Katherine Trenchard’s very earliest sense of morality had been that there were God, the Trenchard’s and the Devil—that the Devil wished very much to win the Trenchards over to His side, but that God assured the Trenchards that if only they behaved well He would not let them go—and, for this, Troy had burnt, Carthage been razed to the ground, proud kings driven from their thrones and humbled to the dust, plague, pestilence, and famine had wrought their worst....
The Trenchards were, indeed, a tremendous family, and it was little wonder that the Heavenly Powers should fight for their alliance. In the county of Glebeshire, where Katherine had spent all her early years, Trenchards ran like spiders’ webs, up and down the lanes and villages.
In Polchester, the Cathedral city, there were Canon Trenchard and his family, old Colonel Trenchard, late of the Indian army, the Trenchards of Polhaze and the Trenchards of Rothin Place—all these in one small town. There were Trenchards at Rasselas and Trenchards (poor and rather unworthy Trenchards) at Clinton St. Mary. There was one Trenchard (a truculent and gout-ridden bachelor) at Polwint—all of these in the immediate neighbourhood of Katherine’s home. Of course they were important to God....
In that old house in the village of Garth in Roselands, where Katherine had been born, an old house up to its very chin in deep green fields, an old house wedded, hundreds of years ago to the Trenchard Spirit, nor likely now ever to be divorced from it, Katherine had learnt to adore with her body, her soul and her spirit Glebeshire and everything that belonged to that fair county, but to adore it, also, because it was so completely, so devoutly, the Trenchard heritage. So full were her early prayers of petitions for successive Trenchards, “God bless Father, Mother, Henry, Millie, Vincent, Uncle Tim, Uncle Wobert, Auntie Agnes, Auntie Betty, Cousin Woger, Cousin Wilfrid, Cousin Alice, etc., etc.,” that, did it ever come to a petition for someone unhappily not a Trenchard the prayer was offered with a little hesitating apology. For a long while Katherine thought that when Missionaries were sent to gather in the heathen they were going out on the divine mission of driving all strangers into the Trenchard fold.
Not to be a Trenchard was to be a nigger or a Chinaman.
And here I would remark with all possible emphasis that Katherine was never taught that it was a fine and a mighty thing to be a Trenchard. No Trenchard had ever, since time began, considered his position any more than the stars, the moon and the sun consider theirs. If you were a Trenchard you did not think about it at all. The whole Trenchard world with all its ramifications, its great men and its small men, its dignitaries, its houses, its Castles, its pleasure-resorts, its Foreign Baths, its Theatres, its Shooting, its Churches, its Politics, its Foods and Drinks, its Patriotisms and Charities, its Seas, its lakes and rivers, its Morality, its angers, its pleasures, its regrets, its God and its Devil, the whole Trenchard world was a thing intact, preserved, ancient, immovable. It took its stand on its History, its family affection, its country Places, its loyal Conservatism, its obstinacy and its stupidity. Utterly unlike such a family as the Beaminsters with their preposterous old Duchess (now so happily dead) it had no need whatever for any self-assertion, any struggle with anything, any fear of invasion. From Without nothing could attack its impregnability. From Within? Well, perhaps, presently ... but no Trenchard was aware of that.
A young Beaminster learnt from the instant of its breaking the Egg that it must at once set about showing the world that it was a Beaminster.
A young Trenchard never considered for a single second that he was supposed to show anyone anything.He was... that was enough.
The Trenchards had never been conceited people—conceit implied too definite a recognition of other people’s position and abilities. To be conceited you must think yourself abler, more interesting, richer, handsomer than someone else—and no Trenchard ever realised anyone else.
From the security of their Mirror they looked out upon the world. Only from inside the House could the Mirror be broken—surely then they were secure....
Katherine was always a very modest little girl, but her modesty had never led to any awkward shyness or embarrassment; she simply did not consider herself at all. She had been, in the early days, a funny little figure, ‘dumpy’, with serious brown eyes and a quiet voice. She was never in the way, better at home than at parties, she never ‘struck’ strangers, as did her younger sister Millicent, ‘who would be brilliant when she grew up’; Katherine would never be brilliant.
She had, from the first, a capacity for doing things for the family without attracting attention—and what more can selfish people desire? She was soon busy and occupied—necessary to the whole house. She very seldom laughed, but her eyes twinkled and she was excellent company did anyone care for her opinion. Only Uncle Tim of them all realised her intelligence—for the rest of the family she was slow ‘but a dear.’
It was in her capacity of ‘a dear’ that she finally stood to all of them. They adored because they knew that they never disappointed her. Although they had, none of them (save Henry) any concern as to their especial failings or weaknesses, it was nevertheless comforting to know that they might put anything upon Katherine, behave to her always in the way that was easiest to them, and that she would always think them splendid. They would not in public places put Katherine forward as a Fine Trenchard. Millicent would be a Fine Trenchard one day—but at home, in their cosy fortified security, there was no one like Katherine.
Katherine was perfect to them all.... Not that she did not sometimes have her tempers, her impatiences, her ‘moods’. They were puzzled when she was short with them, when she would not respond to their invitations for compliments, when she seemed to have some horrible doubt as to whether the Trenchard world was, after all, the only one—but they waited for the ‘mood’ to pass, and it passed very swiftly ... it is noteworthy however that never, in spite of their devotion to her, did they during these crises, attempt to help or console her. She stood alone, and at the back of their love there was always some shadow of fear.
Very happy had her early years been. The house at Garth, rambling, untidy, intimate, with the croquet-lawn in front of it, the little wild wood at the right of it, the high sheltering green fields at the left of it, the old church Tower above the little wood, the primroses and cuckoos, the owls and moonlight nights, the hot summer days with the hum of the reaping machine, the taste of crushed strawberries, the dim-sleepy voices from the village street.Thiswas a world! The Old House had never changed—as she had grown it had dwindled perhaps, but ever, as the years passed, had enclosed more securely the passion of her heart. She saw herself standing in the dim passage that led to her bedroom, a tiny, stumpy figure. She could hear the voice of Miss Mayer, the governess, “Now, Katherine—come along, please—Millie’s in bed.”
She could smell the tallow of the candle, could hear the owls’ hoot from the dark window, could smell apples and roses somewhere, could remember how intensely she had caught that moment and held it, and carried it, for ever and ever, away with her. Yes, thatwasa World!
And, beyond the House, there was the Country. Every lane and wood and hill did she know. Those thick, deep, scented lanes that only Glebeshire in all the world can provide—the road to Rafiel, running, at first, with only a moment’s peep now and again of the sea, then plunging with dramatic fling, suddenly down into the heart of the Valley. There was Rafiel—Rafiel, the only Cove in all the world! How as the dog-cart bumped down that precipice had her heart been in her mouth, how magical the square harbour, the black Peak, the little wall of white-washed cottages, after that defeated danger!
There were all the other places—St. Lowe and Polwint, Polchester with the Cathedral and the Orchards and the cobbled streets, Grane Woods and Grane Castle, Rothin Woods, Roche St. Mary, Moore with the seadunes and the mists and rabbits, the Loroe river and the fishing-boats at Pelynt—world of perfect beauty and simplicity, days stained with the high glory of romance. And this was Trenchard Country!
London, coming to her afterwards, had, at first, been hated, only gradually accepted. She grew slowly fond of the old Westminster house, but the crowds about her confused and perplexed her. She was aware now that, perhaps, there were those in the world who cared nothing for the Trenchards. She flew from such confusion the more intensely into her devotion to her own people. It was as though, at the very first peep of the world, she had said to herself—“No. That is not my place. They have no need of me nor I of them. They would change me. I do not wish to be changed.”
She was aware of her own duty the more strongly because her younger sister, Millicent, had taken always the opposite outlook. Millicent, pretty, slender, witty, attractive, had always found home (even Garth and its glories) ‘a little slow’.
The family had always understood that it was natural for Millicent to find them slow—no pains had been spared over Millicent’s development. She had just finished her education in Paris and was coming back to London. Always future plans now were discussed with a view to finding amusement for Millicent. “Millie will be here then”. “I wonder whether Millie will like him.” “You’d better accept it. Millie will like to go.”
Beyond all the family Katherine loved Millicent. It had begun when Millie had been very small and Katherine had mothered her,—it had continued when Millie, growing older, had plunged into scrapes and demanded succour out of them again—it had continued when Katherine and Millie had developed under a cloud of governesses, Millie brilliant and idle, Katherine plodding and unenterprising, it had continued when Millie, two years ago, had gone to Paris, had written amusing, affectionate letters, had told “Darling Katie that there wasno one, no one, noone, anywhere in all the world, to touch her—Mme. Roget was a pig, Mlle. Lefresne, who taught music, an angel, etc. etc.”
Now Millicent was coming home.... Katherine was aware that from none of the family did she receive more genuine affection than from Henry, and yet, strangely, she was often irritated with Henry. She wished that he were more tidy, less rude to strangers, less impulsive, more of a comfort and less of an anxiety to his father and mother. She was severe sometimes to Henry and then was sorry afterwards. She could ‘do anything with him,’ and wished therefore that he had more backbone. Of them all she understood her mother the best. She was very like her mother in many ways; she understood that inability to put things into words, that mild conviction that ‘everything was all right’, a conviction to be obtained only by shutting your eyes very tight. She understood, too, as no other member of the family understood, that Mrs. Trenchard’s devotion to her children was a passion as fierce, as unresting, as profound, and, possibly, as devastating as any religion, any superstition, any obsession. Itwasan obsession. It had in it all the glories, the dangers, the relentless ruthlessness of an overwhelming ‘idée fixe’—that ‘idée fixe’ which is at every human being’s heart, and that, often undiscovered, unsuspected, transforms the world.... Katherine knew this.
For her father she had the comradeship of a play-fellow. She could not take her father very seriously—he did not wish that she should. She loved him always and he loved her in his ‘off’ moments, when he was not thinking of himself and his early Nineteenth Century—if he had any time that he could spare from himself it was given to her. She thought it quite natural that his spare time should be slender.
And, of them all, no one enquired as to her own heart, her thoughts, her wonders, her alarms and suspicions, her happiness, her desires. She would not if she could help it, enquire herself about these things—but sometimes she was aware that life would not for ever, leave her alone. She had one friend who was not a Trenchard, and only one. This was Lady Seddon, who had been before her marriage a Beaminster and grand-daughter of the old Duchess of Wrexe. Rachel Beaminster had married Roddy Seddon. Shortly after their marriage he had been flung from his horse, and from that time had been always upon his back—it would always be so with him. They had one child—a boy of two—and they lived in a little house in Regent’s Park.
That friendship had been of Rachel Seddon’s making. She had driven herself in upon Katherine and, offering her baby as a reward, had lured Katherine into her company—but even to her, Katherine had not surrendered herself. Rachel Seddon was a Beaminster, and although the Beaminster power was now broken, about that family there lingered traditions of greatness and autocratic splendour. Neither Rachel nor Roddy Seddon was autocratic, but Katherine would not trust herself entirely to them. It was as though she was afraid that by doing so she would be disloyal to her own people.
This, then, was Katherine’s world.
Upon the morning of the November day when Millicent was to make, upon London, her triumphal descent from Paris, Katherine found herself, suddenly, in the middle of Wigmore Street, uneasy—Wigmore Street was mild, pleasantly lit with a low and dim November sun, humming with a little stir and scatter of voices and traffic, opening and shutting its doors, watching a drove of clouds, like shredded paper, sail through the faint blue sky above it. Katherine stopped for an instant to consider this strange uneasiness. She looked about her, thought, and decided that she would go and see Rachel Seddon.
Crossing a little finger of the Park, she stopped again. The shredded clouds were dancing now amongst the bare stiff branches of the trees and a grey mist, climbing over the expanse of green, spread like thin gauze from end to end of the rising ground. A little soughing wind seemed to creep about her feet. She stopped again and stood there, a solitary figure. For, perhaps, the first time in her life she considered herself. She knew, as she stood there, that she had for several days been aware of this uneasiness. It was as though someone had been knocking at a door for admittance. She had heard the knocking, but had refused to move, saying to herself that soon the sound would cease. But it had not ceased, it was more clamorous than before. She was frightened—why? Was it Millie’s return? She knew that it was not that....
Standing there, in the still Park, she seemed to hear something say to her “You are to be caught up.... Life is coming to you.... You cannot avoid it.... You are caught.”
She might have cried to the sky, the trees, the little pools of dead and sodden leaves “What is it? What is it? Do you hear anything?” A scent of rotting leaves and damp mist, brought by the little wind, invaded her. The pale sun struck through the moist air and smiled down, a globe of gold, upon her. There came to her that moment of revelation that tells human beings that, fine as they may think themselves, full of courage and independent of all men, Life, if it exert but the softest pressure, may be too strong for them—the armies of God, with their certain purpose, are revealed for a brief instant entrenched amongst the clouds. “If we crush you what matters it to Us?”
She hurried on her way, longing for the sound of friendly voices, and, when she found Rachel Seddon with her son in the nursery, the fire, the warm colours, the absurd rocking-horse, armies of glittering soldiers encamped upon the red carpet, the buzz of a sewing-machine in the next room, above all, Michael Seddon’s golden head and Rachel’s dark one, she could have cried aloud her relief.
Rachel, tall and slender, dark eyes and hair from a Russian mother, restless, impetuous, flinging her hands out in some gesture, catching her boy, suddenly, and kissing him, breaking off in the heart of one sentence to begin another, was a strange contrast to Katherine’s repose. Soon Katherine was on the floor and Michael, who loved her, had his arms about her neck.
“That’s how she ought always to be,” thought Rachel, looking down at her. “How could anyone ever say that she was plain! Roddy thinks her so.... He should see her now.”
Katherine looked up. “Rachel,” she said, “I was frightened just now in the Park. I don’t know why—I almost ran here. I’m desperately ashamed of myself.”
“You—frightened?”
“Yes, I thought someone was coming out from behind a tree to slip a bag over my head, I—Oh! I don’t know what I thought....”
Then she would say no more. She played with Michael and tried to tell him a story. Here she was, as she had often been before, unsuccessful. She was too serious over the business, would not risk improbabilities and wanted to emphasise the moral. She was not sufficiently absurd ... gravely her eyes sought for a decent ending. She looked up and found that Michael had left her and was moving his soldiers.
The sun, slanting in, struck lines of silver and gold from their armour across the floor.
As she got up and stood there, patting herself to see whether she were tidy, her laughing eyes caught Rachel.
“There! You see! I’m no good atthat!—no imagination—father’s always said so.”
“Katie,” Rachel said, catching her soft, warm, almost chubby hand, “there’s nothing the matter, is there?”
“The matter! No! what should there be?”
“It’s so odd for you to say what you did just now. And I think—I don’t know—you’re different to-day.”
“No, I’m not.” Katherine looked at her. “It was the damp Park, all the bare trees and nobody about.”
“But it’s so unlike you to think of damp Parks and bare trees.”
“Well—perhaps it’s because Millie’s coming back from Paris this afternoon. I shall be terrified of her—so smart she’ll be!”
“Give her my love and bring her here as soon as she’ll come. She’ll amuse Roddy.” She paused, searching in Katherine’s brown eyes—“Katie—if there’s ever—anything—anything—I can help you in or advise you—or do for you. You know, don’t you?... You alwayswillbe so independent. You don’ttellme things. Remember I’ve had my times—worse times than you guess.”
Katherine kissed her. “It’s all right, Rachel, there’s nothing the matter—except that ... no, nothing at all. Good-bye, dear. Don’t come down. I’ll bring Millie over.”
She was gone—Rachel watched her demure, careful progress until she was caught and hidden by the trees.
There had been a little truth in her words when she told Rachel that she dreaded Millie’s arrival. If she had ever, in the regular routine of her happy and busy life, looked forward to any event as dramatic or a crisis, that moment had always been Millie’s return from Paris. Millie had been happy and affectionate at home, but nevertheless a critic. She had never quite seen Life from inside the Trenchard Mirror nor had she quite seen it from the vision of family affection. She loved them all—but she found them slow, unadventurous, behind the times. That was the awful thing—‘behind the times’—a terrible accusation. If Millie had felt that (two years ago) how vehemently would she feel it now!... and Katherine knew that as she considered this criticism of Millie’s she was angry and indignant and warm with an urgent, passionate desire to protect her mother from any criticism whatever. “Behind the times”, indeed—Millie had better not.... And then she remembered the depth of her love for Millie ... nothing should interfere with that.
She was in her bedroom, after luncheon, considering these things when there was a tap on the door and Aunt Betty entered. In her peep round the door to see whether she might come in, in the friendly, hopeful, reassuring butterfly of a smile that hovered about her lips, in the little stir of her clothes as she moved as though every article of attire was assuring her that it was still there, and was very happy to be there too, there was the whole of her history written.
It might be said that she had no history, but to such an assertion, did she hear it, she would offer an indignant denial, could she be indignant about anything. She had been perfectly, admirably happy for fifty-six years, and that, after all, is to have a history to some purpose. She had nothing whatever to be happy about. She had no money at all, and had never had any. She had, for a great number of years, been compelled to live upon her brother’s charity, and she was the most independent soul alive. In strict truth she had, of her own, thirty pounds a year, and the things that she did with those thirty pounds are outside and beyond any calculation. “There’s alwaysmymoney, George,” she would say when her brother had gloomy forebodings about investments. She lived, in fact, a minute, engrossing, adventurous, flaming life of her own, and the flame, the colour, the fire were drawn from her own unconquerable soul. In her bedroom—faded wall-paper, faded carpet, faded chairs because no one ever thought of her needs—she had certain possessions, a cedar-wood box, a row of books, a water-colour sketch, photographs of the family (Katherine 3½, Vincent 8 years old, Millicent 10 years, etc., etc.), a model of the Albert Memorial done in pink wax, a brass tray from India, some mother-of-pearl shells, two china cats given to her, one Christmas day, by a very young Katherine—those possessions were her world. She felt that within that bedroom everything was her own. She would allow no other pictures on the wall, no books not hers in the book-case. One day when she had some of the thirty pounds ‘to play with’ she would cover the chairs with beautiful cretonne and she would buy a rug—so she had said for the last twenty years. She withdrew, when life was tiresome, when her sister Aggie was difficult, when there were quarrels in the family (she hated quarrels) into this world of her own, and would suddenly break out in the midst of a conversation with “I might have the bedthere” or “There isn’t really room for another chair if I had one,” and then would make a little noise like a top, ‘hum, hum, hum’. In defiance of her serenity she could assume a terrible rage and indignation were any member of the family attacked. Her brother George and Katherine she loved best—she did not, although she would never acknowledge it, care greatly for Henry—Millie she admired and feared. She had only to think of Katherine and her eyes would fill with tears ... she was a very fount of sentiment. She had suffered much from her sister Agnes, but she had learnt now the art of withdrawal so perfectly that she could escape at any time without her sister being aware of it. “You aren’t listening, Elizabeth,” Agnes would cry suspiciously.
“Yes, dear Aggie, I am. I don’t think things as bad as you say. For instance,” and a wonderful recovery would reassure suspicion. The real core of her life was Katherine and Katherine’s future. There was to be, one day, for Katherine a most splendid suitor—a Lord, perhaps, a great politician, a great Churchman, she did not know—but someone who would realise first Katherine’s perfection, secondly the honour of being made a Trenchard, thirdly the necessity of spending all his life in the noble work of making Katherine happy. “I shall miss her—we shall all miss her—but we mustn’t be selfish—hum, hum—she’ll have one to stay, perhaps.”
Very often she came peeping into Katherine’s room as she came to-day. She would take Katherine into her confidence; she would offer her opinion about the events of the hour. She took her stand in the middle of the room, giving little excited pecks at one of her fingers, the one that suffered most from her needle when she sewed, a finger scarred now by a million little stabs. So she stood now, and Katherine, sitting on the edge of her bed, looked up at her.
“I came in, my dear, because you hardly ate any luncheon. I watched you—hardly any at all.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Aunt Betty. I wasn’t hungry.”
“I don’t like your not eating—hum, hum. No, I don’t. Mother always used to say ‘Don’t Eat, can’t Beat’—of military forces, you know, dear, or anything that had a hard task to perform.”
She looked about her with an aimless and rather nervous smile, which meant that she had something to say but was afraid of it.
“Katie, dear, do you know?” (This with an air of intense importance.) “I don’t think I’ll show Millie my room—not just at first at any rate.”
“Oh, but you must. She’ll be longing to see it.”
“Well, but—will she, do you think? Oh, no, she won’t, not after Paris.... Paris is so grand. Perhaps, later I will—show it her. I mean when she’s more accustomed to the old life.”
But even now it was plain that she had not delivered her purpose. It was imprisoned, like a mouse in a very woolly moth-eaten trap. Soon there will be a click and out it will come!
Her wandering, soft, kindly eyes looked gravely upon Katherine.
“My dear, I wish you’d eaten something. Only a little mince and two of those cheese biscuits.... Katie dear, did you hear what Mr. Mark said at luncheon about leaving us?”
“Yes, Aunt Betty.”
“He said he’d got somewhere from next Monday. Poor young man—notsoyoung now either—but he seems lonely. I’m glad we were able to be kind to him at first. Katie, I have an ‘Idea’.” Impossible to give any picture of the eagerness with which now her eyes were lit and her small body strung on a tiptoe of excitement, “I have an idea.... I think he and Millie—I think he might be just the man for Millie—adventurous, exciting, knowing so much about Russia—and, after Paris, she’ll want someone like that.”
Katherine turned slowly away from her aunt, gazing vaguely, absent-mindedly, as though she had not been thinking of the old lady’s words.
“Oh, no, Aunt Betty. I don’t think so—What an old matchmaker you are!”
“I love to see people happy. And I like him. I think it’s a pity he’s going on Monday. He’s been here a fortnight now. I like him. He’s polite to me, and when a young man is polite to an old woman like me that says a lot—hum, hum—yes, it does. But your mother doesn’t like him—I wonder why not—but she doesn’t. I always know when your mother doesn’t like anybody. Millie will.... I know she will. But I don’t think I’ll show her my things—not at first, not right after Paris.”
“Perhaps it would be better to wait a little.” Katherine went and sat in front of her mirror. She touched the things on her dressing-table.
“I’ll go now, dear—I can’t bear to think of you only having had that mince. My eye will be on you at dinner, mind.”
She peeped out of the door, looked about her with her bright little eyes, then whisked away.
Katherine sat before her glass, gazing. But not at herself. She did not know whose face it was that stared back at her.
Millie’s entrance that afternoon was very fine. There were there to receive her, her grandfather, her great-aunt (in white boa), her father, her mother, Henry, Katherine, Aunt Betty and Aggie, Philip Mark, Esq. She stood in the doorway of the drawing-room radiant with health, good spirits and happiness at being home again—all Trenchards always are. Like Katherine in the humour of her eyes, otherwise not at all—tall, dark, slim in black and white, a little black hat with a blue feather, a hat that was over one ear. She had her grandfather’s air of clear, finely cut distinction, but so alive, so vibrating with health was she that her entrance extinguished the family awaiting her as you blow out a candle. Her cheeks were flushed, her black eyes sparkled, her arms were outstretched to all of them.
“Here I am!” she seemed to say, “I’m sure you’ve forgotten in all this time how delightful I am!—and indeed I’m ever so much more delightful than I was before I went away. In any case here I am, ready to love you all. And there’s no family in the world I’d be gladder to be a member of than this!”
Her sharp, merry, inquisitive eyes sought them all out—sought out the old room with all the things in it exactly as she had always known them, and then the people—one after the other—all of them exactly as she had always known them....
She was introduced to Philip Mark. Her eyes lingered up him, for an instant, mischievously, almost interrogatively. To him she seemed to say: “What on earth are you doing inside here? How did you ever get in? And what are you here for?” She seemed to say to him: “You and I—we know more than these others here—but just because of that we’re not half so nice.”
“Well, Henry,” she said, and he felt that she was laughing at him and blushed. He knew that his socks were hanging loosely. He had lost one of his suspenders.
“Well, Millie,” he answered, and thought how beautiful she was.
It was one of the Trenchard axioms that anyone who crossed the English Channel conferred a favour—it was nice of them to go, as though one visited a hospital or asked a poor relation to stay. Paris must have been glad to have had Millie—it must have been very gay for Paris—and that not because Millie was very wonderful, but simply because Paris wasn’t English.
“It must be nice to be home again, Millie dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard comfortably.
Millie laughed and for a moment her eyes flashed across at Philip Mark, but he was looking at Katherine. She looked round upon them all, then, as though she were wondering how, after all, things were going to be now that she had come home ‘for good’—now that it would be always and always—well, perhaps not always. She looked again at Philip Mark and liked him. She surrendered herself then to the dip and splash and sparkle of the family waters of affection. They deluged and overwhelmed her. Her old grandfather and the great-aunt sat silently there, watching, with their bird-like eyes, everything, but even upon their grim features there were furrowed smiles.
“And the crossing was really all right?” “The trees in the Park were blowing rather ...” “And so, Milly dear, I said you’d go. I promised for you. But you can get out of it as easily as anything....”
“You must have been sorry, as it was the last time, but you’ll be able to go back later on and see them....”
And her father. “Well,they’vehad her long enough, and now it’s our turn for a bit. She’s been spoiled there.... She won’t get any spoiling here....”
He roared with laughter, flinging his head back, coming over and catching Millie’s head between his hands, laughing above her own laughing eyes. Henry watched them, his father cynically, his sister devotedly. He was always embarrassed by the family demonstrations, and he felt it the more embarrassing now because there was a stranger in their midst. Philip was just the man to think this all odd.... But Henry was anxious about the family behaviour simply because he was devoted to the family, not at all because he thought himself superior to it.
Then Milly tore herself away from them all. She looked at Katherine.
“I’m going up to my room. Katy, come up and help me—”
“I’d better come and help you, dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard. “There’s sure to be a mess....”
But Milly shook her head with a slight gesture of impatience. “No, no, Mother ... Katy and I will manage.”
“Hilda will do everything if—”
“No, I want to show Katy things....”
They went.
When the two girls were alone in the bedroom and the door was closed Milly flung her arms round Katherine and kissed her again and again. They stood there, in the silence, wrapped in one another’s arms.
“Katy—darling—if you only knew, all this time, how I’ve longed for you. Sometimes I thought ‘Imust—Imust—see her’—that’s you. I’d run away—I’d do anything. I don’t think anything matters now that I’ve got you again—andI’ve so much to tell you!”
They sat down on the bed, Millie vibrating with the excitement of her wonderful experiences, Katherine quiet, but with one hand pressing Millie’s and her eyes staring into distance.
Suddenly Millie stopped.
“Katie, dear, who’s this man?”
“What man?”
“The nice-looking man I saw downstairs.”
“Oh, he’s a Mr. Mark. Son of a great friend of father’s. He’s lived in Russia—Moscow—for years. He came in by mistake one night in a fog and found that ours was the house he was coming to next day—then Father asked him to stay—”
“Do you like him?”
“Yes. He’s very nice.”
“He looks nice.”
Milly went on again with her reminiscences. Katherine, saying only a word now and then, listened.
Then, exactly as though she had caught some unexpected sound, Milly broke off again.
“Katy—Katy.”
“Yes.”
“You’re different, something’s happened to you.”
“My dear!—nothing, of course.”
“Yes, something has.—Something ... Katy!” And here Milly flung her arms again about her sister and stared into her eyes. “You’re in love with someone.”
But Katherine laughed. “That’s Paris, Milly dear—Paris—Paris.”
“It isn’t. It isn’t. It’syou. There is someone. Katy, darling, tell me—you’ve always told me everything: who is he? tell me.”
Katherine drew herself away from Milly’s embrace, then turned round, looking at her sister. Then she caught her and kissed her with a sudden urgent passion. “There’s no one, of course there’s no one. I’m the old maid of the family. You know we, long ago, decided that. I’m not ...” she broke off, laughed, got up from the bed. She looked at Milly as though she were setting, subduing some thoughts in her mind. “I’m just the same, Milly.You’redifferent, of course.”
At a sudden sound both the girls looked up. Their mother stood in the doorway, with her placidity, her mild affection; she looked about the room.
“I had to come, my dears, to see how you were getting on.” She moved forward slowly towards them.
Part of a letter that Philip Mark wrote to his friend:—
“... I couldn’t stay any longer. They’d had me there a fortnight and then one of the daughters came home from being ‘finished’ in Paris, so that they’ve really no room for strangers. I’ve moved here—not very far away—three furnished rooms in an upper part in a small street off Victoria Street. It’s quiet with an amazing quietness considering its closeness to all the rattle. The Roman Catholic Cathedral is just round the corner—hideous to look at, but it’s nice inside. There’s a low little pub. opposite that reminds me comfortably of one of our beloved ‘Trakteer’—you see I’m sentimental about Moscow already—more so every day.
“I’ve so much to tell you, and yet it comes down to one very simple thing. I’ve found, I believe, already the very soul I set out to find, set out with yours and Anna’s blessing, remember. You mayn’t tell her yet. It’s too soon and it may so easily come to nothing, but I do believe that if I’d searched England through and through for many years I could never have found anyone so—so—exactly what I need. You must have guessed in that very first letter that it had, even then, begun. It began from the instant that I saw her—it seems to me now to be as deeply seated in me as my own soul itself. But you know that at the root of everything is my own distrust in myself. Perhaps if I had never gone to Russia I should have had more confidence, but that country, as I see it now, stirs always through the hearts of its lovers, questions about everything in heaven or earth and then tells one at the end that nothing matters. And the Englishman that is in me has always fought that distrust, has called it sentimental, feeble, and then again I’ve caught back the superstition and the wonder. In Russia one’s so close to God and the Devil—in England there is business and common-sense. Between the two I’m pretty useless. If you had once seen Katherine you’d know why she seems to me a refuge from all that I’ve been fighting with Anna for so long. She’s clear and true as steel—so quiet, so sure, so much better and finer than myself that I feel that I’m the most selfish hound in the world to dream of attaching her to me. Mind you, I don’t know at present that she’s interested; she’s so young and ignorant in so many ways, with all her calm common-sense, that I’m terrified of alarming her, and if she doesn’t care for me I’ll never disturb her—never. But if she should—well, then, I believe that I can make her happy—I know myself by now. I’ve left my Moscow self behind me just as Anna said that I must. There’s nothing stranger than the way that Anna foretold it all. That night when she shewed me that I must go she drew a picture of the kind of woman whom I must find. She had never been to England, she had only, in all her life, seen one or two Englishwomen, but she knew, she knew absolutely. It’s as though she had seen Katherine in her dreams....
“But I’m talking with absurd assurance. Putting Katherine entirely aside there is all the family to deal with. Trenchard himself likes me—Mrs. Trenchard hates me. That’s not a bit too strong, and the strange thing is that there’s no reason at all for it that I can see, nor have we been, either of us, from the beginning anything but most friendly to one another. If she suspected that I was in love with Katherine I might understand it, but that is impossible. There has been nothing, I swear, to give anyone the slightest suspicion. She detects, I think, something foreign and strange in me. Russia of course she views with the deepest suspicion, and it would amuse you to hear her ideas of that country. Nothing, although she has never been near it nor read anything but silly romances about it, could shake her convictions. Because I don’t support them she knows me for a liar. She is always calm and friendly to me, but her intense dislike comes through it all. And yet I really like her. She is so firm and placid and determined. She adores her family—she will fight for them to the last feather and claw. She is so sure and so certain about everything, and yet I believe that in her heart she is always afraid of something—it’s out of that fear, I am sure, that her hatred of me comes. For the others, the only one who troubled about me was the boy, and he is the strangest creature. He’d like me to give him all my experiences: he hasn’t the slightest notion of them, but he’s morbidly impatient of his own inexperience and the way his family are shutting him out of everything, and yet he’s Trenchard enough to disapprove violently of that wider experience if it came to him. He’d like me, for instance, to take him out and show him purple restaurants, ladies in big hats, and so on. If he did so he’d feel terribly out of it and then hate me. He’s a jumble of the crudest, most impossible and yet rather touching ideas, enthusiasms, indignations, virtues, would-be vices. He adores his sister. About that at least he is firm—and if I were to harm her or make her unhappy!...
“I suppose it’s foolish of me to go on like this. I’m indulging myself, I can talk to no one. So you ... just as I used to in those first days such years ago when I didn’t know a word of Russian, came and sat by the hour in your flat, talked bad French to your wife, and found all the sympathy I wanted in your kind fat face, even though we could only exchange a word or two in the worst German. How good you were to me then! How I must have bored you!... There’s no one here willing to be bored like that. To an Englishman time is money—none of that blissful ignoring of the rising and setting of sun, moon, and stars that for so many years I have enjoyed. ‘The morning and the evening were the first day....’ It was no Russian God who said that. I’ve found some old friends—Millet, Thackeray, you’ll remember—they were in Moscow two years ago. But with them it is ‘Dinner eight o’clock sharp, old man—got an engagement nine-thirty.’ So I’m lonely. I’d give the world to see your fat body in the doorway and hear your voice rise into that shrill Russian scream of pleasure at seeing me. You should sit down—You should have some tea although I’ve no Samovar to boil the water in, and I’d talk about Katherine, Katherine, Katherine—until all was blue. And you’d say ‘Harosho’ ‘Harosho’—and it would be six in the morning before we knew.... God help us all, I mustn’t talk about it. It all comes to this, in the end, as to whether a man can, by determination and resolve, of his own will, wipe out utterly the old life and become a new man. All those Russian years—Anna, Paul, Paul’s death, all the thought, the view, the vision of life, the philosophy that Russia gave me—those things have got to disappear.... They never existed. I’ve got again what, all those years, you all said that I wanted—the right to be once again an English citizen with everything, morals and all, cut and dried. I can say, like old Vladimir after his year in Canada, ‘I’d never seen so many clean people in my life.’ I’ve got what I wanted, and I mustn’t—I musn’t—look back.
“I believe I can carry it all through if I can get Katherine—get her and keep her and separate her from the family. She’s got to belong to me and not to the Trenchards. Moscow—The Trenchards! Oh, Paul, there’s a Comedy there—and a tragedy too perhaps. I’m an ass, but I’m frightened. I think I’m doing the finest things and, when they’re done, they turn out the rottenest. Supposing I become a Trenchard myself? Think of that night when Paul died. Afterwards we went up to the Kremlin, you remember. How quiet it was and how entirely I seemed to have died with Paul, and then how quickly life was the same again. But at any rate Moscow cared for me and told me that it cared—London cares nothing ... not even for the Trenchards....
“Think of me, Paul, as often as you can. Think of that afternoon in the restaurant when you first showed me how to drink Vodka and I told you in appalling German that Byron and Wilde weren’t as good as you thought them.... Think of me, old man. I believe I’m in for a terrible business. If Katherine loves me the family will fight me. If she doesn’t love me nothing else now seems to matter ... and, with it all, I’m as lonely as though I were a foreigner who didn’t know a word of English and hadn’t a friend.... I’ve got my Ikon up on the right corner—Near it is a print of ‘Queen Victoria receiving news of her accession to the throne of England’ ...”
Philip Mark sat, day after day, in his ugly sitting-room and thought of Katherine Trenchard. It was nearly a fortnight now since he had come to these rooms—he had not, during that time, seen Katherine; he had called once at the Trenchard’s house; he had spent then half an hour alone with Mrs. Trenchard and Aunt Aggie.
In these fourteen days she had grown from an attractive thought into a compelling, driving impulse. Because his rooms were unattractive and because he was sick for Moscow (although he would not admit that) therefore he had turned to the thought of her to comfort him; now he was a slave to the combination of it.... He must see her, he must speak to her, he must have something to remember.... He must not speak to her, he must not see her lest he should be foolish and ruin all his friendship with her by frightening her; and, meanwhile, in these long, long evenings the lamp from the street below trembled and trembled on his wall as though London, like some hostile policeman, were keeping its eye upon him, and warned him not to go too far.
The history of Philip Mark, its past, its present, and its future, is to be found clearly written in the character of his mother. His mother had been a woman of great force, resolve and determination. She had in complete subjection those who composed her world. She was kind as the skilful executioner is kind who severs a head with one neat blow; her good-humoured husband, her friendly, sentimental, idealistic son submitted, utterly, without question, to her kindness. She had died when Philip was twenty-one, and instantly Philip and his father had discovered, to their immense surprise, their immense relief. Philip’s father had married at once a young clergyman’s daughter of no character at all, and was compelled to divorce her four years later. Philip, to show his new and splendid independence, had discovered an opening in a cloth business in Moscow. He went there and so remained until, in his thirtieth year, the death of his father had presented him with fifteen hundred pounds a year.
Always, through all the Russian time, it had been his dream that he would one day be an English land-owner with a house and a wood, fields and children, white gates and a curving drive. He had come home now to realise this ambition.
The central motive of Philip’s existence was that he always desired, very seriously, sometimes desperately, to be all these things that the elements in his character would always prevent him from being. For instance, awaking, at his mother’s death, from her relentless domination, he resolved that he would never be influenced by anyone again; five minutes after this determination he was influenced by the doctor who had attended his mother, the lawyer who read her will, and the clergyman who buried her.
It had seemed to him, as he grew up in England, that the finest thing in the world was to be (when he was sixteen) like St. Francis of Assisi, (when he was nineteen) like Shelley, (when he was twenty-one) like Tolstoi, and the worst thing in the world was to be a commonplace English Squire. He went to Russia and, at once, concluded that there was nothing like the solid, sensible beef-eating English Squire for helping on the World, and that, as I have said, as soon as he was rich enough, he would settle down in England, with, his estate, his hunters and his weekly ‘Spectator’.
Meanwhile he was influenced more and more by Russia and the Russians. He did not really desire to be strong, sober, moral, industrious, strong-minded, but only kindly, affectionate, tolerant, with every one man for his friend.... He found in Russia that the only thing demanded of him was that he should love his brother. He made an immense number of friends, lived with a Russian girl, Anna Petrovna Semyonov, (she danced in the Moscow Imperial Ballet) for three years, and had, by her, a son who died. At the end of that time his father’s death gave him the opportunity of doing what he had always declared to every Russian was the ambition of his life—to settle in England as an English land-owner. Anna was fond of him now, but not at all in love with him—they were the best friends in the world. She believed, very seriously, that the greatest thing for him would be to find a nice English girl whom he could love, marry, and make the mother of his children.
Philip had, during these Russian years, grown stronger in character, and still was determined that the worst thing in the world was to be under anyone’s domination. He was however under the power of anyone who showed him affection; his outlook was now vehemently idealistic, romantic and sentimental, although, in the cloth business, he was hard-headed, cynical, and methodical. Did a human being care for him, and he would do anything for him; under the influence of anyone’s affection the world became so rosy to him that he lost all count of time, common-sense and digestion.
Anna was really fond of him, although often enough she was desperately bored with him. She had always mothered him, but thought now that an English girl would mother him better. She sent him home. He was very young for his thirty years, but then from the age of anyone who has lived in Russia for long, you may take away, always, twenty years.
He was resolved now to be the most English of all English—to be strong, hard-headed, a little cynical, unsentimental.... He had, of course, fallen in love with the first English girl whom he met. Meanwhile he did not entirely assist his cynical hardheadedness by writing long, introspective letters to his Russian friend. However, to support his resolute independence, he had always in front of him on his writing-table a photograph of his mother.
“It shall never be like that again”, he would say to himself, looking fixedly at the rather faded picture of a lady of iron-grey hair and a strong bosom clad in shining black silk. “Won’t it, my son?” said his mother, looking back at him with a steely twinkle somewhere in her eye. “Won’t it?”
Meanwhile there was no place in London where, at three in the morning, he might drink with his friends and discover that all the world loved him. He was very lonely in London, and wanted Katherine more desperately with every tick of the Ormolu clock on the marble mantelpiece; but he would not go to see her.... One glance at his mother’s photograph was enough to settle that.No, he would not....
Then he met her. Upon a lonely November afternoon he walked along the Embankment, past Lambeth Bridge, into the melancholy, deserted silences of Pimlico. He turned back, out of the little grey streets on to the river again, and stood, for a while, looking back over the broad still sheet of the river, almost white in colour but streaked with black lines of shadow that trembled and wavered as though they were rods about to whip the water into storm. The sky was grey, and all the buildings clustered against it were grey, but slowly, as though some unseen hand were tearing the sky like tissue paper, a faint red background was stealing into the picture and even a little faint gold that came from God knows where flitted, in and out, upon the face of the river.
Heavy black barges lay, like ancient prehistoric beasts, in the slime left now by the retreating tide. One little tug pushed desperately up stream as though it would force some energy into this dreaming, dying world—a revolutionary striving to stir the dim silences that watched, from either bank, into protest.
The air was sharply cold and there was a smell of smoke somewhere—also of tar and cabbage and mud.... The red light pushed and pushed its way upwards.
The silence emphasised, with rather a pleasing melancholy, Philip’s loneliness. It seemed, down here, as though London were a dead city and he, only, alive in it. Katherine, too, was alive somewhere.... He looked and, as in one’s dreams absurdity tumbles upon the heels of absurdity, he saw her walking alone, coming, as yet without any recognition in her eyes, towards him.
The world was dead and he was dead and Katherine—let it stay so then.... No, the world was alive. She had recognised him; she had smiled—the air was suddenly warm and pulsating with stir and sound. As she came up to him he could think of nothing but the strange difference that his fortnight’s absorption in her had made for him. His being with her now was as though he had arrived at some long-desired Mecca after a desperate journey of dust and strain and peril. As he greeted her he felt “A fortnight ago we had only just met, but now we have known each other for years and years and years—but perhaps she does not know that yet.”
But he knew, as she gave him her hand, that she felt a little awkwardness simply because she was so glad to see him—and she had never been awkward with him before.
“You’ve been hiding from us,” she said. Her cheeks were flaming because she had walked fast, because the air was frosty—because she was glad to see him. Her coat and muff were a little old-fashioned and not very becoming to her—all the more did he praise the beautiful kindliness of her eyes. “I’m in love with you,” he wanted to say to her. “Do you care that I am?” ... He turned at her side and they faced together the reddening sky. The whole city lay in absolute silence about them as though they were caught together into a ball of grey evening cloud.
“I haven’t hidden,” he said, smiling, “I came and called, but you were not there.”
“I heard,” she answered, “Aunt Aggie said you were very agreeable and amusing—I hope you’re happy in your rooms.”
“They’re all right.”
“We miss you. Father’s always beginning to tell you something and then finding that you’re gone. Henry—”
“Your Mother?”
“Ah, you were quite wrong about Mother. You thought that she disliked you. You care much too much, by the way, whether people like you or no. But Mother’s hard, perhaps, to get to know. You shocked and disturbed her a little, but she didn’t dislike you.”
Although he had asserted so definitely that Mrs. Trenchard hated him, he had reassured himself, in his own heart, that she rather liked him—now when he saw in spite of Katherine’s words that she really had disliked him, he felt a little shock of dismay.
“You may say what you like,” he said, “I know—”
“No, you don’t understand. Mother is so absorbed by all of us. There are a great many of us, you know—that it takes a long time for her to realise anyone from outside. You were so much from outside. She was just beginning to realise you when you went away. We are all so much to her. In a family as big as ours there are always so many things....”
“Of course,” he said, “I know. As to myself, it’s natural enough. At present I miss Moscow—but that will be all right soon.”
She came a little closer to him, and her eyes were so kindly that he looked down upon the ground lest his own eyes should betray him.
“Look here—come to us whenever you like. Why, all this time, have you kept away? Wasn’t it what you were always telling us about your friends in Moscow that their houses were open to everyone always? You must miss that. Don’t be lonely whatever you do. There are ever so many of us, and some of us are sure to be in.”
“I will,” he said, stammering, “I will.”
“Henry’s always asking questions about Russia now. You’ve had a great effect upon him, and he wants you to tell him ever so much more. Then there’s Millie. She hasn’t seen you at all yet. You’ll like her so much. There’s Vincent coming back from Eton. Don’t be lonely or homesick. I know how miserable it is.”
They were in the Square by the Church outside her house; above the grey solid building the sky had been torn into streaming clouds of red and gold.
He took her hand and held it, and suddenly as she felt his pressure the colour flooded her face; she strove to beat it down—she could not. She tried to draw her hand away—but her own body, as though it knew better than she, defied her. She tried to speak—no words would come.
She tried to tell him with her eyes that she was indifferent, but her glance at him showed such triumph in his gaze that she began to tremble.
Then he released her hand. She said nothing—only with quick steps hurried into the house. He stood there until she had disappeared, then he turned round towards his rooms.
He strode down Victoria Street in such a flame of exultation as can flare this World into splendour only once or twice in a lifetime. It was the hour when the lights come out, and it seemed to him that he himself flung fire here, there, for all the world to catch, now high into a lamp-post, now low beneath some basement window, now like a cracker upon some distant trees, now, high, high into the very evening blue itself. The pavement, the broad street, the high, mysterious buildings caught and passed the flame from one to another.
An ancient newspaper man, ragged in a faded tail coat, was shouting “Finals! Finals! All the Finals!” but to Philip’s ear he was saying—“She cares for you! she cares for you! Praise God! What a world it is.”
He stumbled up the dark stairs of his house past the door from whose crevices there stole always the scent of patchouli, past the door, higher up, whence came, creeping up his stairs the suggestion of beef and cabbage, into his own dark lodging. His sitting-room had its windows still open and its blinds still up. The lamp in the street below flung its squares of white light upon his walls; papers on his table were blowing in the evening breeze, and the noise of the town climbed up, looked in through the open windows, fell away again, climbed up again in an eternal indifferent urgency. He was aware that a man stood by the window, a wavering shadow was spread against the lighted wall.
Philip stopped in the doorway.
“Hullo!” he said, “who’s there?”
A figure came forward. Philip, to whom all the world was, to-night, a fantasy, stared, for a moment, at the large bearded form without recognising it—wild and unreal as it seemed in the dim room. The man chuckled.
“Well, young man. I’ve come to call, I got here two minutes before you.”
It was Uncle Tim, Mrs. Trenchard’s brother, Timothy Faunder, Esq.
“I beg your pardon,” said Philip, “the room was dark and—and—as a matter of fact I was thinking of something rather hard as I came in. Wait a minute. You shall have some light, tea and a cigarette in a moment.”
“No, thanks.” Uncle Tim went back to the window again. “No tea—no cigarette. I hate the first. The second’s poisonous. I’ve got a pipe here—and don’t light up—the room’s rather pleasant like this. I expect it’s hideous when one can see it.”
Philip was astonished. He had liked Tim Faunder, but had decided that Tim Faunder was indifferent tohim—quite indifferent. For what had he come here? Sent by the family?... Yes, he liked Uncle Tim, but he did not want him or anyone else in the world there just then. He desired to sit by the open window, alone, to think about Katherine, to worship Katherine!
They both sat down; Faunder on the window-seat, Philip near by. The noise of the town was distant enough to make a pleasant rumbling accompaniment to their voices. The little dark public-house opposite with its beery eye, a dim hanging lamp in the doorway, watched them.
“Well, how are you?” said Faunder, “lonely?”
“It was at first,” said Philip, who found it immensely difficult to tie his thoughts to his visitor. “And I hadn’t been lonely for so long—not since my first days in Moscow.”
“Theywere lonely then?”
“Oh, horribly. My first two months there were the worst hours in all my life. I wanted to learn Russian, so I kept away from English people—and Russian’s difficult to pick up at first.”
Faunder made one of the rumbling noises in his throat that always testified to his interest.
“I like what you said—over there, at my sister’s,” he waved his hand, “about Russia—and about everything. I listened, although perhaps you didn’t think it. I hope you’re going to stick to it, young man.”
“Stick to what?”
“Your ideas about things—everything being for the best. There’s a great time coming—and the Trenchards are damned fools.”
“But I never—”
“Oh, yes, you did. You implied it. Nobody minded, of course, because the Trenchards know so well that they’re not.Theydon’t bother what people think, bless them. Besides, you don’t understand them in the least—nor won’t ever, I expect.”
“But,” said Philip, “I really never thought for a moment.”
“Don’t be so afraid of hurting people’s feelings. I liked your confidence. I liked your optimism. I just came this afternoon to see whether a fortnight alone had damped it a little.”
Philip hesitated. It would be very pleasant to say that no amount of personal trouble could alter his point of view; it would be very pleasant to say that the drearier his personal life was the surer he was of his Creed. He hesitated—then spoke the truth.
“As a matter of fact, I’m afraid itwasdimmed for a bit. Russia seemed so far away and so did England, and I was hanging in mid-air, between. But now—everything’s all right again.”
“Why now?... Because I’ve paid you a call?”
Uncle Timothy laughed.
Philip looked down at the little public-house. “I’m very glad you have. But this afternoon—it’s been the kind of day I’ve expected London to give me, it seemed to settle me suddenly with a jerk, as though it were pushing me into my place and saying, ‘There! now I’ve found a seat for you’.”
He was talking, he knew, at random, but he was very conscious of Uncle Timothy, the more conscious, perhaps, because he could not see his face.
Then he bent forward in his chair. “It was very jolly of you,” he said, “to come and see me—but tell me, frankly, why you did. We scarcely spoke to one another whilst I was at your sister’s house.”
“I listened to you, though. Years ago I must have been rather like you. How old are you?”
“Thirty.”
“Well, when I was thirty I was an idealist. I was impatient of my family although I loved them. I thought the world was going to do great things in a year or two. I believed most devoutly in the Millennium. I grew older—I was hurt badly. I believed no longer, or thought I didn’t. I determined that the only thing in life was to hold oneself absolutely aloof. I have done that ever since.... I had forgotten all these years that I had ever been like you. And then when I heard once again the same things, the same beliefs ...” He broke off, lit his pipe, puffed furiously at it and watched the white clouds sail into the night air.
“Whatever I have felt,” said Philip, slowly, “however I have changed, to-night I know that I am right. To-night I know that all I believed in my most confident hour is true.”
The older man bent forward and put his hand on Philip’s arm.
“Stick to that. Remember at least that you said it to me. If before I died.... There have been times.... After the Boer War here in England it seemed that things were moving. There was new life, new blood, new curiosity. But then I don’t know—it takes so long to wake people up.Youwoke me up a little with your talk. You woke them all up—a little. And if people like my sister and my brother-in-law—whom I love, mind you—wake up, why then it will be painful for them but glorious for everyone else.”
Philip was more alarmed than ever. He had not, at all, wished to wake the Trenchards up—he had only wanted them to like him. He was a little irritated and a little bored with Uncle Timothy. If only Mr. and Mrs. Trenchard allowed him to love Katherine, he did not care if they never woke up in all their lives. He felt too that he did not really fill the picture of the young ardent enthusiast. He was bound, he knew, to disappoint Uncle Timothy. He would have liked to have taken him by the hand and said to him: “Now if only you will help me to marry Katherine I will be as optimistic as you like for ever and ever.”
But Uncle Tim was cleverer than Philip supposed. “You’re thinking—how tiresome! Here’s this old man forcing me into a stained-glass window. Don’t think that. I know you’re an ordinary nice young fellow just like anyone else. It’s your age that’s pleasant. I’ve lived very much alone all these years at a little house I’ve got down in Glebeshire. You must come and see it. You’re sure to stay with my sister there; she’s only five minutes away. But I’ve been so much alone there that I’ve got into the habit of talking to myself.”
Philip at once loved Uncle Tim.
“I’m delighted that you came. If you’ll let me be a friend of yours I shall be most awfully proud. It was only that I didn’t want you to expect too much of me. One gets into the way in Russia of saying that things are going to be splendid because they’re so bad—and really there they dowantthings to be better. And often I do think that there’s going to be, one day, a new world. And many people now think about it and hope for it—perhaps they always did.”
Uncle Timothy got up. “That’s all right, my son. We’ll be friends. Come and see me. London’s a bit of a forest—one can’t make out always quite what’s going on. You’ll get to know all of us and like us, I hope. Come and see me. Yes?”
“Of course I will.”
“I’ve got a dirty little room in Westminster, 14 Barton Street. I go down to Glebeshire for Christmas, thank God. Good-night.”
He clumped away down the stairs. He had stayed a very short time, and Philip felt vaguely that, in some way or another, Uncle Tim had been disappointed in him. For what had he come? What had he wanted? Had the family sent him? Was the family watching him?
That sense that Philip had had during the early days in London suddenly returned. He felt, in the dark room, in the dark street, that the Trenchards were watching him. From the old man down to Henry they were watching him, waiting to see what he would do.
Did Uncle Tim think that he loved Katherine? Had he come to discover that?
Although it was early, the room was very cold and very dark. Philip knew that for an instant he was so afraid that he dared not look behind him.
“London’s a forest....”
And Katherine! At the thought of her he rose, defied all the Trenchards in the world, lit his lamp and pulled down the blinds. The smell of Uncle Tim’s tobacco was very strong in the room.