MRS. TRENCHARD
Millie, like many of the Trenchard ladies before her, kept a diary. She
had kept it now for three years, and it had not during that time, like
the diaries of other young ladies, died many deaths and suffered many
resurrections, but had continued with the utmost regularity and
discipline. This regularity finds its explanation in the fact that
Millie really was interested in other people as well as in herself, was
sometimes surprised at her cleverness and in turn suspicious of it—in
fact, she knew as much about the world as most girls of eighteen who
have been “finished” in Paris: she thought that she knew more than she
did, and was perfectly determined to know a great deal more than she
thought she knew.
These were some entries:
_Dec. 6th._ Tried on the new white silk, but it won’t do even now—too
tight and makes me skimpy—Refused to let mother come with me this time.
Took Aunt Betty instead, and we saw a _peach_ of a hat at Reneé’s which
I’d give my eyes for, only of course I haven’t got the money now with
Christmas coming and everything. Aunt Betty said it was much better
wanting things you can’t have, because then you go on being excited, but
that’s of course _absurd_ and just like Aunt Betty.
Bought Aunt Aggie a calendar-blotter thing for Christmas which she won’t
like (blue leather with silver corners) but I _can’t_ help it. I’m sick
of thinking what to get her, and she won’t be contented whatever it is.
Meanwhile, in the afternoon: the sensation of a lifetime—All sitting in
the drawing-room, waiting for tea. When in bursts Henry with the wild
news that Katie’s engaged herself to Philip Mark. We all turned
blue—I’d like to have been someone outside and seen us. No one had
really suspected it. _I_ hadn’t myself—although one might have, I
suppose, if one had watched more closely. It’s very exciting, and if
Katie’s happy I don’t care about anything else. At least I do. It was so
lovely coming back from Paris and having her all to oneself. We
understand one another so _much better_ than any of the others do. I’m
the only one in the family who really knows her. I never thought of her
as being married, which was silly, I suppose. It’s funny to think of her
liking a man, whom she’s only just seen, better than all of us. It
wouldn’t be funny with most people, but Katherine’s so _quiet_ and so
_steady_. It all depends on what _he’s_ like. Finished ‘La Faute de
l’abbé Mouret’. _Loved_ it. Downstairs I’m reading ‘Sesame and
Lilies’—well-written but awfully silly.
_Dec. 9th._ Dreary day buying presents with mother at the Stores. _Why_
she will go there I can’t think, and she takes it like a week on the
Riviera or a box at the opera. She says nothing about Philip—not a
word. He dined last night, and was most tactful. I never saw anyone so
determined to make us all devoted to him, but he’s got a difficult
business with Aunt Aggie and mother. I _like_ him, and have a kind of
idea that I understand him better than any of the others do. He’s
certainly not the God that Katherine thinks him—and he knows he isn’t.
He’s a little uncomfortable about it, I think. He’s certainly very much
in love with her. Letter from Louise Pougé—She’s engaged—to no one
very particular. She’s younger than I am—_and_ prettier—lots.
Spoke to Henry about clean handkerchiefs. He’s really incredible at his
age. Philip seems to influence him though. That may do something.
_Dec. 13th._ Dismal day. Out of sorts and cross. Dreadfully restless. I
don’t know why. It’s all wrong this Christmas, not being down at Garth
and Katherine so occupied. On days like these I have terrible scruples
about myself. I suppose I _am_ terribly conceited really—and yet I
don’t know. There are plenty of people I admire ever so much more than
myself. I suppose it’s seeing Katherine so happy that makes me restless.
It must be nice to have anyone as devoted as that to you.... I’ve always
been very cynical about being in love, but when one watches it, quite
close, with anyone as good as Katherine ... anyway it’s been a beastly
day, and Aunt Aggie went on like an old crow at dinner. I wish I knew
what mother was feeling about it all—she’s so quiet.
_Dec. 17th._ Had a long talk with Philip this evening. I must say I
liked him—he was so modest about himself. He said that he wished he
were a little more as Katherine thinks he is, and that he’s going to try
to be. I said that’s all right so long as he made Katherine happy and
didn’t take her right away from us all. He said that he would do
anything to make mother like him, and did I think that she liked him
better now? I said that I was sure that she did—but I’m not sure
really. It’s impossible to know what mother thinks. Katherine came in
whilst we were talking. Afterwards, I don’t know why, I felt afraid
somehow. Katie’s so _sure_. I know I’d never be sure of anybody, least
of all anyone in love with me. But then I know so much more about men
than Katie does. And I’m sure Philip knows lots more about women than
Katie thinks. Katie and mother are _so_ alike in some ways. They’re both
as obstinate as anything. Such a lovely afternoon out with the
Swintons—Snow in the Green Park, sparkling all over and the air like
after you’ve eaten peppermints. Lady Perrot asked me to go with them to
New Year’s supper at the Savoy. Hope I’ll be allowed.
_Dec. 23rd._ Had a walk with Katie—first walk had alone since her
engagement. She was so happy that she was almost—a beastly
word—_frisky_, Katie frisky! We’re miles away from one another just
now, and that’s the truth. I suppose one must simply wait until this
period’s passed away. But supposing it never passes away? Supposing she
disappears altogether—from all of us. At any rate, what can one say? I
like Philip, and can honestly say so, but I don’t think him the angel
Gabriel. Not that Katie at present cares, in the least, what one
thinks—she doesn’t wait to hear. She is making no plans, thinking of no
possible future, imagining nothing. She never had any imagination, or at
any rate never used it. Perhaps she’ll get some now from Philip, who has
_plenty_—far too much. It’s _his_ trouble, I believe that he’s always
imagining something a little better than he’s got.... We Trenchards have
none. I haven’t any really—it’s only curiosity. Henry and I might have
some if we were all very uncomfortable. But of course the whole family
only keeps together because it can’t imagine things being different.
_Are_ things going to be different now?... Rachel Seddon came to tea.
Don’t like her. Thinks she owns Katie—and Katie’s let her. Went with
the Aunts to the Messiah. Very long, with nice bits. Aunt Aggie had a
crick in the neck, and wriggled all the time. Hope I get some money on
Christmas Day or I shall be in an _awful_ hole.
_Dec. 26th._ Two pounds from father, one from grandfather, ten shillings
Cousin Alice, five Aunt Grace, kettle-holder Aunt Aggie, two dozen
handkerchiefs Uncle Bob, fountain-pen father, new hat mother (quite
hopeless), photo-gravure ‘Happy Warrior’ Aunt Betty, two books ‘Reuben
Hallard’ by Westcott (Mudie second-hand) ‘Rossetti’s Poems’ from
Henry—lovely amethyst brooch Katie (darling!) two novels by Turgenieff
from Philip—lots of other things.
Nice day on the whole, but not _quite right_ somehow. Wish mother didn’t
always look so anxious when there’s a dinner party. You always _expect_
things to happen wrong, and really Rocket knows his business by this
time. All of us a little forced, I think. It seemed funny not being at
Garth and Philip the first person we’ve ever had not of the family. Aunt
Sarah keeps forgetting who he is, or pretends to. I wish he didn’t make
up to mother quite so much. That isn’t the way to make her like him. I
really _do_ understand him much better than anyone else does—_much_
better than Katie.
_Dec. 31st._ Going to the Savoy party to-night. Hope it will be fun.
Never expected mother to let me, but she’s awfully sweet to me lately.
She’s a darling, but we’re really always just a little afraid of one
another. Of course I’m not out yet, so I’ll have to be quiet to-night.
Mother never would have dreamt of letting me go six months back. End of
the year—made several resolutions. Not to be snappy, nor superior, nor
cynical, nor selfish. That’s enough for anyone to look after! Wonder
what things will be like this year, and how Katie and Philip will turn
out. Feel as though things will all go wrong, and yet I don’t know why.
Bought the hat I saw a fortnight ago. Finished ‘House of Gentlefolks’.
_Adored_ it. Discussed it with Philip. Going to get all the other
Turgenieffs. Think Russia must be a wonderful country. Time to dress. I
know I’ll just _love_ the party....
* * * * *
Only Mrs. Trenchard herself could say whether or no she had enjoyed this
Christmas. She displayed the same busy placidity as on other occasions;
of her fears, disappointments, surprises, she said nothing. The turkey
was a success, the plum-pudding burnt with a proper glow, no one was
ill, she had forgotten, in sending out her parcels, no single Trenchard
relation—surely all was well.
Her brother, Timothy, who knew her better than anyone else did, had long
abandoned the penetration of her motives, aims, regrets. There had been
a time when she had been almost intimate with him, then something (he
never knew what) had driven her in more obstinately than ever upon
herself. Something he had said.... He could point almost exactly to the
day and hour. She had been a stranger to him from that moment.
Her history was, however, very simple.
When she had been a very, very small child she had decided for herself
that the way to give life a real value was to fix one’s affection upon
someone: perhaps there had been also the fear of life as a motive, the
discovery that the best way to be protected from all kinds of perils was
to be so fond of someone that nothing else mattered. With a quiet,
undemonstrative but absolutely tenacious hold she attached herself to
her nurse, who deserted her on the appearance of a younger sister, to
her mother, who died, to her father, who was always so busy that loving
him was like being devoted to a blotting pad. When she was ten years of
age she went to school, and clung to a succession of older girls, who,
however, found, in her lack of all demonstrations, her almost cynical
remarks, her inability to give any expression whatever to her emotions,
something, at first, terrifying, and afterwards merely tiresome.
When she was about eighteen she discovered that the person to whom a
woman should be properly attached was her husband. She waited then very
calmly until she was twenty, when George Trenchard appeared, proposed to
her, and was accepted. She took it so utterly for granted that her
devotion to him would fill sufficiently the energy of her remaining days
that it wasn’t until the end of a year of married life that she
discovered that, although he liked her very much, he could do quite
beautifully without her, and did, indeed, for three-quarters of every
day forget her altogether. No one, except herself, knew whether that
discovery hurt her. She, of course, said nothing to anyone about it. She
waited for the arrival of her children. Katherine, Henry and Mildred
came, and at last it seemed that Mrs. Trenchard’s ship had come into
port. During their early years, at any rate, they clung to her
tenaciously, did not in the least mind that she had nothing to say to
them: they found her sure and safe and, best of all possible things in a
parent, always the same. It was when Katherine was six years old that
Timothy said to her one day:
“Look here, Harriet, don’t get so wrapt in the children that you’ll
never be able to unwrap yourself again. I’ve seen it happen dozens of
times, and it always gives endless trouble later on. It’s all very well
now, but the time will come when they’ll break away—it _must_ come, and
you’ll suffer horribly unless you’re ready for it. I’m not married
myself, it’s true, but I see all the more for that very reason.”
This was the speech that severed Mrs. Trenchard from her brother. She
never forgot nor forgave it. She never forgave it because she could not
forget it: his words were to haunt her from the moment of their
utterance until the last conscious instant of her life. She had been
born entirely without imagination, but she had not been born without the
wish for romance. Moreover, the Faunder tradition (which is the same as
the Trenchard tradition) taught her to believe that there was something
enfeebling and dangerous about imagination, and that the more one
thought about things not immediately within sight the less likely one
was to do one’s daily task with efficiency. Her longing for a romantic
life therefore (that is for the justification of her own personal
existence) was assisted by no private dreams nor castle-building. No
Faunder or Trenchard had ever built a castle in the air when there were
good square manors and vicarages waiting to be constructed on good solid
ground. She directed the whole of her passionate life towards her
relations with her children, but never even to herself would she admit
that she had any passionate life at all. Take away the children and
there was nothing left for her except her religion; because the loss of
them would be the one tragedy that would drive her to question the
justice of her God was justification of itself for her passionate
determination.
Now Timothy had said that she would lose them—well, Timothy should see.
With other children, with other mothers, it might be so. God Himself
should not take them from her.
Nevertheless, as the children grew, the shadows of his words ever
pursued her and hemmed her in. She watched, with close attention, other
families, and saw that Timothy’s warning was justified often enough, but
always she was able to find for herself some reason. The weakness of
selfishness or carelessness of the parent. Not weak, nor selfish, nor
careless could any watching Powers, waiting to pounce, accuse her of
being!
When the children grew older she discovered certain things about them.
Henry often annoyed her with his untidiness and strangely unjustified
egotism. He always thought about himself, and yet never did anything.
She liked Henry least of her children.
Mildred was delightful, clever, the “show child”, but for that very
reason would in all probability be, afterwards, the most restless of
them. As the two girls grew Mrs. Trenchard told herself that, perhaps,
Millie would have to be sacrificed, and in telling herself this she
implied that if she would only, when the time came, allow Millie without
a murmur to depart, the Gods would be satisfied with that and Katherine
would remain.
It came to this, that by the time that Katherine was twelve she was the
centre of her mother’s existence. Mildred and Henry would be held as
long as it was possible to hold them, but, if the worst came, they
should go. Katherine would always remain....
It seemed indeed that she would. She loved her home, her parents, her
relations, Glebeshire, the whole of the Trenchard inheritance. She
placed her mother first in her life, and she was able to satisfy the
love in her mother’s heart without saying anything about it or drawing
anyone’s attention towards it. She had all the qualities that her mother
admired—sincerity, trust, common-sense, practical punctuality, moral as
well as physical: above all, she took things for granted without asking
endless questions, as was Henry’s unfortunate habit. There grew then in
the lives both of Mrs. Trenchard and Katherine a passionate affection,
which was never allowed by either of them to find outward expression.
This became, behind the commonplace matter-of-fact of all their days, a
kind of romantic conspiracy. Even when Katherine was still a child Mrs.
Trenchard knew that the hours that they spent alone together had some
strange almost incoherent quality, something that was mixed,
inextricably, with the high lanes, the grassy lawns, the distant strip
of sea beyond the fields, the rooks in the high trees, the smell of the
village shop, boot-laces, liquorice, tallow, cheese and cotton, the dark
attic bedroom of Katherine’s, the cries of village children beyond the
garden wall, afternoon Sunday school upon hard benches under glazed
lamps to the accompaniment of the harmonium; all the things that
belonged to Garth belonged also to the love between Mrs. Trenchard and
Katherine. Katherine had been first taken to the sea when she had been a
very little girl; she had been shown Rafiel and the Pirates’ Cove with
its cave (too small for any but very thin pirates), and the village with
the cottages cut out of the rock and the sea advancing and retreating as
a lazy cat stretches and withdraws its paws upon the pebbled beach.
Driving home through the twilight in the high dog-cart behind the fat
and beloved family pony, Katherine had been besieged with questions.
What had she thought of it all? What had she liked best? Had it been
wonderful? She had said nothing. She was obstinately silent. At last,
persecuted beyond bearing, she looked, imploringly, at her mother. Her
eyes had met her mother’s, and, as complete understanding passed between
them, it seemed that they made, there and then, a compact of mutual help
and protection that was never afterwards to be broken. Mrs. Trenchard
had never, never been known to mention scenery, sunsets or buildings,
except for strictly practical reasons. She would say: “Come in,
children, you’ll catch cold, the sun’s setting”, or “I _don’t_ think
we’ll have rain to-day. There’s not a cloud”, or “It’s so hot, there’s
quite a mist. I hope there’ll be enough strawberries and cream for
everyone.” That was her attitude, and yet she loved Glebeshire, every
stone and tree, with an unfaltering and unarguing devotion. She never
said “Glebeshire is the loveliest spot in the world”. But only: “Oh!
you’ve never been to Glebeshire? You don’t know the Clarence Faunders
then? They’re only five miles from us”, or “Yes. We live in
Glebeshire—a little village not far from Polchester. We’re very lucky
in our clergyman, a Mr. Smart, one of the Smarts, etc.” Moreover, she
never when she was quite alone said to herself: “Oh! what a heavenly
day!” or “How lovely the new leaves are”, or “Look at the primroses!”
She only said to herself: “Lucy Cartwright’s Annie has got to have that
ointment”, or “I must tell Rebekah about the poor Curtises. She could
take them the things.”
Nevertheless, when she discovered that Katherine cared for Glebeshire
with a love as deep as her own, how happy she was! How firmly that
discovery bound them together! For them both that journey twice a year
from London to Garth was as exciting as though they had never taken it
before. The stations, whose names were like the successive wrappers that
enclose a splendid present, Rasselas, the little windy station where
they changed from the London Express into the halting, stumbling little
train that carried them towards the sea; then Stoep in Roselands,
tiniest station of all, with the sea smell blowing across the dark
fields, the carriage with its lights and Jacob, the coachman, the drive
through the twilight lanes, the gleaming white gates, the house itself
and old Rebekah on the doorstep ... yes, of all these things was the
love between Mrs. Trenchard and her daughter made.
Most wonderful of all was it that, with Katherine, Mrs. Trenchard never
knew a moment’s awkwardness or embarrassment. With everyone else in the
world and, perhaps especially with her own family, Mrs. Trenchard was
often awkward and embarrassed, although no one but herself was aware of
it. Of this embarrassment Mrs. Trenchard had a horrible dread: it was to
her as though she were suddenly lifted off her feet by a giant hand and
held dangling: she felt that all the world must see how her skirts blew
in the wind. With Katherine she was always safe: she grew, most
urgently, to depend upon this safety. Then, as the years passed she felt
that she might, with justice, consider Katherine secure. Katherine
seemed to have no interest in young men: already she adopted a rather
motherly attitude towards them and, perhaps because Henry was the young
man immediately before her, considered them rather helpless, rather
clumsy, rather unwieldy and ungainly. She was always kind but a little
satirical in her relations to the other sex: young men were, perhaps,
afraid of her.
Mrs. Trenchard did, of course, consider the possibility of Katherine’s
marriage, but, if that ever occurred, it would be, she knew, with
someone in the family, someone like themselves, who would live near by,
who would worship Katherine but never interfere with her, who would give
her children, to whom Mrs. Trenchard could be a delightful grandmother.
This surrender the Gods might demand—it would need more than such a
marriage to separate, now, Katherine from her mother. Mrs. Trenchard,
like all unimaginative people, relied very strongly upon little facts
and well-accustomed places and familiar family relations. She did not
believe that Victoria Street would walk away or that the old woman (Mrs.
Pengello, an ancient widow with a pension, two granddaughters and a cast
in her eye) at the Garth post office would appear one morning as a
radiant young beauty, or that her brother Timothy would go on to the
music halls. Her world was thus a place of security, and Katherine was
one of the most secure things in it. “Ah! Timothy, you’re wrong after
all,” she would sometimes, in the watches of the night, think to
herself. “Nothing can take Katherine from me now. You may be as right as
you like about Millie and Henry. Katherine is enough....”
She had, during these last years, been wrapped in with a strange, placid
content: Millie had been at school in Paris: there was nothing inside
the Trenchard fortress that spoke of the outside world. No secret spirit
ever whispered to Mrs. Trenchard: “Are you not being selfish in keeping
your daughter? You will die some day, and then she will have a lonely
old maid’s life when she might have been so happy. The children’s lives
are their own. What right have you to Katherine’s life and ambitions and
love? Would you, in your youth, have given up your future for your
parents? Why should she?”
There was nothing that Mrs. Trenchard desired more than Katherine’s
happiness. If Katherine had not loved her she would have let her go, but
now ... Katherine’s life was bound up with hers so tightly that nothing,
nothing could part them....
Then there came a night of fog, a stranger bowing in the doorway, and
all the old days were dead. Mrs. Trenchard was still stunned, the fog
was yet about her eyes, and in her heart was a dread that had not yet
found its voice nor driven her to determine what she would do....
Meanwhile there was no one in the world who knew her. She did not know
herself. Until now there had been in her life no crisis strong enough to
force open that realisation.
* * * * *
One morning early in January Mrs. Trenchard said to Katherine at
breakfast: “Will you come to the Stores with me this afternoon,
Katherine? I have to buy some hot-water bottles and one or two other
things. Two of them leak badly ... some hot-water bottles ... and I’d
like you to help me.”
“I’m lunching with Rachel, mother,” Katherine said. “But I’ll be back by
three if that’s time enough.”
“Three o’clock. Very well, dear. They oughtn’t to leak—we’ve had them
quite a short time. Shall I meet you there?”
“No. I’ll come back. We might miss there. I’ll be back by three.”
At ten minutes past three in a large rather confused hat with a black
bird and white feathers Mrs. Trenchard was seated waiting in the
drawing-room. The fire had had coal poured upon it by Rocket, and it was
very black: the room was cold and dark, and Mrs. Trenchard, feeling like
an unwelcome guest in her own house, shivered. At twenty minutes past
three Mrs. Trenchard began to be afraid that there had been an accident.
Katherine was always so punctual. Millie came in.
“_Dear_ mother, what on earth!”
“I’m waiting for Katherine. She was to be back at three from Rachel
Seddon’s. We are—were—going to the Stores. You don’t think there can
have been an accident?”
“Katherine! Why, I saw her twenty minutes ago. I’ve just come back from
Lady Carloes. Katie was at Hyde Park Corner with Philip.”
“Philip!”
Mrs. Trenchard got up, took off one black glove, then put it on again.
She looked at the clock.
“Will you come to the Stores with me, Millie? I’ve got to get some
hot-water bottles and some other things.... Two of ours leak.... I’d
like you to help me.”
Millie looked once at the clock, and her mother saw her. Then Millie
said:
“Of course I will. We won’t be very long, will we?”
“Why, no, dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard, who would have been happy to spend
a week at the Stores had she the opportunity. “Quite a little time.”
They set off together.
Millie was not yet of such an age that she could disguise her thoughts.
She was wondering about Katherine, and Mrs. Trenchard knew that this was
so. Mrs. Trenchard always walked through the streets of London as a
trainer in the company of his lions. Anything might happen, and one’s
life was not safe for a moment, but a calm, resolute demeanour did a
great deal, and, if trouble came, one could always use the whip: the
whip was the Trenchard name. To-day, however, she gave no thought to
London: she was very gentle and kind to Millie—almost submissive and
humble. This made Millie very uncomfortable.
“I’m rather foolish about the Stores, I’m afraid. I know several places
where you can get better hot-water bottles and cheaper. But they know me
at the Stores now.”
Once she said: “I hope, Millie dear, I’m not keeping you from anything.
We shall be home by half-past four.”
In exchange for these two little remarks Millie talked a great deal, and
the more she talked the more awkward she seemed. She was very unhappy
about her mother, and she wished that she could comfort her, but she
knew her so little and had been always on such careless terms with her
that now she had no intuition about her.
“What is she thinking?... I know Katherine has hurt her terribly. She
oughtn’t to wear a hat like that: it doesn’t suit her a bit. Why isn’t
it _I_ who have forgotten, and Katie here instead to console her? Only
then she wouldn’t want consolation....”
As they walked up the steps of the Stores they were stared at by a
number of little dogs on chains, who all seemed to assert their
triumphant claims on somebody’s especial affections. The little dogs
stirred Mrs. Trenchard’s unhappiness, without her knowing why. All down
Victoria Street she had been thinking to herself: “Katherine never
forgot before—never. It was only this morning—if it had even been
yesterday—but this morning! Millie doesn’t understand, and she didn’t
want to come—Katie....”
She walked slowly into the building, and was at once received by that
friendly, confused smell of hams and medicines which is the Stores’ note
of welcome. Lights shone, warmth eddied in little gusts of hot air from
corner to corner: there was much conversation, but all of a very decent
kind: ladies, not very grand ones and not very poor ones, but
comfortable, motherly, housekeeping ladies were everywhere to be seen.
No wonder, surely, that Mrs. Trenchard loved the Stores! Here was
everything gathered in from the ends of the earth that was solid and
sound and real. Here were no extravagances, no decadencies, no flowing
creations with fair outsides and no heart to them, nothing foreign nor
degenerate. However foreign an article might be before it entered the
Stores, once inside those walls it adopted itself at once to the claims
of a Cathedral City—even the Eastern carpets, stained though their past
lives might be with memories of the Harem, recognised that their future
lay along the floor of a Bishop’s study, a Major’s drawing-room or the
dining-room of a country rectory. If ever Mrs. Trenchard was alarmed by
memories of foreign influences, of German invasions, or Armenian
atrocities, she had only to come to the Stores to be entirely reassured.
It would be better for our unbalanced and hysterical alarmists did they
visit the Stores more frequently....
But frequent visits had bred in Mrs. Trenchard a yet warmer intimacy.
Although she had never put her feeling into words, she was determined
now that the Stores was maintained solely in the Trenchard and Faunder
interests. So pleasant and personally submissive had the young men and
young women of the place been to her all these years, that she now
regarded them with very nearly the personal benevolence that she
bestowed upon her own Rebekah, Rocket, Jacob and so on. She felt that
only Trenchards and Faunders could have produced an organisation whose
spirit was so entirely sprung from their own views and observances. She
did not defend or extol those views. There simply they were! and out of
them the Stores were born. She paid her call here, therefore, rather as
a Patroness visits a Hospital in which she is interested—with no
conceit or false pride, but with a maternal anxiety that everything
should be well and prosperous. Everything always was well and
prosperous.... She was a happy Patroness!
“That’s a splendid ham!” were invariably her first words, and “I do like
the way they arrange things here,” her second. She could have wandered,
very happily, all day from compartment to compartment, stopping
continually to observe, to touch, to smile, to blow her nose (being
moved, very often, quite emotionally) to beam happily upon the customers
and then to turn, with a little smile of intimacy, to the young men in
frock coats and shiny hair, as though she would say: “We’ve got a good
crowd to-day. Everyone seems comfortable ... but how can they help it
when everything is so beautifully done?”
Her chief pride and happiness found its ultimate crown in the furniture
department. Here, hung as it was somewhere up aloft, with dark
bewildering passages starting into infinity on every side of it, was the
place that her soul truly loved. She could gaze all day upon those sofas
and chairs. Those wonderful leather couches of dark red and dark blue,
so solid, so stern in their unrelenting opposition to flighty
half-and-half, so self-supporting and self-satisfying, so assured of
propriety and comfort and solid value for your money. She would sink
slowly into a huge leather arm-chair, and from her throne smile upon the
kind gentleman who washed his hands in front of her.
“And how much is this one?”
“Nine pounds, eight and sixpence, ma’am.”
“Really. Nine pounds, eight and sixpence. It’s a splendid chair.”
“It is indeed, ma’am. We’ve sold more than two dozen of this same
article in this last fortnight. A great demand just now.”
“And so there ought to be—more than two dozen! Well, I’m not
surprised—an excellent chair.”
“Perhaps we can send it for you? Or you prefer—?”
“No, thank you. Not to-day. But I must say that it’s wonderful for the
money. That sofa over there—”
Up here, in this world of solid furniture, it seemed that England was
indeed a country to be proud of! Mrs. Trenchard would have made no mean
Britannia, seated in one of the Stores’ arm-chairs with a Stores’
curtain-rod for her trident!
Upon this January afternoon she found her way to the furniture
department more swiftly than was usual with her. The Stores seemed
remote from her to-day. As she passed the hams, the chickens, the
medicines and powders, the petticoats and ribbons and gloves, the books
and the stationery, the cut-glass and the ironware, the fancy pots, the
brass, the Chinese lanterns, the toys, the pianos and the gramophones,
the carpets and the silver, the clocks and the pictures, she could only
be dimly aware that to-day these things were not for her, that all the
treasures of the earth might be laid at her feet and she would not care
for them, that all the young men and young women in England might bow
and smile before her and she would have no interest nor pleasure in
them. She reached the furniture department. She sank down in the
red-leather arm-chair. She said, with a little sigh:
“She has never forgotten before!”
This was, considering her surroundings and the moment of its expression,
the most poignant utterance of her life.
Millie’s chief emotion, until this moment, had been one of intense
boredom. The Stores seemed to her, after Paris, an impossible
anachronism; she could not understand why it was not instantly burnt up
and destroyed, and all its solemn absurdities cast, in dirt and ashes,
to the winds.
She followed her mother with irritation, and glances of cynical contempt
were flung by her upon the innocent ladies who were buying and chatting
and laughing together. Then she remembered that her mother was in
trouble, and she was bowed down with self-accusation for a hard
heartless girl who thought of no one but herself. Her moods always thus
followed swiftly one upon another.
When, in the furniture department, she heard that forlorn exclamation
she wanted to take her mother’s hand, but was shy and embarrassed.
“I expect Katie _had_ to go with Philip.... Something she _had_ to do,
and perhaps it only kept her a moment or two and she got back just after
we’d left. We didn’t wait long enough for her. She’s been waiting there,
I expect, all this time for us.”
Mrs. Trenchard’s cheek flushed and her eyes brightened.
“Why, Millie, that’s most likely! We’ll go back at once ... that’s most
likely.... We’ll go back at once.”
“This is a very cheap article,” said the young man, “or if Madame would
prefer a chair with—”
“No, no,” said Mrs. Trenchard quite impatiently. “Not to-day. Not
to-day, thank you.”
“There are the hot-water bottles,” said Millie.
“Oh, of course.... I want some hot-water bottles. Ours leak ... three of
them....”
“In the rubber department, Madam, first to the right, second to the
left....”
But Mrs. Trenchard hurried through the hot-water bottles in a manner
utterly foreign to her.
“Thank you. I’m sure they’re very nice. They won’t leak, you say? How
much?... Thank you ... no, I prefer these.... If you’re sure they won’t
leak.... Yes, my number is 2157.... Thank you.”
Outside in Victoria Street she said: “I might have given her until
quarter to four. I daresay she’s been waiting all this time.”
But Millie for the first time in all their days together was angry with
Katherine. She said to herself: “She’s going to forget us all like this
now. We aren’t, any of us, going to count for anything. Six months ago
she would have died rather than hurt mother....”
And behind her anger with Katherine was anger with herself because she
seemed so far away from her mother, because she was at a loss as to the
right thing to do, because she had said that she had seen Philip with
Katherine. “You silly idiot!” she thought to herself. “Why couldn’t you
have kept your mouth shut?”
Mrs. Trenchard spoke no word all the way home.
* * * * *
Katherine was not in the house when they returned. Millie went upstairs,
Mrs. Trenchard stared at the desolate drawing-room. The fire was dead,
and the room, in spite of its electric light, heavy and dark. Mrs.
Trenchard looked at the reflection of her face in the mirror; with both
hands she pushed her hat a little, then, with a sudden gesture, took it
off, drawing out the pins slowly and staring at it again. Mrs. Trenchard
glanced at the clock, and then slowly went out, holding her hat in her
hand, advancing with that trailing, half-sleepy movement that was
peculiarly hers.
She did then what she had not done for many years: she went to her
husband’s study. This hour before tea he always insisted was absolutely
his own: no one, on any pretext, was ever to disturb him. To-day,
cosily, with a luxurious sense that the whole world had been made for
him, and made for him exactly as he liked it, he was, with a lazy
pencil, half-writing, half-thinking, making little notes for an essay on
William Hazlitt.
As his wife entered he was reading: “How fine it is to enter some old
town, walled and turreted, just at the approach of nightfall, or to come
to some straggling village, with the lights streaming through the
surrounding gloom; and then, after enquiring for the best entertainment
the place affords, to take one’s ease at one’s inn! These eventful
moments in our lives’ history are too precious, too full of solid,
heartfelt happiness to be frittered and dribbled away in imperfect
sympathy. I would have them all to myself, and drain them to the last
drop.”
How thoroughly George Trenchard agreed with that. How lucky for him that
he was able to defend himself from so much of that same “imperfect
sympathy”. Not that he did not love his fellow-creatures, far from it,
but it was pleasant to be able to protect oneself from their too
constant, their too eager ravages. Had he been born in his beloved
Period, then he fancied that he might, like magnificent Sir Walter, have
built his Castle and entertained all the world, but in this age of
telephones and motorcars one was absolutely compelled.... He turned
Hazlitt’s words over on his tongue with a little happy sigh of regret,
and then was conscious that his wife was standing by the door.
“Hullo!” he cried, starting up. “Is anything the matter?”
It was so unusual for her to be there that he stared at her large, heavy
figure as though she had been a stranger. Then he jumped up, laughing,
and the dark blue Hazlitt fell on to the carpet.
“Well, my dear,” he said, “tea-time?”
She came trailing across the room, and stood beside him near the fire.
“No ...” she said, “not yet ... George.... You, look very cosy here,”
she suddenly added.
“I am,” he answered. He looked down at the Hazlitt, and her eyes
followed his glance. “What have you been doing?”
“I’ve been to the Stores.”
“Why, of course,” he said, chaffing her. “You live there. And what have
you been buying this time?”
“Hot-water bottles.”
“Well, _that’s_ exciting!”
“Ours leaked.... Two of them, and we’d had them a very short time. I
took Millie with me!”
“Very good for her. Clear some of her Parisian fancies.”
There was a pause then, and he bent forward as though he would pick up
the book, but he pulled himself up again.
“Katherine’s been out with Philip all the afternoon.”
He smiled one of his radiant, boyish smiles.
“She’s happy, isn’t she? It does one good to see her. She deserves it
too if anyone in this world does. I like him—more and more. He’s seen
the world, and has got a head on his shoulders. And he isn’t conceited,
not in the least. He’s charming to her, and I think he’ll make her a
very good husband. That was a lucky thing for us his coming along,
because Katherine was sure to marry someone, and she might have set her
heart on an awful fellow. You never know in these days.”
“Ah! I don’t think so,” said Mrs. Trenchard, nervously turning her hat
over in her hands, “that wouldn’t be like Katie at all.”
“No, well, perhaps it wouldn’t,” said George cheerfully. There was
another pause, and now he bent right down, picked up the book, grunting
a little, then stood, turning over the pages.
“I’m getting fat,” he said, “good for all of us when we get down to
Garth.”
“George ...” she began and stopped.
“Well, my dear.” He put his hand on her shoulder, and then as though
embarrassed by the unexpected intimacy that his action produced,
withdrew it.
“Don’t you think we might go out to the theatre one evening—theatre or
something?”
“What! With the children? Family party! Splendid idea!”
“No, I didn’t mean with the children—exactly. Just you and I alone.
Dine somewhere—have an evening together.”
It was no use to pretend that he was not surprised. She saw his
astonishment.
“Why, of course—if you’d really care about it. Mostly pantomimes just
now—but I daresay we could find something. Good idea. Good idea.”
“Now that—now that—the children are beginning to marry and go off by
themselves. Why, I thought ... you understand....”
“Of course. Of course,” he said again. “Any night you like. You remind
me....”
He whistled a gay little tune, and turned over the pages of the Hazlitt,
reading sentences here and there.
“Tea in a minute?...” he said gaily. “Just got a line or two more to
finish. Then I’ll be with you.”
She looked at him as though she would say something more: she decided,
however, that she would not, and trailed away.
* * * * *
Returning to the drawing-room, she found Katherine standing there.
Katherine’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled: she was wearing a
little black hat with red berries, and the black velvet ribbon round her
neck had a diamond brooch in it that Philip had given her. Rocket was
bending over the fire: she was laughing at him. When she saw her mother
she waved her hand.
“Mother, darling—what kind of an afternoon have you had? I’ve had the
loveliest time. I lunched at Rachel’s, and there, to my immense
surprise, was Philip. I hadn’t the _least_ idea he was coming. Not the
slightest. We weren’t to have met to-day at all. Just Lord John, Philip,
Rachel and I. Then we had _such_ a walk. Philip and I. Hyde Park Corner,
right through the Park, Marble Arch, then through Regent’s Park all the
way up Primrose Hill—took a ’bus home again. _Never_ enjoyed anything
so much. You’ve all been out too, because here’s the fire dead. I’ve
been telling Rocket what I think of him. Haven’t I, Rocket?... Where are
the others? Millie, Aunt Aggie. It’s tea-time.”
“Yes, dear, it is,” said Mrs. Trenchard.
It was incredible, Katherine was utterly unconscious. She remembered
nothing.
Mrs. Trenchard looked at Rocket.
“That’ll do, Rocket. That’s enough. We’ll have tea at once.”
Rocket went out. She turned to her daughter.
“I’m glad you’ve enjoyed your afternoon, dear. I couldn’t think what had
happened to you. I waited until half-past three.”
“Waited?”
“Yes—to go to the Stores. You said at breakfast that you’d come with
me—that you’d be back by three. I waited until half-past.... It was
quite all right, dear. Millie went with me. She had seen you—you and
Philip at Hyde Park Corner—so, of course, I didn’t wait any longer.”
Katherine stared at her mother: the colour slowly left her face and her
hand went up to her cheeks with a gesture of dismay.
“Mother!... How _could_ I!”
“It didn’t matter, dear, in the slightest ... dear me, no. We went,
Millie and I, and got the hot-water bottles, very good and strong ones,
I think, although they said they couldn’t positively guarantee them. You
never can tell, apparently, with a hot-water bottle.”
Katherine’s eyes, now, were wide and staring with distress.
“How _could_ I possibly have forgotten? It was talking about it at
breakfast when Aunt Aggie too was talking about something, and I got
confused, I suppose. No, I haven’t any excuse at all. It was seeing
Philip unexpectedly....”
She stopped abruptly, realising that she had said the worst thing
possible.
“You mustn’t let Philip, dear, drive everything out of your head,” Mrs.
Trenchard said, laughing. “We have some claim on you until you are
married—then, of course....”
The colour mounted again into Katherine’s face.
“No, mother, you mustn’t say that,” she answered in a low voice, as
though she was talking to herself. “Philip makes _no_ difference—none
at all. I’d have forgotten in any case, I’m afraid, because we talked
about it at breakfast when I was thinking about Aunt Aggie. It was
nothing to do with Philip—it was my fault absolutely. I’ll never
forgive myself.”
All the joy had left her eyes. She was very grave: she knew that, slight
as the whole incident was, it marked a real crisis in her relations, not
only with her mother, but with the whole house. Perhaps during all these
weeks, she had forgotten them all, and they had noticed it and been hurt
by it. She accused herself so bitterly that it seemed that nothing could
be bad enough for her. She felt that, in the future, she could not show
her mother enough attention and affection. But now, at this moment,
there was nothing to be done. Millie would have laughed, hugged her
mother and forgotten in five minutes that there had been any crime. But,
in this, Katherine’s character resembled, exactly, her mother’s.
“Really, Katie, it didn’t matter. I’m glad you liked the walk. And now
it’s tea-time. It always seems to be tea-time. There’s so much to do.”
They were then, both of them, conscious that Aunt Aggie had come in and
was smiling at them. They wished intensely to fling into the pause some
conversation that would be trivial and unimportant. They could think of
nothing to say....
“Why, Katherine,” said Aunt Aggie, “where _have_ you been? Millie says
she’s been to the Stores.... You said at breakfast ...”
“I was kept ...” said Katherine sharply, and left the room.
“I’ll be down in five minutes, Aggie,” said Mrs. Trenchard. “Tea-time—”
Her sister watched her as she went out, carrying her hat in her hand.
Half-way upstairs she saw Henry, who was half-tumbling, half-sliding
from step to step: he was evidently hurrying, in his confused way, to do
something that he had forgotten to do or to finish some task that he
should long ago have completed.
“Henry,” she said, “I wonder whether—”
“Right, mother,” he called back to her. “I must—” the rest of his
sentence was swallowed by distance. She turned and looked after him,
then walked through the long passages to her room. She entered it,
closed the door, and stood by her dressing-room staring in front of her.
There was complete, intense silence here, and all the things lay about
the room, as though waiting for her to address them.
“George, Millie, Henry, Katherine ... Millie didn’t want to go ...
Katherine....”
On her table was a list of articles, the week’s washing—her own list.
Handkerchiefs—12.
Stockings—8 pairs.
She looked at it without seeing it, then with a sudden, vindictive,
passionate movement tore it in half, and then those halves into smaller
pieces, tore the smaller pieces into little shreds of paper that
fluttered in the air and then fell on to the floor at her feet.