CHAPTER I

[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.