GARTH IN ROSELANDS
Philip, on the day following his evening with Henry, left London to
spend three weeks with some relations who lived near Manchester. This
was the first parting from him that Katherine had suffered since the
beginning of their engagement, and when she had said good-bye to him at
the station, she seemed to return through empty streets, through a town
without colour or movement, and the house, when she entered it, echoed,
through its desolate rooms and passages, to her steps.
She resolved at once, however, that now was the time to show the family
that she was the same Katherine as she had ever been. As she waited for
a little in her bedroom, finally dismissing Philip’s presence and
summoning the others, she laughed to think how simply now she would
brush away the little distrusts and suspicions that seemed, during those
last weeks, to have grown about her.
“They _shall_ know Phil,” she thought to herself. “They can’t help
loving him when they see him as he really is. Anyway, no more keeping
anything back.” It seemed to her, at that moment, a very simple thing to
impart her happiness to all of them. She had no fear that she would
fail. Then, almost at once, the most delightful thing occurred.
Two or three days after Philip’s departure Mrs. Trenchard, alone with
Katherine in the dining-room before breakfast, said:
“I’ve written to Philip, my dear, to ask him to go down with us to
Garth.”
Katherine’s eyes shone with pleasure.
“Mother!... How delightful of you! I was hoping that perhaps you might
ask him later. But isn’t it tiresome to have him so soon?”
“No—my dear—no. Not tiresome at all. I hope he’ll be able to come.”
“Of course he’ll be able to come,” laughed Katherine.
“Yes—well—I’ve written to ask him. We go down on the fifth of March.
Your father thinks that’s the best day. Griffiths writes that that
business of the fences in Columb meadow should be looked into—Yes. No,
Alice, not the ham—tell Grace to boil two more eggs—not enough—I’m
glad you’re pleased, Katherine.”
Katherine looked up, and her eyes meeting her mother’s, the confidence
that had been clouded ever since that fatal affair with the hot-water
bottles seemed to leap into life between them. Mrs. Trenchard put out
her hand, Katherine moved forward, but at that moment Aunt Aggie and
Aunt Betty entered; breakfast began.
“I believe,” thought Katherine, “Aunt Aggie waits outside the door and
chooses her moment. She’s always interrupting....” The fact that there
was now some restraint between her mother and herself was only
emphasised the more by the feeling of both of them that an opportunity
had been missed.
And why, Katherine wondered afterwards, had her mother asked Philip? If
he had been invited to come to them after Easter—but now, to go down
with them, as one of the family! Was not this exactly what Katherine had
been desiring? And yet she was uncomfortable. She felt sometimes now
that her mother, who had once been her other self, in whose every
thought, distress, anxiety she had shared, was almost a stranger.
“It’s just as though there were ghosts in the house,” she thought. As
she went to bed she was, for the first time in her life, lonely. She
longed for Philip ... then suddenly, for no reason that she could name,
began to cry and, so crying, fell asleep. She was much younger than
everyone thought her....
Throughout the three weeks that followed she felt as though she were
beating the air. Rachel Seddon had taken her husband abroad. There was
no one to whom she could speak. She wrote to Philip every day, and
discovered how useless letters were. She tried to approach Millie, but
found that she had not the courage to risk Millie’s frankness. Her
sister’s attitude to her was: “Dear Katie, let’s be happy and jolly
together without talking about it—it’s much better....” There had been
a time, not so very long ago, when they had told one another everything.
Henry was the strangest of all. He removed himself from the whole
family, and would speak to no one. He went apparently for long solitary
walks. Even his father noticed his depression, and decided that
something must really be done with the boy. “We might send him abroad
for six months—learn some French or German ...” but of course nothing
was done.
Aunt Betty was the only entirely satisfactory member of the family. She
frankly revelled in the romance of the whole affair. She was delighted
that Katherine had fallen in love “with such a fine manly fellow” as
Philip. Her attention was always centred upon Katherine to the exclusion
of the others, therefore she noticed no restraint nor awkwardness. She
was intensely happy, and went humming about the house in a way that
annoyed desperately her sister Aggie. She even wrote a little letter to
Philip, beginning “My dear Boy,” saying that she thought that he’d like
to know from one of the family that Katherine was in perfect health and
looking beautiful. She received a letter from Philip that surprised and
delighted her by its warmth of feeling. This letter was the cause of a
little battle with Aggie.
They were alone together in Betty’s room when she said, half to herself:
“_Such_ a delightful letter from the ‘dear boy’.”
“_What_ dear boy?” said Aunt Aggie sharply.
Aunt Betty started, as she always did when anyone spoke to her sharply,
sucked her fingers, and then, the colour mounting into her cheeks, said:
“Philip. He’s written to me from Manchester.”
“I do think, Betty,” Aggie answered, “that instead of writing letters to
young men who don’t want them you might try to take a little of the
burden of this house off my shoulders. Now that Katherine has lost all
her common-sense I’m supposed to do everything. I don’t complain. They
wish me to help as much as I can, but I’m far from strong, and a little
help from you ...”
Then Aunt Betty, with the effect of standing on her toes, her voice
quite shrill with excitement, spoke to her sister as she had never, in
all her life, spoken to anyone before.
“It’s too bad, Aggie. I used to think that you were fond of Katherine,
that you wished her happiness—Now, ever since her engagement, you’ve
done nothing but complain about her. Sometimes I think you really want
to see her unhappy. We ought to be glad, you and I, that she’s found
someone who will make her happy. It’s all your selfishness, Aggie; just
because you don’t like Philip for some fancied reason ... it’s unfair
and wicked. At anyrate to me you shan’t speak against Katherine and
Philip.... I love Katherine, even though you don’t.”
Now it happened that, as I have said elsewhere, Aggie Trenchard loved
her niece very deeply. It was a love, however, that depended for its
life on an adequate return. “That young man has turned Katherine against
me. Ever since he first came into the house I knew it.” Now at her
sister’s accusation her face grew grey and her hands trembled.
“Thank you, Betty. I don’t think we’ll discuss the matter. Because
you’re blind and know nothing of what goes on under your nose is no
reason that other people’s sight should be blinded too. Can’t you see
for yourself the change in Katherine? If you loved her a little more
sensibly than you do, instead of romancing about the affair, you’d look
into the future. I tell you that the moment Philip Mark entered this
house was the most unfortunate moment in Katherine’s life. Nothing but
unhappiness will come of it. If you knew what I know—”
Aunt Betty was, in spite of herself, struck by the feeling and softness
in her sister’s voice.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean nothing. I’m right, that’s all. _You’re_ a silly, soft fool,
Elizabeth, and so you always were. But Harriet ... asking him to go down
to Garth with us, when she hates him as I know she does! _I_ don’t know
what it means. Do you suppose that I don’t love Katherine any longer? I
love her so much that I’d like to strangle Mr. Philip Mark in his
sleep!”
She flung from the room, banging the door behind her.
* * * * *
Philip arrived on the evening before the departure into the country. He
came well pleased with all the world, because his Manchester relations
had liked him and he had liked his Manchester relations. Viewed from
that happy distance, the Trenchards had been bathed in golden light. He
reviewed his recent agitations and forebodings with laughter. “Her
family,” he told his relations, “are a bit old-fashioned. They’ve got
their prejudices, and I don’t think they liked the idea, at first, of
her being engaged—she’s so valuable. But they’re getting used to it.”
He arrived in London in the highest spirits, greeted Rocket as though he
had been his life-long friend, and going straight up to his room to
dress for dinner, thought to himself that he really did feel at home in
the old house. He looked at his fire, at the cosy shape of the room,
heard a purring, contented clock ticking away, thought for a moment of
Moscow, with its puddles, its mud, its dark, uneven streets, its country
roads, its weeks of rain.
“No, I’ve found my place,” he thought, “_this_ is home.”
And yet, during dinner, his uneasiness, like a forgotten ghost, crept
back to him. Henry had a headache, and had gone to bed.
“He’s not been very well lately,” said Aunt Aggie to Philip, “that
evening with you upset him, I believe—over-excited him, perhaps. I’m
glad you liked Manchester.” He could not deny that dinner was a little
stiff. He was suddenly aware over his pudding that he was afraid of Mrs.
Trenchard, and that his fear of her that had been vague and nebulous
before his absence was now sharp and defined.
He looked at her, and saw that her eyes were anything but placid and
contented, like the rest of her.
“More pudding, Philip?” she asked him, and his heart beat as though he
had received a challenge.
Afterwards in the drawing-room he thought to himself: “’Tis this beastly
old house. It’s so stuffy”—forgetting that two hours earlier it had
seemed to welcome him home. “We’ll be all right when we get down to the
country,” he thought.
Finally he said good-night to Katherine in the dark little passage. As
though he were giving himself some desperate reassurance, he caught her
to him and held her tightly in his arms:
“Katie—darling, have you missed me?”
“Missed you? I thought the days were never going to pass.”
“Katie, I want to be married, here, now, to-night, at once. I hate this
waiting. I _hate_ it. It’s impossible—”
Katherine laughed, looking up into his eyes.
“I like you to be impatient. I’m so happy. I don’t think anything can
ever be happier. Besides, you know,” and her eyes sparkled—“you may
change—you may want to break it off—and then think how glad you’ll be
that we waited.”
He held her then so fiercely that she cried out.
“Don’t say that—even as a joke. How dare you—even as a joke? I love
you—I love you—I love you.” He kissed her mouth again and again, then
suddenly, with a little movement of tenderness, stroked her hair very
softly, whispering to her, “I love you—I love you—I love you—Oh! how
I love you!”
That night she was so happy that she lay for many hours staring at the
black ceiling, a smile on her lips. He, also, was awake until the early
morning....
The departure to the station was a terrific affair. There were Mr.
Trenchard, senior, Great Aunt Sarah (risen from a bed of sickness,
yellow and pinched in the face, very yellow and pinched in the temper,
and deafer than deaf), Aunt Aggie, Aunt Betty, George Trenchard, Mrs.
Trenchard, Millie (very pretty), Henry (very sulky), Katherine, Philip,
Rocket and Aunt Sarah’s maid (the other maids had left by an earlier
train)—twelve persons. The train to be caught was the eleven o’clock
from Paddington, and two carriages had been reserved. The first business
was to settle old Mr. Trenchard and Aunt Sarah. They were placed, like
images, in the best corners, Mr. Trenchard saying sometimes in his
silvery voice: “It’s very kind of you, Harriet,” or “Thank ye, Betty, my
dear,” and once to Millie, “I like to see ye laughing, my dear—very
pretty, very pretty”. Aunt Sarah frowned and wrinkled her nose, but was,
in her high black bonnet, a very fine figure. Her maid, Clarence, was
plain, elderly and masculine in appearance, having a moustache and a
stiff linen collar and very little hair visible under her black straw
hat. She, however, knew just how Great-Aunt Sarah liked to be....
The others in that compartment were Aunt Aggie, George Trenchard (he sat
next to his father and told him jokes out of the papers) and Mrs.
Trenchard. In the other carriage Katherine and Philip had the corners by
the window. Aunt Betty sat next to Philip, Millie and Henry had the
farther corners. When the train started, Katherine’s heart gave a jump,
as it always did when she set off for Garth. “We’re really off. We’ll
really be in Garth by the evening. We’ll really wake up there to-morrow
morning.”
Philip had not seen Henry since his return from Manchester, so he tried
to talk to him. Henry, however, was engaged upon a very large edition of
“War and Peace,” and, although he answered Philip’s enquiries very
politely, he was obviously determined to speak to no one. Millie had
Henry Galleon’s “Roads” to read, but she did not study it very
deeply—Aunt Betty had a novel called “The Rosary” and her knitting; now
and then she would break into little scraps of talk as: “But if I moved
the bed across lengthways that would leave room for the book-case,” or
“I do think people must be clever to make up conversations in books,” or
“There’s Reading”. The lovers, therefore, were left to one another....
Katherine had upon her lap the novel that had so greatly excited Henry;
he had insisted upon her reading it, but now it lay idly there,
unopened. That little smile that had hovered about her lips last night
was still there to-day. Often her eyes were closed, and she might have
seemed to be asleep were it not that the little smile was alive—her
eyes would open, they would meet Philip’s eyes, they would be drawn, the
two of them, closer and closer and closer.
They talked together, their voices scarcely above a whisper. The day was
one of those that are given sometimes, in a fit of forgetfulness, by the
gods, at the beginning of March. It was a very soft, misty day, with the
sun warm and golden but veiled. Trees on the dim blue horizon were
faintly pink, and streams that flashed for an instant before the windows
were pigeon-colour. Everywhere the earth seemed to be breaking, flowers
pushing through the soil, rivers released from their winter bondage
laughing in their new freedom, the earth chuckling, whispering, humming
with the glorious excitement of its preparation, as though it had never
had a spring in all its life before, as though it did not know that
there would yet be savage winds, wild storms of rain, many cold and
bitter days. Blue mist—running water—trees with their bursting buds—a
haze of sun and rain in the air—a great and happy peace.
Katherine and Philip, although they saw no one but one another, were
aware of the day—it was as though it had been arranged especially for
them. The rise and fall of their voices had a sleepy rhythm, as though
they were keeping time with the hum of the train:
“I’m so glad,” said Katherine, “that your first view of Glebeshire will
be on a day like this.”
“I’m a little afraid,” he answered. “What will you say if I don’t like
it?”
She seemed really for an instant to be afraid. “But, of course, of
course, you will.”
“Everyone doesn’t. Someone told me the other day that either it was
desolate enough to depress you for a lifetime or stuffy like a
hot-house, and that the towns were the ugliest in the United Kingdom.”
Katherine sighed and then smiled.
“I expect they’d think Manchester the loveliest place on earth,” she
said. Then, looking at him very intently, she asked him: “Do you regret
Russia—the size and the space and the strangeness? I daresay you do. Do
you know, Phil, I’m rather jealous of Russia, of all the things you did
before I knew you, I wonder whether I’d have liked you if I’d met you
then, whether you’d have liked me. I expect you were very different.
Tell me about it. I’m always asking you about Moscow, and you’re so
mysterious—yes, I believe I’m jealous.”
Philip looked away from her, out of the window, at the fields with their
neat hedges, the gentle hills faintly purple, villages tucked into nests
of trees, cows grazing, horses mildly alert at the passing train. For a
moment he was conscious of irritation at the tidy cosiness of it all.
Then he spoke, dreamily, as though he were talking in his sleep:
“No. That’s all behind me. I shall never go back there again. I don’t
think of it often, but sometimes I fancy I’m there. Sounds will bring it
back, and I dream sometimes.... One gets so used to it that it’s hard
now to say what one did feel about it. I had a little flat in a part of
the town called the Arbat. Out of my window I could see a church with
sky-blue domes covered with silver stars, there was a shop with food,
sausages and all kinds of dried fish, and great barrels of red caviare
and mountains of cheese. The church had a cherry-coloured wall, with a
glittering Ikon at the gate and a little lamp burning in front of it.
There were always some cabs at the end of my street, with the cabmen in
their fat, bunched-up clothes sleeping very often, their heads hanging
from the shafts. Lines of carts from the country would pass down the
street with great hoops of coloured wood over the horses’ necks and
wild-looking peasants in charge of them. They didn’t seem wild to me
then—they were quite ordinary. Always just before six the bells at the
church would ring, one slow, deep note and a little funny noisy jangle
as well—one beautiful and unearthly; the other like a talkative woman,
all human.... In the autumn there’d be weeks of rain and the mud would
rise and rise, and the carts and cabs go splashing through great streams
of water. When the snow came there’d be fine days and the town on fire,
all sparkling and quivering, and every ugly thing in the place would be
beautiful. There’d be many days too when the sky would fall lower and
lower and the town be like grey blotting-paper and the most beautiful
things hideous. Opposite my window there was a half-built house that had
been there for three years, and no one had troubled to finish it. There
was a beggar at the corner—a fine old man with no legs. He must have
made a fortune, because everyone who passed gave him something. It would
be fine on a snowy night when the night-watchmen built great fires of
logs to keep them warm.
“On a starry night I could see the domes of St. Saviour’s Cathedral like
little golden clouds—very beautiful.”
“And what was the inside of your flat like?” asked Katherine. She had
been leaning a little forward, her hands clasped together, deeply
interested.
“Oh! very small! I made it as English as I could. It had central heating
and, in the winter, with the double windows, it got very stuffy. I had
English pictures and English books, but it was never very comfortable. I
don’t know why. Nothing in Russia’s comfortable. I had a funny old
servant called Sonia. She was fond of me, but she drank; she was always
having relations to stay with her. I would find funny-looking men in the
kitchen in the morning. She had no idea of time, and would cook well or
badly as she pleased. She liked to tell fairy stories; she stole and she
drank and she lied, but I kept her because I couldn’t bother to change
her.”
He stopped—then began again, but now more dreamily than before, as
though he’d been carried far away from the train, from England, from
Katherine. “Yes—that was it—one couldn’t be bothered. One couldn’t be
bothered about anything, and one didn’t need to bother, because no one
else bothered either. Perhaps that’s just why I loved it, as I see now
that I did love it. No one cared for anything but what was in the
air—dreams, superstitions, stories. The country itself was like that
too—so vague, so vast and boundless, so careless and heedless, so
unpractical, so good for dreams, so bad for work, so unfinished, letting
so many things go to pieces, so beautiful and so ugly, so depressing and
so cheerful, so full of music and of ugly sounds ... so bad to live in,
so good to dream in. I was happy there and I didn’t know it—I was happy
and didn’t know it.” His voice had sunk to a whisper, so that Katherine
could not catch his words. She touched the sleeve of his coat.
“Come back, Phil, come back,” she said, laughing. “You’re lost.”
He started, then smiled at her.
“It’s all right ... but it’s odd. There are so many things that didn’t
seem to me to be curious and beautiful then that are so now.” Then,
looking at Katherine very intently, as though he were calling her back
to him, he said:
“But don’t talk to me about Russia. It’s bad for me. I don’t want to
think of it. I’ve left it for ever. And when you ask me questions it
revives me, as though it still had some power.... You say that you’re
afraid of it—why,” he ended, laughing, “I believe I’m afraid of it
too—I don’t _want_ to think of it. It’s England now and Glebeshire and
you—and you,” he whispered. They were interrupted then by an attendant,
who told them that it was time for the first luncheon.
* * * * *
Afterwards, when the shadows were lengthening across the fields and the
misty sun rode low above the far hills, they sat silently dreaming of
their great happiness. It was an afternoon that was to remain, for both
of them, throughout their lives, in spite of all after events, a most
perfect memory. There are moments in the histories of all of us when we
are carried into heights that by the splendour of their view, the fine
vigour of their air, the rapture of their achievement offer to us a
sufficient reassurance against the ironic powers. We find in them a
justification of our hopes, our confidences, our inspirations, our
faith....
So, for these few hours at least, Katherine and Philip found their
justification.
This was a moment that two others, also, in that carriage were never
afterwards to forget. Millie, under the warm afternoon sun, had fallen
asleep. She woke to a sudden, half-real, half-fantastic realisation of
Philip. She was awake, of course, and yet Philip was not quite human to
her—or was it that he was more human than he had ever been before? She
watched him, with her young, eager, inquisitive gaze, over the cover of
her book. She watched him steadily for a long time.
She had always liked the clean, bullet-shaped head, his black eyes, his
sturdiness and set, square shoulders, his colour and his strength. She
had always liked him, but to-day, in this sudden glimpse, he seemed to
be revealed to her as someone whom she was seeing for the first time.
Millie, in all the freshness of her anticipated attack upon the world,
had at this period very little patience for bunglers, for
sentimentalists, for nervous and hesitating souls. Now, strangely, she
saw in Philip’s eyes some hinted weakness, and yet she did not despise
him. “I believe,” she thought, “he’s afraid of us.” That discovery came
as though it had been whispered to her by someone who knew. Her old
conviction that she knew him better than did the others showed now no
signs of faltering. “I believe I could help him as they none of them
can,” she thought. “No, not even Katherine.” She had, in spite of her
determined, practical common-sense, the most romantic idea of love, and
now, as she thought of the two of them wrapped up there before her eyes
in one another, she felt irritated by her own isolation. “I wonder
whether Katherine understands him really,” she thought. “Katherine’s so
simple, and takes everything for granted. It’s enough for her that she’s
in love. I don’t believe it’s enough for him.” She had always in very
early days felt some protecting, motherly element in her love for
Katherine. That protection seemed now to spread to Philip as well. “Oh!
I do hope they’re going to be happy,” she thought, and so, taking them
both with her under her wing, dozed off to sleep again....
The other was, of course, Henry.
No one could ever call Henry a gay youth. I don’t think that anyone ever
did, and although with every year that he grows he is stronger, more
cheerful and less clumsy and misanthropic, he will never be really gay.
He will always be far too conscious of the troubles that may tumble on
to his head, of the tragedies of his friends and the evils of his
country.
And yet, in spite of his temperament, he had, deep down in his soul, a
sense of humour, an appreciation of his own comic appearance, a ready
applause for the optimists (although to this he would never, never
confess). “He’s a surly brute,” I heard someone say of him once—but it
is possible (I do not say probable) that he will be a great man one of
these days, and then everyone will admire his fine reserve, “the
taciturnity of a great man”; in one of his sudden moments of confidence
he confessed to me that this particular journey down to Glebeshire was
the beginning of the worst time in his life—not, of course, quite the
beginning. Philip’s appearance on that foggy night of his grandfather’s
birthday was that—and he is even now not so old but that there may be
plenty of bad times in store for him. But he will know now how to meet
them; this was his first test of responsibility.
He had always told himself that what he really wanted was to show, in
some heroic fashion, his love for Katherine. Let him be tested, he
cried, by fire, stake, torture and the block, and he would “show them.”
Well, the test had come. As he sat opposite her in the railway carriage
he faced it. He might go up to Philip and say to him: “Look here, is it
true? Did you have a mistress in Moscow for three years and have a son
by her?” But what then? If Philip laughed, and said: “Why, of course ...
everyone knows it. That’s all over now. What is it to you?” He would
answer: “It’s this to me. I’m not going to have a rotten swelp of a
fellow marrying my sister and making her miserable.”
Then Philip might say: “My dear child—how young you are! all men do
these things. I’ve finished with that part of my life. But, anyway,
don’t interfere between me and Katherine, you’ll only make her miserable
and you’ll do no good.”
Ah! that was just it. He would make her miserable; he could not look at
her happiness and contemplate his own destruction of it. And yet if
Philip were to marry her and afterwards neglect her, and leave her as he
had left this other woman, would not Henry then reproach himself most
bitterly for ever and ever? But perhaps, after all, the story of that
wretched man at the Club was untrue, it had been, perhaps, grossly
exaggerated. Henry had a crude but finely-coloured fancy concerning the
morals of the Man of the World. Had not Seymour dismissed such things
with a jolly laugh and “my dear fellow, it’s no business of ours. We’re
all very much alike if we only knew.” Had he not a secret envy of this
same Man of the World who carried off his sins so lightly with so
graceful an air? But now it was no case of an abstract sinner—it was a
case of the happiness or unhappiness of the person whom Henry loved best
in life.
A subtler temptation attacked him. He knew (he could not possibly doubt)
that if his parents were told, Philip would have to go. One word from
him to his mother, and the family were rid of this fellow who had come
out of nowhere to disturb their peace. The thing was so infernally easy.
As he sat there, reading, apparently, his novel, his eyes were on
Katherine’s face. She was leaning back, her eyes closed, smiling at her
thoughts. What would Katherine do? Would she leave them all and go with
him? Would she hate him, Henry, for ever afterwards? Yes, that she would
probably do.... Ah, he was a weak, feeble, indeterminate creature. He
could make up his mind about nothing.... That evening he had had with
Philip, it had been glorious and disgusting, thrilling and sordid. He
was rather glad that he had been drunk—he was also ashamed. He was
intensely relieved that none of the family had seen him, and yet he saw
himself shouting to them: “I was drunk the other night, and I talked to
rotten women and I didn’t care what happened to me.... I’m a boy no
longer.”
He hated Philip, and yet, perhaps, Philip was leading him to freedom.
That fellow in the novel about the sea and the forests (Henry could see
him challenging his foes, walking quietly across the square towards his
friend, who was waiting to slay him). He would have admired Philip.
Henry saw himself as that fine solitary figure waiting for his
opportunity. How grand he could be had he a chance, but life was so
lofty, so unromantic, so conventional. Instead of meeting death like a
hero, he must protect Katherine ... and he did not know how to do it....
As the sun was sinking in a thick golden web that glittered behind the
dark purple woods—woods that seemed now to stand like watchers with
their fingers upon their lips—the train crossed the boundary river.
That crossing bad been, ever since he could remember, a very great
moment to Henry. To-day the recognition of it dragged him away from
Philip and Katherine, from everything but Glebeshire.
He looked across at Katherine instinctively—she, sitting now upright,
gazing out of the window, turned as though she had known and smiled at
him. They were in Glebeshire, there was the first valley, mysterious,
now like a dark purple cup, there the white winding road that went over
the hill on to Rasselas, Liskane, Clinton and Truxe, there was the first
break in the hills, where you always peered forward expecting to catch a
shimmer of the sea, here that cluster of white cottages that, when he
had been small, had seemed to be tumbling down the hill, very dangerous
to live in ... at last the pause at Carlyon, the last stop before
Rasselas.
It was quite dark now. The light had suddenly been drawn from the sky,
and the earth was filled with new sounds, new scents, new mysteries. The
train stopped for a minute before Rasselas, and, suddenly all about it,
through the open window there crowded whispers, stealthy movements, the
secret confidences of some hidden stream, the murmured greetings of the
trees. The train lay there as though it had wanted them all to know how
lovely the evening was. On the road that skirted the train a man with a
lantern greeted a cart. “Well, good-night to ’ee,” a voice said clear
and sharp like an invitation; Henry’s heart began to beat furiously.
Glebeshire had welcomed them.
With a jerk the train stumbled forward again, and they were in Rasselas.
The little station, which was of some importance because it was a
junction for Pelynt and therefore also for Rafiel, lay very quietly at
the bottom of the wooded hill. A porter went down the train swinging a
lantern and crying: “Change for P’lynt. Change for P’lynt.”
A stream flowed near by, and the scent of a garden flooded the station:
there would be already snowdrops and primroses and crocuses. The whole
party of them were bundled out on to the platform—a great pile of
luggage loomed in the distance. Heads from the carriage windows watched
them, then a pause, a cry, and the train was off, leaving them all high
and dry, with the wind blowing round their hair and clothes and ankles
like a friendly and inquisitive dog. There was sea in the wind.
“Smell the sea!” cried Millie. “I must have left it in the restaurant
car,” said Aunt Aggie. “Too provoking. I particularly wanted you to read
that article, Harriet. I think you might have noticed, Millie ... you
were sitting next to me.”
“There’s Jacob!” Henry, suddenly happy and excited and free from all
burdens, cried:
“Hallo! Jacob! How are you? How’s everyone? How’s Rebekah?”
Jacob, with a face like a red moon, smiled, touched his hat, stormed at
a young man in buttons. “Do ’ee bustle a bit, John. Didn’t I tell ’ee
the box with the black ’andles?... very comfortable, Mr. ’Enry, sir,
thank ’ee, as I ’opes you finds yourself. Been a bit o’ sickness around
down along in the village ... but not to ’urt....”
Could they all get in? Of course they could. The luggage was all on the
luggage-cart, and Rock and Clarence with it; a silver moon, just rising
now above the station roofs, peeping at her, laughed at her serious
dignity.
“No, we’ll go on the box, Philip and I,” said Katherine. “Of course I
shan’t be cold. No, really, we’d rather, wouldn’t we, Philip? Plenty of
room, Jacob.”
They were off, up the little hill, down over the little bridge and
through the little village. Katherine, sitting between Philip and Jacob,
pressing her cheek against Philip’s rough tweed coat, her hand lying in
his under the rug, seemed to slip, dreaming, fulfilling some earlier
vision, through space. She had wondered sometimes, in the earlier days,
whether there could be any greater happiness in life than that
ever-thrilling, ever-satisfying return to Garth. She knew now that there
was a greater happiness....
A white world of crackling, burning stars roofed them in; an owl flew by
them through the grey dusk; the air smelt of spring flowers and fresh
damp soil. The stream that had been with them since their entrance into
Glebeshire still accompanied them, running with its friendly welcome at
their side. Beyond the deep black hedges cows and horses and sheep moved
stealthily: it seemed that they might not disturb the wonderful silence
of the night.
“Are you warm enough?” he asked her; he caught her hand more tightly and
kissed her cheek, very softly and gently. She trembled with happiness,
and pressed more closely against his coat.
“Can you smell the sea yet? You will when you get to the top of Rasselas
Hill. This is the high road to Pelynt. It runs parallel with the railway
until we get to the cross roads, Pelynt Cross, you know.... You’ll smell
the sea there. You can see it on a clear day. To the left of you there
is just Pelynt Moor. It runs for miles and miles, right along by the
Drymouth Road.... Look through the break in the hedge. Do you see that
light across the field? That’s John Pollen’s cottage. John was murdered
just about a hundred years ago. He was an old miser, and some men robbed
him, but they never found his head. They say he wanders about still
looking for it.... Oh, if this could go on for ever. Philip, are you
happy?”
“Happy?” ... Ah! she could feel his body quiver.
“Yes, and now we’re coming down to the Well. There’s a little wood just
at the body of the hill. We always call it the Well because it’s so dark
and green. It’s the most famous wood for primroses in all Glebeshire.
They’ll be coming now.... We’ll walk here.... I cried once because I
thought I was lost here. They forgot me and went home. Then I was
comforted by the postman, who found me and carried me home.... Jacob, do
you remember?”
“Ah, Miss Kathie, doan’t ’ee think that I’d forget ought about ’ee. Not
likely. And your mother in a fine takin’, poor soul, too. We’re a-coming
to P’lynt Cross now, sir—as famous as any spot o’ ground in the ’ole of
Glebeshire, sir—Hup, then! Hup, then—Whey—Oh! oh! Hup, then!”
They pulled to the top, leaving the wood in the dip behind them. The
wind met them, flinging its salt and freshness in their faces with a
rough, wild greeting. Philip could hear suddenly the humming of the
telegraph wires, as though they had sprung from their imprisonment in
the valley and were chanting their victory. To his left, vague and
formless under the starlight, stretched Pelynt Moor, waiting there,
scornfully confident in its age and strength and power, for daylight.
The salt wind flung its arms around them and dragged them forward;
Philip, listening, could hear, very stealthily, with the rhythm of armed
men marching, the beating of the sea....
“Now we’re near—now we’re very near. It’ll be Garth Cross in a minute.
There it is. Now we turn off down to the Almshouses. We don’t really
come into the village.... There are the Almshouses and the Common....
Now round the corner.... There it is—there’s the Gate—the Gate!... Oh!
Philip, are you _happy_?”
She was crying a very little: her eyes were blurred as they turned up
the long drive, past all the rhododendron bushes, past the lawn with the
giant oak at the farther end of it, round the curve to the hall door,
with Rebekah standing under the porch to welcome them. Philip was down,
and had helped her to the ground. She stood a little away from them all
as they laughed and chattered about the door. She wiped her eyes with
her gloved hand to stop the tears.
Philip was conscious of standing in a long dark hall with stairs at the
end of it and a large oak chest with a glass case that contained a
stuffed bird taking up much of the space; that, he always afterwards
remembered, was his first impression of the house, that it was absurd to
put so large a chest just there where everyone would knock against it. A
misty babel of talk surrounded him: he was conscious of a tall old woman
wearing a high, stiffly-starched white cap: she had a fine colour, very
dark red cheeks, hair a deep black and flashing eyes. She must be
between sixty and seventy, but her body was straight and vigorous. This
was, he supposed, Rebekah. He saw, in the background, old Mr. Trenchard
being helped up the stairs by Rocket; he heard Aunt Betty in a happy
twitter, “Ah, now, this is nice ... this _is_ nice ... how nice this
is.” He heard Mrs. Trenchard’s slow, sleepy voice: “No—the train was
punctual, Rebekah, quite punctual. We had luncheon on the train ... yes,
we were quite punctual.”
Someone said: “I’ll show Philip his room,” and George Trenchard,
laughing, cried to him: “Come on, Philip, this way—this way.”
Trenchard, like a boy, bounded up the stairs in front of him. They were
old, black, winding and creaking stairs that sighed as you mounted them.
Trenchard cried: “To the right now—mind your head!” They turned through
a little passage, so low that Philip must bend double and so dark that
he could see nothing before him. He put out his hand, touched
Trenchard’s broad back, and was surprised at his sense of relief. Now
they walked along another passage, very narrow, white walls with
coloured sporting prints hanging on them. “Ah! here’s the Blue Room.
Here you are. Hope you’ll like it—got a decent view. Brought you hot
water? Ah, yes, there it is. When you’ve washed come down just as you
are. Don’t bother to change.... It’s only supper to-night, you know....
Right you are.”
His room was charming, with cherry-coloured wall-paper on walls that
seemed a thousand years old. He flung his windows open, and there was
the moon, thin, sharp, quivering with light in the sky, and he could
hear the stream that had accompanied him ever since his entry into
Glebeshire still singing to him. The night air was so sweet, the trees,
that sighed and trembled and sighed again, so intimate. There was an
intimacy here that he had never felt in any country before.
There was an intimacy and also, for him, at any rate, some strange
loneliness.... He closed the window. He found his way down into the
hall, and there saw Katherine. “Quick!” she cried. “Quick! I hoped that
you’d come down before the others. We’ve got ten minutes.” She was
almost dancing with excitement (she his staid, reserved Katherine). She
was pulling him by the arm, out through the door, under the porch, into
the garden. She ran across the lawn, and he, more slowly, followed her.
He caught her and held her close to him.
“You love it, Philip—don’t you? You must. Of course you’ve hardly seen
anything to-night. To-morrow we must both get up early, before anyone
else, and come down. But look back now. Isn’t the house simply—? Isn’t
it? Don’t you feel the happiness and cosiness and friendliness? Oh, you
must! You must!”
“When I’ve got you I don’t want anything. Everything is lovely.”
“But you’re happy now to be here, aren’t you?”
“Very happy.”
“And you won’t be disappointed, will you? You must promise me that you
won’t be disappointed.”
“I promise you.”
“And there’s so much to show you! Oh! it’s so wonderful to have all the
old places that I’ve loved so long, to have them all to show you—to
share them all with you.... Oh, wonderful, wonderful!”
“Yes, I’ll share them all with you. But—but ... Katherine, darling. No,
turn round—come closer. There, like that: I don’t want to share _you_
with _them_. I don’t want to share you with anyone or anything.”
“You don’t—you can’t. Of course you can’t. I’m all yours—but then this
is part of me, so _it’s_ all yours too.”
“And you couldn’t live away from it? You couldn’t imagine having to be
right away from it—if I _had_ to live somewhere else?”
“But why should you? You won’t have to live somewhere else. And let’s
not imagine anything. Things are so lovely, so perfect, as they are. I
don’t like imagining things. I can’t when _this_ is all so real.”
“Katie ... Katie ... No, come closer. Much closer. I don’t care if I do
hurt you. I want to. I want _you, you, you_. It’s what I said last
night. Let’s marry soon—not this awful year. I feel—I don’t know—I
imagine too much. I suppose—Rut I feel as though you’d escape me, as
though they’d all come between and take you away. If once you were
_mine_ I’d never care again. We’d stay anywhere, do anything you like.
But this is so hard—to wait like this. To see you caring so much for
other people, who don’t, perhaps, care for me. I _want_ you. I _want_
you—_all_ of you. And I’ve only got half.”
“Half!” She laughed triumphantly. “You _have_ all of me—_all_ of
me—for _ever_! Philip, how funny you are! Why, you don’t trust me! I’d
wait for ever if necessary, and never doubt for an instant that anything
could come between. I trust you as I trust this place.”
A voice broke in upon them. Someone called.
“Katherine! Katherine!”
Slowly she drew away from him. “That’s mother. I must go.”
He caught her hand. “Stay a little longer. They can wait.”
“No, it’s mother. She wants me. Come on, Phil darling. Supper time.
We’ll creep out again afterwards.”
She crossed the lawn, expecting Philip to follow her. But he stayed
there under the oak tree. He heard the voices laughing and calling in
the lighted house. He was suddenly desperately lonely. He was
frightened.... He crossed hurriedly the lawn, and as he walked he knew
that what he wanted was that someone, someone who really knew him,
should come and comfort him.
Before he entered the hall he stopped and looked back into the dark
garden. Was there someone beneath the oak, someone who watched him with
an ironical, indulgent smile?... No, there was no one there. But he knew
who it was that could comfort him. With a swift, sharp accusation of
disloyalty he confessed to himself that it was Anna for whom, during
that instant, he had looked.