CHAPTER VII

ROCHE ST. MARY MOOR

Terror is a tall word; it should not, perhaps, be used, in this trivial

history, in connection with the feelings and motives of so youthfully

comfortable a character as Philip—nevertheless very nearly akin to

terror itself was Philip’s emotion on discovering the results of his

disgraceful encounter with Aunt Aggie ... because there were no results.

As he had watched Aunt Aggie trembling, silent, emotional, retreat

(after striking Philip she had risen and, without a word, left the

room), he had thought that the moment for all his cards to be placed

dramatically upon the Trenchard table had at last come. Perhaps they

would tell him that he must go; they would openly urge Katherine to

abandon him, and then, faced, with force and violence, by the two

alternatives, he was assured, absolutely assured, of her loyalty to

himself. He saw her, protesting that she would love them all, reminded

that (Philip being proved an abomination) she must now choose, finally

going out into the world with Philip.

He went to his room that Sunday evening triumphant. No more Trenchard

secrets and mysteries—thanks to that horrible old woman, the way was

clear. He came down the next morning to breakfast expecting to be

treated with chilly politeness, to be asked to interview George

Trenchard in his study, to hear Trenchard say: “Well, my dear boy—I’m

very sorry of course—but you must see with me that it’s better to break

off ...” and then his reply.

“That, sir, must remain with Katherine. I am bound to her....” No, he

had no fear of the result. As he came down the stairs on that Monday

morning, a fine hot spring day, with the mist of the spring heat hazy

above the shining grass, his eyes were lighter, his spirits higher than

they had been since his first coming to Garth. He entered the

dining-room, and thought that he had dreamt yesterday’s incidents.

Millie cried—“Hullo, Phil! Late as usual.”

George Trenchard said: “Philip, what do you say to a drive over to

Trezent? It’s a good day and I’ve some business there.”

Aunt Aggie gave him her withered hand to shake with exactly the proud,

peevish air that she always used to him. There was a scratch on his face

where her rings had cut him; he looked at her rings ... yes, he was

surely dreaming. Then there crept to him the conviction that the

plot—the family plot—seen before vaguely, mysteriously and

uncertainly—was now developing before his eyes as something far deeper,

far more soundless, far more determined than he had ever conceived. Mrs.

Trenchard, smiling there at the head of the table, knew what she was

about. That outburst of Aunt Aggie’s last night had been a slip—They

would make no more.

His little quarrel with Katherine had needed no words to mark its

conclusion. He loved her, he felt, just twice as deeply as he had loved

her before ... he was not sure, though, that he was not now a little—a

very little—afraid of her....

* * * * *

In the middle of the week, waking, very early on the most wonderful of

all spring mornings, his inspiration came to him.

He got up, and about half-past seven was knocking on Katherine’s door.

She spoke to him from within the room.

“Katie!”

“Yes!”

He whispered to her in the half-lit house, across whose floors the

light, carrying the scent of the garden-flowers, shook and trembled; he

felt a conspirator.

“Look here! You’ve got to dress at once and come off with me somewhere.”

“Go off!”

“Yes, for the day! I’ve thought it all out. We can take the pony-cart

and just catch the nine o’clock at Rasselas. That’ll get us to Clinton

by ten. We’ll be down in Roche Cove by eleven—spend the day there,

catch the eight-thirty back and be in the house again by half-past ten

to-night.”

There was a pause, filled with the delighted twittering of a company of

sparrows beyond the open passage-window.

At last her voice:

“Yes. I’ll come.”

“Good.... Hurry!... I’ll tell them downstairs.”

When the family assembled for breakfast and he told them, his eyes

challenged Mrs. Trenchard’s.

“Now, look here,” his eyes said, “I’m the dreadful young man who is

teaching your boy Henry to drink, who’s ruining your domestic

peace—surely you’re not, without protest, going to allow me a whole day

with Katherine!”

And her eyes answered him.

“Oh, I’m not afraid.... You’ll come back. You’re a weak young man.”

In the train he considered, with a beating heart, his project. The day

encouraged adventure, boldness, romance; he was still young enough to

believe in the intangible illusion of a Deity Who hangs His signs and

colours upon the sky to signify His approval of one bold mortal’s

projects, and no ironic sense of contrast attacked, as yet, his belief.

If the Trenchards refused to make the incident of Sunday night a crisis,

he would, himself, force them to recognise it. He had been passive long

enough ... he did not know that, all his life, he had never been

anything else.

In the train they talked to one another very little. He watched her and

was bewildered, as are all lovers, by her proximity and her remoteness.

The very love that brought her so close to him made her the more remote

because it clothed her in strange mystery.

She was further from him than Anna had ever been, because he loved her

more deeply ... and at the thought of Anna—so constant now and so

sinister—he had a sudden fear of the success of his project....

Clinton St. Mary is a village, with one ugly street, on the very edge of

Roche St. Mary Moor. It has visitors from the outside world because, in

a hollow in the moor, lie the remains of St. Arthe Church, one of the

earliest Christian buildings in Great Britain, ‘buried until lately in

the sand, but recently excavated through the kind generosity of Sir John

Porthcullis, Bart., of Borhaze, and shown to visitors, 6d. a

head—Wednesday and Saturday afternoons free.’ Tourists therefore

continually patronise ‘The Hearty Cow’ in Clinton, where there is every

day a cold luncheon—ham, chicken, beef, tart, junket, cheese—for

half-a-crown a-head. Katherine also had relations here, the Vicar, the

Rev. James Trenchard, being a cousin ‘and a dear old man’. However,

to-day the world should be for themselves alone. In the village they

bought ginger-beer, ham-sandwiches, saffron buns, chocolate. They set

off across the Moor.

When they had walked a very little way they were suddenly engulfed.

Behind them the road, the trees, the village were wrapped in blue haze:

to the right, very faintly the yellow sand-hills hovered. In the sandy

ground at their feet little pools that caught blue fragments of sky

shone like squares of marble: out of the tufts of coarse grass larks

rose, circling, like sudden sprays of some flashing into the air as a

fountain flashes: no mortal being was visible in this world.

They walked for two hours and exchanged scarcely a word. Philip felt as

though he had never had Katherine alone with him before since the day of

their engagement—always there had been people between them, and, if not

people, then his own silly fancies and imaginations. As he looked his

love was now neither reasoning nor hesitating. “I am stronger than you

all,” he could shout to the ironical heavens, for the first time in all

his days. Then she spoke to him, and her voice reminded him of his

desperate plans.... His confidence left him. It was his great misfortune

that he never believed in himself.

Very little, this morning, was Katherine troubled about dreams or

fancies. She was happy, as she had always been happy, with absolute

simplicity, her trust in the ultimate perfection of the world being so

strong in her that a fine day, her closeness to Philip, her own bodily

health and fitness were enough to sweep all morbidities far away. She

had not been happy lately—some new force had been stirring in her that

was strange to her and unreal, like a bad dream.

But now her unhappiness of the last weeks was as faint as the hazy mist,

as shadowy as the thin curtain of sea that now spread before them, hung

like gauze between two humped and staring sand-hills. They rushed down

the deep cup of the sand-valley and up, through the thin wiry grass, to

the top, then down again, then up once more to be perched on the very

edge of the path that twisted down to their Cove. The sea-breeze, warm

and soft, invited them.... Down they went.

The Cove was hidden by black rocks, piled together, seeming, through the

mist, to be animals herded together to guard its sanctity. Under the

rocks the Cove lay, curved like a small golden saucer, the sea forming

here a thin glassy lake, protected by a further range of rocks that

extended, as though placed there by human agency, across the mouth of

the tiny circle. The water within the rocks was utterly clear, the

seaweed, red-gold and green, covering the inside of the cup: when the

waves broke beyond the barrier they were echoed here by a faint ripple

that trembled, in green shadows, like a happy sigh across the surface,

and, with this ripple, came the echo of the dull boom that the surging

tide was making in the distant caves: this echo was a giant’s chuckle,

sinister, malevolent, but filtered. When the tide was coming in, the

ripples, running in faint lines from side to side, covered the shining

surface of the rocks and stones, with layers of water, thin and fine

like silk, now purple, now golden, now white and grey.

The silk stretched over the rocks, drew itself taut, then spilt itself

suddenly, with a delighted ecstasy, in cascades of shining water, into

the breast of the retreating tide. As the tide went out, very

reluctantly the colour withdrew from the rocks, leaving them, at last,

hard and dry beneath the sun ... but at the heart of the smooth, glassy

cup, on these warm spring days, there was a great peace and content:

birds, sea-gulls, sparrows, thrushes, came to the edge of the golden

sand, and with trembling, twittering happiness listened to the hollow

booming in the distant caves.

Lying there, on the little beach, upon such a spring day as this, man

might be assured that the world had been made only for his especial

comfort and safety. The intense blue of the sky, the green wall of hill

behind him, these things could not change: for an hour of his journey,

life, gay rather than solemn, humorous rather than ironic, satisfying

and complete, would seem to be revealed to him. He would wonder that he

had ever doubted it....

Katherine and Philip lay, for a long time, saying very little, listening

to the gentle hiss of the water, watching the line, beyond the rocks,

where the sea was suddenly deep blue, feeling the sun upon their faces,

and the little breeze that, once and again, with a sudden gesture of

merriment ruffled the faces of the golden pools with a flurry of grey

splashes and shadows. They ate their sandwiches and saffron buns and

drank their ginger-beer, which resembled hot-soap-and-water: Katherine

waited. She knew that Philip had something to say to her, that he had

brought her here with some purpose, and she seemed to know also that

that gentle sunny hour of the late morning was to be the last moment in

some stage in her life. Her first meeting with him, his proposal to her,

her talk afterwards with her mother, her coming to Garth with him, his

confession at Rafiel, their first quarrel yesterday—all these had been

stages in her growth. She waited now with a struggle, a maturity that

had been far from her experience a year ago.

He began at last, holding her hand covered by both of his, searching her

eyes with his, very grave; she saw with a little loving smile to herself

that he intended to be of an immense seriousness, that his sense of

humour was very far away. He began as though he were carrying through

the most tremendous business of his life—and a sparrow, perched on the

water’s edge, seemed to watch his gravity with a twitter of superior

amusement.

“Do you mind my talking now a little? There’s something I’ve got to

say.”

“It’s a beautiful place for talking. There’s no Aunt Aggie ... only one

sparrow to overhear us.”

“But it’s really important—terribly important. It’s simply this—that

last night was a crisis. I’m never going back to Garth again.”

Katherine laughed, but her eyes were suddenly frightened.

“My dear Phil ... What do you mean?”

“No, I’m not—I mean—at least not until certain things have happened.

You’re not going back either—”

“_I’m_ not going back?”

“No, not as Miss Katherine Trenchard—one day as Mrs. Philip Mark,

perhaps.”

Katherine drew her hand from his, sat up, looked out to the deep blue

line of sea, said, at last, quietly:

“Now please, Philip, explain the joke. The afternoon’s too lovely to be

wasted.”

“There is no joke. I’m perfectly serious. I can’t stand it any longer.

_I cannot stand it_—and when I say ‘it’ I mean the family, their

treatment of me, their dislike of me, their determination to swallow me

up in their feather-bed and make an end of me—the whole long

engagement; _you’re_ suffering. _I’m_ suffering. You were wretched

yesterday—so was I. When you’re wretched I could burn the whole family,

Garth and Glebeshire and all included and waste no pity whatever.”

But Katherine only laughed:

“Do you know, Phil, you’re exaggerating the whole thing in the most

ridiculous manner. It’s quite natural—it’s because you don’t know our

habits and manners. Aunt Aggie lost her temper last night—we were all

rather worked up—Sunday can be awful. She won’t lose her temper again.

We had a quarrel. Well, I suppose all lovers have quarrels. You think

they’ll all be terribly shocked because you let Henry drink too much

that night in London. That shows that you simply don’t know the family

at all, because if you did you’d know that it’s never shocked at

anything that it hasn’t seen with its own eyes. Aunt Aggie _saw_ Henry,

so she _was_ shocked—but for the others.... If they were to know—well,

what you told me at Rafiel—then—perhaps—”

“Then?” Philip cried eagerly.

“They might be—I don’t know what they’d do.” She turned her eyes to his

face again. “But you’re so impatient, Phil. You want everything to

happen in a minute—You’re discontented because they all have their own

lives, which you can’t share. But you’re so strange. _I’m_ the person

whose life you ought to share, and yet you don’t. You’ve hardly looked

at all this. You’ve taken no interest at all in the fishermen or the

villagers. Garth is nothing to you—”

“I _hate_ Garth!” he broke out furiously. “I—” Then he dropped his

voice. “That’ll all come later.... I’ll just say this about myself. It’s

only what I’ve always told you, that I’m simply not worthy for you to

care about me. You may have had some illusions about me at first. You

can’t have any now. I’m weak and backboneless, always wanting things

better than I can have them, ready to be influenced by simply anyone if

they’re nice to me, hating it when people aren’t nice. I’m no good at

all, except for one thing—my love for you.”

He bent forward and drew her towards him.

“I have never known anything like it before. I shall never know anything

like it again—and just because I do know myself so well I’m going to

hold on to it and let nothing take it from me. They, all of them—are

doing their best to take it from me. Your mother knows me much better

than you do.... She despises me completely and she knows the way to

influence me.”

Katherine would have spoken, but he stopped her.

“Oh, yes, she does. Have you noticed that she and I are never alone

together, that we never have talks nor walks nor anything? She is always

perfectly kind, but she knows, and I know that she knows, that if I were

once to get really intimate with her I might overcome my fright of her,

that it’s by my imagination of her that she’s influencing me. And she is

... she is ... she is.” His hand trembled against Katherine. “You don’t

know. You don’t see! You love her and think that she’s simply your

mother. But you don’t know.... Already she can get me to do anything she

likes. If she wants me to waste every day doing nothing, thinking

nothing, becoming a stupid bore, with no ambitions, no lips of his own,

no energy—and that’s what she _does_ want—she’s making me exactly

that. I feel her when she’s not there—all over the house, in the

garden, in the roads. I can’t escape her. In half a year’s time, when

the wedding day comes, all I shall want is to be allowed to cut the

flowers for the dinner-table and to hold your mother’s wool when she’s

winding it.”

He paused, stood suddenly upon his feet: “It’s like my own mother over

again—only Mrs. Trenchard’s cleverer ... but I tell you, Katie, you

shan’t marry a man like that. If you marry me down there, and we’re to

spend all our lives there, a year after marriage you’ll despise me, hate

me for the thing I’ve become.... I’ve thought it all out. That scene

last night decided me. You shan’t go back—not until we’re married.”

He stood proudly facing her, his whole body stirred to his decision. But

even then, as she looked at him she saw that his upper lip trembled a

little—his upper lip had always been weak. He looked down at her, then

sat very close to her, leaning towards her as though he were pleading

with her.

“I know that ever since our engagement you’ve been thinking that I’ve

imagined things. Perhaps I have. Perhaps that’s my way, and always has

been. And Russia increased my tendency. But if _that’s_ true then it

ought to be taken into account just as much as though I’d got a game leg

or was blind of one eye. You can’t just dismiss it and say: ‘He’s a

silly ass—he oughtn’t to imagine things’. I know that if I were

sensible I should just hang on for six months more, marry you and then

take you right off. But I know myself—by that time I shall simply do

exactly what your mother tells me—and she’ll tell me to dig potatoes in

the garden.”

“You’re unjust to yourself, Phil,” looking up at him. “You’re not so

weak ... and soon you’ll love Garth. You’ll understand the family, even

perhaps mother. It must come—it _must_. I want it so.”

“It will never come,” he answered her firmly. “You can make up your mind

to that now for ever. The only way we can live altogether like a happy

family in the future is for me to become a chair or table or one of your

aunt’s green cushions. That’s what I shall become if I don’t do

something now.”

She waited because she saw that he had more to say.

“And do you suppose that even then any of us would be happy? See already

how everyone is changed! Millie, Henry, Aunt Aggie, you, even your

father. Isn’t he always wondering now what’s come over everyone? There’s

a surprised look in his eyes. And it’s I!... I!... I! It’s like a pebble

in your shoe that you can’t find. I’m the pebble, and they’ll never be

comfortable so long as I’m here. They’re not only threatened with losing

you, they’re threatened with losing their confidence, their trust, their

superstitions.”

“I’m one of them,” Katherine said. “You forget that. We may be slow and

stupid and unimaginative, as you say, but we _are_ fond of one another.

You’re impatient, Phil. I tell you to wait ... wait!”

“Wait!” He looked out to sea, where the bar of blue was now sown with

white dancing feathers. “I can’t wait ... there’s something else.

There’s Anna.”

Katherine nodded her head as though she had known that this would come.

“Ever since that day at Rafiel she’s been between us; you’ve known it as

well as I. It hasn’t been quite as I’d expected. I thought perhaps that

you’d be shocked. You weren’t shocked. I thought that I’d be confused

myself. I haven’t been confused. You’ve wanted to know about

her—anything I could tell you. You’ve simply been curious, as you

might, about anyone I’d known before I met you—but the business has

been this, that the more you’ve asked the more I’ve thought about her.

The more she’s come back to me. It hasn’t been that I’ve wanted her,

even that I’ve thought tenderly about her, only that your curiosity has

revived all that life as though I were back in it all again. I’ve

remembered so much that I’d forgotten.”

Katherine took his hand and came close to him. “Yes. I knew that it was

like that,” she said. “I knew that it was foolish of me to ask

questions, to make you talk about her, and I couldn’t help myself—I

knew that it was foolish, and I couldn’t help myself. And the strange

thing is that I don’t suppose I’ve ever wondered about anyone whom I

didn’t know in my life before. I’ve never been able to imagine people

unless I had pictures or something to help me. But now—I seem to see

her as though I’d known her all my days. And I’m not jealous—no, truly,

truly, I’m not jealous. And yet I don’t like her—I grudge—I grudge—”

She suddenly hid her face in the sleeve of his coat and her hand went up

to his cheek.

Philip, holding her with his arm as though he were protecting her, went

on: “And you’ve felt that I didn’t want you to ask me questions about

her—and you’ve been silent. I knew that you were silent because you

were afraid of my restlessness, and that has made restraint between us.

You wouldn’t speak and I wouldn’t speak, and we’ve both been thinking of

Anna until we’ve created her between us. It’s so like her—_so like_

her. Why,” he went on, “you’ll think this absurd perhaps—but I don’t

know—it’s not so absurd when you’ve lived with her. I wrote and told

her about us—about our engagement. I’ve never had an answer from her,

but I can fancy her saying to herself: ‘It would be amusing to bring him

back to me—not that I want him. I should be bored to death if I had to

live with him again—but just for the humour of it. He was always so

weak. He’ll come if I ask him.’

“I can imagine her saying that, and then I can imagine her just

projecting herself over here into the middle of us—simply for the fun

of it. I can see her laughing to herself in the way she used to when she

saw people behaving in what she thought was a childish fashion. So now

she’ll think us all childish, and she’ll simply come here, her laughing,

mocking spirit—and do her best to break us all up.”

“You’re afraid of her!” Katherine cried, as though she were challenging

him.

“Yes. I’m afraid of her,” he acknowledged.

“Well, I’m not,” she answered. “She can do her utmost. She can laugh as

much as she pleases.”

“She shall be given no chance,” he answered eagerly. “See, Katherine!

Listen!... All that matters is that we should be married. She can’t

touch us then—Garth can’t touch us, the family can’t touch us. I

suddenly saw it as an inspiration—that you’ve got to come up with me

now—to London. We’ll get a special licence. We’ll be married to-morrow.

If we catch the five-thirty from Truxe we’ll be up there soon after

midnight. We can get a trap in Clinton to drive us over. It’s got to be.

It’s just got to be. There can be no alternative.”

She shook her head smiling. “What a baby you are, Phil! Just because

Aunt Aggie lost her temper last night we’ve got to be married in half an

hour. And what about our promise to father of a year’s engagement?”

“That’s all right,” he answered eagerly. “If your father had wanted to

break off the engagement before the year’s up he’d have done so, you can

be sure.”

She laughed. “But I don’t want to be married all in a minute. You don’t

know how women care about trousseaux and presents and bells and—”

“Ah! Please, Katie!... It’s most awfully serious! Please—”

She was grave then. They stood up together on the little beach, her arm

round his neck.

“Phil. I do understand better than you think. But do you know what it

would mean if we were to run away now like this? My mother would never

forgive me. It would mean that I was throwing off everything—the place,

mother, all my life.... Of course I would throw it away for you if that

were the only course to take. But it isn’t the only course. You see life

exaggerated, Phil. Everything that happened yesterday has irritated you.

To-morrow—”

“To-morrow may be too late,” he answered her. “At least give my idea

half an hour, I’ll go off now for a walk by myself. In half an hour’s

time I’ll be back. Do your best for me.”

She looked at him, bent forward and kissed him.

“Yes, go—Come back in half an hour.”

She watched him climb the rocks, wind up the path, turn at the bend and

look back to her, then disappear. She sat down on the beach, rested her

elbows on her knees and looked out to sea. She was utterly alone: the

pool, now spun gold, beneath a sun that was slowly sinking to bars of

saffron, quivered only with the reaction of the retreating tide; the

rocks were black and sharp against the evening sky.

Katherine, as she sat there, had, at first, a desperate wish for the

help of some older person’s advice. It was not that she could, for an

instant, seriously contemplate this mad proposal of Philip’s—and yet he

had imparted to her some of his own fear and distrust of the possible

machinations of heaven. What he had said was true—that ever since he

had told her about Anna it had been as though they had taken some third

person into their lives—taken her unwillingly, almost unconsciously,

but nevertheless destructively. Then also, although Katherine had denied

it, she knew now that what he had said about the family was true. She

not only could not hope now that they and Philip would ever live happily

together—it was also the fact that they had changed. Her mother had

changed—her Aunts, her father, Millie, Henry—they had all

changed—changed to her and changed to themselves.

Katherine, moreover, now for the first time in her life criticised her

family—even her mother. She felt as though she and Philip had needed

help, and that the family, instead of giving it, had made difficulties

and trouble. Her mother had, deliberately, made trouble—had been hard

and unkind to Philip, had brought him to Garth that he might seem to

Katherine unsuited there, had put him into impossible positions and then

laughed at him. Her mother had come to her and asked her to give Philip

up; in retrospect that scene of yesterday afternoon seemed a deliberate

challenge—but a challenge offered behind Philip’s back.

Now her whole impulse was that Philip must at all costs be protected and

defended, and, for the first time, this afternoon, sitting there alone

with the world all hers, she realised how her feeling for him had

changed. When she had first known him she had fallen in love with him

because she had thought him the strongest, most adventurous, most

fearless of mortal souls. Now—she knew that he was weak, afraid of

himself, unbalanced, a prey to moods, impulses, terrors—and with that

knowledge of him her love had grown, had flung its wide arm about him,

had caught him to her heart with a fierce protection that the attraction

for his strength had never given her.

With her new knowledge of him came also her direct antagonism with that

other woman. She knew that what Philip had said was true, that her

curiosity had increased for them both the live actuality of that figure.

Katherine had always been afraid of cynical people, who must, always,

she felt, despise her for the simplicity of her beliefs, the confidence

of her trust. She remembered a woman who had, at one time, been a close

friend of Aunt Aggie’s, a sharp, masculine woman with pincenez, who,

when Katherine had said anything, had looked at her sharply through her

glasses, laughed as though she were ringing a coin to see whether it

were good metal, and said: ‘Do you think so?’

Katherine had hated her and been always helpless before her, clumsy,

awkward and tongue-tied. Now it was a woman of that kind whom she was

called out to challenge. Her thought in church yesterday was with her

now more strongly than ever. “How she would despise me if she knew

me!...” and then, “what a power she must have if she can come back like

this into Philip’s life.”

And yet not such a power! Always before him was that world where he was

not: his fancy, running before him, cried to him: “Yes. There! There!

was happiness,” or “In such a fashion happiness will come to you”—as

though the only end of life was happiness, the security of the ideal

moment. Yes, Katherine knew why Anna had laughed at Philip.

Her thoughts turned back again then to his mad idea of their escape to

London, and, suddenly, as though some woman were with her whom she had

never seen before, some voice within her cried: “Ah! I wish he’d make me

go! simply take me prisoner, force me by brutal strength, leave me no

will nor power.” Her imagination, excited, almost breathless, began to

play round this. She saw his return, heard him ask her whether she would

go with him, heard her answer that she would not, heard him say: “But

you are in my power now. I have arranged everything. Whether you like it

or not we go....”

She would protest, but in her surrender, triumphant at heart, she would

see her utter defeat of that other woman, whose baffled ghost might

whistle across the dark moor back to its own country to find other

humours for its decision.

“Poor Ghost,” she might cry after it, “you did not know that he would

prove so strong!” Nor would he.... Her dream faded like the trembling

colours in the evening sea.

And otherwise, unless that were so, she could not go. She had no

illusions as to what her escape with him would mean. There would be no

return for her to Garth—even Glebeshire itself would cast her out. As

she thought of all her days, of her babyhood, when the world had been

the green lawn and the old oak, of her girlhood, when Rafiel and

Polchester had been the farthest bounds, of all the fair days and the

wild days, of the scents and the sounds and the cries and the laughter,

it seemed that the little cove itself came close to her, pressing up to

her, touching her cheek, whispering to her: “You will not go!... You

will not go!... You will not go!” No, of her own will she could not go.

The golden pool was very full, swelling with a lift and fall that caught

the light of the sun as though the evening itself were rocking it.

Against the far band of rocks the tide was breaking with a white flash

of colour, and the distant caves boomed like drums. But the peace was

undisturbed; birds slowly, with a dreamy beat of wings, vanished into a

sky that was almost radiant white ... and behind her, the dark rocks,

more than ever watching, guarding beasts that loved her, waited for her

decision.

Then all things faded before her vision of her mother. That so familiar

figure seemed to come towards her with a freshness, a piquancy, as

though mother and daughter had been parted for years. “We’ve

misunderstood one another,” the figure seemed to say: “there shall never

be misunderstanding again.” There seemed, at that moment, to be no one

else in Katherine’s world: looking back she could see, in all her past

life, only her mother’s face, could hear only her mother’s voice.

She remembered the day when she had told her about the engagement, the

day when she had forgotten about the Stores, yesterday in her

bedroom....

She buried her face in her hands, feeling a wild, desperate despair—as

though life were too strong for her and her will too weak.

She felt a touch on her shoulder, and saw that Philip had returned, his

face in the dusk was pale like the white sky.

“Well?” he said.

She shook her head, smiling a dismal little smile. “I can’t go.... You

know that I can’t.”

(That other woman in her whispered: ‘Now he must compel you.’)

Philip looked out to sea.

“I can’t,” she repeated. “I can’t leave it all.”

(‘Ah! make me go!’ that other whispered.)

He turned away from her and looked back at the rocks.

“You care for all this more than for me.”

“You know that that is not true. I care for you more than anyone or

anything in the world. But these have all been fancies of yours, Phil.

In six months time—” she broke off.

(‘Force me, compel me to go with you,’ the other woman whispered to him.

But he did not hear.)

“Yes. We’ll go back,” he said.

They were silent. Suddenly he gripped her shoulder, and they both turned

and looked behind them.

“I thought I heard someone laugh,” he whispered.

She rose, then before they moved away, put her arm round him with a

close, maternal gesture that she had never used to him before.

BOOK III

KATHERINE AND ANNA

CHAPTER I

KATHERINE ALONE

It happened that in the middle of July there was to be a

Trenchard-Faunder wedding in London. It was to be a quite especial

Trenchard-Faunder wedding that no Trenchard or Faunder must miss. A Miss

Dorothy Faunder, daughter of Colonel Faunder of Foxley Park, Wilts, was

to marry her cousin Humphrey Trenchard, second son of Sir Geoffrey

Trenchard of Tredent Hall, Truxe, in Glebeshire, and 22 Bryanston

Square, W....

The wedding was to be towards the end of the season, before Goodwood and

Cowes; and St. Margaret’s, Westminster, was to be the scene of the

Ceremony. Of course the George Trenchards of Garth would be

present—there was never any question of that—but at the same time it

was an inconvenient interference with normal life. Trenchards and

Faunders saw, as a rule, little of London in the season unless there was

a daughter coming out or a wedding or a Presentation at Court. George

Trenchard greatly disliked being torn from Garth during July and August,

and it was only an exceptional demand that could uproot him.

This demand _was_ exceptional. Of course they must all be there.

On the evening before the departure for London Katherine sat alone in

her bedroom looking through her bright window on to the garden beneath

her. The July evening was close and oppressive—the garden was almost

black, with a strange quivering bar of pale yellow light behind the

trees. The scents came up to the open window heavily—there was no

breeze. Now and then a dog barked as though it were challenging someone.

Although there was no breeze, the trees sometimes shivered very faintly.

One star glittered between the black clouds.

Katherine sat at the open window smelling the pinks and the roses, her

room dim behind her with a pale metallic glow. She felt oppressed by the

evening, and at the same time strangely excited, as though something was

about to happen. But beyond this she was conscious of a curious

combative loneliness that should have been a miserable thing, but was in

reality something challenging and almost defiant. Defiant of what?

Defiant of whom? She thought of it as she sat there.

Her thoughts went back to that day that she had spent with Philip at

Roche St. Mary Moor. Her loneliness had begun quite definitely from that

day. Only a fortnight later Philip had departed. She had not seen him

since then. But even had he been with her she thought that he would not,

very greatly, have affected her loneliness. He might even have

accentuated it. For Philip had behaved very strangely since that

afternoon at Roche St. Mary. It was, Katherine thought, as though,

having made his bolt for freedom and failed, he simply resigned himself.

He only once afterwards alluded to the affair. One day he said to her

quite suddenly: “After all, it’s worth it—so long as you’re there.”

“What’s worth it?” she had asked him.

“But if you were to leave me,” he went on, and stopped and looked at

her.

“What’s worth it?” she had repeated.

“Being swallowed up,” he had answered her. “Your mother and I are going

to pay calls together this afternoon.”

He had during these last weeks been wonderful about her mother; he had

agreed to everything that she proposed, had run errands for her,

supported her opinions, “been quite a son to her,” Aunt Betty, happy at

this transformation, had declared—and he had been perfectly miserable.

Katherine knew that.

And his misery had kept them apart. Katherine had never loved him so

intensely as she did during those last days, and he had loved her with a

kind of passionate, almost desperate, intensity. But their love had

never brought them together. There had always been someone between.

It was as good as though he had said to her: “We have still another six

months before our marriage. You have told me definitely that you will

not give up the family. Your mother is determined not to surrender a bit

of you to me, therefore I am to be surrendered to your mother. I am

willing that this should be so because I love you, but if I change, if I

am dull and lifeless you mustn’t be surprised.

“There’s the earlier life, which one can’t forget all at once, however

deeply one wants to. Meanwhile, I hate your mother and your mother hates

me. But she’ll never let me go unless you force her to. She knows that I

can’t break away so long as you’re here. And she means you to be here

always. What would a strong man do? Forget the earlier life, I suppose.

So would I if I had you all to myself. But I have to share you—and that

gives the earlier life a chance.”

Although he had never opened his lips, Katherine heard him saying all

this as though he were there in front of her, there with his charm and

his hopeless humours about himself, his weakness that she had once

thought was strength, and for which now she only loved him all the more.

But the terrible thing about those last weeks had been that, although

she knew exactly what he was thinking, they had simply avoided all open

and direct discussion. She had wished for it, but what could she say?

Only the same things again—that it would be all right when they were

married, that he would love the family then, that she would be _his_

then and not the _family’s_.... Always at this point in her argument she

was pulled up sharply, because that was a lie. She would not be _his_

when they were married. She knew now, quite definitely, that her mother

was utterly, absolutely resolved never to let her go.

And meanwhile there was Anna....

Katherine, putting Philip aside for a moment, thought of the members of

the family one by one. They were all separated from her. She summoned

this ghostly truth before her, there in her dim room with the hot

scented air surrounding her, quite calmly without a shudder or a qualm.

Her mother was separated from her because, during the last six months,

they had never, with one exception, spoken the truth to one another.

Aunt Aggie was separated from her because, quite definitely, ever since

that horrible Sunday night, she hated Aunt Aggie. Henry was separated

from her because during these last months he had been so strange with

his alternate moods of affection and abrupt rudeness that she now

deliberately avoided him. Aunt Betty was separated from her because she

simply didn’t see things in the least as they were. Her father was

separated from her because he laughed at the situation and refused to

consider it at all. Millie—ah! Millie, the friend of all her life!—was

separated from her because they were concealing things the one from the

other as they had never done in all their days before.

Katherine faced these facts. She had an illusion about her life that she

had always been right in the very heart of her family. She did not know

that it had been their need of her that had put her there, and that now

that she was turning away from them to someone else, they were all

rejecting her. They also were unaware of this. They thought and she

thought that it had been always a matter of Love between them all—but

of course Love in most cases is only a handsome name for selfishness.

So Katherine sat alone in her room and waited for the thunder to come.

Meanwhile she was immensely surprised that this discovery of her

loneliness did not immediately depress her, but rather aroused in her a

pugnacity and an independence that seemed to her to be quite new

qualities. And then, following immediately upon her pugnacity, came an

overwhelming desire to kiss them all, to do anything in the world that

they wished, to love them all more than she had ever done before. And

following upon that came an aching, aching desire for Philip, for his

presence, his eyes, his hair, his neck, his hands, his voice....

And following upon that came Anna. Anna had become an obsession to

Katherine. If, in her earlier life, she had thought very intently of

persons or countries remote from her, she would, perhaps, have known how

to deal with the woman, but never before, in any crisis or impulse, had

her imagination been stirred. If she had ever thought about imagination,

she had decided that Rachel Seddon’s “Imagination!... you haven’t got a

scrap, my dear!” hurled at her once in the middle of some dispute, was

absolutely true. But her love for Philip had proved its preserver, had

proved it, roused it, stirred it into a fierce, tramping monster, with

whom she was simply unable to deal.

If only, she felt, she had been able to speak of her to Philip! Surely

then the questions and the answers would have stripped Anna of her

romance, would have shown her to be the most ordinary of ordinary women,

someone unworthy of Philip, unworthy of anyone’s dreams. But bringing

Anna into the air had been forbidden—anything better than to start

Philip thinking of her—so that there she had lingered, somewhere in the

shadow, romantic, provoking, mocking, dangerous, coloured with all the

show of her foreign land, with the towers and plains and rivers of

romance.

Nevertheless it had not been all Katherine’s imagination. There had been

in the affair some other agency. Again and again Katherine had been

conscious that, in opposition to her will, she was being driven to hunt

for that figure. In the middle of some work or pleasure she would start,

half frightened, half excited, conscious that someone was behind her,

watching her. She would turn, and in the first flash of her glance it

would seem to her that she caught some vanishing figure, the black hair,

the thin, tall body, the laughing, mocking eyes.

It was simply, she would tell herself, that her curiosity refused to be

quiet. If only she might have known whether Philip thought of Anna,

whether Anna thought of Philip, whether Anna wanted Philip to return to

her, whether Anna really despised him, whether ... and then with a

little shudder of dismissal, she would banish the Phantom, summoning all

her admirable Trenchard common-sense to her aid.... “That was past, that

was gone, that was dead.”

She was, upon this afternoon, at the point of summoning this resolution

when the door opened and Millie came in. For a moment so dark was the

room that she could not see, and cried: “Katie, are you there?”

“Yes. Here by the window.”

Millie came across the room and stood by Katherine’s chair. In her voice

there was the shadow of that restraint that there had been now between

them ever since the Sunday with the Awful Supper.

“It’s only the Post. It’s just come. Two letters for you—one from

Philip that I thought that you’d like to have.”

Katherine took the letters, laid them on her lap, looking up at her

sister with a little smile.

“Well ...” said Millie, hesitating, then, half turning, “I must go back

to Aunt Betty—I’m helping her with the things.”

“No. Don’t go.” Katherine, who was staring in front of her now into the

black well of a garden, lit by the quivering, shaking light, put out her

hand and touched Millie’s sleeve. Millie stood there, awkwardly, her

white cotton dress shining against the darkness, her eyes uncertain and

a little timid.

“I ought to go, Katie dear.... Aunt Betty—”

“Aunt Betty can wait. Millie, what’s the matter?”

“What’s the matter?”

“Yes, between us. For a long time it’s been—and worse since Philip went

away.”

“Nothing,” said Millie, slowly, then, quite suddenly, with one of those

movements so characteristic of her, she flung herself on to her knees,

caught Katherine’s hands, then stretched forward and pulled Katherine’s

head down to hers—then kissed her again and again. The two sisters held

one another in a close embrace, cheek against cheek, breast to breast.

So they stayed for some time.

At last Millie slid down on to the floor and rested there, her head,

with all its fair hair ruffled and disordered, on Katherine’s lap.

“Well ...” said Katherine at last, her head against her sister’s cheek.

“Why, all this time, have you been so queer? Is it because you hate

Philip?”

“No, I like him.”

“Is it because you hate me?”

“No, I love _you_.”

“Is it because you hate my marrying Philip?”

“No—if you’d do it at once.”

“Do it at once?”

“Yes—now—go up to London—Marry him to-morrow—”

“My _dear_ Millie!... our year isn’t up—nearly.”

“What does it matter about your year? Better to break your year than to

have us all at one another’s throats—miserable. And then perhaps after

all to lose Philip.”

“Lose Philip?”

“Yes. He’ll go back to Russia.”

The words flashed before Katherine’s eyes like lightning through the

garden. Her heart gave a furious jump and then stopped.

“Why do you think he’d do that?” she asked at last. “Do you think he

doesn’t love me?”

“No, it’s because he loves you so much that he’d do it. Because he’d

rather have none of you than only a bit of you, rather have none of you

than share you with us.” She turned round, staring into Katherine’s

eyes. “Oh, I understand him so well! I believe I’m the only one in all

the family who does! You think that I’m not grown up yet, that I know

nothing about life, that I don’t know what people do or think, but I

believe that I do know better than anyone! And, after all, it’s Philip

himself that’s made me see! He understands now what he’s got to give up

if he marries you—all his dreams, all his fun, all his travels, all his

imagination. _You_ don’t want to give up anything, Katie. You want to

keep all this, Garth and the sea, even the oldest old man and woman in

the place, above all, you want to keep all of us, mother most of all.

You know that mother hates Philip and will always make him unhappy, but

still you think that it’s fair that you should give up nothing and he

everything. But you’re up against more than Philip, Katie—you’re up

against all his imagination that won’t let him alone however much he

wants it to—and then,” Millie finally added, turning her eyes back to

the other garden—“There’s the other woman.”

“Why!” Katherine cried—“You know?... Who told you?”

“And _you_ know?” cried Millie. “He told you after all?”

“But who told you?” Katherine insisted, her hand on Millie’s shoulder.

“Henry.”

“Then _he_ knows. Who else?”

“None of the family, I think, unless Henry’s told the others. I’ve never

said a word.”

“Who told _him_?”

“A man at his Club.”

There was silence. Then Katherine said:

“So _that’s_ why you’ve been so queer?”

“Yes. I didn’t know whether he’d told you or no. I was afraid to say

anything. I thought perhaps he’d told you and it was making you

miserable. Then I thought that you ought to know. I thought sometimes

that I’d speak to Philip, and then I was afraid of Henry doing something

awful, blurting it all out to everybody. I haven’t known what to do.

But, Katie darling, you aren’t unhappy about it, are you?”

“No—not unhappy,” said Katherine.

“Because you mustn’t be. What does it matter what Phil did before he

loved you, whom he knew? What _does_ it matter so long as you take her

place? If ever anybody loved anybody, Philip loves you....” Then she

said quickly, eagerly: “What was she like, Katie? Did he tell you? Did

he describe her? Was she lovely, clever? What was her name?”

“Anna,” Katie said.

“Does he think of her still? Does he want to see her again?”

“I don’t know,” Katherine said slowly. “That’s what’s been so hard all

these months. We simply don’t talk of her. He doesn’t want to think of

her, nor of Russia, nor of any of that past life. He says it’s all

dead—”

“Well,” said Millie, eagerly.

“But it isn’t to me. I don’t hate her, I’m not jealous, it doesn’t alter

one scrap of my love for Phil, but—I don’t know—I feel as though if we

talked about it everything would clear away. I’d see then that she was

just an ordinary person like anyone else, and I wouldn’t bother about

her any more, as it is, simply because I don’t know anything, I imagine

things. I don’t know whether Philip thinks of her or not, but I expect

that he does, or thinks of my thinking of her, which is the same thing.”

“Well, _I’ve_ thought of her!” Millie declared, “again and again. I’ve

wondered a thousand things, why she gave Philip up, whether she loves

him still, whether she hates his being in love with someone else,

whether she writes to him, what she’s like, what she wears.... Doesn’t

it prove, Katie, how shut up we’ve always been? Why, even in Paris I

never really thought about anybody whom I couldn’t actually see, and

life used to seem too simple if you just did the things in front of your

nose—and now it’s only the things that aren’t anywhere near you that

seem to matter.” Millie said all this as though she were fifty years old

at least. It was indeed a real crisis that she should be admitted into

the very heart of all this thrilling affair; she was rewarded at last

with her flaming desire, that ‘she should share in life.’ It was almost

as though she herself had a lover.

Katherine waited, then she broke out suddenly: “But it’s all so stupid

this. Why can’t things be perfectly simple? Why can’t Philip like them

and they like Philip? Why can’t Philip and I marry and spend part of the

year here and part of the year away?”

“You’ve got to choose,” Millie said, “Mother or Philip—Philip or the

family—Philip or Glebeshire. The old life or the new one. You’ve tried

to mix it all up. You can’t. Philip can change us. He _is_ changing us

all, but mix with us never. If he is forced to, he’ll simply disappear.”

“My dear, what’s happened to you?” Katherine cried. “How wise you’ve

become! How you’ve grown up!”

“I am,” said Millie, with a solemnity that proved that ‘grown-up’ was

the last thing that she really was. She sprang to her feet. She spoke as

though she were delivering a challenge.

“Katie, if you let things go, if you let Mother have her way, one of two

things will happen; either Philip won’t be able to stand it and will

vanish to Russia, or he’ll endure it, will be smothered by us all, and

there’ll only be the corpse left for your enjoyment.

“Katie!” Her eyes shone with excitement, her voice quivered with the

thrill of her intensity. “You must marry him _now_—whilst you’re in

London. You must chuck us all, show Mother that Philip comes before

everything, take it into your own hands, send that Russian woman’s ghost

back to Russia ... just as Browning and Mrs. Browning did, slip off one

day, buy some smelling-salts at the chemist’s and be married!”

She laughed. She clapped her hands.

“Oh! Katie! Katie!... It’s the only way, the only possible way!”

But Katherine replied: “You’re wrong, Millie. I can keep it all. I

_will_ keep it all. I love Phil, but I love Mother and you and Henry and

This—This—all of it. If I were to marry Phil now Mother would never

forgive me—you know that she would not. I could never come back. I must

lose it all.”

“You’d rather lose Philip then?”

“No. _That_ never!”

“Well—Anna’s after him, Katie. Russia’s after him. He’s awfully

unhappy—and you’re unfair. You’re giving him nothing, not even himself.

You say that you love him, but you want things all your way. I tell you

you deserve to lose ...” then suddenly softening again: “But I’ll help

you, Katie dear, whatever way it is. Oh! I’m so glad that we’ve spoken.

We’re together now, and nothing can part us.”

Katherine caught her hand and held her close. “What would Mother do, do

you think, if she knew about Anna?” she said, at last.

“I don’t know,” Millie answered, “Mother’s so strange. I believe she’d

do nothing. She’d know that if she dismissed him she’d lose you.”

Then Katherine suddenly, holding Millie so close to her that their

hearts beat as one, said: “I love him so. I love him so.... Everything

must go if he wants it to.”

And then, as though the house, the land, the place that had always been

hers, answered her challenge, a lightning flash struck the darkness and

the rain broke in a thunder of sound.

* * * * *

All through the wedding-ceremony Katherine felt insanely that she was no

longer a Trenchard—insanely because if she was not a Trenchard what was

she? Always before in these Trenchard gatherings she had known herself

wonderfully at home, sinking down with the kind of cosy security that

one greets as one drops into a soft, familiar bed. Every Trenchard was,

in one way or another, so like every other Trenchard that a Trenchard

gathering was in the most intimate sense of the word a family party. At

a Beaminster gathering you were always aware of a spirit of haughty

contempt for the people who were still outside, but at a Trenchard or

Faunder assembly the people outside did not exist at all. “They were not

there.” The Beaminsters said: “Those we don’t know are not worth

knowing.” The Trenchards said: “Those we can’t see don’t exist”—and

they could only see one another. All this did not mean that the

Trenchards were not very kind to the human beings in the villages and

towns under their care. But then these dependents _were_ Trenchards,

just as old Trenchard chairs and tables in old Trenchard houses were

Trenchards.

The Beaminsters had been broken all in a moment because they had tried

to do something that their Age no longer permitted them to do. The

Trenchards were much more difficult to break, because they were not

trying to do anything at all. There was no need for them to be

“Positive” about anything....

As old Mrs. Trenchard, mother of Canon Trenchard of Polchester, once

said to a rebellious daughter: “My dear, it’s no use your trying to do

anything. People say that new generations have come and that we shall

see great changes. For myself, I don’t believe it. England, thank God,

is not like one of those foreign countries. England never changes about

the Real Things,” and by ‘England’ of course she meant ‘Trenchards.’

Katherine knew exactly whom she would see at St. Margaret’s,

Westminster. From Glebeshire there would be Canon Trenchard, his wife

and his two girls, also the Trenchards of Rothin Place, Polchester.

There would be Sir Guy Trenchard from Truxe, and Miss Penelope Trenchard

from Rasselas. There would be the head of all the Trenchards—Sir Henry

Trenchard of Ruston Hall, in Norfolk, and there would be Garth

Trenchard, Esq., from Bambury Towers, in Northumberland. There would be

the Medlicott Trenchards of South Audley Street, the Robert Trenchards

from somewhere in South Kensington (he was a novelist), and the Ruston

Trenchards from Portland Place. Of the Faunders there was no end—Hylton

Faunder, the famous painter, one of the props of the Royal Academy, the

Rev. William Faunder of St. Mary’s, Monkston, one of the best of

London’s preachers, the Misses Faunder of Hampstead, known for their

good work, and others, others ... from Hampshire, Wiltshire, Kent,

Suffolk, Durham, Cumberland, every county in England.

Well, there they all were in rows; again and again you beheld the same

white high forehead, the same thin and polished nose, the same mild,

agreeable, well-fed, uncritical eyes. How well Katherine knew those

eyes! She herself had them, of course, but her mother had them so

completely, so magnificently, that once you had seen Mrs. Trenchard’s

eyes you would be able, afterwards, to recognise a Trenchard anywhere.

But now, as Katherine looked about the church, it suddenly struck her,

with a little shiver of alarm, that all the eyes were blind. She was

sitting with her mother and Millie, and she looked at them quickly to

see whether they’d noticed anything strange or unusual—but no, very

placidly and agreeably, they were enjoying the comfort and ‘rightness’

of the whole affair....

She was lonely, then, with a sudden shock of acute distress. She felt

suddenly, with positive terror, that she did not belong to anyone at

all. Philip was miles and miles away; as though it were the voice of

prophecy, something seemed to tell her that she would never see him

again. The service then seemed endless—she waited desperately for it to

close. At last, when they all moved on to 22 Bryanston Square, her

impatience simply seemed more than she could control. The presents were

there, and many, many beautiful clothes and shining collars and cakes

that no one wanted to eat, and over and over again, a voice (it seemed

always the same voice) saying: “How nice! How delightful!... so glad ...

so fortunate....” At last she was on her way back to Westminster. She

had now only this one thought, that unless she were very quick she would

never see Philip again. He had said that he would come to her for a

moment after the wedding, and, when at the doorway of the drawing-room

she caught a reflection of his figure in the mirror, her heart bounded

with relief. How silly of her. What had she supposed? Nevertheless,

quite breathlessly, she caught his hand.

“Oh, Phil! I’m so glad!... Come up to the schoolroom. We shall be alone

there!”

The schoolroom, that had once been the nursery, packed away at the very

top of the house, was bathed with the rich evening glow. He caught her

in his arms, held her, and she kissed him, passionately, with clinging,

eager kisses. Then, with a little happy sigh, she released him.

The old shabby room, with its old shabby books, Charlotte Mary Yonge and

Mrs. Ewing and Henry, and the Christmas Supplements on the walls and the

old grate that seemed still to be sunk in happy reveries of roasted

chestnuts and toffee and toast, reassured her.

“Oh, Phil!” she cried. “I thought I was never going to get to you!”

She looked at him, carefully, luxuriously, with all the happiness of

possessing something known and proved and loved. Why, were it the

ugliest face in the world, the oldest, shabbiest body, nothing now could

change her attachment. That was why, with true love, old age and decay

did not, could not matter—and here, after all, was _her_ possession, as

far from old age as anyone could be, strong and thick-set and with the

whole of life before it! But he seemed tired and depressed. He was very

quiet, and sat there close to her, holding her hand, loving her, but

subdued, saying very little. He _had_ changed. He was not now that

eager, voluble figure that had burst through the fog on that first

wonderful evening so long ago.

“Phil—you’re tired!” she said quickly, looking up into his eyes.

“Yes. I am rather,” he answered. “It’s been awfully hot. Was it very

splendid?”

“The wedding?... No, horrid.... Just like any other, and I can’t tell

you anything about it, because I didn’t notice a thing.”

But he didn’t ask her. He didn’t want to know anything about it. He only

wanted to have her there. They sat quietly, very close to one another.

Her terror and her loneliness left her. The Abbey clock boomed the hour,

and a little clock in the room gave a friendly, intimate echo.

“Your mother’s asked me to go back to Garth with you,” he suddenly said.

Katherine remembered how triumphant she had been when, upon a certain

earlier occasion, he had told her that. Now her alarm returned; her hand

trembled on his knee.

“What did you say?”

“Oh! I’m going of course. You’ll be there, and I want to do what your

mother wishes.”

He said this very quietly, and looked at her with a little smile.

“Phil, don’t go!” she said suddenly. “You’re happier here. We’ll be up

in October.”

“October!” he answered, still very quietly, “that’s a long time to

wait—and I haven’t had very much of you lately. It won’t help things

very much my staying here—and I want to please your mother,” he ended.

“I’ve a kind of idea,” he went on, “that she’ll get to like me later,

when she really gets to know me. I’ve been thinking all this time in

London that I behaved very badly when I was down there before. Wanted

everything my own way.”

Katherine could say nothing. In between them once more was that shadow.

To speak right out would mean the old business all over again, the

business that they had both resolutely dismissed. To speak out would

mean Anna and the family, and that same demand once more—that Katherine

should choose. One word and she knew that he would be pleading with all

his force: “Marry me now! Come off with me! Slip out of the house and

have it over.”

But she could not—she was not ready. Give them all up, cut her life in

half, fling them all away? No, still she clung desperately to the belief

that she would keep them both, the family and Philip, the old life and

the new. She heard Millie urging her, she saw Philip quietly determined

to say nothing now until she led the way—but she could not do it, she

could not, _could_ not do it!

So they sat there, holding hands, his shoulder against hers, until at

last it was time for him to go. After he had left her, whilst she was

dressing for dinner, she had a moment of panic and almost ran out of the

house, just as she was, to find him. But the Trenchard blood reasserted

itself; she went down to dinner calm and apparently at ease.

That night, when they had all gone up to their rooms, she stood for a

moment waiting outside her bedroom door, then, as though some sudden

resolve had come to her, turned and walked to her mother’s door. She

knocked, entered and found her mother standing in front of her

looking-glass. She had slipped off her evening dress, there with her

short white sleeves, from which her stout, firm, bare arms stood out

strong and reliant, with her thick neck, her sturdy legs, she seemed, in

spite of her grey hair, in the very plenitude of her strength. Her mild

eyes, large and calm, her high white forehead, the whole poise of her

broad, resolute back seemed to Katherine to have something defiant and

challenging in it. Her mouth was full of hair-pins, but she nodded and

smiled to her daughter.

“May I come in, Mother,” said Katherine, “I want to speak to you.”

Katherine thought of that earlier occasion in that same room when she

had first spoken of her engagement. How far apart since then they had

grown! It seemed to her to-night, as she looked at that broad white

back, that she was looking at a stranger.... Yes, but an extraordinary

stranger, a really marvellous woman. How curious that Katherine should

have been living during all those years of intimate affection with her

mother and have thought of her never—no, never at all. She had taken

her, her love, her little habits, her slow voice, her relentless

determination, her ‘managing’—all these things and many more—as though

they had been inevitably outside argument, statement or gratitude. But

now, simply because of the division that there was between them, she saw

her as a marvellous woman, the strangest mingling of sweetness and

bitterness, of tenderness and hardness, of unselfishness and relentless

egotism. She saw this, suddenly, standing there in the doorway, and the

imminent flash of it struck her for an instant with great fear. Then she

saw Philip and gained her courage.

“I want to speak to you, Mother,” she repeated, moving into the middle

of the room.

“Well, dear ...” said Mrs. Trenchard, through the hair-pins. She did not

let down her hair, but after another glance into the mirror, moved away,

found a pink woolly dressing-gown, which she put on. Then sat down on

the old sofa, taking up, as she always did, a little piece of work—this

time it was some long red worsted that she was knitting. It curled away

from her, like a scarlet snake, under the flickering light of the

candles on her dressing-table, disappearing into darkness.

Katherine stood in front of her mother, with her hands behind her, as

she had done when she was a very little girl.

“Well, dear, what is it?” said Mrs. Trenchard again.

“Mother—I don’t want you to have Philip down at Garth.”

“Why not, dear? I thought you would like it.”

“He isn’t happy there.”

“Well, he’s only got to say so.... He needn’t come.”

“If he doesn’t—he’s afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Afraid of losing me.” Katherine, as she said this, made a little

forward movement with her hand as though she were asking for help, but

Mrs. Trenchard’s eyes were wide and cold.

“Afraid of losing you?... My dear, he can’t trust you very much!”

“No, no, it isn’t that!... He knows that you, the others don’t like him.

He hates Garth—at least he hates it if he’s always got to live there.

If he’s alone here in London he thinks that you’ll persuade me never to

leave you, that you’ll get the tighter hold of me, that—Oh! I can’t

explain it all!” she broke off quite desperately. “But it isn’t good for

him to be there, he’s unhappy, he’s depressed. Mother, _why_ do you hate

him?” she cried, suddenly challenging the whole room, with its old

familiar pictures, its books and furniture to answer her.

“I think,” said Mrs. Trenchard, very quietly, counting her stitches and

nodding her head at her stocking, “that you’re taking all this in a very

exaggerated fashion—and you never used to be exaggerated, Katie, my

dear—no, you never used to be. I often used to say what a comfort and

help I always found you, because you saw things as they were—not like

Millie and Henry, who would get excited sometimes over very little. But

your engagement’s changed you, Katie dear—it really has—more than I

should have expected.”

Katherine, during this speech, had summoned her control. She spoke now

with a voice low and quiet—ridiculously like her mother’s an observer

might have thought.

“Mother, I don’t want to be exaggerated—I don’t indeed. But, all these

last six months, we’ve never said to one another what we’ve thought,

have never spoken openly about anything—and now we must. It _can’t_ go

on like this.”

“Like what, Katie dear?”

“Never knowing what we’re really thinking. We’ve become a dreadful

family—even father’s noticed it.”

“Certainly,” said Mrs. Trenchard slowly. “We were all happier before

Philip came.”

Katherine’s cheeks flushed. “That’s unkind, Mother!” she cried. Her

voice grew harder. “Please don’t say anything about Philip unless you

must. It makes everything very difficult. I know that you don’t like

him. You see him strangely, you put him in the wrong whatever he does.

But, Mother,” her voice softened again. “It isn’t that. We can’t alter

that. Phil will never be at his best at Garth—not as things are now.

But if we were married. Oh! you would see how fine things would be!” Her

voice was eager, excited now. “He would be happy and quite, quite

different with everyone. I know him. He depends so much—too much—on

what people think of him. He knows that you don’t like him, and that

makes him embarrassed and cross—at his worst. But he’s splendid,

really, he is, indeed, and you’d see it if we were married and this

horrid engagement were over. He’s fine in every way, but he’s different

from us—he’s seen so much more, knows life that we can’t know, has

other standards and judgments. Everyone can’t be like us, Mother. There

_must_ be people who want different things and think different things.

Why should he be made into something like us, forced to think as we

do?... Mother, let us be married soon, at once, perhaps, and then

everything will be right—” She stopped, breathless then, in her

eagerness, bent down and kissed her mother’s cheek.

But Mrs. Trenchard’s cheek was very cold.

“Your father said a year,” she answered, counting her stitches, “four,

five, six—Yes, a year. And you agreed to that, you know.”

Katherine turned, with a sharp movement, away, clenching her hands. At

that moment she hated her mother, hated with a hot, fiery impulse that

urged her to leave the room, the house, the family at that very instant,

flinging out, banging the door, and so settle the whole affair for ever.

Mrs. Trenchard made no sound. Her needles clicked. Then she said, as

though she had been looking things over:

“Do you think it’s good of you, Katherine, considering how much all

these years we’ve all been to one another, to persist in marrying a man

whom, after really doing our best, we all of us—yes, all of

us—dislike? You’re of age, my dear—you can do as you please. It was

your father who consented to this engagement, I was not asked. And now,

after all these months, it is hardly a success, is it? You are losing us

all—and I believe we still mean something to you. And Philip. How can

you know about him, my dear? You are in love now, but that—that first

illusion goes very quickly after marriage. And then—when it has

gone—do you think that he will be a good companion for you, so

different from us all, with such strange ideas picked up in foreign

countries? You don’t know what he may have done before he met you.... I

don’t appeal to your love for us, as once I might have done, but to your

common-sense—your common-sense. Is it worth while to lose us, whom you

know, in exchange for a man of whom you can know nothing at all?... Just

give me those scissors off the dressing-table. The little ones, dear.”

Katherine turned at the dressing-table. “But,” she cried, her voice full

of passionate entreaty, “_why_ must I give you up because I marry him?

Why can’t I have you—all of you—and him as well? _Why_ must I choose?”

Then she added defiantly: “Millie doesn’t dislike him—nor Aunt Betty.”

“Millie’s very young,” answered her mother. “Thank you, my dear, and

_as_ you _are_ there, just that thimble. Thank you ... and your Aunt

Betty likes everyone.”

“And then,” Katherine went on, “why do you see it from everyone’s point

of view except mine? It’s my life, my future. You’re settled—all of

you, you, father, Aunt Aggie, Aunt Betty—but with Millie and Henry and

I everything’s to come. And yet you expect us to do all the things,

think all the things that you’ve done and thought. We’re different,

we’re another generation. If we weren’t behind everyone else there

wouldn’t be anything to talk about at all. All parents now,” Katherine

ended, with an air of profound knowledge, “think of their children. Life

isn’t what it was fifty years ago.”

Mrs. Trenchard smiled a grim little smile. “These are the things, my

dear, I suppose, that Philip’s been telling you. You must remember that

he’s been living for years in a country where one can apparently do

anything one pleases without being thought wicked, and where you’re put

in prison a great deal, but only for rather innocent crimes. I don’t

pretend to understand all that. We may be—perhaps we are—an

old-fashioned family, but the fact remains that we were all happy enough

a year ago.”

She picked up the long trailing serpent, then concluded: “But you’re

free, Katie dear. Perfectly free.”

“If I were to go,” said Katie, staring at her mother’s face, so like

that of an uneloquent baby, “if I were to go off now. If we were to be

married at once—would you—would you—turn us out—have no more to do

with us?”

She waited as though her whole life hung on her mother’s answer.

“I really don’t know what’s happened to you, Katie,” Mrs. Trenchard

answered very quietly. “You’re like a young woman in a play—and you

used to be so sensible. Just give me those scissors again, dear.

Certainly if you were to marry Philip to-morrow, without waiting until

the end of the year, as you promised, I should feel—we should all

feel—that you had given us up. It would be difficult not to feel that.”

“And if we wait until the end of the year and then marry and don’t live

in Glebeshire but somewhere else—will you give us up _then_?”

“My dear, isn’t it quite simple? We’ve given Philip every opportunity of

knowing us—we’re now just going to give him another. If he loves you he

will not want to take you away from all of us who love you also. He’ll

do his best to like us—to settle—”

“To settle!” Katherine cried. “Don’t you see that that’s what he’s tried

to do—and he can’t—he can’t! It’s killing him—and you want him to be

killed!... You’d like him to leave me, and if he won’t do that you’ll

break his will, keep him under you, ruin his spirit.... Mother, let him

alone—If we marry, after six months, let us lead our own lives. You’ll

see I shall be as much yours as ever, more than ever. It will be all

right. It must be!”

Mrs. Trenchard said then her final word.

“If you leave us for Philip that is your affair. I do my best to keep

you both. You’ve talked much, Katie dear, about our dislike of

Philip—what of his dislike of us? Is that nothing? Doesn’t he show it

every moment of the day? Unless he hates us less you’ll have to choose.

You’ll have to choose—let him come down to Garth then—we’ll do

everything for him.”

Katherine would have answered, but a sudden catch in her mother’s voice,

a sudden, involuntary closing of the eyes, made her dart forward.

“Mother, you’re tired.”

“Yes, my dear, very.”

They sat down on the old sofa together. Mrs. Trenchard, her arms folded,

leant back against her daughter’s shoulder.

“Just a moment, Katie dear,” she murmured, “before I undress.”

Suddenly she was asleep.

Katherine sat stiffly, staring before her into the room. Her arm was

round her mother, and with the pressure of her hand she felt the soft

firmness of the shoulder beneath the dressing-gown. Often in the old

days her mother had thus leant against her. The brushing of her hair

against Katherine’s cheek brought back to the girl thronging memories of

happy, tranquil hours. Those memories flung before her, like

reproaching, haunting ghosts, her present unhappiness. Her love for her

mother filled her heart; her body thrilled with the sense of it. And so,

there in the clumsy, familiar room, the loneliest hour of all life came

to her.

She was separated from them all. She seemed to know that she was holding

her mother thus for the last time.... Then as her hands tightened, in

very protest, about the slumbering body, she was conscious of the

presence, behind her, just then where she could not see, of the

taunting, laughing figure. She could catch the eyes, the scornful lips,

the thin, defiant attitude.

“I’ll take him back! I’ll take him back!” the laughing figure cried.

But Katherine had her bravery. She summoned it all.

“I’ll beat you!” she answered, her arms tight around her mother. “I’ve

made my choice. He’s mine now whatever you try!”

CHAPTER II

THE MIRROR

Philip had never had any conceit of himself—that is, he could not

remember the time when he had been satisfied with what he had done, or

pleased with the figure that he presented. The selfish actions in his

life had always arisen from unselfish motives, because he had been

afraid of hurting or vexing other people, because he thought other

people finer than himself. Even when, as in the case of Seymour, he

burst out in indignation at something that he felt to be pretentious and

false, he, afterwards, on thinking it over, wondered whether the man

hadn’t after all been right ‘from his point of view.’ It was this

ability to see the other person’s point of view that had been, and would

always be, the curse of his life.

Such men as Philip are not among the fine creatures of the world. Very

rightly they are despised for their weakness, their lack of resistance,

their inability to stand up for themselves. It is possible,

nevertheless, that in heaven they will find that they, too, have their

fine side. And this possibility of an ultimate divine comprehension

irritates, very naturally, their fellow human beings who resent any

defence of weakness. Philip himself would have been the first to resent

it. He never consoled himself with thought of heaven, but took, now and

then, a half-humorous, half-despairing glance at himself, swore, as he

had in those long-ago days sworn about his mother, ‘how this shall never

happen again’, and then once more was defeated by his imagination.

In this matter of the Trenchards he saw only too plainly, everyone’s

point of view; even with Aunt Aggie he saw that she was an old

disappointed woman who disliked change and loved power so long as she

need not struggle for it. Mrs. Trenchard he did not understand, because

he was afraid of her. His fear of her had grown and grown and grown, and

in that fear was fascination, hatred, and admiration. He felt now quite

definitely that he was beaten by her. He had felt that, after she had

taken no notice whatever of his public scene with Aunt Aggie. She would

now, he believed, take no notice of anything. He knew also, now, of her

hold over Katherine. He must stay with Katherine because he loved her.

Therefore he must submit to Mrs. Trenchard ... it was all quite

simple.—Meanwhile to submit to Mrs. Trenchard meant, he knew, to such a

character as his, extinction. He knew. Oh!... better than anyone else in

the world—the kind of creature that, under her influence, he would

become. He saw the others under her influence, the men and women of the

village, the very chickens and pigs in the neighbouring farms. He knew

what he had been under his mother, he knew what he had been under Anna,

he knew what now he would be under Mrs. Trenchard. Well, extinction was

a simple thing enough if you made up your mind to it—why struggle any

further?

But day and night, increasingly, as the weeks passed, he was being urged

to escape. All this summer, Anna, no longer a suggestion, no longer a

memory, but now a vital, bodily presence, was urging him. Her power over

him was not in the least because he was still in love with her—he loved

only Katherine in all the world—but because of the damnable

common-sense of what she said. What she said was this:

“Here you are amongst all these funny people. You are too much in the

middle of them to see it plainly for yourself, but I’m a ghost and can

see everything quite clearly; I know you—better than you know yourself.

This Mrs. Trenchard is determined never to let her daughter go. You say

that you love this young woman, although what you can see in her stupid

English solidity I can’t imagine. However, you were always a fool....

All the same, if you love her it’s for _her_ sake that you must escape.

You know the kind of creature you’re going to be if you stay. What does

she want with such a man? When she wakes up, about a week after

marriage, and finds you under the thumb of her mother, what will happen

to her love? She may continue to love you—English women are so

stupid—but she’ll certainly despise you. Come back to Russia. It isn’t

that I want you, or will take you back into my life, but she’ll find out

what you’re worth then. If she really loves you she’ll have to come

after you. _Then_ you’ll have broken with the family and will be free.

Run away, I tell you. It’s the only thing to do.”

All this he heard during a terribly heavy three weeks with relatives in

the North, during a hot and glittering July in London when the world

seemed to gyrate with the flashing cabs, the seething crowds, the glass

and flowers and scents of a London season. Katherine seemed dreadfully

far away from him. He was aware very vividly how bad it was for a

healthy young man of his age to have no definite occupation. The men

whom he knew in town seemed to him both uninteresting and preoccupied. A

day in England seemed of so vast a length. In Russia time had been of no

importance at all, and one day had vanished into another without any

sound or sign. Here every clock in the town seemed to scream to him that

he must take care to make the most of every second. This practical

English world, moreover, could offer no friendly solution for the

troubles that beset him.

He knew very well that if he asked any man at the club for advice he

would be frankly dismissed for a fool. “What! You like the girl but

can’t bear the Mother-in-law! My dear boy, any music hall will tell you

how common that is. Wait till you’re married, then you can clear off all

right—let the old woman scream as much as you like. What! the girl

wants to stay with the mother? Well, again, wait till you’re married.

The girl will follow you fast enough then!”

How could he expect that any ordinary healthy Englishman would

understand the soft, billowy, strangling web that the Trenchard family

had, by this time, wound about him? Yes, another six months would

complete the business....

One hope remained to him—that when they knew of his immoral life in

Moscow they would definitely insist on Katherine’s leaving him—and, if

it came to that, she would stand by him. He knew that she would stand by

him. He would himself long ago have told Trenchard had he not been sure

that someone else would do that for him, and that then the sense of his

own subterfuge and concealment would add to their horror and disgust.

The stronger their disgust the better for him.

The day of that disclosure seemed now his only hope. Let them fling him

off and he knew what Katherine would do!...

Upon a torrid afternoon, two days after the Trenchard-Faunder wedding,

an irresistible desire to see Katherine drove him to the Westminster

house. He rang the bell, and was told by Rocket, who always treated him

with an air of polite distrust, that the ladies were out, but might be

in at any time.

“I will wait,” said Philip.

“Very good, sir,” said Rocket reluctantly, and showed him into the

drawing-room, cool and damp like a green cave. To Rocket’s own

restrained surprise, old Mr. Trenchard was there sitting quite alone,

with a shawl covering his knees, in a large arm-chair near the empty

fireplace.

The old gentleman showed no interest whatever in the opening of the

door, and continued to stare in front of him through his gold-rimmed

eye-glasses, his hands pressed fiercely into his knees. Rocket hesitated

a moment, then withdrew, closing the door behind him.

Philip advanced slowly into the room. One of his difficulties with old

Mr. Trenchard had always been that he was not sure whether he were truly

deaf or no. On certain occasions there had been no question old Mr.

Trenchard was not at all deaf, and then again on others deaf as a crab!

He had never shown any marked signs of being aware of Philip’s

existence. There were many weeks that he spent in his own room, and he

could not be said to show a very active consciousness of anyone except

Katherine, whom he adored, and Aunt Aggie, whom he hated.

But, altogether, he was to Philip a terrible old man. Like a silver-grey

shadow, beautiful perhaps, with the silver buckles on his shoes, his

delicate hands and his snow-white hair, but emphatically terrible to

Philip, who throve and blossomed under warm human intercourse, and

shrivelled into nothing at all under a silent and ghostly disapproval.

But to-day Philip was desperate and defiant. This old man would never

die any more than this old drawing-room, reflected in the green mirror,

would ever change.

“I’d like to smash that mirror,” thought Philip, “smash it into pieces.

That would change the room if anything would. Why, I believe the whole

family would tumble like a pack of cards if I smashed that mirror. I

believe the old man himself would vanish into thin air.”

“Good afternoon, sir,” Philip said—and then thought to himself: “Why

should I be afraid of the old image? He can’t eat me!”

He walked over, close to him, and shouted:

“Good afternoon, sir.”

The old man never stirred, not an eyelid quivered, but he replied in his

clear, silvery voice, “Good afternoon to you.”

He might indeed have been an Idol in his old particular temple—the old

green room waited around him with the patient austerity that a shrine

pays to its deity. The lamp on a distant table flung a mild and decent

glow.

“I’m damned if I’m going to be afraid of him,” thought Philip, and,

taking a chair, he dragged it very close to the other’s throne. Sitting

there, near to him, it seemed to him that the light, mild though it was,

really did go right through the old fellow, his cheeks, like the finest

egg-shell china, seemed to catch the glow, store it for an instant in

some fine inner receptacle and then pass it out on the other side. It

was only the eyes that were not fine. They were true Trenchard eyes, and

now, in old age, they were dull and almost dead.

They, ever so faintly, hinted that the beauty, fine as the present

glass, was of the surface only, and had, behind it, no soul.

“It’s a very hot day,” said Philip, in a voice that was intended for a

shout if the old man were really deaf and pleasant cheerfulness if he

were not, “really very hot indeed. But this room’s so very cool.

Delightful.”

Mr. Trenchard did then very slowly raise his head and look at Philip

through his glasses. Then very slowly lowered his eyes again.

“My daughter will be here very shortly to receive you,” he said.

“I’d like to talk to _you_,” Philip said, still very cheerfully. “We’ve

not had many talks together, have we? and that really isn’t right,

considering that I’m engaged to your grand-daughter.”

The old man picked up a magazine that lay on the little table that was

in front of him. “Do you ever see Blackwood?” he said, as though he were

very politely making conversation for a complete stranger. “It’s a

magazine for which I have a great liking. It seems to me to keep up its

character wonderfully—most agreeable reading—most agreeable reading.”

It was then that Philip, looking up, caught a reflection of Mr.

Trenchard’s face in the Mirror. It may have been imagination or it may

have been the effect of shadow, or again it may have been nothing but

truth—in any case it seemed to Philip that the old man’s expression was

an amazing mixture of pathos and wickedness—a quite intolerable

expression. Philip made a movement with his hands as though he were

brushing away a confusion of cobwebs, then burst out: “Look here, I

don’t know whether you’re deaf or not—if you are it won’t matter, and

if you aren’t we’ll have a straight talk at last. You can’t move until

someone comes in to move you, and that may be a long while yet. You

aren’t strong enough to knock me down, so that I’m afraid you’ll just

have to stay here for a while and listen.... Of course you know by this

time who I am. It’s no use your pretending.”

Philip paused and looked, but the old man had not stirred at all. His

hands were still pressed into his knees, his eyes staring through his

glasses, and, as his delicate breathing rose and fell, one black button

shone in the lamplight and faded again. This immobility seemed to stir

more profoundly Philip’s anger.

“I’m going to marry your grand-daughter Katherine, and of course you

hate it and me too. You’re just as selfish as all the others, and more

too, I daresay. And you think you can frighten me by just doing nothing

except showing you dislike me. But you won’t frighten me—no, never—so

you needn’t expect it. I’m going to marry Katherine and take her right

away from you all, so you may as well make up your mind to it.”

Philip, flushed in the face and half expecting that the walls of the

house would fall in upon him, paused—but there was no change at all in

Mr. Trenchard’s attitude, unless possibly one shining hand was driven a

little more deeply into the knee. There was perhaps some unexpected

pathos in the intensity of those pressing fingers, or, perhaps, Philip’s

desperate challenge was, already, forsaking him. At any rate he went on.

“Why can’t you like me? I’m ready enough to like you. I’m not a bad kind

of man, and I’ll be very good to Katherine, no one could ever be better

to anyone than I’ll be to her. But why can’t we lead our own life?

You’re an old man—you must have seen a lot in your time—you must know

how times alter and one way of thinking gives way to another. You can’t

keep a family together by just refusing to listen to anything or

anybody. I know that you love Katherine, and if you love her really,

surely you’ll want her to lead her own life. Your life’s nearly

over—why should you spoil hers for her?”

He paused again, but now he could not tell whether the eyes were closed

or no. Was the old man sleeping? or was he fiercely indignant? or was he

satirical and smiling? or was he suddenly going to cry aloud for Rocket?

The uncertainty and the silence of the room worked terribly upon

Philip’s nerves. He had begun courageously, but the sound of his voice

in all that damp stillness was most unpleasant. Moreover, he was a poor

kind of fellow, because he always, even in the heat of anger, thought a

friend better than an enemy. He was too soft to carry things through.

“He really does look very old,” he thought now, looking at the thin

legs, the bones in the neck, the lines on the forehead of the poor

gentleman, “and after all it can’t be pleasant to lose Katherine.”

“If you’d only,” he went on in a milder voice, “give me a chance.

Katherine’s much too fond of all of you to give you up simply because

she’s married. She isn’t that sort at all. You knew that she’d marry

some day. All the trouble has come because you don’t like me. But have

you ever tried to? I’m the sort of man that you’ve got to like if you’re

to see the best of me. I know that’s my fault, but everyone has to have

allowances made for them.”

Philip paused. There was a most deadly stillness in the room. Philip

felt that even the calf-bound Thackeray and the calf-bound Waverley

novels behind the glass screens in the large book-case near the door

were listening with all their covers.

Not a movement came from the old man. Philip felt as though he were

addressing the whole house—

He went on. “When you were young you wanted to go on with your

generation just as we do now. You believed that there was a splendid

time coming, and that none of the times that had ever been would be so

fine as the new one. _You_ didn’t want to think the same as your

grandfather and be tied to the same things. Can’t you remember? _Can’t_

you remember? Don’t you _see_ that it’s just the same for us?”

Still no movement, no sound, no quiver of a shadow in the Mirror.

“I’ll be good to her, I swear to you, I don’t want to do anyone any

harm. And after all, what have I done? I was rude one Sunday night,

Henry drank too much once, I don’t always go to church, I don’t like the

same books—but what’s all that? isn’t everyone different, and isn’t it

a good thing that they are?”

He bent forward—“I know that you can do a lot with them all. Just

persuade them to help, and be agreeable about it. That’s all that’s

wanted—just for everyone to be agreeable. It’s such a simple thing,

really.”

He had touched Mr. Trenchard’s knee. With that touch the whole room

seemed to leap into hostile activity. He had, quite definitely, the

impression of having with one step plunged into a country that bristled

with foes behind every bush and tree. The warmth of the old man’s knees

seemed to fling him off and cast him out.

Old Mr. Trenchard raised his head with a fierce, furious gesture like

the action of a snake striking.

In a voice that was not silvery nor clear, but shaking and thick with

emotion, he said:

“I warn you, young man—if you dare to take my grand-daughter

away—you’ll kill me!”

Before Philip could do more than start back with a gesture of dismay,

the door had opened and Mrs. Trenchard and Aunt Aggie had entered.

* * * * *

Meanwhile there was Henry.

Important events had occurred in Henry’s life since that Sunday when he

had told Millie about Philip’s terrible past and had shared in that

disastrous supper. He was to go to Cambridge.

This important decision had apparently followed on Aunt Aggie’s

disclosure of his evil courses, therefore it may be considered that

Philip was, in this as in the other recent events in the Trenchard

history, responsible. Quite suddenly George Trenchard had lifted up his

head and said: “Henry, you’re to go to Cambridge next October. I think

that Jesus College shall bear the burden of your company. I believe that

there are examinations of a kind that you must pass before they will

admit you. I have written for papers.”

This declaration should, of course, have been enough to fling Henry into

a wild ecstasy. Before the arrival of Philip it would undoubtedly have

done so. Now, however, he seemed to himself to have progressed already

so far beyond Jesus College, Cambridge. To have troubles and experiences

so deep and weighty as compared with anything that anyone at Cambridge

could possibly have known, and that to propose that he should go there

was very little less than an insult.... And for this he blamed Philip.

Nevertheless the papers arrived. He was, in reality, no fool, and the

Cambridge ‘Little Go’ is not the most difficult examination under the

sun. At the end of May he went up to Cambridge. If one may judge by

certain picturesque romances concerned with University life and recently

popular amongst us, one is to understand that that first vision of a

University thrills with all the passion of one’s first pipe, one’s first

beer and one’s first bedmaker or scout, as the case may be. The weather

was chill and damp. He was placed in a tiny room, where he knocked his

head against the fine old rafters and listened to mice behind the

wainscot. His food was horrible, his bedmaker a repulsive old woman, and

the streets were filled with young men, who knew not Henry and pushed

him into the gutter. He hated everyone whom he saw at the examination,

from the large, red-faced gentleman who watched him as he wrote, down to

the thin and uncleanly youth who bit his nails at the seat next to his

own. He walked down Petty Cury and hated it; he strolled tip the King’s

Parade and hated that too. He went to King’s College Chapel and heard a

dull anthem, was spoken to by an enormous porter for walking on the

grass and fell over the raised step in the gateway. He was conceited and

lonely and hungry. He despised all the world, and would have given his

eyes for a friend. He looked forward to his three years in this city

(“The best time of your life, my boy. What I would give to have those

dear old days over again”) with inexpressible loathing.

He knew, however, three hours of happiness and exultation. This joy came

to him during the English Essay—the last paper of the examination.

There were four subjects from which he might choose, and he selected

something that had to do with ‘The Connection between English History

and English Literature.’ Of facts he had really the vaguest notion. He

seemed to know, through hearsay rather than personal examination, that

Oliver Cromwell was something responsible for ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’,

that that dissolute monarch Charles II. had to do with the brilliance

and audacity of Mr. Congreve and Mr. Wycherley, that Queen Anne in some

way produced Pope and Robespierre, Wordsworth, and Queen Victoria,

Charlotte Mary Yonge (he had cared very deeply for ‘The Daisy Chain’),

and our Indian Empire Mr. Rudyard Kipling. He knew it all as vaguely as

this, but he wrote—he wrote divinely, gloriously ecstatically, so that

the three hours were but as one moment and the grim nudity of the

examination-room as the marbled palaces of his own fantastic dreams.

Such ecstasy had he known when he began that story about the man who

climbed the ricketty stairs. Such ecstasy had been born on that day when

he had read the first page of the novel about Forests—such ecstasy had,

he knew in spite of itself, received true nourishment from that enemy of

their house, Philip.

His spirits fell when he came to himself, saw how many other gentlemen

had also written essays and with what indifference and languor the

red-faced gentleman hustled his pages in amongst all the others.

Nevertheless, he did come out of that examination-room with some

conviction as to the course that his future life would take, and with a

kindness, almost a tenderness, towards this grey town that was going to

allow him, even to command him, to write essays for the next three

years. With Henry one mood succeeded another as rapidly as, in his

country, wet weather succeeds fine.

He returned to Garth in an outrageous temper. His main feeling now was

that Philip had spoiled Cambridge for him. Philip and his immoral life

‘got in’ between all that he saw and dropped a misty veil, so that he

could think of nothing in the way that tradition had taught him. He had

always had a great respect for tradition.

Then as the weeks passed by he was made increasingly unhappy by the

strange condition in which he found the family. He was, at heart, the

crudest sentimentalist, and his sentimentalism had been fed by nothing

so richly as by the cherished conviction that the George Trenchards were

the most united family in England. He had always believed this; and had

never, until now, considered the possibility of any division. But what

now did he find? His mother stern, remote, silent, Millie irritable,

uneasy and critical, Aunt Aggie always out of temper, Aunt Betty

bewildered and tactless, even his father disturbed and unlike himself.

And Katie?... He could not have believed that six months would change

anyone so utterly.

Instead of the reliable, affectionate and stolid sister who had shared

with him all her intimacies, her plans, her regrets, her anticipations,

he beheld now a stranger who gave him no intimacies at all, avoided him

and hid from him her undoubted unhappiness. It was true of him now as it

had ever been that ‘he would give his life to make Katherine happy,’ but

how was he to do anything for her when she would tell him nothing, when

she treated him like a stranger, and then blamed him for his

hostilities.

If it had been clear that now, after these months of her engagement, she

no longer loved Philip, the matter would have been simple. He would have

proceeded at once to his father and told him all that he knew about

Philip’s Moscow life. But she _did_ love Philip—more, yes, far more,

than ever—nothing could be clearer than that. This love of Katherine’s

burned, unceasingly, in Henry’s brain. With no other human being could

he have felt, so urgently, the flame of it but Katherine, whom he had

known as he had known himself, so sure, so undramatic, so happily

sexless, as she had always seemed to him, that it should be she whom

this passion had transformed! From that moment when he had seen her

embrace of Philip, his imagination had harried him as a dog harries a

rabbit, over the whole scale of the world.... Love, too, that he had

believed was calm, domestic, friendly, reassuring, was in truth unhappy,

rebellious, devastating. In the very hearty of her unhappiness seemed to

be the fire of her love. This removed her from him as though he had been

flung by it into a distant world. And, on every side, he was attacked by

this same thing. There were the women whom he had seen that night with

Philip, there was the woman who had given Philip a son in Russia, there

was here a life, dancing before him, now near him, now far away from

him, intriguing him, shaming him, stirring him, revolting him, removing

him from all his family, isolating him and yet besetting him with the

company of wild, fantastic figures.

He walked the Glebeshire roads, spoke to no one, hated himself, loathed

Philip, was lashed by his imagination, aroused at last to stinging

vitality, until he did not know whither to turn for safety.

* * * * *

He came up to London for the Faunder-Trenchard wedding. Late in the

afternoon that had seen Philip’s conversation with old Mr. Trenchard

Henry came into the drawing-room to discover that tea was over and no

one was there. He looked into the tea-pot and saw that there was nothing

there to cheer him. For a moment he thought of Russia, in which country

there were apparently perpetual samovars boiling upon ever-ready tables.

This made him think of Philip—then, turning at some sudden sound, there

was Aunt Aggie in the doorway.

Aunt Aggie looked cold in spite of the warm weather, and she held her

knitting-needles in her hand defiantly, as though she were carrying them

to reassure a world that had unjustly accused her of riotous living.

“It’s simply rotten,” said Henry, crossly. “One comes in expecting tea

and it’s all over. Why can’t they have tea at the ordinary time?”

“That’s it,” said Aunt Aggie, settling herself comfortably into the

large arm-chair near the fireplace. “Thinking of yourself, Henry, of

course. Learn to be unselfish or you’ll never be happy in _this_ world.

I remember when I was a girl—”

“Look here!” Henry interrupted. “Has Philip been here this afternoon?”

“Mr. Mark? Yes, he has.”

“Did he come to tea?”

“Yes.”

She dug her needles viciously into an innocent ball of wool.

“Yes,” said Henry fiercely, “that’s why they had it early, I

suppose—and why I don’t get any—_of_ course.”

“All I know is,” continued Aunt Aggie, “that he’s put your grandfather

into the most dreadful state. He was alone in here with him it seems,

and I’m sure I don’t know what he’s said to him, but it upset him

dreadfully. I’ve not been well myself to-day, and to have your

grandfather—”

But Henry again interrupted.

“What did he want coming to-day at all for? He might have waited.”

Aunt Aggie, however, did not like to be interrupted when she was

discussing her health, so she said now sharply: “Just look at your

hands, Henry—Why _can’t_ you keep them clean. I should have thought

going up to Cambridge—”

“Oh! I’m all right,” he answered, impatiently. “Anyway, I wonder what he

told grandfather.”

“Why, what _could_ he have told him?” said Aunt Aggie, eagerly, looking

up.

“Oh, I don’t know—nothing—Only ... Oh, Rocket, ask them to make some

fresh tea. Let me have it in here.”

“Certainly, Mr. Henry,” said Rocket, removing the tea-pot with an air of

strong disapproval.

“Really, Henry!” Aunt Aggie exclaimed. “And simply for yourself! Why,

even though I’ve had the most trying headache all day, I’d never venture

to give so much trouble simply for myself.”

“Oh, I daresay you’ll have some when it comes,” Henry answered,

carelessly—then, pursuing his thoughts, he continued: “Well, he won’t

be coming back to Garth with us—that’s one comfort.”

“Oh, but he is!” cried Aunt Aggie, excitedly. “He is! Your mother’s

_asked_ him to come back with us, and he’s accepted. I simply don’t

understand it. Your mother dislikes him as much as the rest of us do,

and why she should _ask_ him! It can’t be for poor Katie’s sake. She’s

miserable enough when he’s at Garth. I’m sure if things go on like this

much longer I shall go and take a little house by myself and live alone.

I’d really rather than all this unpleasantness.”

This threat did not apparently alarm Henry very greatly, for, bursting

out suddenly, he cried: “It’s beastly! perfectly beastly! There we’ve

all got to sit watching him make Katie miserable. I won’t stand it! I

_won’t_ stand it!”

“Why you!” said Aunt Aggie, scornfully. “How can you prevent it! You’re

only a boy!”

This epithet stung Henry to madness. Ah, if Aunt Aggie only knew all,

she’d see that he was very far from being ‘only a boy’—if she only knew

the burden of secret responsibility that he’d been bearing during all

these weeks. He’d keep secret no longer—it was time that everyone

should know the kind of man to whom Katherine was being sacrificed. He

turned round to his aunt, trembling with anger and excitement.

“You talk like that!” he cried, “but you don’t know what I know!”

“What don’t I know?” she asked eagerly.

“About Philip—this man Mark—He’s wicked, he’s awful,

he’s—abominable!”

“Well,” said Aunt Aggie, dropping her needles. “What’s he done?”

“Done!” Henry exclaimed, sinking his voice into a horrified and

confidential whisper. “He’s been a dreadful man. Before, in Russia,

there’s nothing he didn’t do. I know, because there’s a friend of mine

who knew him very well out there. He lived a terribly immoral life. He

was notorious. He lived with a woman for years who wasn’t his wife, and

they had a baby. There’s nothing he didn’t do—and he never told father

a word.” Henry paused for breath.

Aunt Aggie’s cheeks flushed crimson, as they always did when anyone

spoke, before her, of sexual matters.

At last she said, as though to herself: “I always knew it—I always knew

it. You could see it in his face. I warned them, but they wouldn’t

listen.”

Henry meanwhile had recovered himself. He stood there looking into the

Mirror. It was a tragic moment. He had done, after all, what, all these

months, he had determined to prevent himself from doing. He saw now, in

a flash of accusing anger, what would most certainly follow. Aunt Aggie

would tell everyone. Philip would be dismissed—Katherine’s heart would

be broken.

He saw nothing but Katherine, Katherine whom he loved with all the

ardour of his strange undisciplined quixotic soul. He saw Katherine

turning to him, reproaching him, then, hiding her grief, pursuing her

old life, unhappy for ever and ever. (At this stage in his development,

he saw everything in terms of ‘for ever and for ever’.) It never

occurred to him that if Philip were expelled out of the Trenchard Eden

Katherine might accompany him. No, she would remain, a heart-broken

monument to Henry’s lack of character.

He scowled at his aunt, who sat there thrilled and indignant and happy.

“I say!” he burst out. “Of course you mustn’t tell anybody!”

Aunt Aggie nodded her head and her needles clicked.

“It must remain with wiser and older heads than yours, Henry, as to what

ought to be done ...” then to herself again: “Ah, they’ll wish they’d

listened to me now.”

“But I say,” repeated Henry, red in the face, standing in front of her,

“you really mustn’t. I told it you as a secret.”

“A secret! When everyone in London knows! A nice thing they’ll all

think—letting Katherine marry a man with such a reputation!”

“No, but look here—_you_ wouldn’t have known anything if I hadn’t told

you—and you mustn’t do anything—you mustn’t really. Katie loves

him—more than ever—and if she were to lose him—”

“Much better for her to lose him,” said Aunt Aggie firmly, “than for her

to be miserable for life—much better. Besides, think of the abominable

way the man’s deceived us! Why, he’s no better than a common thief!

He—”

“Perhaps he hasn’t deceived her,” interrupted Henry. “Perhaps he’s told

her—”

“Told her!” cried his aunt. “And do you really suppose that Katherine

would stay for one moment with a man whose life—My dear Henry, how

little you know your sister. She certainly has changed lately under that

dreadful man’s influence, but she’s not changed so fundamentally as to

forget all principles of right and wrong, all delicate feeling.”

“I don’t know,” said Henry slowly, “I don’t believe we do know Katie a

bit. Girls are so queer. You think they don’t know a thing about

anything, and really they know more than you do.... Anyway,” he went on

eagerly, “you mustn’t say a word. You mustn’t really. You must give me

your promise.”

But before Aunt Aggie could do more than shake her head there was an

interruption. The door opened and Philip entered. Aunt Aggie at once

rose from her chair, and, with a rustle and a quiver, without looking at

the young man, without speaking left the room.

Henry remained, staring at Philip, confused and bewildered, furious with

himself, furious with Aunt Aggie, furious with Philip. Yes, now he had

ruined Katherine’s life—he and Philip between them. That he should not

consider it possible that Katherine should have her life in her own

hands to make or mar was characteristic of the Trenchard point of view.

Philip, conscious of Aunt Aggie’s exit, said: “I was just going—I came

back to fetch a book that I left here—one that Katherine lent me.”

Henry made his usual lurching movement, as though he would like to move

across the room and behave naturally, but was afraid to trust himself.

“That it?” he asked, pointing gloomily to a novel on the table near him.

“That’s it,” said Philip.

“Hullo!” cried Henry, looking at it more closely. “That’s mine!” It was

indeed the novel that had to do with forests and the sea and the liberty

of the human soul, the novel that had been to Henry the first true

gospel of his life and that had bred in him all the troubles, distrusts

and fears that a true gospel is sure to breed. Henry, when the original

book had been delivered back to Mudie’s had with ceremony and worship

bought a copy for himself. This was his copy.

“It’s my book,” Henry repeated, picking it up and holding it defiantly.

“I’m very sorry,” said Philip stiffly. “Of course I didn’t know.

Katherine spoke as though it were hers.”

“Oh, you can take it,” Henry said, frowning and throwing it back on the

table.

Philip looked at him, then suddenly, laughing, walked over to him,

“What’s the matter, Henry?” he said catching his arm. “I’ll have it out

with the lot of you, I swear I will. You, none of you, say anything—you

all just look as though you didn’t know me. You yourself, these last

months, have looked as though you’d like to stick a dagger into my back.

Now, really, upon my word, I don’t know what I’ve done. I’m engaged to

Katherine, but I’ve behaved as decently about it as I can. I’m not going

to take her away from you all if I can help it. I’ve made up my mind to

that, now that I see how much she cares for you all. I’ve done my best

... I really have. Now, what is it?”

Henry was, in spite of himself, touched by this appeal. He glanced at

Philip’s face and thought, again in spite of himself, what a nice one it

was. A horrible suspicion came to him that he liked Philip, had always

liked him, and this abominable whisper, revealing treachery to all his

principles, to all his traditions, to all his moral code, above all to

Katherine, infuriated him. He tore his arm away.

“If you want to know,” he cried, “it’s because I think you’re a beast,

because you’re not fit to touch Katie—because—because—I know all

about you!”

Philip stood there; for a moment a smile trembled to his lips, then was

dismissed.

“What do you mean?” he said, sternly.

“Mean?” cried Henry, allowing himself to be carried along on a tide of

indignation that seemed, in some way, in spite of itself, to be quite

genuine. “Mean? I mean that I’ve known for weeks and weeks the kind of

man _you_ are! I know what you did in Moscow for years and years,

although you may look so quiet. Do you think you’re the sort of man to

marry Katherine? Why, you aren’t fit to touch her hand.”

“Would you mind,” said Philip quietly, “just telling me exactly to what

you are referring?”

“Why,” said Henry, dropping his voice and beginning to mumble, “you

had—you had a mistress—in Moscow for years, and everyone knew it—and

you had a baby—and it died. Everyone knows it.”

“Well,” said Philip quietly, “and what then?”

“Oh, you’re going to deny it, I suppose,” said Henry, “but I tell you—”

“No,” said Philip, “I’m not going to think of denying it. I don’t know

where you got your information from, but it’s perfectly true. At the

same time I can’t see that it’s your particular business or, indeed,

anyone’s. The affair’s absolutely done with—old history.”

“No, I suppose,” cried Henry, “it doesn’t seem to be anything to you.

You don’t know what a decent family thinks of such things. It’s nothing

to you, of course. But we happen to care for Katherine more than—more

than—you seem to know. And—and she’s everything to us. And we’re not

going to let her—to let her marry someone who’s notoriously a—a bad

man. No, we’re not. It may seem odd to you, but we’re _not_.”

Philip was standing now beneath the Mirror, in front of the fireplace,

his hands behind his back.

“My dear Henry,” he said, “it’s extremely pleasant to me to hear that

you’re so fond of Katherine—but has it ever occurred to any of you that

she may possibly have a life of her own, that she isn’t going to be

dependent on all of you for ever?... And as for you, Henry, my boy,

you’re a nice character, with charming possibilities in it, but I’m

afraid that it can’t be denied that you’re a bit of a prig—and I don’t

know that Cambridge is exactly the place to improve that defect.”

Philip could have said nothing more insulting. Henry’s face grew white

and his hands trembled.

His voice shaking, he answered: “You can say what you like. All I can

tell you is that if you don’t give up Katherine I’ll tell Father at once

the sort of man you are—tell them all. And then you’ll have to go.”

At Philip’s heart there was triumph. At last the crisis was threatened

for which he had, all this time, been longing. He did not for an instant

doubt what Katherine would do. Ah! if they drove him away she was his,

his for ever! and, please God, they would never see Glebeshire again!

He was triumphant, but he did not give Henry his mood.

“You can do what you please, my son,” he answered, scornfully. “Tell ’em

all. But brush your hair next time you come down to the drawing-room for

tea. Even in Russia we do that. You don’t know how wild it looks....

Now, just hand me that book and I’ll clear out. Meanwhile don’t be so

childish. You’re going to Cambridge, and really _must_ grow up. Take my

advice. Brush your hair, put on a clean collar, and don’t be a prig.”

Henry, white with passion, saw nothing but Philip’s face. Philip the

enemy and scorn of the house, Philip the ravisher of Katherine, Philip

author of all evil and instigator of all wickedness.

He picked up the book and flung it at Philip’s head.

“There’s your book!” he screamed. “Take it!... You—you cad!”

The book crashed into the centre of the mirror.

There was a tinkle of falling glass, and instantly the whole room seemed

to tumble into pieces, the old walls, the old prints and water-colours,

the green carpet, the solemn book-cases, the large arm-chairs—and with

the room, the house, and with the house Westminster, Garth, Glebeshire,

Trenchard and Trenchard tradition—all represented now by splinters and

fragments of glass, by broken reflections of squares and stars of green

light, old faded colours, deep retreating shadows.

“Oh!” cried Henry! “Oh!”

“Thank Heaven!” laughed Philip triumphantly. “One of you’ve done

something at last!”

CHAPTER III

ANNA AND MRS. TRENCHARD

That return to Garth was, for everyone concerned, a miserable affair. It

happened that the fine summer weather broke into torrents of rain. As

they drove up to the old house they could hear the dripping of water

from every nook and corner. As Henry lay awake that first night the hiss

and spatter of the rain against his window seemed to have a personal

grudge against him. “Ah—you fool—s-s-s—you s-s-s-illy a-s-s-s. _Put_

your _pride_ in your _pocket_—s-s-s-illy a-s-s.”

When he slept he dreamt that a deluge had descended upon the earth, that

all were drowned save he, and that he was supported against the flood

only by the floor of the house that swayed and swayed. Suddenly with a

crash in it fell—he awoke to find that he had tumbled out of bed on to

the carpet.

For days a steaming, clammy mist, with a weight and a melancholy

peculiar to Glebeshire, hung over the world.

They lived in hot steam, their hair was damp and their hands chill. It

was poor days for the beginning of August. Rebekah was in a bad temper;

no one knew what it was that had displeased her, but she had a wicked

nephew who wrote, at certain times, to plead for money, and always for

many days after receiving a letter from him she was displeased with

everyone. She walked now like a tragedy queen in her tall white cap and

stiff white apron; only Mrs. Trenchard could be expected to deal with

her, and Mrs. Trenchard had other things that occupied her mind.

Henry’s eye was now forever on his mother. He waited for the moment when

Aunt Aggie would speak, that quite inevitable moment.

He thought that he had never truly seen his mother before. In old days,

in that strange, dim world before Philip’s arrival, she had seemed to

him someone to be cherished, to be protected, someone growing a little

old, a little cheerless, a little lonely. Now she was full of vigour and

dominion. When she said to him: “Did you put on that clean

under-clothing this morning, Henry?” instead of sulking and answering

her question with an obvious disgust, he assured her earnestly that he

had done so. He admired now her strong figure, her pouring of tea at

breakfast, her sharp rebukes to the gardener, and her chiding of Uncle

Tim when he entered the drawing-room wearing muddy boots. Yes, he

admired his mother. So he trembled at the thought of her cold, ironic

anger when she heard of Philip’s past.

On the day after their arrival at Garth he told Millie what he had done.

He had long ago realised that, since her return from Paris, Millie had

been a quite unaccountable creature. It was not only her French

education. He attributed this change also to the dire influence of

Philip. He noticed with disgust that she behaved now as though she were

a woman of the world, implying, at the same time, that he was still an

uncleanly and ignorant schoolboy. He knew that she would be indignant

and scornful at his indiscretion, nevertheless he was driven by

loneliness to confide in her.

They walked together to the village that they might fetch the afternoon

post, otherwise unrescued until the following morning.

Millie was in a bad temper.

“I never knew anyone walk in the mud as you do, Henry. Your boots are

filthy in a minute. You walk into every puddle you can see. You always

did.”

The trees hung ghostly out of the mist like mocking scarecrows. Every

once and again moisture from somewhere trickled down between Henry’s

neck and collar.

“Look here, Millie,” he said gloomily, “I want your advice.”

“You’ve done something silly again, I suppose,” she answered loftily.

Glancing shyly at her, he thought that she was looking very pretty.

Strange, the number of new things that he was noticing now about the

family. But she _was_ pretty—a great deal prettier than Katherine; in

fact, the only pretty one of the family. He liked her soft hair, so

charming under her large flopping garden-hat, her little nose, her eyes

black and sparkling, the colour of her cheeks, her tall and slim body

that carried her old cotton dress so gracefully. Everything about her

was right and beautiful in a way that no other members of the family

could achieve. Katherine was always a little clumsy, although since her

engagement to Philip she had taken more care.... There was something

light and lovely about Millie that no care would produce if you had not

got it. He was proud of her, and would have liked that she should be

nice to him.

“Yes,” he said, “I’ve been an awful fool.... I’ve told Aunt Aggie about

Philip.”

Millie stopped and stood, staring at him.

“You’ve told Aunt Aggie?” she cried furiously.

“Yes,” he repeated, blushing, as he always did when he was scolded.

“Oh! you _silly_ ass!” She was so deeply exasperated that she could

scarcely speak.

“You SILLY ass! I might have guessed it—And yet all the time I’d hoped

that at least.... And Aunt Aggie of all people!... and now Katherine and

mother!

“Oh, you chattering, blundering idiot!”

She walked forward at a furious pace; he plunged after her.

“That’s all right,” he said, “when you’ve done cursing you’ll be cooler.

I _know_ I’m an ass, but Aunt Aggie irritated me and got it all out of

me. Aunt Aggie’s the devil!”

“Of course she is, and _of course_ you’ll choose her out of everyone,

when she _hates_ Philip and would wring his neck to-morrow if her hands

were strong enough.”

“Well, I hate him too,” said Henry.

“Oh, no you don’t,” answered Millie, “you think you do. You’re proud of

thinking you hate him, and you lose your temper because he laughs at

you, and then you throw books at his head, but you don’t really hate

him.”

“How do you know I throw books at his head?”

“Oh, you don’t suppose we, any of us, believed that story about you and

Philip having a kind of game in the drawing-room just for fun.... Father

was furious about it, and said the mirror was unreplaceable, and the

sooner you went to Cambridge and stopped there the better—and I think

so too. Oh! you’ve just spoilt everything!”

“It’s only about Katie I’m thinking,” he answered doggedly. “It may,

after all, be true what Aunt Aggie said, that it will be much better for

her in the end for the thing to be broken off, even though it hurts her

now.”

“Better for her!” cried Millie scornfully. “Don’t you know that, however

deeply she loved Philip when it all began, it’s nothing to the way that

she loves him now?... Of course now there’ll be a scene. Philip will be

turned off for ever and—” She broke off, then said, staring at Henry:

“Supposing, after all, Katie were to go with him!”

Henry shook his head. “She’d never do that, however much Philip is to

her. Why, it would mean giving up Garth and us for ever! Mother would

never forgive her! After all, she’s only known Philip six months, and I

heard her say the other day in London she loves Garth more than ever.

And even if Mother _did_ forgive her, in the end she’d never be able to

come back here as one of us again. You and I will love her whatever she

does, but Mother and Father and the aunts ... I believe it would simply

kill them—”

“I’m not so sure,” said Millie slowly, “that Mother thinks that. I

believe she’s half afraid of Philip running off and then Katie following

him. That’s why she’s been so nice to him lately, although she can’t

bear him. Of course if she knew all this that we know he’d _have_ to

go—she wouldn’t have him in the house five minutes, and Father would do

what Mother told him of course. And now that you’ve been an idiot enough

to tell Aunt Aggie, it’s all up.... The only hope is that Katie will

chuck it all and follow him!”

“What!” cried Henry aghast. “You’d like her to!”

“Why, of course,” said Millie, “there isn’t anything compared with the

sort of thing Katie feels for Philip—Home and the family? Why, they’ve

all _got_ to go in these days! That’s what people like the aunts and

fathers and the rest of the old fogeys round here don’t see. But they’ll

_have_ to see soon.... But mother’s cleverer than they are. At least she

is about Katie, because she loves her so much.”

“My word!” said Henry, in the husky voice that always came when he

admired anybody. “You’ve changed an awful lot lately, Millie.”

“Yes, I suppose I have,” she answered, complacently.

They talked very little after that, for the reason that in the village

Henry bought Millie some bulls-eyes, because he felt in a confused kind

of way that he admired her more than he had ever done.

Millie had also another reason for silence; she was thinking very hard.

During those few days in London she had lived in a world of thrilling

expectation. She hoped that every moment would announce the elopement of

Katherine and Philip. After her conversation with her sister, it had

seemed to her that this elopement was inevitable. On every occasion of

the opening of a door in the London house her heart had leapt in her

breast. She had watched the lovers with eyes that were absorbed. Ah! if

only they would take her more thoroughly into their confidence, would

put themselves into her hands. She’d manage for them—she’d arrange

everything most beautifully. This was the most romantic hour of her

life....

But now, after Henry’s revelation, Millie’s thoughts were turned upon

her mother. Of course her mother would expel Philip—then there was a

danger that Philip would return to that living, fascinating creature in

Russia, the mysterious, smiling Anna. Millie had created that figure for

herself now, had thought and wondered and dreamed of her so often that

she saw her bright and vivid and desperately dangerous, thin and dark

and beautiful against a background of eternal snow.

There they were—her mother and Anna and Katherine, with Philip, poor

Philip, in between them all. It was truly a wonderful time for Millie,

who regarded all this as a prologue to her own later dazzling history.

She did not know that, after all, she blamed Henry very desperately for

his foolishness. The thrilling crisis was but brought the nearer.

Meanwhile the first thing that she did was to inform Katherine of

Henry’s treachery.

Katherine received the news very quietly.

“And now,” said Millie eagerly, “what will you do, Katie darling?”

“Wait and see what Mother does,” said Katie.

“She’ll be simply horrified,” said Millie. “If she sends Philip away and

forbids you ever to see him again, what will you do?”

But Katherine would not answer that.

“Let’s wait, Millie dear,” she said gently.

“But you wouldn’t let him _go_?” Millie pursued, “not back to Russia and

that awful woman.”

“I trust Philip,” Katherine said.

“You can never trust a man,” Millie said gravely. “I know. One of our

girls in Paris was let in terribly. She—”

Katherine interrupted her.

“Philip isn’t like anyone else,” she said.

And Millie was dismissed.

But when Katherine was alone she sat down and wrote a letter. This was

it:

MY DARLING RACHEL,

Do you remember that a long time ago, one day when I came to see

you in London, you said that if I were ever in trouble I was to

tell you and you’d understand _anything_? Well, I’m in trouble

now—bad trouble. Things are growing worse and worse, and it

seems now that whichever way I act, something’s got to be

hopelessly spoiled. To any ordinary outsider it would mean such

a small business, but really it’s the _whole_ of my life and of

other people’s too. You’re _not_ an outsider, and so I know that

you’ll understand. I can’t tell you more now—I don’t know what

will happen, how I’ll act, or anything. But I shall know soon,

and then I shall want your help, dreadfully. I’m sure you’ll

help me when I ask you to.

You do like Philip better now, don’t you? I know that you didn’t

at first, but that was because you didn’t really know him. _I_

didn’t really know him either then, but I know him now, and I

love him twice as much as ever I did.