturbed sleep. They would sit in the -drawing-room, the windows open to the garden scents and the -salt twang of the sea, moths would flutter round the lamps, -Millie would play and sing a little at a piano that was never -quite in tune. Aunt Betty would struggle happily with her -“Demon Patience,” George Trenchard would laugh at them -for half-an-hour, and then slip away to his study. Mrs. -Trenchard and Aunt Aggie would knit and discuss the village, -Henry would lie back in an arm-chair, his nose deep -in a book, Katherine would be at anybody’s service—the minutes -would fly, then would come Rebekah with hot milk -for some and toast-and-water for others, there would be -prayers, and then “good-night, ma’am”. “Good-night, sir”, -from the three maids, the cook and Rebekah, then candles -lighted in the hall, then climbing slowly up the stairs, with -clumsy jokes from Henry and last words from Mrs. Trenchard, -such as “Don’t forget the Williams’ coming over to-morrow, -Katie dear,” or “Some of that quinine for your cold, -Aggie, <span class='it'>I</span> suggest,” or “I’ve put the new collars on your bed, -Henry,” then the closing of doors, then a happy silence, utterly -secure. That had been the old way.</p> - -<p>Outwardly the August nights of this year resembled the old -ones—but the heart of them beat with panic and dismay. -Philip had thought at first that it was perhaps his presence -that caused the uneasiness, and one evening he complained of -a headache and went up to his room after dinner. But he -learnt from Katherine that his absence had merely emphasised -everything. They must be all there—it would never -do to show that there was anything the matter. Millie played -the piano, Aunt Betty attempted her “Patience” with her -usual little “Tut-tut’s” and “Dear me’s.” Mrs. Trenchard -and Aunt Aggie sewed or knitted, but now the minutes -dragged in endless procession across the floor, suddenly someone -would raise a head and listen, Henry, pretending to read -a book, would stare desperately in front of him, then noticing -that Aunt Aggie watched him, would blush and hold his book -before his face; with relief, as though they had escaped some -threatening danger, they would greet the milk, the ‘toast-and-water’, -the maids and the family prayers.</p> - -<p>There was now no lingering on the staircase.</p> - -<p>There are many families, of course, to whom the rebellion -or disgrace of one of its members would mean but little, so -slightly had been felt before the dependence of one soul -upon another. But with the Trenchards that dependence -had been <span class='it'>everything</span>, the outside world had been a fantastic -show, unreal and unneeded: as the pieces of a pictured puzzle -fit one into another, so had the Trenchards been interwoven -and dependent ... only in England, perhaps, had such a -blind and superior insularity been possible ... and it may -be that this was to be, in all the records of history, the last -of such a kind—“<span class='it'>Nil nisi bonum</span>”....</p> - -<p>To Philip these summer days were darkened by his consciousness -of Mrs. Trenchard. When he looked back over -the months since he had known her, he could remember no -very dramatic conversation that he had had with her, nothing -tangible anywhere. She had been always pleasant and agreeable -to him, and, at times, he had tried to tell himself that, -after all, he might ultimately be happy ‘eaten up by her,’ as -Jonah was by the whale. Then, with a little shiver, he knew -the truth—that increasingly, as the days passed, he both hated -and feared her. She had caught his will in her strong hands -and was crushing it into pulp.</p> - -<p>He made one last effort to assert himself, even as he had -tried his strength against Katherine, against Henry, against -Aunt Aggie, against old Mr. Trenchard. This little conversation -that he had in the Garth garden with Mrs. Trenchard -upon one of those lovely summer evenings was of the simplest -and most undramatic fashion. Nevertheless it marked the -end of his struggle; he always afterwards looked back upon -those ten minutes as the most frightening experience of his -life. Mrs. Trenchard, in a large loose hat and gauntleted -gardening gloves, made a fine cheerful, reposeful figure as she -walked slowly up and down the long lawn; she asked Philip -to walk with her; the sun flung her broad flat shadow like a -stain upon the bright grass.</p> - -<p>They had talked a little, and then he had suddenly, with a -tug of alarm at his heart, determined that he would break -his chains. He looked up at her placid eyes.</p> - -<p>“I think,” he said—his voice was not quite steady—“that -Katherine and I will live somewhere in the North after our -marriage. Quite frankly I don’t think Glebeshire suits me.”</p> - -<p>“And Katie,” said Mrs. Trenchard, smiling.</p> - -<p>“Katie ... she—she’ll like the North when she’s tried -it for a little.”</p> - -<p>“You’ll rob us of her?”</p> - -<p>“Not altogether, of course.”</p> - -<p>“She’ll be very miserable away from Glebeshire ... very -miserable. I’ve seen such a nice little house—Colve Hall—only -two miles from here—on the Rafiel road. I don’t think -you must take Katie from Glebeshire, Philip.”</p> - -<p>That was a challenge. Their eyes met. His dropped.</p> - -<p>“I think it will be better for her to be away after we are -married.”</p> - -<p>“Why? Do you hate us all?”</p> - -<p>He coloured. “I’m not myself with you. I don’t know -what to do with your kind of life. I’ve tried—I have indeed—I’m -not happy here.”</p> - -<p>“Aren’t you selfish? If you rob Katie of everything—will -you be happy then?”</p> - -<p>Yes, that was it. He could see their future life, Katherine, -longing, longing to return, excited, homesick!</p> - -<p>Although he did not look up, he knew that she was smiling -at him.</p> - -<p>“You are very young, Philip,” she said. “You want life -to be perfect. It can’t be that. You must adapt yourself. -I think that you will both be happier here in Glebeshire—near -us.”</p> - -<p>He would have broken out, crying that Katherine was his, -not theirs, that he wanted her for himself, that they must be -free.... Of what use? That impassivity took his courage -and flattened it all out as though he were a child of ten, still -ruled by his mother.</p> - -<p>“Shall we go in?” said Mrs. Trenchard. “It’s a little -cold.”</p> - -<p>It was after this conversation that he began to place his -hope upon the day when his Moscow misdeeds would be declared—that -seemed now his only road to freedom.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Upon one lovely summer evening they sat there and had, -some of them, the same thought.</p> - -<p>Millie, slim and white, standing before the long open window, -stared into the purple night, splashed with stars and -mysterious with tier-like clouds. She was thinking of Anna, -of all that life that Philip had, of what a world it must be -where there are no laws, no conventions, no restraints. That -woman now had some other lover, she thought no more, perhaps, -of Philip—and no one held her the worse. She could -do what she would—how full her life must be, how adventurous, -packed with colour, excitement, battle and victory. And, -after all, it might be, to that woman, that this adventure -meant so little that she did not realise it <span class='it'>as</span> an adventure. -Millie’s heart rose and fell; her heart hurt her so that she -pressed her hand against her frock. She wanted her own life -to begin—at once, at once. Other girls had found the beginning -of it during those days in Paris, but some English restraint -and pride—she was intensely proud—had held her -back. But now she was on fire with impatience, with longing, -with, courage.... As she stared into the night she -seemed to see the whole world open, like a shining silver plate, -held by some dark figure for her acceptance. She stretched -out her hands.</p> - -<p>“Take care you don’t catch cold by that open window, -Millie dear,” said her mother.</p> - -<p>Henry also was thinking of Anna. From where he sat -he could, behind his book, raising his eyes a little, see Philip. -Philip was sitting, very straight and solid, with his short -thick legs crossed in front of him, reading a book. He never -moved. He made no sound. Henry had, since the day when -he had broken the mirror, avoided Philip entirely. He did -not want to consider the man at all; of course he hated the -man because it was he who had made them all miserable, -and yet, had the fellow never loved Katherine, had he remained -outside the family, Henry knew now that he could -have loved him.</p> - -<p>This discovery he had made exactly at the moment when -that book had fallen crashing into the mirror—it had been -so silly, so humiliating a discovery that he had banished it -from his mind, had refused to look into it at all.</p> - -<p>But that did not mean that he did not contemplate Philip’s -amazing life. He contemplated it more intensely every day. -The woman had all the mystery of invisibility, and yet Henry -thought that he would know her if he saw her. He coloured -her according to his fancy, a laughing, tender figure who -would recognize him, did she meet him, as the one man in the -world for whom she had been searching.</p> - -<p>He imagined to himself ridiculous conversations that he -should have with her. He would propose to marry her, -would declare, with a splendid nobility, that he knew of her -earlier life, but that “that meant nothing to him.” He would -even give up his country for her, would live in Russia, -would ... Then he caught Philip’s eye, blushed, bent to -pull up his sock, said, in a husky, unconcerned voice:</p> - -<p>“Do play something, Millie. Something of Mendelssohn.”</p> - -<p>Philip also was thinking of Anna. Through the pages of -his stupid novel, as though they had been of glass, he saw her -as she had last appeared to him on the platform of the Moscow -station. She had been wearing a little round black fur -hat and a long black fur coat, her cheeks were pale, her eyes -mocking, but somewhere, as though in spite of herself, there -had been tenderness. She had laughed at him, but she had, -for only a moment perhaps, wished that he were not going. -It was that tenderness that held him now. The evening, -through which he was now passing, had been terrible—one of -the worst that he had ever spent—and he had wondered -whether he really would be able to discipline himself to that -course on which he had determined, to marry Katherine under -the Trenchard shadow, to deliver himself to Mrs. Trenchard, -even as the lobster is delivered to the cook. And so, -with this desperation, had come, with increasing force, that -memory of Anna’s tenderness.</p> - -<p>He did not want to live with her again, to renew that old -life—his love for Katherine had, most truly, blotted out all -the fire and colour of that earlier passion, but he wanted—yes, -he wanted most passionately, to save his own soul.</p> - -<p>Might it not, after all, be true, as that ghostly figure had -urged to him, that it would be better for him to escape and so -carry Katherine after him—but what if she did not come?</p> - -<p>He heard Mrs. Trenchard’s voice as she spoke to Millie, -and, at that sound, he resigned himself ... but the figure -still smiled at him behind that glassy barrier.</p> - -<p>Katherine also thought of Anna. She was sitting just -behind Aunt Betty watching, over the old lady’s shoulder, -the ‘Patience’.</p> - -<p>“There,” said Aunt Betty, “there’s the ten, the nine, the -eight. Oh! if I only had the seven!”</p> - -<p>“You can get it,” said Katherine, “if you move that six -and five.”</p> - -<p>“How stupid I am!” said Aunt Betty, “thank you, my dear, -I didn’t see.”</p> - -<p>Katherine saw dancing in and out between the little cards -a tiny figure that was yet tall and strong, moving there a teasing, -taunting puppet, standing also, a motionless figure, away -there, by the wall, watching, with a cynical smile, the room. -Beneath the thin hands of the old lady the cards fluttered, -shifted, lay with their painted colours on the shining table, -and, in accompaniment with their movement, Katherine’s -thoughts also danced, in and out, round and round, chasing -the same old hopeless riddle. Sometimes she glanced across -at her mother. Perhaps already Aunt Aggie had told -her.... No, she had not. Her mother’s calm showed that -she, as yet, knew nothing. Katherine, like the others, did -not doubt what her mother would do. She would demand -that the engagement should be broken off; they would all, -ranged behind her broad back, present their ultimatum—And -then what would Katherine do?... Simply, sitting there, -with her fingers fiercely interlaced, her hands pressed against -her knee, she did not know. She was exhausted with the -struggle that had continued now for so many weeks, and -behind her exhaustion, waiting there, triumphant in the expectation -of her success, was her rival.</p> - -<p>Then, suddenly, as they waited there came to them all the -idea that the hall door had been opened and gently closed. -They all, Mrs. Trenchard, Aunt Aggie, Millie, Henry, Katherine, -started, looked up.</p> - -<p>“Did someone come in?” said Mrs. Trenchard, in her mild -voice. “I thought I heard the hall door—Just go and see, -Henry.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll go,” said Katherine quickly.</p> - -<p>They all waited, their heads raised. Katherine crossed -the room, went into the hall that glimmered faintly under a -dim lamp, paused a moment, then turned back the heavy handle -of the door. The door swung back, and the lovely summer -night swept into the house. The stars were a pattern of -quivering light between the branches of the heavy trees that -trembled ever so gently with the thrilling sense of their -happiness. The roses, the rich soil soaked with dew, and the distant -murmur of the stream that ran below the garden wall -entered the house.</p> - -<p>Katherine waited, in the open door, looking forward. Then -she came in, shutting the door softly behind her.</p> - -<p>Had someone entered? Was someone there with her, in -the half-light, whispering to her: “I’m in the house now—and -I shall stay, so long as I please—unless you can turn -me out.”</p> - -<p>She went back into the drawing-room.</p> - -<p>“There was no one,” she said. “Perhaps it was Rebekah.”</p> - -<p>“There’s rather a draught, dear,” said Aunt Aggie, “my -neuralgia ... thank you, my dear.”</p> - -<p>“I’ve done it!” cried Aunt Betty, flushed with pleasure. -“It’s come out! If you hadn’t shown me that seven, Katie, -it never would have come!”</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Upon the very next afternoon Aunt Aggie made up her -mind. After luncheon she went, alone, for a walk; she -climbed the fields above the house, threaded little lanes sunk -between high hedges, crossed an open common, dropped into -another lane, was lost for awhile, finally emerged on the hill -above that tiny Cove known as Smuggler’s Button. Smuggler’s -Button is the tiniest cove in Glebeshire, the sand of it -is the whitest, and it has in the very middle a high jagged -rock known as the Pin. Aunt Aggie, holding an umbrella, -a black bonnet on her head and an old shabby rain-coat flapping -behind her, sat on the Pin. It was a long way for her -to have come—five miles from Garth—and the day was -windy, with high white clouds that raced above her head like -angry birds ready to devour her. Aunt Aggie sat there and -looked at the sea, which approached her in little bowing and -beckoning white waves, as though she were a shrivelled and -pouting Queen Victoria holding a drawing-room. Once and -again her head trembled, as though it were fastened insecurely -to her body, and her little fat, swollen cheeks shook like jelly. -Sometimes she raised a finger, encased in a black glove, and -waved it in the air, as though she were admonishing the universe.</p> - -<p>She clutched vigorously in one hand her umbrella.</p> - -<p>She gazed at the sea with passion. This love for the sea -had been a dominant power in her ever since she could remember, -and had come she knew not whence. It had been, in -earlier days, one of the deep, unspoken bonds between herself -and Katherine, and it had been one of her most active criticisms -of Millie that ‘the girl cared nothing about the sea -whatever’. But she, Aunt Aggie, could not say why she -loved it. She was no poet, and she knew not the meaning of -the word ‘Enthusiasm’. She was ashamed a little of her -passion, and, when she had walked five miles to Smuggler’s -Button or seven miles to Lingard Sand ‘just to look at it’, -she would walk stiffly home again, would give no answer to -those who asked questions, and, if driven into a corner would -say she had been ‘just for a walk.’ But she loved it in all -its moods, grave, gay and terrible, loved it even when it -was like a grey cotton garment designed for the poor or when -it slipped into empty space under a blind and soaking mist. -She loved the rhythm of it, the indifference of it, above all, -the strength of it. Here at last, thank God, was something -that she could admire more than herself.</p> - -<p>She had, nevertheless, always at the back of her mind the -thought that it would be bad for it if it knew how much she -thought of it; she was always ready to be disappointed in it, -although she knew that it would never disappoint her—she -was grim and unbending in her attitude to it lest, in a moment -of ecstasy, she should make cheap of her one devotion. To-day -she did not actively consider it. She sat on the rock and -made up her mind that she would take steps ‘that very day.’ -Harriet, her sister-in-law, had, during these last months, often -surprised her, but there would be no question of her action -in this climax of the whole unfortunate business.</p> - -<p>“The young man,” as she always called Philip, would never -show his face in Trenchard circles again. Harriet might -forgive, because of her love for Katherine, his impertinence, -his conceit, his irreligion, his leading Henry into profligacy -and drunkenness, she <span class='it'>would</span> not—<span class='it'>could</span> not—forgive his -flagrant and open immorality, an immorality that had extended -over many years. As she thought of this vicious life -she gave a little shiver—a shiver of indignation, of resolution, -of superiority, and of loneliness. The world—the gay, -vital, alluring world, had left her high and dry upon that -rock on which she was sitting, and, rebuke and disapprove -of it as she might, it cared little for her words.</p> - -<p>It was, perhaps, for this reason that she felt strangely -little pleasure in her approaching triumph. She had hated -“the young man” since her first meeting with him, and at -last, after many months of patient waiting, the means had -been placed in her hands for his destruction.... Well, she -did not know that she cared to-day very greatly about it. -She was old, she was tired, she had neuralgia in one side of -her face, there was a coming headache in the air. Why was -it that she, who had always held so steadily for right, whose -life had been one long struggle after unselfishness, who had -served others from early morning until late at night, should -now find no reward, but only emptiness and old age and frustration? -She had not now even the pleasure of her bitternesses. -They were dust and ashes in her mouth.</p> - -<p>She resolved that at once, upon that very afternoon, she -would tell Harriet about Philip—and then suddenly, for no -reason, with a strange surprise to herself, she did a thing -that was quite foreign to her; she began to cry, a desolate -trickling of tears that tasted salt in her mouth, that were shed, -apparently, by some quite other person.</p> - -<p>It seemed to her as she turned slowly and went home that -that same Woman who had encountered life, had taken it all -and tasted every danger, now, watching her, laughed at her -for her wasted, barren days....</p> - -<p>By the time, however, that she reached Garth she had -recovered her spirits; it was the sea that had made her melancholy. -She walked into the house with the firm step of -anticipated triumph. She went up to her bedroom, took off -her bonnet, washed her face and hands, peeped out on to the -drive as though she expected to see someone watching there, -then came down into the drawing-room.</p> - -<p>She had intended to speak to her sister-in-law in private. -It happened, however, that, on going to the tea-table, she -discovered that the tea had been standing for a considerable -period, and nobody apparently intended to order any more—at -the same time a twinge in her left jaw told her that it had -been foolish of her to sit on that rock so long.</p> - -<p>Then Philip, who had the unfortunate habit of trying to -be friendly at the precisely wrong moment, said, cheerfully:</p> - -<p>“Been for a walk all alone, Aunt Aggie?”</p> - -<p>She always hated that he should call her Aunt Aggie. -To-day it seemed a most aggravated insult.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she said. “You’ve had tea very early.”</p> - -<p>“George wanted it,” said Mrs. Trenchard, who was writing -at a little table near a window that opened into the sunlit -garden. “One never can tell with you, Aggie, what time -you’ll like it—never can tell, surely.”</p> - -<p>There! as though that weren’t directly charging her with -being a trouble to the household. Because <span class='it'>they’d</span> happened -to have it early!</p> - -<p>“I call it very unfair—” she began nibbling a piece of -bread and butter.</p> - -<p>But the unfortunate Philip gaily continued: “When we -are married, Aunt Aggie, and you come to stay with us, you -shall have tea just when you like.”</p> - -<p>He was laughing at her, he patronised her! He dared—! -She trembled with anger.</p> - -<p>“I shall never come and stay with you,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Aunt Aggie!” cried Katherine, who was sitting near her -mother by the window.</p> - -<p>“No, never!” Aunt Aggie answered, her little eyes flashing -and her cheeks shaking. “And if I had my way you -should never be married!”</p> - -<p>They all knew then that at last the moment had come. -Henry started to his feet as though he would escape, Katherine -turned towards her mother, Philip fixed his eyes gravely -upon his enemy—only Mrs. Trenchard did not pause in her -writing. Aunt Aggie knew then that she was committed. She -did not care, she was glad if only she could hurt Philip, that -hateful and intolerable young man.</p> - -<p>Her hands trembled, her rings making a tiny clatter against -the china; she saw only her sister-in-law and Philip.</p> - -<p>Philip quietly said:</p> - -<p>“Why do you hope that Katherine and I will never marry, -Aunt Aggie?”</p> - -<p>“Because I love Katherine—because I—we want her to -make a happy marriage. Because if she—knew what I -know she would not marry you.”</p> - -<p>“My dear Aggie!” said Mrs. Trenchard, softly, from the -writing-table—but she stayed her pen and waited, with her -head turned a little, as though she would watch Katherine’s -face without appearing to do so.</p> - -<p>“And what do you know,” pursued Philip quietly, “that -would prevent Katherine from marrying me?”</p> - -<p>“I know,” she answered fiercely, the little gold cross that -hung round her throat jumping against the agitation of her -breast, “that you—that you are not the man to marry my -niece. You have concealed things from her father which, -if he had known, would have caused him to forbid you the -house.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! I say!” cried Henry, suddenly jumping to his -feet.</p> - -<p>“Well,” pursued Philip, “what are these things?”</p> - -<p>She paused for a moment, wondering whether Henry had -had sufficient authority for his statements. Philip of course -would deny everything—but she had now proceeded too far -to withdraw.</p> - -<p>“I understand,” she said, “that you lived in Russia with -a woman to whom you were not married—lived for some -years, and had a child. This is, I am ashamed to say, common -talk. I need scarcely add that I had not intended to -bring this disgraceful matter up in this public fashion. But -perhaps after all it is better. You have only yourself to -blame, Mr. Mark,” she continued, “for your policy of secrecy. -To allow us all to remain in ignorance of these things, to -allow Katherine—but perhaps,” she asked, “you intend to -deny everything? In that case—”</p> - -<p>“I deny nothing,” he answered. “This seems to me a very -silly manner of discussing such a business.” He addressed -his words then to Mrs. Trenchard. “I said nothing about -these things,” he continued, “because, quite honestly, I could -not see that it was anyone’s affair but my own and Katherine’s. -I told Katherine everything directly after we were -engaged.”</p> - -<p>At that Aunt Aggie turned upon her niece.</p> - -<p>“You knew, Katherine? You knew—all these disgraceful—these—” -Her voice broke. “You knew and you continued -your engagement?”</p> - -<p>“Certainly,” answered Katherine quietly. “Whatever life -Philip led before he knew me, was no business of mine. It -was good of him to tell me as he did, but it was not my affair. -And really, Aunt Aggie,” she continued, “that you could -think it right to speak like this before us all—to interfere—”</p> - -<p>Her voice was cold with anger. They had none of them -ever before known this Katherine.</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie appealed to her sister-in-law.</p> - -<p>“Harriet, if I’ve been wrong in mentioning this now, I’m -sorry. Katherine seems to have lost her senses. I would -not wish to condemn anyone, but to sit still and watch whilst -my niece, whom I have loved, is given to a profligate—”</p> - -<p>Katherine stood, with the sunlight behind her; she looked -at her aunt, then moved across the room to Philip and put -her hand on his shoulder.</p> - -<p>They all waited then for Mrs. Trenchard; they did not -doubt what she would say. Katherine, strangely, at that -moment felt that she loved her mother as she had never loved -her before. In the very fury of the indignation that would -be directed against Philip would be the force of her love for -her daughter.</p> - -<p>This pause, as they all waited for Mrs. Trenchard to speak, -was weighted with the indignation that they expected from -her.</p> - -<p>But Mrs. Trenchard laughed: “My dear Aggie: what a -scene! really too stupid. As you have mentioned this, I may -say that I have known—these things—about Philip for a long -time. But I said nothing because—well, because it is really -not my business what life Philip led before he met us. Perhaps -I know more about young men and their lives, Aggie, -than you do.”</p> - -<p>“You knew!” Henry gasped.</p> - -<p>“You’ve known!” Aggie cried.</p> - -<p>Katherine had, at the sound of her mother’s voice, given her -one flash of amazement: then she had turned to Philip, while -she felt a cold shudder at her heart as though she were some -prisoner suddenly clapt into a cage and the doors bolted.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Mrs. Trenchard, “Mr. Seymour came a long -time ago and told me things that he thought I ought to know. -I said to Mr. Seymour that he must not do such things, and -that if I ever spoke of it to Philip I should give him his name. -I disapprove of such things. Yes, it was Mr. Seymour—I -think he never liked you, Philip, because you contradicted -him about Russia. He’s a nice, clever boy, but I daresay he’s -wrong in his facts....” Then, as they still waited in silence, -“I really think that’s all, Aggie. You must forgive -me, dear, but I don’t think it was quite your business. Katherine -is over age, you know, and in any case it isn’t quite nice -in the drawing-room—and really only because your tea was -cold, Aggie dear.”</p> - -<p>“You’ve known ... you’ll do nothing, Harriet?” Aggie -gasped.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard looked at them before she turned back -to her writing-table.</p> - -<p>“You can ring for some fresh tea if you like,” she said.</p> - -<p>But for a moment her eyes had caught Philip’s eyes. They -exchanged the strangest look. Hers of triumph, sarcastic, -ironic, amazingly triumphant, his of a dull, hopeless abandonment -and submission.</p> - -<p>Her attack at last, after long months of struggle, had succeeded. -He was beaten. She continued her letter.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2 id='ch17'>CHAPTER IV<br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>THE WILD NIGHT</span></h2> - -<p>Ten minutes later Katherine and Philip were alone in -the garden. There were signs that the gorgeous summer -afternoon was to be caught into thunder. Beyond the garden-wall -a black cloud crept toward the trees, and the sunlight -that flooded the lawn seemed garish now, as though it had -been painted in shrill colours on to the green; the air was -intensely hot; the walls of the house glittered like metal.</p> - -<p>They stood under the great oak bobbing in front of them.</p> - -<p>“Well,” said Philip at last, “that’s the end, Katie dear—your -mother’s a wonderful woman.”</p> - -<p>Katherine was silent. He went on:</p> - -<p>“That was my last hope. I suppose I’d been counting on -it more than I ought. You’d have come with me, I know, -if they’d turned me out? Not a bit of it. Your mother’s a -wonderful woman, I repeat.” He paused, looked into her -eyes, seemed to be startled by the pain in them. “My dear, -don’t mind. She only wants to keep you because she can’t -get on without you—and I shall settle down all right in a bit. -What a fuss, after all, we’ve been making.”</p> - -<p>Katherine said: “Tell me, Phil, have there been times, -lately, in the last week, when you’ve thought of running -away, going back to Russia? Tell me honestly.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” he answered, “there have—many times. But I -always waited to see how things turned out. And then to-day -when the moment <span class='it'>did</span> come at last, I saw quite clearly -that I couldn’t leave you <span class='it'>ever</span>—that anything was better -than being without you—<span class='it'>anything</span>—So that’s settled.”</p> - -<p>“And you’ve thought,” Katherine pursued steadily, “of -what it will be after we’re married. Mother always wanting -me. Your having to be in a place that you hate. And even -if we went to live somewhere else, of Mother always keeping -her hand on us, never letting go, never allowing you to be -free, knowing about Anna—their <span class='it'>all</span> knowing—you’ve faced -it all?”</p> - -<p>“I’ve faced it all,” he answered, trying to laugh. “I can’t -leave you, Katie, and that’s the truth. And if I’ve got to -have your mother and the family as well, why, then, I’ve got -to have them.... But, oh! my dear, how your mother despises -me! Well, I suppose I <span class='it'>am</span> a weak young man! And -I shall forget Russia in time.... <span class='it'>I’ve got to!</span>” he ended, -almost under his breath.</p> - -<p>She looked at him queerly.</p> - -<p>“All right,” she said, “I know now what we’ve got to do.”</p> - -<p>“What do you mean?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“Wait. I must go and speak to Uncle Tim. I shall be -an hour. Be ready for me out here under this tree in an -hour’s time. It will be seven o’clock.”</p> - -<p>“What do you mean?” he asked her again, but she had -gone.</p> - -<p>She had picked up an old garden hat in the hall, and now -very swiftly hurried up the village road. She walked, the -dust rising about her and the black cloud gaining in size and -strength behind her. Uncle Tim’s house stood by itself at -the farther end of the village. She looked neither to right -nor left, did not answer the greeting of the villagers, passed -quickly through the little garden, over the public path and -rang the rusty, creaking bell. An old woman, who had been -Uncle Tim’s housekeeper for an infinite number of years, -opened the door.</p> - -<p>“Ah, Miss Kathie,” she said, smiling. “Do ee come in. -’E’s gardenin’, poor soul. All of a sweat. Terrible ’ot ’tis, -tu. Makin’ up thunder I’m thinkin’.”</p> - -<p>Katherine went into the untidy, dusty hall, then into her -uncle’s study. This had, ever since her childhood, been the -same, a litter of bats, fishing-rods, specimens of plants and -flowers drying on blotting paper, books lying in piles on the -floor, and a pair of trousers hanging by a nail on to the back -of the door.</p> - -<p>She waited, seeing none of these familiar things. She -did not, at first, see her uncle when he came in from the garden, -perspiration dripping down his face, his old cricket shirt -open at the neck, his grey flannel trousers grimed with dust.</p> - -<p>“Hullo, Katie!” he cried, “what do <span class='it'>you</span> want? And if -it’s an invitation to dinner tell ’em I can’t come.” Then, -taking another look at her, he said gravely, “What’s up, my -dear?”</p> - -<p>She sat down in an old arm-chair which boasted a large -hole and only three legs; he drew up a chair close to her, -then suddenly, as though he saw that she needed comfort, -put his arms round her.</p> - -<p>“What’s the matter, my dear?” he repeated.</p> - -<p>“Uncle Tim,” she said, speaking rapidly but quietly and -firmly, “you’ve got to help me. You’ve always said that -you would if I wanted you.”</p> - -<p>“Why, of course,” he answered simply. “What’s happened?”</p> - -<p>“Everything. Things, as you know, have been getting -worse and worse at home ever since—well, ever since Phil -and I were engaged.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I know,” he said.</p> - -<p>“It hasn’t been Phil’s fault,” she broke out with sudden -fierceness. “He’s done everything. It’s been my fault. -I’ve been blind and stupid from the beginning. I don’t want -to be long, Uncle Tim, because there’s not much time, but -I must explain everything so that you shall understand me -and not think it wrong. We’ve got nearly two hours.”</p> - -<p>“Two hours?” he repeated, bewildered.</p> - -<p>“From the beginning Mother hated Phil. I always saw -it of course, but I used to think that it would pass when she -knew Phil better—that no one could help knowing him without -loving him—and that was silly, of course. But I waited, -and always hoped that things would be better. Then in the -spring down here there was one awful Sunday, when Aunt -Aggie at supper made a scene and accused Philip of leading -Henry astray or something equally ridiculous. After that -Philip wanted me to run away with him, and I—I don’t -know—but I felt that he ought to insist on it, to make me go. -He didn’t insist, and then I saw suddenly that he wasn’t -strong enough to insist on anything, and that instead of being -the great character that I’d once thought him, he was really -weak and under anyone’s influence. Well, that made me -love him in a different way, but more—much more—than I -ever had before. I saw that he wanted looking after and protecting. -I suppose you’ll think that foolish of me,” she said -fiercely.</p> - -<p>“Not at all, my dear,” said Uncle Tim, “go on.”</p> - -<p>“Well, there was something else,” Katherine went on. -“One day some time before, when we first came to Garth, he -told me that when he was in Russia he had loved another -woman. They had a child, a boy, who died. He was afraid -to tell me, because he thought that I’d think terribly of him.</p> - -<p>“But what did it matter, when he’d given her up and left -her? Only this mattered—that I couldn’t forget her. I -wasn’t jealous, but I was curious—terribly. I asked him -questions, I wanted to see her as she was—it was so strange -to me that there should be that woman, still living somewhere, -who knew more, much more, about Phil than I did. Then -the more questions I asked him about her the more he thought -of her and of Russia, so that at last he asked me not to speak -of her. But then she seemed to come between us, because we -both thought of her, and I used to wonder whether he wanted -to go back to her, and <span class='it'>he</span> wondered whether, after all, I was -jealous about her. Then things got worse with everyone. I -felt as though everyone was against us. After the Faunder -wedding Henry and Phil had a quarrel, and Henry behaved -like a baby.</p> - -<p>“I’ve had a dreadful time lately. I’ve imagined <span class='it'>anything</span>. -I’ve been expecting Phil to run away. Millie said he would—Mother’s -been so strange. She hated Phil, but she asked -him to Garth, and seemed to want to have him with her. -She’s grown so different that I simply haven’t <span class='it'>known</span> her -lately. And Phil too—it’s had a dreadful effect on him. He -seems to have lost all his happiness—he hates Garth and -everything in it, but he’s wanted to be near me, and so he’s -come. So there we’ve all been.” She paused for a moment, -then went on quickly. “Just now—this afternoon—it all -came to a climax. Aunt Aggie had found out from Henry -about the Russian woman. She lost her temper at tea, and -told Mother before us all. Phil has been expecting this to -happen for weeks, and had been almost hoping for it, because -then he thought that Mother and Father would say that he -must give me up, and that then I would refuse to leave him. -In that way he’d escape.</p> - -<p>“But it seemed”—here Katherine, dropping her voice, -spoke more slowly—“that Mother had known all the time. -That horrid Mr. Seymour in London had told her. She’d -known for <span class='it'>months</span>, and had never said anything—Mother, -who would have been <span class='it'>horrified</span> a year ago. But no—She -said <span class='it'>nothing</span>. She only told Aunt Aggie that she oughtn’t to -make scenes in the drawing-room, and that it wasn’t her business.</p> - -<p>“Philip saw then that his last chance was gone, that she -meant <span class='it'>never</span> to let me go, and that if she must have him as -well she’d <span class='it'>have</span> him. He’s sure now that I’ll never give -Mother up unless she makes me choose between him and her—and -so he’s just resigned himself.”</p> - -<p>Uncle Tim would have spoken, but she stopped him.</p> - -<p>“And there’s more than that. Perhaps it’s foolish of me, -but I’ve felt as though that woman—that Russian woman—had -been coming nearer and nearer and nearer. There was -an evening the other night when I felt that she’d come right -inside the house. I went into the hall and listened. That -must seem ridiculous to anyone outside the family, but it may -be that thinking of anyone continually <span class='it'>does</span> bring them—<span class='it'>does</span> -do something.... At least for me now she’s here, and -she’s going to try and take Phil back again. Mother wants -her, it’s Mother, perhaps, who has made her come. Mother -can make Phil miserable in a thousand ways by reminding -him of her, by suggesting, by ...” With a great cry -Katherine broke off: “Oh, Mother, Mother, I did love you -so!” and bursting into a passion of tears, clung to her uncle -as though she were still a little child.</p> - -<p>Then how he soothed her! stroking her hair, telling her that -he loved her, that he would help her, that he would do anything -for her. He held her in his arms, murmuring to her -as he had done so many years ago:</p> - -<p>“There, Katie, Katie ... it’s all right, it’s all right. -Nobody will touch you. It’s all right, it’s all right.”</p> - -<p>At last, with a sudden movement, as though she had -realised that there was little time to waste, she broke from -him and stood up, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief; -then, with that strange note of fierceness, so foreign to the -old mild Katherine, she said:</p> - -<p>“But now I see—I see everything. What Millie said is -true—I can’t have it both ways, I’ve got to choose. Mother -doesn’t care for anything so much as for beating Philip, for -humiliating him, for making him do everything that she says. -That other woman too—she’d like to see him humiliated, -laughed at—I <span class='it'>know</span> that she’s like that, cruel and hard.</p> - -<p>“And he’s only got me in all the world. I can beat that -other woman only by showing her that I’m stronger than she -is. I thought once that it was Phil who would take me and -look after me, but now it is <span class='it'>I</span> that must look after him.</p> - -<p>“If we stay, if we do as Mother wishes, we shall never escape. -I love everything here, I love them all, I can’t leave -them unless I do it now, <span class='it'>now</span>! Even to-morrow I shall be -weak again. Mother’s stronger than we are. She’s stronger, -I do believe, than anyone. Uncle Tim, we must go to-night!”</p> - -<p>“To-night!” he repeated, staring at her.</p> - -<p>“Now, at once, in an hour’s time. We can drive to Rasselas. -There’s the London Express at eight o’clock. It’s in -London by midnight. I can wire to Rachel. She’ll have -me. We can be married, by special licence, to-morrow!”</p> - -<p>He did not seem astonished by her impetuosity. He got -up slowly from his chair, knocked over with his elbow the -blotting-paper upon which were the dried flowers, swore, bent -down and picked them up slowly one by one, rose at last and, -very red in the face with his exertions, looked at her. Then -he smiled gently, stroking his fingers through his beard.</p> - -<p>“My dear, how you’ve changed!” he said.</p> - -<p>“You understand, Uncle Tim,” she urged. “I couldn’t -tell Millie. They’d make it bad for her afterwards, and it -would hurt Mother too. I don’t want Mother to be left -alone. It’s the only thing to do. I saw it all in a flash this -evening when Mother was speaking. Even to-morrow may -be too late, when I see the garden again and the village and -when they’re all kind to me. And perhaps after all it will -be all right. Only I must show them that Phil comes first, -that if I must choose, I choose Phil.”</p> - -<p>She paused, breathlessly. He was grave again when he -spoke:</p> - -<p>“You know, my dear, what you are doing, don’t you? I -won’t say whether I think you right or wrong. It’s for you -to decide, and only you. But just think. It’s a tremendous -thing. It’s more than just marrying Philip. It’s giving -up, perhaps, everything here—giving up Garth and Glebeshire -and the house. Giving up your Mother may be for -ever. I know your Mother. It is possible that she will -never forgive you.”</p> - -<p>Katherine’s under lip quivered. She nodded her head.</p> - -<p>“And it’s hurting her,” he went on, “hurting her more than -ever anything has done. It’s her own fault in a way. I -warned her long ago. But never mind that. You must realise -what you’re doing.”</p> - -<p>“I do realise it,” Katherine answered firmly. “It needn’t -hurt her really, if her love for me is stronger than her hatred -of Philip. I’ve thought it all out. If she loves me she’ll -see that my love for her isn’t changed at all,—that it’s there -just as it always was; that it’s only that she has <span class='it'>made</span> me -choose, either Phil’s happiness or unhappiness. I can only -choose one way. He’s ready to give up everything, surrender -all the splendid things he was going to do, give up half of me, -perhaps more, to the family—perhaps more. He hates the -life here, but he’ll live it, under Mother and grandfather and -the rest, for my sake. It isn’t fair that he should. Mother, -if she loves me, will see that. But I don’t believe,” here -Katherine’s voice trembled again, “that she cares for <span class='it'>anything</span> -so much as beating Philip. He’s the first person in the world -who ever opposed her.... She knows that I’ll love her always, -always, but Phil’s life shan’t be spoilt. Nothing matters -beside that.”</p> - -<p>She stopped, her breast heaving, her eyes flashing; he -looked at her and was amazed, as in his queer, isolated life -he had never been before, at what love can do to the soul.</p> - -<p>“Life’s for the young,” he said, “you’re right, Katherine. -Your Mother will never forgive me, but I’ll help you.”</p> - -<p>“No,” Katherine said, “<span class='it'>you’re</span> not to be involved, Uncle -Tim. Mother mustn’t lose <span class='it'>anyone</span> afterwards. You’re to -know nothing about it. I shall leave a note with someone to -be taken up to the house at half-past nine. I’ve told you because -I wanted you to know, but you’re not to have anything -to do with it. But you’ll love me just the same, won’t you? -<span class='it'>You</span> won’t be any different, will you? I had to know that. -With you and Millie and Aunt Betty and Father caring for -me afterwards, it won’t be quite like breaking with the family. -Only, Uncle Tim, I want you to do for me what you -can with Mother. I’ve explained everything to you, so that -you can tell her—show her.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll do my best,” he said. Then he caught her and -hugged her.</p> - -<p>“Good luck,” he said—and she was gone.</p> - -<p>Although she had been less than her hour with her uncle, -she knew that she had no time to spare. She was haunted, as -she hurried back again down the village road by alarms, regrets, -agonising reproaches that she refused to admit. She -fortified her consciousness against everything save the immediate -business to which she had bound herself, but every tree -upon the road, every hideous cottage, every stone and flower -besieged her with memories. “You are leaving us for ever. -Why? For Panic?... For Panic?” ... She could hear -the voices that would follow the retreat. “But why did she -run away like that? It wasn’t even as though their engagement -had been forbidden. To be married all in a hurry and -in secret—I don’t like the look of it.... She was always -such a quiet, sensible girl.”</p> - -<p>And she knew—it had not needed Uncle Tim’s words to -show her—that this act of hers was uprooting her for ever -from everything that had made life for her. She would -never go back. More deeply than that, she would never belong -again, she, who only six months ago had been the bond -that had held them all together....</p> - -<p>And behind these thoughts were two figures so strangely, so -impossibly like one another—the first that woman, suddenly -old, leaning back on to Katherine’s breast, fast asleep, tired -out, her mother—the second that woman who, only that afternoon, -had turned and given both Katherine and Philip that -look of triumph.... “I’ve got you both—You see that I -shall never let you go. You cannot, cannot, cannot, escape.” -That also was her mother.</p> - -<p>She stopped at the village inn, ‘The Three Pilchards’, saw -Dick Penhaligan, the landlord, and an old friend of hers.</p> - -<p>“Dick, in half-an-hour I want a jingle. I’ve got to go to -Rasselas to meet the eight train. I’ll drive myself.”</p> - -<p>“All right, Miss Katherine,” he said, looking at her with -affection. “ ’Twill be a wild night, I’m thinkin’. Workin’ -up wild.”</p> - -<p>“Twenty minutes, Dick,” she nodded to him, and was off -again. She crossed the road, opened the little wicket gate -that broke into the shrubbery, found her way on to the lawn, -and there, under the oak, was Philip, waiting for her. As -she came up to him she felt the first spurt of rain upon her -cheek. The long lighted windows of the house were watching -them; she drew under the shadow of the tree.</p> - -<p>“Phil,” she whispered, her hand on his arm, “there isn’t a -moment to lose. I’ve arranged everything. We must catch -the eight o’clock train at Rasselas. We shall be in London -by twelve. I shall go to Rachel Seddon’s. We can be married -by Special Licence to-morrow.”</p> - -<p>She had thought of it so resolutely that she did not realise -that it was new to him. He gasped, stepping back from her.</p> - -<p>“My <span class='it'>dear</span> Katie! What <span class='it'>are</span> you talking about?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, there isn’t any <span class='it'>time</span>,” she went on impatiently. “If -you don’t come I go alone. It will be the same thing in the -end. I saw it all this afternoon. Things <span class='it'>can’t</span> go on. I -understood Mother. I know what she’s determined to do. -We must escape or it will be too late. Even to-morrow it -may be. I won’t trust myself if I stay; I’m afraid even to -see Mother again, but I <span class='it'>know</span> I’m right. We have only a -quarter of an hour. That suit will do, and of course you -mustn’t have a bag or anything. There’s that cousin of yours -in the Adelphi somewhere. You can go to him. We must -be at the ‘Three Pilchards’ in a quarter of an hour, and go -separately, of course, or someone may stop us....”</p> - -<p>But he drew back. “No, no, no,” he said. “Katie, you’re -mad! Do you think I’m going to let you do a thing like -this? What do you suppose I’m made of? Why, if we were -to go off now they’d never forgive you, they’d throw you -off—”</p> - -<p>“Why, of course,” she broke in impatiently, “that’s exactly -why we’ve got to do it. You proposed it to me yourself -once, and I refused because I didn’t understand what our -staying here meant. But I do now—it’s all <span class='it'>settled</span>, I tell -you, Phil, and there’s only ten minutes. It’s the last chance. -If we miss that train we shall never escape from Mother, from -Anna, from anyone. Oh! I know it! I know it!”</p> - -<p>She scarcely realised her words; she was tugging at his -sleeve, trying to drag him with her.</p> - -<p>But he shook her off. “No, Katie, I tell you I’m not such -a cad. I know what all this means to you, the place, the -people, everything. It’s true that I asked you once to go -off, but I didn’t love you then as I do now. I was thinking -more of myself then—but now I’m ready for anything here. -You know that I am. I don’t care if only they let me stay -with you.”</p> - -<p>“But they won’t,” Katherine urged. “You know what -they’ll do. They’ll marry us, they’ll make you take a house -near at hand, and if you refuse they’ll persuade you that -you’re making me miserable. Oh! Phil! don’t you see—if -I were sure of myself I’d never run off like this, but it’s from -myself that I’m running. That’s the whole point of everything. -I can’t trust myself with Mother. She has as much -influence over me as ever she had. I felt it to-day more than -I’ve ever felt it. There she is over both of us. You know that -you’re weaker with her than I am. It isn’t that she does -anything much except sit quiet, but I love her, and it’s -through that she gets at both of us. No, Phil, we’ve got to -go—and <span class='it'>now</span>. If not now, then never. I shan’t be strong -enough to-morrow. Don’t you <span class='it'>see</span> what she can do in the -future, now that she knows about Anna....” Then, almost -in a whisper, she brought out: “Don’t you see what -<span class='it'>Anna</span> can do?”</p> - -<p>“No,” he said, “I won’t go. It’s not fair. It’s not—”</p> - -<p>“Well,” she answered him, “it doesn’t matter what you do, -whether you go or not. I shall go. And what are you to do -then?”</p> - -<p>She had vanished across the lawn, leaving him standing -there. Behind all his perplexity and a certain shame at his -inaction, a fire of exultation inflamed him, making him heedless -of the rain or the low muttering thunder far away. She -loved him! She was freeing him! His glory in her strength, -her courage, flew like a burning arrow to his heart, killing the -old man in him, striking him to the ground, that old lumbering -body giving way before a new creature to whom the whole -world was a plain of victory. He stood there trembling with -his love for her....</p> - -<p>Then he realised that, whatever he did, there was no time -to be lost. And after all what was he to do? Did he enter -and alarm the family, tell them that Katherine was flying to -London, what would he gain but her scorn? How much -would he lose to save nothing? Even as he argued with himself -some stronger power was dragging him to the house. He -was in his room; he had his coat and hat from the hall; he -saw no one; he was in the dark garden again, stepping softly -through the wicket-gate on to the high road—Then the wind -of the approaching storm met him with a scurry of rain that -slashed his face. He did not know that now, for the first moment -since his leaving Russia, Anna was less to him than -nothing. He did not know that he was leaving behind him -in that dark rain-swept garden an indignant, a defeated -ghost....</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>Meanwhile Katherine had gone, rapidly, without pause, to -her bedroom. She was conscious of nothing until she reached -it, and then she stood in the middle of the floor, struck by a -sudden, poignant agony of reproach that took, for the moment, -all life from her. Her knees were trembling, her -heart pounding in her breast, her eyes veiled by some mist -that yet allowed her to see with a fiery clarity every detail of -the room. They rose and besieged her, the chairs, the photographs, -the carpet, the bed, the wash-hand-stand, the pictures, -the window with the old, old view of the wall, the church-tower, -the crooked apple-tree clustered in a corner, the bed -of roses, the flash of the nook beyond the lawn. She covered -her eyes with her hand. Everything was still there, crying -to her “Don’t leave us! Is our old devotion nothing, our -faithful service? Are you, whom we have trusted, false like -the rest?”</p> - -<p>She swayed then; tears that would never fall burnt her -eyes. The first rain lashed her window, and from the trees -around the church some flurry of rooks rose, protesting against -the coming storm. She drove it all down with a strong hand. -She <span class='it'>would</span> not listen....</p> - -<p>Then, as she found her coat and hat, a figure rose before -her, the one figure that, just then, could most easily defeat -her. Her Mother she <span class='it'>would</span> not see, Millie, Henry, the -Aunts could not then touch her. It was her Father.</p> - -<p>They were breaking their word to him, they who were -standing now upon their honour. His laughing, friendly -spirit, that had never touched her very closely, now seemed -to cling to her more nearly than them all. He had kept outside -all their family trouble, as he had kept outside all trouble -since his birth. He had laughed at them, patted them on -the shoulder, determined that if he did not look too closely at -things they must be well, refused to see the rifts and divisions -and unhappiness. Nevertheless he must have seen -something; he had sent Henry to Cambridge, had looked at -Millie and Katherine sometimes with a gravity that was not -his old manner.</p> - -<p>Seeing him suddenly now, it was as though he knew what -she was about to do, and was appealing to her with a new -gravity: “Katie, my dear, I may have seemed not to have -cared, to have noticed nothing, but now—don’t give us up. -Wait. Things will be happier. Wait. Trust us.”</p> - -<p>She beat him down; stayed for another moment beside the -window, her hands pressed close against her eyes.</p> - -<p>Then she went to her little writing-table, and scribbled -very rapidly this note:</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:1em;'><span class='sc'>Darling Mother</span>,</p> - -<p>I have gone with Philip by the eight train to London. -We shall be married as soon as possible. I shall stay with -Rachel until then. You know that things could not go on -as they were.</p> - -<p>Will you understand, dear Mother, that if I did not -love you so deeply I would not have done this? But because -you would not let Phil go I have had to choose. If -only you will understand that I do not love you less for -this, but that it is for Phil’s sake that I do it, you will -love me as before. And you know that I will love you -always.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:3em;'>Your devoted daughter,</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:1em;'><span class='sc'>Katherine</span>.</p> - -</div> - -<p>She laid this against the looking-glass on her dressing-table, -glanced once more at the room, then went.</p> - -<p>Upon the stairs she met Henry.</p> - -<p>“Hullo!” he cried, “going out? There’s a lot of rain -coming.”</p> - -<p>“I know,” she answered quietly. “I have to see Penhaligan. -It’s important.”</p> - -<p>He looked at her little black hat; her black coat. These -were not the things that one put on for a hurried excursion -into the village.</p> - -<p>“You’ll be late for dinner,” he said.</p> - -<p>“No, I shan’t,” she answered, “I must hurry.” She -brushed past him; she had an impulse to put her arms round -his neck and kiss him, but she did not look back.</p> - -<p>She went through the hall; he turned on the stairs and -watched her, then went slowly to his room.</p> - -<p>When she came out on to the high road the wind had fallen -and the rain was coming in slow heavy drops. The sky was -all black, except that at its very heart there burnt a brilliant -star; just above the horizon there was a bar of sharp-edged -gold. When she came to the ‘Three Pilchards’ the world was -lit with a strange half-light so that, although one could see -all things distinctly, there was yet the suggestion that nothing -was what it seemed. The ‘jingle’ was there, and Philip -standing in conversation with Dick Penhaligan.</p> - -<p>“Nasty night ’twill be, Miss Katherine. Whisht sort o’ -weather. Shouldn’t like for ’ee to get properly wet. Open -jingle tu.”</p> - -<p>“That’s all right, Dick,” she answered. “We’ve got to -meet the train. I’ve been wet before now, you know.”</p> - -<p>She jumped into the trap and took the reins. Philip followed -her. If Mr. Penhaligan thought there was anything -strange in the proceeding he did not say so. He watched -them out of the yard, gave a look at the sky, then went whistling -into the house.</p> - -<p>They did not speak until they had left the village behind -them, then, as they came up to Pelynt Cross, the whole beauty -of the sweep of stormy sky burst upon them. The storm -seemed to be gathering itself together before it made its -spring, bunched up heavy and black on the horizon, whilst the -bar of gold seemed to waver and hesitate beneath the weight -of it. Above their heads the van of the storm, twisted and -furious, leaned forward, as though with avaricious fingers, -to take the whole world into its grasp.</p> - -<p>At its heart still shone that strange glittering star. Beneath -the sky the grey expanse of the moon quivered with anticipation -like a quaking bog; some high grass, bright against -the sky, gave little windy tugs, as though it would release -itself and escape before the fury beat it down. Once and -again, very far away, the rumble of the thunder rose and fell, -the heavy raindrops were still slow and measured, as though -they told the seconds left to the world before it was devastated.</p> - -<p>Up there, on the moor, Philip put his arm round Katherine. -His heart was beating with tumultuous love for her, so -that he choked and his face was on fire; his hand trembled -against her dress. This was surely the most wonderful thing -that had ever happened to him. He had seemed so utterly -lost, and, although he had known that she loved him, he had -resigned himself to the belief that her love stayed short of sacrifice. -He had said to himself that he was not enough of a -fellow for it to be otherwise. And now he did not care for -any of them! No one, he realised, had ever, in all his life, -made any great sacrifice for him—even Anna had let him go -when he made life tiresome for her.</p> - -<p>Surging up in him now was the fine vigour of reassurance -that Katherine’s love gave to him. It was during that drive -to Rasselas station that he began, for the first time, to believe -in himself. He did not speak, but held Katherine with his -arm close to him, and once, for a moment, he put his cheek -against hers.</p> - -<p>But she was not, then, thinking of Philip, she was scarcely -aware that he was with her. Her whole will and purpose -was concentrated on reaching the station in time. She -thought: “If we missed that train we’re finished. We’ll -have to come back. They’ll have found my note. Mother -won’t be angry outwardly, but she’ll hate Phil twice as much -as ever, and she’ll never loose her hold again. She’ll show -him how ashamed he should be, and she’ll show me how deeply -I’ve hurt her. We shall neither of us have the courage to -try a ‘second time’.”</p> - -<p>How was it that she saw all this so clearly? Never before -these last months had she thought of anything save what was -straight in front of her.... The world was suddenly unrolled -before her like a map of a strange country.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, although she did not know it, she was wildly -excited. Her imagination, liberated after those long years -of captivity, flamed now before her eyes. She felt the storm -behind her, and she thought that at the head of it, urging it -forward, was that figure who had pursued her, so remorselessly, -ever since that day at Rafiel when Philip had confessed -to her.</p> - -<p>Anna would keep them if she could, she would drag them -back, miserable fugitives, to face the family—and then how -she would punish Philip!</p> - -<p>“Oh, go on! Go on!” Katherine cried, whipping the pony; -they began to climb a long hill. Suddenly the thunder broke -overhead, crashing amongst the trees of a dark little wood on -their right. Then the rain came down in slanting, stinging -sheets. With that clap of thunder the storm caught them, -whirled up to them, beat them in the face, buffeted in their -eyes and ears, shot lightning across their path, and then -plunged them on into yet more impenetrable darkness. The -world was abysmal, was on fire, was rocking, was springing -with a thousand gestures to stop them on their way. Katherine -fancied that in front of her path figures rose and fell, -the very hedges riding in a circle round about her.</p> - -<p>“Oh! go on! Go on!” she whispered, swaying in her seat, -then feeling Philip’s arm about her. They rose, as though -borne on a wave of wild weather, to the top of the hill. They -had now only the straight road; they could see the station -lights. Then the thunder, as though enraged at their persistence, -broke into a shattering clatter—the soil, the hedges, -the fields, the sky crumbled into rain; a great lash of storm -whipped them in the face, and the pony, frightened by the -thunder, broke from Katherine’s hand, ran wildly through -the dark, crashed with a shuddering jar into the hedge. -Their lamps fell; the ‘jingle’, after a moment’s hesitation, -slipped over and gently dropped them on to the rain-soaked -ground.</p> - -<p>Katherine was on her feet in an instant. She saw that -by a happy miracle one of the lamps still burned. She went -to the pony, and found that, although he was trembling, he -was unhurt. Philip was trying to turn the ‘jingle’ upright -again.</p> - -<p>“Quick!” she cried. “Hang the lamp on the cart. We -must run for it—the shaft’s broken or something. There’s -no time at all if we’re to catch that train. Run! Run! Phil! -There’s sure to be someone coming in by the train who’ll see -the ‘jingle’.”</p> - -<p>They ran; they were lifted by the wind, beaten by the -rain, deafened by the thunder, and Katherine as she ran -knew that by her side was her enemy:</p> - -<p>“You shan’t go! You shan’t go! I’ve got you still!”</p> - -<p>She could hear, through the storm, some voice crying, -“Phil! Phil! Come back! Come back!”</p> - -<p>Her heart was breaking, her eyes saw flame, her knees -trembled, she stumbled, staggered, slipped. They had -reached the white gates, had passed the level crossing, were -up the station steps.</p> - -<p>“It’s in! It’s in!” gasped Philip. “Only a second!”</p> - -<p>She was aware of astonished eyes, of the stout station-master, -of someone who shouted, of a last and strangely distant -peal of thunder, of an open door, of tumbling forward, -of a whistle and a jerk, and then a slow Glebeshire voice:</p> - -<p>“Kind o’ near shave that was, Miss, I’m thinkin’.”</p> - -<p>And through it all her voice was crying exultantly: “I’ve -beaten you—you’ve done your worst, but I’ve beaten you. -He’s mine now for ever”—and her eyes were fastened on a -baffled, stormy figure left on the dark road, abandoned, and, -at last, at last, defeated....</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2 id='ch18'>CHAPTER V<br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>THE TRENCHARDS</span></h2> - -<p>Henry waited, for a moment, on the stairs. He heard -the door close behind Katherine, heard the approaching -storm invade the house, heard the cuckoo-clock in the -passage above him proclaim seven o’clock, then went slowly -up to his room. Why had Katherine gone out to see Penhaligan -in those clothes, in such weather, at such an hour?... -Very strange.... And her face too. She was excited, she -had almost kissed him.... Her eyes....</p> - -<p>He entered his familiar room, looked with disgust at his -dinner-jacket and trousers lying upon the bed (he hated dressing -for dinner), and then wandered up and down, dragging a -book from the book-case and pushing it impatiently back again, -stumbling over his evening slippers, pulling his coat off and -allowing it to fall, unregarded, on to the floor.</p> - -<p>Katherine!... Katherine?... What was ‘up’ with -Katherine?</p> - -<p>He had, in any case, been greatly upset by the events of -the day. The crisis for which he had so long been waiting -had at length arrived, and, behold, it had been no crisis at -all. Superficially it had been nothing ... in its reality it -had shaken, finally, destructively, the foundations of everything -upon which his life had been built. He remembered, -very clearly, the family’s comments upon the case of a young -man known to them all, who, engaged to a girl in Polchester, -had confessed, just before the marriage, that he had had a -mistress for several years in London, who was however now -happily married to a gentleman of means and had no further -claim on him. The engagement had been broken off, with the -approval of all the best families in Glebeshire. Henry remembered -that his mother had said that it was not only the -immorality of the young man but also his continued secrecy -concerning the affair that was so abominable, that, of course, -“young men must be young men, but you couldn’t expect a -nice girl”—and so on.</p> - -<p>He remembered all this very clearly, and he had decided -at the time that if he ever had a mistress he would take very -good care that no one knew about her. That had been a year -ago ... and now! He was bewildered, almost breathless -with a kind of dismayed terror as to what the world might -possibly be coming to. His mother! of whom at least one -thing had surely been unalterable—that she, herself, would -never change. And now she had taken this thing without -horror, without anger, almost with complacency.</p> - -<p>She had known of it for months!</p> - -<p>It was as though he had cherished a pet with the happy -conviction that it was a kitten and had suddenly discovered -it to be a cub. And out of this confusion of a wrecked and -devastated world there emerged the conviction “that there was -something more behind all this”, that “his mother had some -plan.” He did not see at all what her plan could possibly -be, but she appeared before him now as a sinister and menacing -figure, someone who had been close to him for so many -years, but whose true immensity he had never even remotely -perceived.</p> - -<p>He, Henry, had, from other points of view, risen out of -the affair with considerable good fortune. He had not, as far -as he could perceive, earned Katherine’s undying hatred; he -had not even made a fool of himself, as might naturally be -expected. It was plain enough now that Philip was to be -with them for ever and ever, and that therefore Henry must -make the best of him. Now indeed that it had come to this, -Henry was not at all sure that he might not like Philip very -much indeed. That night at the ‘Empire’ had been the -beginning of life for Henry, and the indifference of his mother -to Philip’s past and the knowledge that Katherine had long -been aware of it made him not a little ashamed of his indignation -and tempers. Nevertheless Philip <span class='it'>had</span> that effect -upon him, and would have it many times again no doubt. -For a clear and steady moment Henry, looking at himself in -his looking-glass, wondered whether he were not truly the -most terrible of asses.</p> - -<p>However, all this was of the past. It was with a sense -of advancing to meet a new world that he went down to dinner.</p> - -<p>In the drawing-room he found his mother alone. She -was wearing an evening dress of black silk, and Henry, whose -suspicion of the world made him observant, noticed that -she was wearing a brooch of old silver set with pearls. This -was a family brooch, and Henry knew that his mother wore -it only ‘on occasions’; his mother’s idea of what made an -‘occasion’ was not always that of the outside world. He wondered -what the occasion might be to-night.</p> - -<p>He had, for long, been unconsciously in the habit of dividing -his mother into two persons, the figure of domination and -power who kept the household in awe and was mysterious in -her dignity and aloof reserve, and the figure of maternal -homeliness who spoke to one about underclothes, was subject -to human agitations and pleasures; of the first he was -afraid, and would be afraid until he died. The second he -loved. His mother to-night was the first of these. She -looked, in his eyes, amazingly young. Her fair grey hair, -her broad shoulders, her straight back, these things showed -Henry’s mother to be younger than ever Henry would be. -The pearl brooch gleamed against the black silk that covered -her strong bosom; her head was carried high; her eyes feared -no man nor woman alive.</p> - -<p>Therefore Henry, as was his manner on such an occasion, -did his best to slip quietly into a chair and hide his diminished -personality in a book. This, however, was not permitted -him.</p> - -<p>“Henry,” his mother said softly, “why did you not tell me -earlier the things that you had heard about Philip?”</p> - -<p>Henry blushed so intensely that there was a thin white line -just below the roots of his hair.</p> - -<p>“I didn’t want to make Katie unhappy,” he muttered.</p> - -<p>“I should have thought your duty to your parents came -before your duty to Katherine,” his mother replied.</p> - -<p>“It wasn’t you who was going to marry Philip,” he answered, -not looking at his mother.</p> - -<p>“Nevertheless it’s possible that older heads—yes, older -heads—”</p> - -<p>“Oh! well! it’s all right,” he burst out, “I’m sick of the -thing, and you and father don’t seem to mind anything about -it—”</p> - -<p>“I haven’t told your father,” she interrupted.</p> - -<p>“Haven’t told Father?” Henry repeated.</p> - -<p>“No. Father doesn’t think of such things. If everything -goes well, as I am sure that everything will, Father will -want to know nothing further. I have every confidence in -Philip.”</p> - -<p>“Why!” Henry burst out, “I always thought you hated -Philip, Mother. I simply don’t understand.”</p> - -<p>“There are quite a number of things you don’t understand, -Henry dear,” his mother answered. “Yes, quite a number. -Philip was perhaps not at home with us at first—but I’m sure -that in time he will become quite one of the family—almost -as though he had been born a Trenchard. I have great -hopes.... Your tie is as usual, Henry, dear, above your -collar. Let me put it down for you.”</p> - -<p>Henry waited whilst his mother’s cool, solid fingers rubbed -against his neck and sent a little shiver down his spine as -though they would remind him that he was a Trenchard too -and had better not try to forget it. But the great, overwhelming -impression that now dominated him was of his -mother’s happiness. He knew very well when his mother was -happy. There was a note in her voice as sure and melodious -as the rhythm of a stream that runs, somewhere hidden, between -the rocks. He had known, on many days, that deep joy -of his mother’s—often it had been for no reason that he could -discover.</p> - -<p>To-night she was triumphant; her triumph sang through -every note of her voice.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>The others come in. George Trenchard entered, rubbing -his hands and laughing. He seemed, every week, redder in -the face and stouter all over; in physical reality he added but -little to his girth. It was the stoutness of moral self-satisfaction -and cheerful complaisance. His doctrine of pleasant -aloofness from contact with other human beings had acted so -admirably; he would like to have recommended it to everyone -had not such recommendation been too great a trouble.</p> - -<p>He was never, after this evening, to be aloof again, but -he did not know that.</p> - -<p>“Well, well,” he cried. “Punctual for once, Henry. -Very nice, indeed. Dear me, Mother, why this gaudiness? -People coming to dinner?”</p> - -<p>She looked down at her brooch.</p> - -<p>“No, dear.... No one. I just thought I’d put it on. -I haven’t worn it for quite a time. Not for a year at least.”</p> - -<p>“Very pretty, very pretty,” he cried. “Dear me, what a -day I’ve had! So busy, scarcely able to breathe!”</p> - -<p>“What have you been doing, Father?” asked Henry.</p> - -<p>“One thing and another. One thing and another,” said -George airily. “Day simply flown.”</p> - -<p>He stood there in front of the fire, his legs spread, his huge -chest flung out, his face flaming like the sun.</p> - -<p>“Yes, it’s been a very pleasant day,” said Mrs. Trenchard, -“very pleasant.”</p> - -<p>“Where’s Katie?” asked her father. “She’s generally -down before anyone.”</p> - -<p>Henry, who, in the contemplation of his mother, had forgotten, -for the moment, his sister’s strange behaviour, said:</p> - -<p>“Oh! she’ll be late, I expect. I saw her go out about -seven. Had to see Penhaligan about something important, -she told me. Went out into all that storm.”</p> - -<p>As he spoke eight o’clock struck.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard looked up.</p> - -<p>“Went out to see Penhaligan?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“Yes, Mother. She didn’t tell me why.”</p> - -<p>Aunt Betty came in. Her little body, her cheerful smile, -her air as of one who was ready to be pleased with anything, -might lead a careless observer into the error of supposing that -she was a quite ordinary old maid with a fancy for knitting, -the Church of England, and hot water with her meals. He -would be wrong in his judgment; her sharp little eyes, the -corners of her mouth betrayed a sense of humour that, although -it had never been encouraged by the family, provided -much wise penetration and knowledge. Any casual acquaintance -in half an hour’s talk would have discovered in Aunt -Betty wisdom and judgment to which her own family would, -until the day of its decent and honourable death, be entirely -blind.</p> - -<p>Just now she had lost her spectacles.</p> - -<p>“My spectacles,” she said. “Hum-hum—Very odd. I -had them just before tea. I was working over in that corner—I -never moved from there except once when—when—Oh! -there they are! No, they are not. And I played ‘Patience’ -there, too, in the same corner. Very odd.”</p> - -<p>“Perhaps, dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard, “you left them in -your bedroom.”</p> - -<p>“No, Harriet, I looked there. Hum-hum-hum. Very -odd it is, because—”</p> - -<p>Millie came in and then Aunt Aggie.</p> - -<p>“Is Father coming down to-night?” said George.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Mrs. Trenchard. “He said that he felt better. -Thought it would be nice to come down. Yes, that it would -be rather nice.... Aggie, dear, that’s your sewing, isn’t it? -You left it here this morning. Rocket put it between the -pages of my novel to mark the place. I knew it was yours—”</p> - -<p>“Yes, it’s mine,” said Aunt Aggie, shortly.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile Henry, looking at the door, waited for Katherine. -A strange premonition was growing in him that all -was not well. Katherine and Philip, they had not appeared—Katherine -and Philip.... As he thought of it, it occurred -to him that he had not heard Philip moving as he -dressed. Philip’s room was next to Henry’s, and the division -was thin; you could always hear coughs, steps, the pouring of -water, the opening and shutting of drawers.</p> - -<p>There had been no sounds to-night. Henry’s heart began -to beat very fast. He listened to the wind that, now that the -storm had swung away, was creeping around the house, trying -the doors and windows, rattling something here, tugging -at something there, all the pipes gurgled and spluttered with -the waters of the storm.</p> - -<p>“Ah! there they are!” cried Aunt Betty.</p> - -<p>Henry started, thinking that she must herald the entry of -Katherine and Philip; but no, it was only the gold-rimmed -spectacles lying miraculously beneath the sofa.</p> - -<p>“Now, <span class='it'>how</span>,” cried Aunt Betty, “did they get there? Very -odd, because I remember distinctly that I never moved from -my corner.”</p> - -<p>“Well,” said George Trenchard, who, now that his back -was warmed by the fire, wanted his front warmed too, “how -much longer are we to wait for dinner? Katie and Philip. -Playing about upstairs, I suppose.”</p> - -<p>Quarter-past eight struck, and Rocket, opening the door, -announced that dinner was ready.</p> - -<p>“Suppose you just go up and see what Katie’s doing, Millie -dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard.</p> - -<p>Millie left them and ran quickly upstairs. She pushed -back Katie’s door, then, stepping inside, the darkness and silence -and a strange murmurous chill caught her, as though -someone had leapt, out of the dusk, at her throat. She knew -then instantly what had occurred. She only said once, very -softly, “Katie!” then gently closed the door behind her, as -though she did not want anyone else to see the room.</p> - -<p>She stayed there; there, beside the door, for quite a long -time. The room was very dark, but the looking-glass glimmered -like a white, flickering shadow blown by the wet wind -that came in through the open window. Something flapped -monotonously.</p> - -<p>Millie, standing quite motionless by the door, thought to -herself “Katherine and Philip! They’ve done it!... at -last, they’ve done it!” At first, because she was very young -and still believed in freedom and adventure as the things best -worth having in life, she felt nothing but a glad, triumphant -excitement; an excitement springing not only from her pleasure -in any brave movement, but also from her reassurance in -her beloved sister, her knowledge that after all Katherine <span class='it'>did</span> -believe in Love beyond every other power, was ready to venture -all for it. Her own impulse was to run after them, as -fast as she could, and declare her fidelity to them.</p> - -<p>At last she moved away from the door to the dressing-table -and lit a candle. Its soft white flame for a moment blinded -her. She had an instant of hesitation; perhaps after all she -had flown too rapidly to her desired conclusions, the two of -them were waiting now in the drawing-room for her.... -Then she saw Katherine’s note propped against the looking-glass.</p> - -<p>She took it up, saw that it was addressed to her mother, and -realised, for the first time, what this would mean to them all. -She saw then—<span class='sc'>THE OLD ONES</span>—Grandfather, Mother, Father, -Aunt Sarah, Aunt Aggie, Aunt Betty. She was sorry for them, -but she knew, as she stood there, that she did not care, really, -whether they were hurt or no. She felt her own freedom descend -upon her, there in Katie’s room, like a golden, flaming -cloud. This was the moment for which, all her life, she had -been waiting. The Old Ones had tried to keep them and tie -them down, but the day of the Old Ones was past, their -power was broken. It was the New Generation that mattered—Katherine and Philip, Millie and Henry, and all their -kind; it was <span class='it'>their</span> world and <span class='it'>their</span> dominion—</p> - -<p>She suddenly, alone there, with the note in her hand, -danced a little dance, the candle-flame flickering in the breeze -and Katherine’s white, neat bed so cold and tidy.</p> - -<p>She was not hard, she was not cruel—her own time would -come when she would cry for sympathy and would not find it, -and must set her teeth because her day was past ... now -was her day—She seized it fiercely.</p> - -<p>Very quietly she went downstairs....</p> - -<p>She opened the drawing-room door: as she entered all their -eyes met her and she knew at once, as she saw Henry’s, that -he was expecting her announcement.</p> - -<p>She looked across at her mother.</p> - -<p>“Katherine’s room’s empty,” she said. “There’s no one -there at all.” She hesitated a moment, then added: “There -was this note for you, Mother, on her dressing-table.”</p> - -<p>She went across the room and gave it to her mother. Her -mother took it; no one spoke.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard read it; for a dreadful moment she thought -that she was going to give way before them all, was going to -cry out, to scream, to rush wildly into the road to stop the -fugitives, or slap Aunt Aggie’s face. For a dreadful moment -the battle of her whole life to obtain the mastery of herself -was almost defeated—then, blindly, obeying some impulse -with which she could not reason, of which she was scarcely -conscious, some strong call from a far country, she won a -triumphant victory.</p> - -<p>“It’s from Katherine!” she said. “The child’s mad. She’s -gone up to London.”</p> - -<p>“London!” George Trenchard cried.</p> - -<p>“London!” cried Aunt Aggie.</p> - -<p>“Yes. With Philip. They have caught the eight train. -They are to be married to-morrow. ‘Because I would not -let Philip go,’ she says. But she’s mad—”</p> - -<p>For an instant she gripped the mantelpiece behind her. -She could hear them, only from a distance, as though their -voices were muffled by the roar of sea or wind, their exclamations.</p> - -<p>Her husband was, of course, useless. She despised him. -He cried:</p> - -<p>“They must be stopped! They must be stopped. This -is impossible! That fellow Mark—one might have guessed! -They must be stopped. At once! At once!”</p> - -<p>“They can’t be.” She heard her voice far away with the -others. “They can’t be stopped. The train left at eight -o’clock, nearly half an hour ago. There’s nothing to be done.”</p> - -<p>“But, of course,” cried George, “there’s <span class='it'>something</span> to be -done. They must be stopped at once. I’ll go up by the -next train.”</p> - -<p>“There’s no train until six to-morrow morning—and what -good would you do? They’re engaged. You gave your permission. -Katherine’s of age. It is her own affair.”</p> - -<p>They all cried out together. Their voices sounded to Mrs. -Trenchard like the screams of children.</p> - -<p>Through the confusion there came the sound of an opening -door. They all turned, and saw that it was old Mr. Trenchard, -assisted by Rocket.</p> - -<p>“Why don’t you come in to dinner?” he said, in his clear, -thin voice. “I went straight into the dining-room because I -was late, and here you all are, and it’s nearly half-past eight.”</p> - -<p>The same thought instantly struck them all. Grandfather -must know nothing about it; a very slight shock, they were -all aware, would <span class='it'>kill</span> Grandfather, and there could not possibly -be any shock to him like this amazing revolt of Katherine’s. -Therefore he must know nothing. Like bathers -asserting themselves after the first quiver of an icy plunge, -they fought their way to the surface.</p> - -<p>Until Grandfather was safely once more alone in his room -the situation must be suspended. After all, there was <span class='it'>nothing</span> -to be done! He, because he was feeling well that evening, -was intent upon his dinner.</p> - -<p>“What! Waiting for Katherine?” he said.</p> - -<p>“Katherine isn’t coming down to dinner, Father,” Mrs. -Trenchard said.</p> - -<p>“What, my dear?”</p> - -<p>“Katherine isn’t coming down to dinner.”</p> - -<p>“Not ill, I hope.”</p> - -<p>“No—a little tired.”</p> - -<p>George Trenchard was the only one who did not support -his part. When the old man had passed through the door, -George caught his wife’s arm.</p> - -<p>“But, I say,” he whispered, “something—”</p> - -<p>She turned for an instant, looking at him with scorn.</p> - -<p>“Nothing!” she said. “It’s too late.”</p> - -<p>They went in to dinner.</p> - -<p>It was fortunate that Grandfather was hungry; he did -not, it seems, notice Philip’s absence.</p> - -<p>“Very nice to see you down, Father,” Mrs. Trenchard -said pleasantly. “Very nice for us all.”</p> - -<p>“Thank ye, my dear. Very agreeable—very agreeable. -Quite myself this evening. That rheumatism passed away, -so I said to Rocket, ‘Well, ’pon my word, Rocket, I think -I’ll come down to-night’ Livelier for us all to be together. -Hope Katie isn’t ill, though?”</p> - -<p>“No—no—nothing at all.”</p> - -<p>“I saw her this morning. She seemed quite well.”</p> - -<p>“A little headache, Father dear. She thought she was -better by herself.”</p> - -<p>“Dear Katie—never do to have her ill. Well, George. -What’s the matter with ’ee? Looking quite hipped. Dig -your father in the ribs, Millie, my dear, and cheer him up a -bit.”</p> - -<p>So seldom was old Mr. Trenchard in his merry mood, and -so difficult of him to be in it now. So often he was consumed -with his own thoughts, his death, perhaps, the present -degradation of the world, the tyranny of aches and pains, -impatience with the monotonous unvariety of relations, past -Trenchard glories, old scenes and days and hours ... he, -thus caught up into his own life, would be blind to them all. -But to-night, pleased with his food because he was hungry, -and because his body was not paining him anywhere just -now, he was interested in them. His bright little eyes darted -all about the table.</p> - -<p>There came at last the question that they dreaded:</p> - -<p>“Why, where’s the young man? Katie’s young man?”</p> - -<p>A moment’s silence, and then Mrs. Trenchard said quietly, -and with her eyes upon the new ‘girl,’ introduced into -the house only last week and fresh to the mysteries of a dinner-table:</p> - -<p>“He’s dining with Timothy to-night, Father.”</p> - -<p>Rocket could be heard whispering to Lucy, the ‘girl’:</p> - -<p>“Potatoes first—then the sauce.”</p> - -<p>Of them all, it was George Trenchard who covered with -least success the yawning chasm, even Aunt Betty, although -her hands shook as she crumbled her bread, had not surrendered -her control.</p> - -<p>But for George this was the first blow, in all his life, to -reach his heart. Nothing really had ever touched him before. -And he could not understand it—he simply could not understand -it. It had been as sudden as an earthquake, and then, -after all, there had been nothing to be done. That was the awful -thing. There had been nothing to be done.... It was also -so mysterious. Nothing had ever been mysterious to him before. -He had been dimly aware that during these last months -all had not been well, but he had pursued his old safe plan, -namely, that if you didn’t mention things and just smiled -upon life without inviting it to approach you closely, all -would, in the end, be well.</p> - -<p>But now he could no longer hold aloof—he was in the middle -of something, as surely as though he had been plunged -into a deep tab of tossing, foaming water. Katherine ... -Katie ... dear, devoted Katie ... who had always loved -him and done as he wished; Katie, nearest of all human beings -to his heart, and nearest because he had always known -that she cared for him more than for any other human being. -And now it was obvious that that was not so, it was obvious -that she cared more for that young man, that abominable -young man.... O, damn it! damn it! <span class='it'>damn it!</span> Katherine -was gone, and for no reason, for nothing at all except -pride and impatience. Already, as he sat there, he was wondering -how soon, by any means whatever, he could establish -pleasant relations with her, and so make his life comfortable -once more. But, beyond Katherine, there was his wife. -What was he to do about Harriet? For so many years now -he had decided that the only way to deal comfortably with -Harriet was not to deal with her, and this had seemed to work -so well ... but now ... now ... he <span class='it'>must</span> deal with her. -He saw that she was in terrible distress; he knew her well -enough to be sure of that. He would have liked to have -helped and comforted her; it really distressed him to see -anyone in pain, but he discovered now, with a sharp surprise, -that she was a complete stranger, that he did not know any -more about the real Harriet Trenchard than he did about -Lucy, the maid-servant. There was approaching him that -awful moment when he would be compelled to draw close to -her ... he was truly terrified of this.</p> - -<p>It was a terrible dinner for all of them; once Lucy dropped -a knife, and they started, all of them, as though a bomb had -screamed through the ceiling. And perhaps, to the older -ones, there was nothing in it more alarming than the eyes, -the startled, absorbed and challenging eyes, of Millie and -Henry....</p> - -<p>Slowly, as the dinner progressed, old Mr. Trenchard discovered -that something was the matter. He discovered it as -surely by the nervous laughter and chatter of Aunt Betty as -by the disconcerted discomfort of his son George. His merriment -fell away from him; he loved ‘Angels on Horseback’—to-night -there were ‘Angels on Horseback’, and he ate -them with a peevish irritation. Whatever was the matter -now? He felt lost without Sarah; <span class='it'>she</span> knew when and why -things were the matter more quickly than anyone, aware of -her deafness, would consider possible. But before he was -assisted from the table he was sure that the ‘something’ was -connected with his dear Katherine.... The men did not -stay behind to-night. In the hall they were grouped together, -on the way to the drawing-room, waiting for the old man’s -slow progress.</p> - -<p>He paused suddenly beside the staircase.</p> - -<p>“George,” he said, “George, just run up and see how -Katie is. Give her my love, will ’ee?”</p> - -<p>George turned, his face white. Mrs. Trenchard said:</p> - -<p>“She’s probably asleep, Father. With her headache—it -would be a pity to wake her.”</p> - -<p>At that moment the hall door pushed slowly open, and -there, the wind eddying behind him, his ulster up over his -neck, his hair and beard wet with the rain, stood Uncle -Timothy.</p> - -<p>“Hullo!” he cried, seeing them all grouped together. But -old Mr. Trenchard called to him in a voice that trembled -now with some troubled anticipation:</p> - -<p>“Why, your dinner’s soon done? Where’s the young man?”</p> - -<p>Uncle Timothy stared at them; he looked round at them, -then, at a loss for the first time in his life, stammered: “Why, -don’t you know...?”</p> - -<p>The old man turned, his stick shaking in his hand: -“Where’s Katherine? Katie.... What’s happened to -Katie? What’s this mean?”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard looked at him, then said:</p> - -<p>“It’s all right, Father—really. It’s quite all right.”</p> - -<p>“It’s not all right.” Fright like the terror of a child alone -in the dark was in his eyes. “What have you done with her?”</p> - -<p>Her voice cold, without moving, she answered:</p> - -<p>“Katherine went up by the eight o’clock train to London -with Philip. She has gone to Rachel Seddon.”</p> - -<p>“With Philip?... What do you say? I can’t hear you.”</p> - -<p>“Yes. She is to stay with Rachel Seddon.”</p> - -<p>“But why? What have you done? Why did you tell me -lies?”</p> - -<p>“We have done nothing. We did not know that she was -going.”</p> - -<p>“You didn’t know?... then she’s left us?”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Trenchard said nothing.</p> - -<p>He cried: “I told him—what it would be—if he took -her ... Katie!”</p> - -<p>Then, his stick dropping with a rattle on to the stone floor, -he fell back. Rocket caught him.</p> - -<p>There was a movement forward, but Mrs. Trenchard, saying -swiftly, “George ... Rocket,” had swept them all outside -the figure—the figure of an old, broken, tumbled-to-pieces -man, held now by his son and Rocket, huddled, with his white, -waxen hand trailing across George Trenchard’s strong arm.</p> - -<p>Harriet Trenchard said to her brother:</p> - -<p>“You knew!” then turned up the stairs.</p> - -<p>In the drawing-room Aunt Aggie, Aunt Betty, Millie and -Henry faced Uncle Timothy.</p> - -<p>“Well!” said Aunt Aggie, “so you know all about it.... -You’ve killed Father!” she ended with a grim, malignant -triumph.</p> - -<p>He answered fiercely: “Yes, I knew. That’s why I -came. She said that she would send up a note from the village. -I thought that you wouldn’t have heard it yet. I -came up to explain.”</p> - -<p>They all burst upon him then with questions:</p> - -<p>“What?” “Did you see her?” “What did she say?” -“Where was she?”</p> - -<p>“Of course I saw her. She came to me before she went -off.”</p> - -<p>“She came and you didn’t stop her!” This from Aunt -Aggie. He turned then and addressed himself solely to her.</p> - -<p>“No. I didn’t stop her. I gave her my blessing.”</p> - -<p>Aunt Aggie would have spoken, but he went on: “Yes, -and it’s you—you and Harriet and the others—who are -responsible. I warned Harriet months ago, but she wouldn’t -listen. What did you expect? Do you think the world’s -always going on made for you and you alone? The more -life’s behind you the more important you think you are, -whereas it doesn’t matter a damn to anybody what you’ve -done compared with what others are going to do. You -thought you could tie Katherine and Philip down, take away -their freedom? Well, you couldn’t, that’s all.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” cried Aunt Aggie, who was shaking with anger, -“it’s such doctrines as yours, Timothy, that lead to Katherine -and others doing the dreadful things they do. It’s all freedom -now and such words, and young men like Mr. Mark, who -don’t fear God and have no morals and make reprobates of -themselves and all around them, can do what they please, I -suppose. You talk about common-sense, but what about -God? What about the Commandments and duty to your -parents? They may think what they like abroad, but, -Heaven be praised, there are some of us still in England who -know our duty.”</p> - -<p>He had recovered his control before she ended her speech. -He smiled at her.</p> - -<p>“The time will come,” he answered, “and I daresay it isn’t -so distant as you think, when you and you fellow-patriots, -Aggie, will learn that England isn’t all alone, on her fine -moral pedestal, any longer. There won’t be any pedestal, -and you and your friends will have to wake up and realise -that the world’s pushed a bit closer together now-a-days, that -you’ve got to use your eyes a bit, or you’ll get jostled out of -existence. The world’s going to be for the young and the -independent and the unprejudiced, not the old and narrow-minded.</p> - -<p>“Philip Mark’s woken you all up, and thank God he has!”</p> - -<p>“Heaven forgive you,” Aunt Aggie answered, “for taking -His name. You’ve got terrible things to answer to Him for, -Timothy, when the time comes.”</p> - -<p>“I’m not afraid, Aggie,” he said.</p> - -<p>But it was Millie who spoke the final word.</p> - -<p>“Oh, <span class='it'>what</span> are you all talking about!” she broke in. “What -does it matter <span class='it'>who’s</span> good or bad or right or wrong. It’s -Katie’s <span class='it'>happiness</span> that matters, nothing else. Of <span class='it'>course</span>, -she’s gone. She ought to have gone months ago. You all -wanted to make her and Phil live <span class='it'>your</span> life just as you wished -it, and Phil, because he loved Katie so much, was ready to, -but <span class='it'>why</span> should they? You say you all loved her, but I -think it was just selfishness. I’ve been as bad as the rest -of you. I’ve been thinking of myself more than Katie, but -at heart now I’m glad, and I hope they’ll be happy, happy for -ever.”</p> - -<p>“And your Mother?” said Aunt Aggie. “Did Katherine -owe her nothing?”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” answered Millie, stoutly, “but she didn’t owe her -all her life. Mother’s still got her if she wants her. Katie -will never change—she isn’t that kind. It’s mother’s pride -that’s hurt, not her love.”</p> - -<p>Aunt Betty, who had been quite silent, said:</p> - -<p>“I do indeed hope that she will be very happy ... but -life will never be the same again. We mustn’t be selfish, of -course, but we shall miss her—terribly.”</p> - -<p>At a later hour George Trenchard, in pyjamas and a dressing -gown, knocked on his wife’s door. She opened it, and -he found her fully clothed; she had, it seemed to him, been -reading.</p> - -<p>He looked at her; he felt very wretched and uncomfortable.</p> - -<p>“Father’s asleep,” he said.</p> - -<p>“I’m glad of that,” she answered.</p> - -<p>“I think he’ll be none the worse in the morning.”</p> - -<p>“I hope not. Dr. Pierson seemed reassured.”</p> - -<p>There was a pause; in spite of his bedroom slippers, his -feet were cold.</p> - -<p>“Harriet.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, George.”</p> - -<p>“I only wanted to say—well, I don’t know—only that—I’m -sorry if this—this business of Katherine’s—has been a -great blow to you.”</p> - -<p>Her mind returned to that day, now so long ago, when, -after her visit to the Stores, she had gone to his study. Their -position now was reversed. But she was tired; she did not -care. George did not exist for her.</p> - -<p>“It has surprised me, of course,” she answered, in her -even, level voice. “I thought Katherine cared more for us -all than she has shown that she does. I certainly thought so. -Perhaps my pride is hurt.”</p> - -<p>By making this statement—not especially to George, but -to the world in general—she could say to herself: “You see -how honest you are. You are hiding nothing.”</p> - -<p>He meanwhile hated his position, but was driven on by a -vague sense that she needed comfort, and that he ought to -give it her.</p> - -<p>“See here, Harriet,” he said, awkwardly, “perhaps it needn’t -be so bad. Nothing very terrible’s happened, I mean. After -all, they were going to marry anyway. They’ve only done it -a bit sooner. They might have told us, it’s true—they ought -to have told us—but, after all, young people will be young -people, won’t they? We can’t be very angry with them. -And young Mark isn’t quite an Englishman, you know. Been -abroad so long.”</p> - -<p>As he spoke he dwindled and dwindled before her until his -huge, healthy body seemed like a little speck, a fly, crawling -upon the distant wall.</p> - -<p>“Nothing very terrible’s happened” ... “<span class='it'>Nothing very -terrible’s happened</span>” ... “<span class='sc'>NOTHING VERY TERRIBLE’S HAPPENED.</span>”</p> - -<p>George, who, during these many years had been very little -in her life, disappeared, as he made that speech, utterly and -entirely out of it. He was never to figure in it again, but -he did not know that.</p> - -<p>He suddenly sat down beside her on the old sofa and put -his arm round her. She did not move.</p> - -<p>They sat there in utter silence. At last desperately, as -though he were committing the crime of his life, he kissed -her. She patted his hand.</p> - -<p>“You look tired,” he said, feeling an immense relief, now -that he had done his duty. “You go to bed.”</p> - -<p>“Good night, George dear,” she said.</p> - -<p>He raised his big body from the sofa, smiled at her and -padded away....</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>When he had gone and she was alone, for a terrible time -she fought her defeat. She knew now quite clearly that her -ruling passion during all these months had not been, as she -had supposed, her love of Katherine, but her hatred of Philip.</p> - -<p>From the first moment of seeing him she had known him -for her enemy. He had been, although at the time she had -not realised it, the very figure whose appearance, all her life, -she had dreaded; that figure, from outside, of whose coming -Timothy had long ago prophesied. How she had hated him! -From the very first she had made her plans, influencing the -others against him, watching how she might herself most securely -influence him against himself, breaking in his will, -using Katherine against him; finally, when Seymour had told -her the scandal, how she had treasured it up for the moment -when he, because of his love for Katherine, should be completely -delivered over to her!</p> - -<p>And the moment had come. She had had her triumph! -She had seen his despair in his eyes! She had got him, she -thought, securely for ever and ever.</p> - -<p>Then how she had known what she would do in the future, -the slave that she would make of him, the ways that she would -trouble him with Katherine, with that Russian woman, with -Aggie, with all of them!</p> - -<p>Ah! it had been so perfect! and—at the very moment of -her triumph—he had escaped!</p> - -<p>That love for Katherine that had been a true motive in -her earlier life, a true motive even until six months ago, was -now converted into a cold, implacable resentment, because it -was Katherine who had opened the door of Philip’s cage. -Strange the complexities of the human heart! That very -day, as she won her triumph she had loved her daughter. -She had thought: “Now that I have beaten him I can take -you back to my heart. We can be, my dear, as we used -to be”—but now, had Katherine entered the room, she would -have been spurned, dismissed for ever.</p> - -<p>In the lust of love there is embedded, as the pearl is embedded -in its shell, a lust of hate. Very closely they are -pressed together. Mrs. Trenchard was beaten—beaten by -her daughter, by a new generation, by a new world, by a new -age—beaten in the very moment of her victory.</p> - -<p>She would never forgive.</p> - -<p>What was left to her?</p> - -<p>Her heart was suddenly empty of love, of hatred, of triumph, -of defeat. She was tired and lonely. Somewhere, -dimly, from the passage, the cuckoo-clock proclaimed the -hour.</p> - -<p>The house! That at least was left to her. These rooms, -these roofs, the garden, the village, the fields, the hedges the -roads to the sea. The Place had not deceived her, had not -shared in the victory over her; it had, rather, shared in her -defeat.</p> - -<p>It seemed, as she stood there, to come up to her, to welcome -her, to console her.</p> - -<p>She put a shawl over her shoulders, went softly through -the dark passages, down into the drawing-room.</p> - -<p>There, feeling her way, she found candles and lit them. -She went to her cabinet, opened drawers, produced papers, -plans, rows of figures. Here was a plan of a new barn -behind the house, here the addition of a conservatory to the -drawing-room. Before her was a map of South Glebeshire, -with the roads, the fields, the farms. She began to work, -adding figures, following the plans, writing....</p> - -<p>The light of the summer morning found her working there -in the thin candle-light.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2 id='ch19'>CHAPTER VI<br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>THE CEREMONY</span></h2> - -<p>At about half-past four upon the afternoon of November -8th, 1903, the drawing-room of No. 5 Rundle -Square Westminster, was empty. November 8th was, of -course, Grandfather Trenchard’s birthday; a year ago on that -day Philip Mark had made his first entrance into the Trenchard -fastnesses. This Eighth of November, 1903, did not, -in the manner of weather, repeat the Eighth of November, -1902. There had been, a year ago, the thickest of fogs, now -there was a clear, mildly blue November evening, with the -lamps like faint blurs of light against a sky in which tiny -stars sparkled on a background that was almost white. It -was cold enough to be jolly, and there was a thin wafer-like -frost over the pools and gutters.</p> - -<p>A large fire roared in the fireplace; the room seemed -strangely altered since that day when Henry had read his -novel and thought of his forests. In what lay the alteration? -The old green carpet was still there; in front of the fireplace -was a deep red Turkey rug—but it was not the rug that -changed the room. The deep glass-fronted book-cases were -still there, with the chilly and stately classics inside them; -on the round table there were two novels with gaudy red and -blue covers. One novel was entitled “The Lovely Mrs. Tempest”, -the other “The Mystery of Dovecote Mill”—but it -was not the novels that changed the room. The portraits -of deceased Trenchards, weighted with heavy gold, still hung -upon the walls; there was also, near the fireplace, a gay water-colour -of some place on the Riviera, with a bright parasol -in the foreground and the bluest of all blue seas in the background—but -it was not the water-colour that changed the -room.</p> - -<p>No, the change lay here—the Mirror was gone.</p> - -<p>After Henry had broken it, there was much discussion -as to whether it should be mended. Of course it would be -mended—but when?—Well, soon. Meanwhile it had better -be out of the way somewhere ... it had remained out of -the way. Until it should be restored, Sir George Trenchard, -K.C.B., 1834-1896, a stout gentleman with side whiskers, -hung in its place.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile it would never be restored. People would forget -it; people wanted to forget it ... the Mirror’s day was -over.</p> - -<p>It was, of course, impossible for Sir George Trenchard to -reflect the room in his countenance or in his splendid suit of -clothes, and the result of this was that the old room that had -gathered itself so comfortably, with its faded and mossy -green, into the shining embrace of the Mirror, had now nowhere -for its repose; it seemed now an ordinary room, and -the spots of colour—the Turkey rug, the novels, the water-colour, -broke up the walls and the carpet, flung light here -and light there, shattered that earlier composed remoteness, -proclaimed the room a comfortable place that had lost its -tradition.</p> - -<p>The Room was broken up—the Mirror was in the cellar.</p> - -<p>Henry came in. He had had permission to abandon—for -one night—his labours at Cambridge to assist in the celebration -of his grandfather’s birthday, the last, perhaps, that -there would be, because the old man now was very broken -and ill. He had never recovered from the blow of Katherine’s -desertion.</p> - -<p>The first thing that Henry had done on his arrival in London -had been to pay a visit to Mrs. Philip Mark. Katherine -and Philip lived in a little flat in Knightsbridge—Park -Place—and a delightful little flat it was. This was not the -first visit that Henry had paid there; George Trenchard, -Millie, Aunt Betty had also been there—there had been several -merry tea-parties.</p> - -<p>The marriage had been a great success; the only thing -that marred it for Katherine was her division from her -mother. Mrs. Trenchard was relentless. She would not -see Katherine, she would not read her letters, she would not -allow her name to be mentioned in her presence. Secretly, -one by one, the others had crept off to the Knightsbridge -flat.... They gave no sign of their desertion. Did she -know? She also gave no sign.</p> - -<p>But Katherine would not abandon hope. The time must -come when her mother needed her. She did not ask questions -of the others, but she saw her mother lonely, aged, miserable; -she saw this from no conceit of herself, but simply -because she knew that she had, for so many years, been the -centre of her mother’s life. Her heart ached; she lay awake, -crying, at night, and Philip would strive to console her but -could not. Nevertheless, through all her tears, she did not -regret what she had done. She would do it again did the -problem again arise. Philip was a new man, strong, happy, -reliant, wise ... she had laid the ghosts for him. He was -hers, as though he had been her child.</p> - -<p>Henry, upon this afternoon, was clearly under the influence -of great excitement. He entered the drawing-room as -though he were eager to deliver important news, and then, -seeing that no one was there, he uttered a little exclamation -and flung himself into a chair. Anyone might see that a -few weeks of Cambridge life had worked a very happy change -in Henry; much of his crudity was gone. One need not -now be afraid of what he would do next, and because he was -himself aware of this development much of his awkwardness -had left him.</p> - -<p>His clothes were neat; his hair was brushed. He might -still yield at any moment to his old impetuosities, his despairs -and his unjustified triumphs, but there would now be some -further purpose beyond them; he would know now that there -were more important things in life than his moods.</p> - -<p>He looked at the place where the Mirror had been and -blushed; then he frowned. Yes, he had lost his temper badly -that day, but Philip had had such an abominable way of -showing him how young he was, how little of life he knew. -All the same, Philip wasn’t a bad sort,—and he <span class='it'>did</span> love -Katie—‘like anything!’</p> - -<p>Henry himself thrilled with the consciousness of the things -that he intended to do in life. He had attended a debate -at the Cambridge Union, and himself, driven by what desperate -impulse he did not know, had spoken a few words. -From that moment he had realised what life held in store -for him. He had discovered other eager spirits; they met -at night and drank cocoa together. They intended nothing -less than the redemption of the world; their Utopian City -shone upon no distant hill. They called themselves the -Crusaders, and some time before the end of the term the -first number of a periodical written by them was to startle -the world. Henry was the Editor. His first Editorial was -entitled: “Freedom: What it is”.</p> - -<p>And only a year ago he had sat in this very room reading -that novel and wondering whether life would ever open before -him. It had opened—it was opening before them all. -He did not know that it had been opening thus for many thousands -of years. He knew nothing of the past; he knew nothing -of the future; but he saw his City rising, so pure and of -marvellous promise, before his eyes....</p> - -<p>As he looked back over the past year and surveyed the family, -it was to him as though an earthquake had blown them -all sky-high. A year ago they had been united, as though -no power could ever divide them. Well, the division had -come. There was now not one member of the family who -had not his, or her, secret ambitions and desires. Aunt -Aggie intended to live in a little flat by herself. She found -“the younger ones impossible.” George Trenchard bought -land at Garth. Mrs. Trenchard intended to pull down some -of the Garth house and build a new wing.</p> - -<p>She was immersed all day in plans and maps and figures; -even her father-in-law’s illness had not interfered with her -determination.</p> - -<p>Millie had made friends with a number of independent -London ladies, who thought Women’s Suffrage far beyond -either cleanliness or Godliness. She talked to Henry about -her companions, who hoped for a new City in no very distant -future, very much as Henry’s friends at Cambridge did. -Only, the two Cities were very different. Even Katherine -and Philip were concerned in some Society for teaching poor -women how to manage their children, and Philip was also -interested in a new Art, in which young painters produced -medical charts showing the internal arrangements of the -stomach, and called them “Spring on the Heath” or “Rome—Midday.”</p> - -<p>And through all the middle-class families in England these -things were occurring. “Something is coming....” -“Something is coming....” “Look out....” “Look -out....”</p> - -<p>This was in 1903. Henry, Millie, Katherine had still -eleven years to wait for their revolution, but in at least one -corner of happy England the work of preparation had been -begun.</p> - -<p>The door opened, and Henry’s reveries were interrupted -by the entrance of Millie. He started, and then jumped up -on seeing her; for a moment, under the power of his thoughts, -he had forgotten his news; now he stammered with the importance -of it.</p> - -<p>“Millie!” he cried.</p> - -<p>“Hullo, Henry,” she said, smiling. “We expected you -hours ago.”</p> - -<p>He dropped his voice. “I’ve been round to see Katie. -Look here, Millie, it’s most important. She’s coming here -to see Mother.”</p> - -<p>Millie glanced behind. They carried on then the rest of -their conversation in whispers.</p> - -<p>“To see Mother?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. She can’t bear waiting any longer. She felt that -she <span class='it'>must</span> be here on Grandfather’s birthday.”</p> - -<p>“But—but—”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I know. But she thinks that if she sees Mother -alone and she can show her that nothing’s changed—”</p> - -<p>“But <span class='it'>everything’s</span> changed. She doesn’t <span class='it'>know</span> how different -Mother is.”</p> - -<p>“No, but she thinks if they both <span class='it'>see</span> one another—at any -rate she’s going to try.”</p> - -<p>“Now?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. In a few minutes. I’ll go up and just tell Mother -that there’s a caller in the drawing-room. Then leave them -alone together—”</p> - -<p>Millie sighed. “It would be too lovely for anything if it -really happened. But it won’t—it can’t. Mother’s extraordinary. -I don’t believe she ever loved Katie at all, at least -only as an idea. She’ll <span class='it'>never</span> forgive her—<span class='it'>never</span>—and she’ll -always hate Philip.”</p> - -<p>“How’s Grandfather?”</p> - -<p>“Very bad. He says he <span class='it'>will</span> come down to-night, although -it’ll probably kill him. However, now they’ve arranged that -his presents shall be in the little drawing-room upstairs. -Then he won’t have so far to go. He’s awfully bad, really, -and he’s as hard about Katie as Mother is. He won’t have -her name mentioned. It’s simply, <span class='it'>I</span> believe, that it’s terrible -to him to think that she could love Philip better than him!”</p> - -<p>“And how’s everyone else?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, well, it’s all right, I suppose. But it isn’t very nice. -I’m going off to live with Miss Emberley as soon as they’ll -let me. Aunt Aggie’s been <span class='it'>awful</span>. And then one day she -went suddenly to see Katie, and Mother found out somehow. -Mother never said anything, but Aunt Aggie’s going to take -a flat by herself somewhere. And since that she’s been nicer -than I’ve ever known her. Quite soft and good-tempered.”</p> - -<p>“Does Mother know that we all go to see Katie?”</p> - -<p>“Sometimes I think she does—sometimes that she doesn’t. -She never says a word. She seems to think of nothing but -improving the place now. She must be very lonely, but she -doesn’t show anyone anything. All the same it’s impossible -without Katie—I—”</p> - -<p>At that moment the bell of the hall-door rang. They stood -silently there listening.</p> - -<p>For a moment they stared at one another, like conspirators -caught in the act of their conspiracy. The colour flooded -their cheeks; their hearts beat furiously. Here and now was -Drama.</p> - -<p>They heard Rocket’s footstep, the opening door, Katherine’s -voice. They fled from the room before they could be -seen.</p> - -<p>Katherine, when she stood alone in the room in whose life -and intimacy she had shared for so many years, stared about -her as though she had been a stranger. There was a change; -in the first place there was now her own room, made for her -and for Philip, that absorbed her mind; in comparison with -it this room, that had always appeared to her comfortable, consoling, -protective, was now old-fashioned and a little shabby. -There were too many things scattered about, old things, -neither beautiful nor useful. Then the place itself did not -seem to care for her as it had once done. She was a visitor -now, and the house knew it. Their mutual intimacy had -ceased.</p> - -<p>But she could not waste many thoughts upon the room. -This approaching interview with her mother seemed to her -the supreme moment of her life. There had been other supreme -moments during the past year, and she did not realise -that she was now better able to deal with them than she had -once been. Nevertheless her mother <span class='it'>must</span> forgive her. She -would not leave the house until she had been forgiven. She -was hopeful. The success of her marriage had given her -much self-confidence. The way that the family had, one -after another, come to see her (yes, even Aunt Aggie) had immensely -reassured her. Her mother was proud; she needed -that submission should be made to her.</p> - -<p>Katherine was here to make it. Her heart beat thickly -with love and the anticipated reconciliation.</p> - -<p>She went, as she had done so many, many times, to the -Mirror over the fireplace to tidy herself. Why! the Mirror -was not there! Of course not—that was why the room -seemed so changed. She looked around her, smiled a little. -A fine girl, anyone seeing her there would have thought her. -Marriage had given her an assurance, a self-reliance. She -had shrunk back before because she had been afraid of what -life would be. Now, when it seemed to her that she had -penetrated into the very darkest fastnesses of its secrets, when -she felt that nothing in the future could surprise her ever -again, she shrank back no longer.</p> - -<p>Her clothes were better than in the old days, but even now -they did not fit her very perfectly. She was still, in her -heart, exactly the same rather grave, rather slow, very loving -Katherine. She would be stout in later years; there were -already little dimples in her cheeks. Her eyes were soft and -mild, as they had ever been.</p> - -<p>The door opened, and Mrs. Trenchard entered.</p> - -<p>She had expected some caller, and she came forward a few -steps with the smile of the hostess upon her lips. Then she -saw her daughter, and stopped.</p> - -<p>Katherine had risen, and stood facing her mother. With -a swift consternation, as though someone had shouted some -terrifying news into her ear, she realised that her mother -was a stranger to her. She had imagined many, many times -what this interview would be. She had often considered the -things that she would say and the very words in which she -would arrange her sentences. But always in her thoughts -she had had a certain picture of her mother before her. She -had seen an old woman, old as she had been on that night -when she had slept in Katherine’s arms, old as she had been -at that moment when Katherine had first told her of her engagement -to Philip. And now she thought this old woman -would face her, maintaining her pride but nevertheless ready, -after the separation of these weeks, to break down before the -vision of Katherine’s own submission.</p> - -<p>Katherine had always thought: “Dear Mother. We <span class='it'>must</span> -have one another. She’ll feel that now. She’ll see that I’m -exactly the same....”</p> - -<p>How different from her dreams was this figure. Her -mother seemed to-day younger than Katherine had ever -known her. She stood there, tall, stern, straight, the solidity -of her body impenetrable, inaccessible to all tenderness, -scornful of all embraces. She was young, yes, and stronger.</p> - -<p>At the first sight of Katherine she had moved back as -though she would leave the room. Then she stayed by the -door. She was perfectly composed.</p> - -<p>“Why have you come?” she said.</p> - -<p>At the cold indifference of that voice Katherine felt a little -pulse of anger beat, far away, in the very heart of her tenderness.</p> - -<p>She moved forward with a little gesture.</p> - -<p>“Mother, I had to come. It’s Grandfather’s birthday. I -couldn’t believe that after all these weeks you wouldn’t be -willing to see me.”</p> - -<p>She stopped. Her mother said nothing.</p> - -<p>Katherine came nearer. “I’m sorry—terribly sorry—if I -did what hurt you. I felt at the time that it was the only -thing to do. Phil was so miserable, and I know that it was -all for my sake. It wasn’t fair to let him go on like that -when I could prevent it. You didn’t understand him. He -didn’t understand you. But never, for a single instant, did -my love for you change. It never has. It never will. -Mother dear, you believe that—you <span class='it'>must</span> believe that.”</p> - -<p>Did Mrs. Trenchard have then for a moment a vision of -the things that she might still do with life? With her eyes, -during these weeks, she had seen not Katherine but her own -determination to vindicate her stability, the stability of all -her standards, against every attack. They said that the -world was changing. She at least could show them that she -would not change. Even though, in her own house, that revolution -had occurred about which she had been warned, she -would show them that she remained, through it all, stable, -unconquered.</p> - -<p>Katherine had gone over to the enemy. Well, she would -fasten her life to some other anchor then. It should be as -though Katherine and Katherine’s love had never existed. -There was offered her now her last chance. One word and -she would be part of the new world. One word....</p> - -<p>She may for an instant have had her vision. The moment -passed. She saw only her own determined invincibility.</p> - -<p>“You had your choice, Katherine,” she said. “You made -it. You broke your word to us. You left us without justification. -You have killed your Grandfather. You have -shown that our love and care for you during all these years -has gone for nothing at all.”</p> - -<p>Katherine flushed. “I have not shown that—I....” -She looked as though she would cry. Her lips trembled. -She struggled to compose her voice—then at last went on -firmly:</p> - -<p>“Mother—perhaps I was wrong. I didn’t know what I -did. It wasn’t for myself—it was for Philip. It isn’t true -that I didn’t think of you all. Mother, let me see Grandfather—only -for a moment. He will forgive me. I know—I -know.”</p> - -<p>“He has forbidden us to mention your name to him.”</p> - -<p>“But if he sees me—”</p> - -<p>“He is resolved never to see you again.”</p> - -<p>“But what did I do? If I speak to him, if I kiss him—I -must go to him. It’s his birthday. I’ve got a present—”</p> - -<p>“He is too ill to see you.” This perhaps had moved her, -because she went on swiftly: “Katherine, what is the use of -this? It hurts both of us. It can do no good. You acted -as you thought right. It seemed to show me that you had -no care for me after all these years. It shook all my confidence. -That can never be between us again, and I could -not, I think, in any way follow your new life. I could never -forget, and you have now friends and interests that must -exclude me. If we meet what can we have now in common? -If I had loved you less, perhaps it would be possible, but as it -is—no.”</p> - -<p>Katherine had dried her tears.</p> - -<p>They looked at one another. Katherine bowed her head. -She had still to bite her lips that she might not cry, but she -looked very proud.</p> - -<p>“Perhaps,” she said, very softly, “that one day you will -want—you will feel—At least I shall not change. I will -come whenever you want me. I will always care the same. -One day I will come back, Mother dear.”</p> - -<p>Her mother said only:</p> - -<p>“It is better that we should not meet.”</p> - -<p>Katherine walked to the door. As she passed her mother -she looked at her. Her eyes made one last prayer—then -they were veiled.</p> - -<p>She left the house.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p>A quarter of an hour later Henry came into the room, and -found his Mother seated at her desk, plans and papers in -front of her. He could hear her saying to herself:</p> - -<p>“Fifteen—by fourteen.... The rockery <span class='it'>there</span>—Five -steps, then the door.... Fifteen pounds four shillings and -sixpence....”</p> - -<p>Katherine was not there. He knew that she had been rejected. -His mother showed no signs of discomposure. -Their interview must have been very short.</p> - -<p>He went to the window and stood there, looking out. In -a moment Rocket would come and draw the blinds. Rundle -Square swam in the last golden light.</p> - -<p>Tiny flakes of colour spun across the pale blue that was -almost white. They seemed to whirl before Henry’s eyes.</p> - -<p>He was sorry, terribly sorry, that Katherine had failed, -but he was filled to-day with a triumphant sense of the glory -and promise of life. He had been liberated, and Katherine -had been liberated. Freedom, with its assurances for all -the world, flamed across the darkening skies. Life seemed -endless: its beckoning drama called to him. The anticipation -of the glory of life caught him by the throat so that he -could scarcely breathe....</p> - -<p>At that moment in the upstairs room old Mr. Trenchard, -suddenly struggling for breath, tried to call out, failed, fell -back, on to his pillow, dead.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:4em;font-size:small;'>THE END</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:2em;'><span class='ul'><span class='it'>Books by</span> HUGH WALPOLE</span></p> - -<div class='literal-container' style=''><div class='literal'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'><span class='it'>NOVELS</span></p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>THE WOODEN HORSE</p> -<p class='line'>THE GODS AND MR. PERRIN</p> -<p class='line'>THE DARK FOREST</p> -<p class='line'>THE SECRET CITY</p> -<p class='line'>THE CATHEDRAL</p> -</div></div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<div class='literal-container' style=''><div class='literal'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'><span class='it'>The London Novels</span></p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>FORTITUDE</p> -<p class='line'>THE DUCHESS OF WREXE</p> -<p class='line'>THE GREEK MIRROR</p> -<p class='line'>THE CAPTIVES</p> -<p class='line'>THE YOUNG ENCHANTED</p> -</div></div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<div class='literal-container' style=''><div class='literal'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'><span class='it'>Phantasies</span></p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>MARADICK AT FORTY</p> -<p class='line'>THE PRELUDE TO ADVENTURE</p> -</div></div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<div class='literal-container' style=''><div class='literal'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'><span class='it'>BOOKS ABOUT CHILDREN</span></p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>THE GOLDEN SCARECROW</p> -<p class='line'>JEREMY</p> -<p class='line'>JEREMY AND HAMLET</p> -</div></div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<div class='literal-container' style=''><div class='literal'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'><span class='it'>BELLES-LETTRES</span></p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>JOSEPH CONRAD: A CRITICAL STUDY</p> -</div></div> <!-- end rend --> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Green Mirror, by Hugh Walpole - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREEN MIRROR *** - -***** This file should be named 60327-h.htm or 60327-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/3/2/60327/ - -Produced by David Jones, Al Haines, Mary Meehan & the -online Project Gutenberg team at -http://www.pgdpcanada.net - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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