“Who is that?” she said.
“It’s I, Mother,” said Katherine, remaining by the door.
“Ah, it’s you, dear,” her mother answered. “Just give me that doll on the table. It’s for Miss Sawyer’s Bazaar in the Hampstead Rooms. I said I’d dress three dolls, and I only remembered this morning that they’ve got to go off to-morrow. I thought I’d snatch this quiet time before tea. Yes, it’s for Miss Sawyer, poor thing. I’m sure I shall run out of red silk, and I don’t suppose there’s any in the house. Did you want anything, Katherine?”
Katherine came forward, picked up the doll from the table and gave it to her mother. Then she went to one of the broad high windows and stood looking out. She could see the river, over whose face the evening, studded with golden lamps, was dropping its veil. She could see, very dimly, Westminster Bridge, with dots and little splashes of black passing and repassing with the mechanical indifference of some moving toy. The sight of her mother’s room had suddenly told her that her task would be a supremely difficult one; she did not know why she had not realised that before. Her personal happiness was overwhelmed by her consciousness of her mother; nothing at this moment seemed to be of importance save their relations, the one to the other. “I’m going to hurt her,” she thought, as she turned round from the window. All her life it had been her urgent passion to save her mother from pain.
“Mother dear,” she said, “I’ve got something very important to tell you. Mr. Mark has asked me to marry him, and I’ve accepted him. Father says we’re to wait for a year.”
She moved forward and then stopped. Mrs. Trenchard looked at her, suddenly, as a house of cards crumples up at a single touch, her face puckered as though she were going to cry. For an instant it was like the face of a baby. It was so swift that in a flash it was gone, and only in the eyes there was still the effect of it. Her hands trembled so that she forced them down upon her lap. Then her face, except for her eyes, which were terrified, wore again exactly her look of placid, rather stupid composure. The force that she had driven into her hands had done its work, for now she could raise them again; in one hand she held the doll and in another the little red jacket.
“My dear Katherine!” she said. Then—“Just give me that reel of silk, dear, on the table.” Then—“But it’s absurd—you don’t—” she seemed to struggle with her words as though she were beating back some other personality that threatened to rise and overwhelm her. “You don’t—” She found her words. “You don’t know him.”
Katherine broke in eagerly. “I loved him at the very beginning I think. I felt I knew him at once. I don’t know; it’s so hard to see how it began, but I can’t help it, Mother. I’ve known it myself for weeks now; Mother—” She knelt down beside the sofa and looked up, and then, at something in her mother’s eyes, looked down again. “Please—please—I know it seems strange to you now, but soon you’ll get to know him—then you’ll be glad—” She broke off, and there followed a long silence.
Mrs. Trenchard put down the doll very carefully, and then, with her hands folded on her lap, lay back on her sofa. She watched the dark evening as it gathered in beyond the windows; she heard her maid’s knock on the door, watched her draw the curtains and switch on the light.
It was only four o’clock, but it was very cold.
“I think I’ll have my shawl, dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard. “The Indian one that your Uncle Timothy gave me—it’s in the third drawer—there—to the right.... Thank you. I must go down. Grandfather’s coming down to tea this afternoon.”
Katherine drew closer to the sofa, after she had brought the shawl; she laid her hand upon her mother’s, which were very cold.
“But, Mother, you’ve said nothing! I know that now it must seem as though I’d done it without asking you, without telling you, but I didn’t know myself until yesterday afternoon. It came so suddenly.”
“Yesterday afternoon?” Mrs. Trenchard drew her shawl closely about her. “But how could he—Mr. Mark—yesterday afternoon? You weren’t alone with him—Aggie was there. Surely she—”
“No. He wrote on a piece of paper and slipped it across to me, and I said ‘yes.’ We both felt we couldn’t wait.”
“I don’t like him,” Mrs. Trenchard said slowly. “You knew that I didn’t like him.”
The colour rose in Katherine’s cheeks.
“No,” she said, “I knew that you thought some of his ideas odd. But you didn’t know him.”
“I don’t like him,” said Mrs. Trenchard again. “I could never like him. He isn’t a religious man. He has a bad effect upon Henry. You, Katherine, to accept him when you know that he doesn’t go to church and was so rude to poor Mr. Seymour and thinks Russia such a fine country! I can’t think,” said Mrs. Trenchard, her hands trembling again, “what’s come over you.”
Katherine got up from her knees. “You won’t think that when you know him better. It’s only that he’s seen more of the world than we have. He’ll change and we’ll change, and perhaps it will be better for all of us. Down in Glebeshire we always have done so much the same things and seen the same people, and even here in London—”
Her mother gave a little cry, not sharp for anyone else in the world, but very sharp indeed for Mrs. Trenchard.
“You! Katherine—you! If it had been Millie!”
They looked at one another then in silence. They were both of them conscious of an intensity of love that they had borne towards one another through the space of a great many years—a love that nothing else had ever approached. But it was an emotion that had always been expressed in the quietest terms. Both to Katherine and her mother demonstrations were unknown. Katherine felt now, at what promised to be, perhaps, the sharpest crisis that her life had yet experienced, an urgent desire to break through, to fling her arms round her mother, to beat down all barriers, to assure her that whatever emotion might come to her, nothing could touch their own perfect relationship. But the habits of years muffled everything in thick, thick wrappings—it was impossible to break through.
“Your father is pleased?” said Mrs. Trenchard.
“Yes,” answered Katherine. “He likes Philip. But we must wait a year.”
“Your father has never told me anything. Never.” She got up slowly from the sofa.
“He couldn’t have told you,” Katherine said eagerly. “He has only just known. I came straight to you from him.”
Mrs. Trenchard now stood, looking rather lost, in the middle of her room; the shawl had slipped half from her shoulders, and she seemed, suddenly, an old woman.
The vision of something helpless in her, as she stood there, stirred Katherine passionately.
She took her mother into her arms, stroking her hair, kissing her cheeks and whispering to her: “Darling—darling—it doesn’t make any difference to us—it can’t—it can’t. Nothing can. Nothing.... Nothing!”
Mrs. Trenchard kissed her daughter very quietly, remained in her embrace for a little, then drew herself away and went to her mirror. She tidied her hair, patted her dress, put some eau-de-Cologne on her handkerchief, laid the shawl carefully away in the drawer.
“I must go down now. Father will want his tea. I’ll take the doll—I shan’t have another chance of finishing it.” She walked to the door, then, turning, said with an intensity that was amazing in its sudden vehemence and fire: “No one shall take you from me, Katherine. No one. Let him do what he likes. No one shall take you.”
She did not appear an old woman, then, as she faced her daughter.
Meanwhile, in the drawing-room, the family had already gathered together as though it were aware that something had occurred. Mr. Trenchard, Senior, surrounded by his rugs, his especial table, his silver snuff-box (he never took snuff in the drawing-room, but liked his box to be there), a case of spectacles, and the last number of ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’. Great Aunt Sarah, Aunt Aggie, Aunt Betty, and Millie. Millie, watching them, was, to her own immense surprise, sorry for them.
Millie, watching them, wondered at herself. What had happened to her? She had returned from Paris, eager to find herself as securely inside the family as she had always been—longing after the wide, vague horizons of the outside world to feel that security. She had laughed at them a little, perhaps, but she had always understood and approved of their motives.
Now she found herself at every turn criticising, wondering, defending against her own intelligence, as though she had been the merest stranger. She loved them—all of them—but—how strange they were! And how terrible of her that she should find them strange! They were utterly unaware of any alteration in her; she seemed to herself to be a spy in their midst....
Happily, however, they were all, this afternoon, most comfortably unaware of any criticism from anyone in the world. They sat about the room, waiting for their tea and saying very little. They knew one another so well that conversation was a mere emphasis of platitudes. Aunt Aggie talked, but nobody listened, unless one of the above-mentioned assurances were demanded.
Her dry, sharp little voice, like the fire and the ticking of the clock, made an agreeable background.
Upon this innocent gathering, so happy and tranquil, Henry burst with his news. He came with all the excited vehemence sprung from his own vision of the lovers. He could see only that; he did not realise that the others had not shared his experience. It was almost as though he had tumbled into the middle of them, so abrupt, so agitated, so incoherent was he!
“They’re engaged!” he burst out.
“My dear Henry!” said Millie. “What’s the matter?”
“I tell you! Katherine and Mark. They’ve been into father, and he says they’re to wait a year, but it’s all right. He says that he didn’t know till they told him. Katherine’s with Mother now,—Mark’s coming in to-night; Katherine!”
He broke off, words failed him, and he was suddenly conscious of his Uncle’s eye.
“What?” said Aunt Aggie.
“They’re engaged,” repeated Henry.
“Whom?” cried Aunt Aggie, ungrammatically, with a shrill horror that showed that she had already heard.
“Katie and Philip,” Henry almost screamed in reply.
What Aunt Aggie, whose eyes were staring as though she saw ghosts or a man under her bed, would have said to this no one could say, but Aunt Sarah drove, like a four-wheeled coach, right across her protruding body.
Aunt Sarah said: “What are you all talking about? What’s the matter with Henry? Is he ill? I can’t hear.”
Millie went up to her. “Katherine’s engaged, Aunt Sarah, to Mr. Mark.”
“What do you say about Katherine?”
“She’s engaged.”
“She’s what?”
“Engaged!”
“Who to?”
“Mr. Mark.”
“Eh? What?”
“Mark!”
At the shouting of that name it did indeed seem that the very walls and ceiling of that old room would collapse. To Aunt Aggie, to Millie, to Henry, to Aunt Betty, this raid upon Katherine struck more deeply than any cynical student of human nature could have credited. For the moment Philip Mark was forgotten—only was it apparent to them all from Grandfather Trenchard and Great Aunt Sarah to Henry that Katherine, their own absolute property, the assurance given to them that life would be always secure, solid, unalterable, had declared publicly, before the world, that she preferred a stranger, a complete, blown-from-anywhere stranger, to the family. What would happen to them all, to their comforts, their secret preferences and habits (known as they all, individually, believed, only to Katherine), to their pride, to their self-esteem? They loved one another, yes, they loved the Trenchard family, the Trenchard position, but through all these things, as a skewer through beef, ran their reliance upon Katherine. It was as though someone had cried to them: “The whole of Glebeshire is blown away—fields and houses, roads and rivers. You must go and live in Yorkshire. Glebeshire cares for you no longer!”
“They’re to wait a year, Father says!” shouted Millie.
Aunt Sarah shook her white-plumed head and snorted:
“Katherine! Engaged! To a Stranger! Impossible!”
Aunt Aggie was conscious, at the moment, of nothing except that she herself had been defeated. They had tricked her, those two. They had eluded her vigilance.... They were now, in all probability, laughing at her.
“The last thing I want to do,” she said, “is to blame anybody, but if I’d been listened to at the beginning, Mr. Mark would never have been asked to stay.... It was thoughtless of George. Now we can all see—”
But Millie, standing before them all, her face flushed, said:
“The chief thing is to consider Katherine’s happiness. Mr. Mark is probably delightful. She was sure to marry somebody. How can people help falling in love with Katherine? We all love her. She loves us. I don’t see what Mr. Mark can do to prevent that—and he won’t want to. He must be nice if Katherine loves him!”
But the final word was spoken by Grandfather Trenchard, who had been hitherto utterly silent. In his clear, silvery voice he said:
“A great deal can happen in a year!”
At that moment Katherine and her mother came in.
Katherine Trenchard, although she had, for a number of years now, gone about the world with open eyes and an understanding heart, was, in very many ways, absurdly old-fashioned. I say “absurd” because many people, from amongst her own Trenchard relations, thought her prejudices, simplicities, and confidences absurd, and hoped that she would grow out of them. The two people who really knew her, her Uncle Timothy and Rachel Seddon, hoped that she never would. Her “old-fashioned” habits of mind led her to believe in “people” in “things” and in “causes”, and it was her misfortune that up to this year of which I am speaking she had never been disappointed. That may be because she had grown up amongst the rocks, the fields, the lanes of Glebeshire, true ground where sincerity and truth flourish yet in abundance—moreover it is assured that man lives up to the qualities with which he is by his friends credited, and all the Trenchard family lived up to Katherine’s belief in their word of honour.
She was not so simple a character that she found the world perfect, but she was in no way subtle, and, because she herself acted in her faults and virtues, her impetuosities and repentances, her dislikes and affections with clear-hearted simplicity, she believed that other persons did the same. Her love for her mother was of this quite unquestioning sort; her religion too was perfectly direct and unquestioning: so, then, her love for Philip....
She had never before been in love, nor had she ever considered men very closely as anything but visitors or relations. The force and power of the passion that now held her was utterly removed from anything that had ever encountered her before, but she was a strong character, and her simplicity of outlook helped her. Philip seemed to her to be possessed of all the qualities of the perfect hero. His cleverness, his knowledge of the world, his humour were only balanced by his kindness to everyone and everything, his unselfishness, his honesty of speech and eye. She had thought him, once, a little weak in his anxiety to be liked by all the world, but now that was forgotten. He was, during these days, a perfect character.
She had not, however, lost her clear-sighted sense of humour; that humour was almost cynical sometimes in its sharp perception of people and things, and did not seem to belong to the rest of Katherine at all. It was driven more often upon herself than upon anyone else, but it was, for a character of Katherine’s simplicity, strangely sharp. A fair field for the employment of it was offered to her just now in the various attitudes and dispositions of her own immediate family, but, as yet, she was unable to see the family at all, so blinding was Philip’s radiance.
That year England enjoyed one of the old romantic Christmases. There were sparkling dazzling frosts. The snow lay hard and shining under skies of unchanging blue, and on Christmas Eve, when the traffic and smoke of the town had stolen the purity away, more snow fell and restored it again.
It had always been the rule that the Trenchards should spend Christmas in Glebeshire, but, this year, typhoid fever had visited Garth only a month or two before, and London was held to be safer. Katherine had not had, in her life, so many entertainments that she could afford to be blasé about them, and she still thought a Pantomime splendid, “The Only Way” certainly the most magnificent play in the world, and a dance a thing of perfect rapture, if only she could be more secure about the right shapes and colours of her clothes. She had no vanity whatever—indeed a little more would have helped her judgment: she never knew whether a dress would suit her, nor why it was that one thing “looked right” and another thing “looked wrong”. Millie could have helped her, because Millie knew all about clothes, but it was always a case with Katherine of something else coming first, of having to dress at the last minute, of “putting on any old thing because there was no time.”
Now, however, there was Philip to dress for, and she did really try. She went to Millie’s dressmaker with Millie as her guide, but unfortunately Mrs. Trenchard, who had as little idea about dress as Katherine, insisted on coming too, and confused everyone by her introduction of personal motives and religious dogmas into something that should have been simply a matter of ribbons and bows. Katherine, indeed, was too happy to care. Philip loved her in any old thing, the truth being that when he went about with her, he saw very little except his own happiness....
It is certainly a fact that during these weeks neither of them saw the family at all.
Rachel Seddon was the first person of the outside world to whom Katherine told the news.
“So that was the matter with you that day when you came to see me!” she cried.
“What day?” said Katherine.
“You’d been frightened in the Park, thought someone was going to drop a bag over your head, and ran in here for safety.”
“I shall always run in here for safety,” said Katherine gravely. Rachel came, in Katherine’s heart, in the place next to Mrs. Trenchard and Philip. Katherine had always told Rachel everything until that day of which Rachel had just spoken. There had been reticence then, there would be reticences always now.
“You will bring him very quickly to see me?” said Rachel.
“I will bring him at once,” answered Katherine.
Rachel had liked Philip when she met him at the Trenchards; now, when he came to call, she found that she did not get on with him. He seemed to be suspicious of her: he was awkward and restrained. His very youthful desire to make the person he was with like him, seemed now to give way to an almost truculent surliness. “I don’t care whether you like me or not,” he seemed to say. “Katherine’s mine and not yours any longer.”
Neither Philip nor Rachel told Katherine that they did not like one another. Roddy Seddon, Rachel’s husband, on the other hand, liked Philip very much. Lying for many years on his back had given him a preference for visitors who talked readily and gaily, who could tell him about foreign countries, who did not too obviously pity him for being “out of the running, poor beggar.”
“You don’t like the feller?” Roddy said to his wife.
“He doesn’t like me,” said Rachel.
“Rot,” said Roddy. “You’re both jealous. You both want Katherine.”
“I shan’t be jealous,” answered Rachel, “if he’s good enough for her—if he makes her happy.”
“He seems to me a very decent sort of feller,” said Roddy.
Meanwhile Rachel adored Katherine’s happiness. She had chafed for many years now at what she considered was the Trenchards’ ruthless sacrifice of Katherine to their own selfish needs.
“They’re never going to let her have any life of her own,” she said. Now Katherine had a life of her own, and if only that might continue Rachel would ask no more. Rachel had had her own agonies and disciplines in the past, and they had left their mark upon her. She loved her husband and her child, and her life was sufficiently filled with their demands upon her, but she was apprehensive of happiness—she saw the Gods taking away with one hand whilst they gave with the other.
“I knew more about the world at ten,” she thought, “than Katherine will ever know. If she’s hurt, it will be far worse for her than it ever was for me.”
Although she delighted in Katherine’s happiness, she trembled at the utter absorption of it. “We aren’t meant to trust anything so much,” she thought, “as Katherine trusts his love for her.”
Katherine, perhaps because she trusted so absolutely, did not at present ask Philip any questions. They talked very little. They walked, they rode on the tops of omnibuses, they went to the Zoo and Madame Tussaud’s and the Tower, they had tea at the Carlton Restaurant and lunch in Soho, they went to the Winter Exhibition at Burlington House, and heard a famous novelist give a portentous lecture on the novel at the “Times” Book Club. They were taken to a solemn evening at the Poets’ Club, where ladies in evening dress read their own poetry, they went to a performance given by the Stage Society, and a tea-party given by four lady novelists at the Lyceum Club: old Lady Carloes, who liked Katherine, chaperoned her to certain smart dances, whither Philip also was invited, and, upon two glorious occasions, they shared a box with her at a winter season of German Opera at Covent Garden. They saw the Drury Lane pantomime and Mr. Martin Harvey and one of Mr. Hall Caine’s melodramas and a very interesting play by Sir Arthur (then Mr.) Pinero. They saw the King driving out in his carriage and the Queen driving out in hers.
It was a wild and delirious time. Katherine had always had too many duties at home to consider London very thoroughly, and Philip had been away for so long that everything in London was exciting to him. They spoke very little; they went, with their eyes wide open, their hearts beating very loudly, side by side, up and down the town, and the town smiled upon them because they were so young, so happy, and so absurdly confident.
Katherine was confident because she could see no reason for being otherwise. She knew that it sometimes happened that married people did not get on well together, but it was ridiculous to suppose that that could be the case with herself and Philip. She knew that, just at present, some members of her family did not care very greatly for Philip, but that was because they did not know him. She knew that a year seemed a long time to wait, but it was a very short period compared with a whole married lifetime. How anyone so clever, so fine of soul, so wise in his knowledge of men and things could come to love anyone so ordinary as herself she did not know—but that had been in God’s hands, and she left it there.
There was a thing that began now to happen to Katherine of which she herself was only very dimly perceptive. She began to be aware of the living, actual participation in her life of the outside, abstract world. It was simply this—that, because so wonderful an event had transformed her own history, so also to everyone whom she saw, she felt that something wonderful must have happened. It came to more than this; she began now to be aware of London as something alive and perceptive in the very heart of its bricks and mortar, something that knew exactly her history and was watching to see what would come of it. She had always been concerned in the fortunes of those immediately about her—in the villages of Garth, in all her Trenchard relations—but they had filled her world. Now she could not go out of the Westminster house without wondering—about the two old maids in black bonnets who walked up and down Barton Street, about a tall gentleman with mutton-chop whiskers and a white bow, whom she often saw in Dean’s Yard, about a large woman with a tiny dog and painted eyebrows, about the young man with the bread, the young man with the milk, the very trim young man with the post, the very fat young man with the butcher’s cart, the two smart nursemaids with the babies of the idle rich, who were always together and deep in whispered conversation; the policeman at the right corner of the Square, who was friendly and human, and the policeman at the left corner who was not; the two young men in perfect attire and attaché cases who always lounged down Barton Street about six o’clock in the evening with scorn for all the world at the corners of their mouths, the old man with a brown muffler who sold boot laces at the corner of Barton Street, and the family with the barrel-organ who came on Friday mornings (man once been a soldier, woman pink shawl, baby in a basket), a thick-set, grave gentleman who must be somebody’s butler, because his white shirt was so stiff and his cheeks blue-black from shaving so often, a young man always in a hurry and so untidy that, until he came close to her, Katherine thought he must be Henry ... all those figures she had known for years and years, but they had been only figures, they had helped to make the pattern in the carpet, shapes and splashes of colour against the grey.
Now they were suddenly alive! They had, they must have, histories, secrets, triumphs, defeats of a most thrilling order! She would like to have told them of her own amazing, stupendous circumstances, and then to have invited their confidences. The world that had held before some fifty or sixty lives pulsated now with millions. But there was more than that before her. Whereas she had always, because she loved it, given to Garth and the country around it a conscious, individual existence, London had been to her simply four walls with a fire and a window. From the fire there came heat, from the window a view, but the heat and the view were made by man for man’s convenience. Had man not been, London was not.... Garth had breathed and stormed, threatened and loved before Man’s spirit had been created.
Now, although as yet she did not recognise it, she began to be aware of London’s presence—as though from some hidden corner, from long ago some stranger had watched her; now, because the room was lit, he was revealed to her. She was not, as yet, at all frightened by her knowledge, but even in quiet Westminster there were doorways, street corners, trees, windows, chimneys, houses, set and square and silent, that perceived her coming and going—“Tum—te tum—Tat—Tat—Tat ... Tat—Tat—Tat—Tum—te—tum....
“We know all about it, Katherine Trenchard—We know what’s going to happen to you, but we can’t tell you—We’re older and wiser, much older and much, much wiser than you are—Tat—Tat—Tat....”
She was so happy that London could not at present disturb her, but when the sun was suddenly caught behind black clouds, when a whirr of rain came slashing down from nowhere at all, when a fog caught with its yellow hand London’s throat and squeezed it, when gusts of dust rose from the streets in little clouds as though the horses were kicking their feet, when a wind, colder than snow came, blowing from nowhere, on a warm day, Katherine needed Philip, clung to him, begged him not to leave her ... she had never, in all her life, clung to anyone before.
But this remains that, during these weeks, she found him perfect. She liked nothing better than his half-serious, half-humorous sallies at himself. “You’ve got to buck me up, Katherine—keep me from flopping about, you know. Until I met you no one had any real influence on me—never in all my days. Now you can do anything with me. Tell me when I do anything hateful, and scold me as often as you can. Look at me with the eyes of Aunt Aggie if you can—she sees me without any false colouring. I’m not a hero—far from it—but I can be anything if you love me enough.”
“Love him enough!” Had anyone ever loved anyone before as she loved him? She was not, to any ordinary observer, very greatly changed. Quietly and with all the matter-of-fact half-serious, half-humorous common-sense she went about her ordinary daily affairs. Young Seymour came to tea, and she laughed at him, gave him teacake, and asked him about the latest novel just as she had always done. Mr. Seymour had come expecting to see love’s candle lit for the benefit of his own especial genius. He was greatly disappointed, but also, because he hated Mark, gratified. “I don’t believe she loves him a bit,” he said afterwards. “He came in while I was there, and she didn’t colour up or anything. Didn’t show anything, and I’m pretty observant. She doesn’t love him, and I’m jolly glad—I can’t stand the man.”
But those who were near her knew. They felt the heat, they watched the colour, of the pure, unfaltering flame. Old Trenchard, the Aunts, Millie, Henry, her mother, even George Trenchard felt it. “I always knew,” said Millie, “that when love came to Katherine it would be terrible”. She wrote that in a diary that she kept.
Mrs. Trenchard said nothing at all. During those weeks Katherine was, for the first time in her life, unaware of her mother.
The afternoon of the Christmas Eve of that year was never afterwards forgotten by Katherine. She had been buying last desperate additions to Christmas presents, had fought in the shops and been victorious; then, seeing through the early dusk the lights of the Abbey, she slipped in at the great door, found a seat near the back of the nave, and remembered that always, at this hour, on Christmas Eve, a Carol Service was held. The service had not yet begun, and a hush, with strange rhythms and pulsations in it, as though some phantom conductor were leading a phantom orchestra, filled the huge space. A flood of people, dim and very silent, spread from wall to wall. Far away, candles fluttered, trembled and flung strange lights into the web of shadow that seemed to swing and stir as though driven by some wind. Katherine sank into a happy, dreamy bewilderment. The heat of the building after the cold, frosty air, some old scent of candles and tombstones and ancient walls, the consciousness of utter, perfect happiness carried her into a state that was half dream, half reality. She closed her eyes, and soon the voices from very far away rose and fell with that same phantom, remotely inhuman urgency.
A boy’s voice that struck, like a dart shot by some heavenly archer, at her heart, awoke her. This was “Good King Wenceslaus”. A delicious pleasure filled her: her eyes flooded with tears and her heart beat triumphantly. “Oh! how happy I am! And I realise it—I know that I can never be happier again than I am now!”
The carol ceased. After a time, too happy for speech, she went out.
In Dean’s Yard the snow, with blue evening shadows upon it, caught light from the sheets of stars that tossed and twinkled, stirred and were suddenly immovable. The Christmas bells were ringing: all the lights of the houses in the Yard gathered about her and protected her. What stars there were! What beauty! What silence!
She stood, for a moment, taking it in, then, with a little shiver of delight, turned homewards.
Millie, like many of the Trenchard ladies before her, kept a diary. She had kept it now for three years, and it had not during that time, like the diaries of other young ladies, died many deaths and suffered many resurrections, but had continued with the utmost regularity and discipline. This regularity finds its explanation in the fact that Millie really was interested in other people as well as in herself, was sometimes surprised at her cleverness and in turn suspicious of it—in fact, she knew as much about the world as most girls of eighteen who have been “finished” in Paris: she thought that she knew more than she did, and was perfectly determined to know a great deal more than she thought she knew.
These were some entries:
Dec. 6th. Tried on the new white silk, but it won’t do even now—too tight and makes me skimpy—Refused to let mother come with me this time. Took Aunt Betty instead, and we saw a peach of a hat at Reneé’s which I’d give my eyes for, only of course I haven’t got the money now with Christmas coming and everything. Aunt Betty said it was much better wanting things you can’t have, because then you go on being excited, but that’s of course absurd and just like Aunt Betty.
Bought Aunt Aggie a calendar-blotter thing for Christmas which she won’t like (blue leather with silver corners) but I can’t help it. I’m sick of thinking what to get her, and she won’t be contented whatever it is. Meanwhile, in the afternoon: the sensation of a lifetime—All sitting in the drawing-room, waiting for tea. When in bursts Henry with the wild news that Katie’s engaged herself to Philip Mark. We all turned blue—I’d like to have been someone outside and seen us. No one had really suspected it. I hadn’t myself—although one might have, I suppose, if one had watched more closely. It’s very exciting, and if Katie’s happy I don’t care about anything else. At least I do. It was so lovely coming back from Paris and having her all to oneself. We understand one another so much better than any of the others do. I’m the only one in the family who really knows her. I never thought of her as being married, which was silly, I suppose. It’s funny to think of her liking a man, whom she’s only just seen, better than all of us. It wouldn’t be funny with most people, but Katherine’s so quiet and so steady. It all depends on what he’s like. Finished ‘La Faute de l’abbé Mouret’. Loved it. Downstairs I’m reading ‘Sesame and Lilies’—well-written but awfully silly.
Dec. 9th. Dreary day buying presents with mother at the Stores. Why she will go there I can’t think, and she takes it like a week on the Riviera or a box at the opera. She says nothing about Philip—not a word. He dined last night, and was most tactful. I never saw anyone so determined to make us all devoted to him, but he’s got a difficult business with Aunt Aggie and mother. I like him, and have a kind of idea that I understand him better than any of the others do. He’s certainly not the God that Katherine thinks him—and he knows he isn’t. He’s a little uncomfortable about it, I think. He’s certainly very much in love with her. Letter from Louise Pougé—She’s engaged—to no one very particular. She’s younger than I am—and prettier—lots.
Spoke to Henry about clean handkerchiefs. He’s really incredible at his age. Philip seems to influence him though. That may do something.
Dec. 13th. Dismal day. Out of sorts and cross. Dreadfully restless. I don’t know why. It’s all wrong this Christmas, not being down at Garth and Katherine so occupied. On days like these I have terrible scruples about myself. I suppose I am terribly conceited really—and yet I don’t know. There are plenty of people I admire ever so much more than myself. I suppose it’s seeing Katherine so happy that makes me restless. It must be nice to have anyone as devoted as that to you.... I’ve always been very cynical about being in love, but when one watches it, quite close, with anyone as good as Katherine ... anyway it’s been a beastly day, and Aunt Aggie went on like an old crow at dinner. I wish I knew what mother was feeling about it all—she’s so quiet.
Dec. 17th. Had a long talk with Philip this evening. I must say I liked him—he was so modest about himself. He said that he wished he were a little more as Katherine thinks he is, and that he’s going to try to be. I said that’s all right so long as he made Katherine happy and didn’t take her right away from us all. He said that he would do anything to make mother like him, and did I think that she liked him better now? I said that I was sure that she did—but I’m not sure really. It’s impossible to know what mother thinks. Katherine came in whilst we were talking. Afterwards, I don’t know why, I felt afraid somehow. Katie’s so sure. I know I’d never be sure of anybody, least of all anyone in love with me. But then I know so much more about men than Katie does. And I’m sure Philip knows lots more about women than Katie thinks. Katie and mother are so alike in some ways. They’re both as obstinate as anything. Such a lovely afternoon out with the Swintons—Snow in the Green Park, sparkling all over and the air like after you’ve eaten peppermints. Lady Perrot asked me to go with them to New Year’s supper at the Savoy. Hope I’ll be allowed.
Dec. 23rd. Had a walk with Katie—first walk had alone since her engagement. She was so happy that she was almost—a beastly word—frisky, Katie frisky! We’re miles away from one another just now, and that’s the truth. I suppose one must simply wait until this period’s passed away. But supposing it never passes away? Supposing she disappears altogether—from all of us. At any rate, what can one say? I like Philip, and can honestly say so, but I don’t think him the angel Gabriel. Not that Katie at present cares, in the least, what one thinks—she doesn’t wait to hear. She is making no plans, thinking of no possible future, imagining nothing. She never had any imagination, or at any rate never used it. Perhaps she’ll get some now from Philip, who has plenty—far too much. It’s his trouble, I believe that he’s always imagining something a little better than he’s got.... We Trenchards have none. I haven’t any really—it’s only curiosity. Henry and I might have some if we were all very uncomfortable. But of course the whole family only keeps together because it can’t imagine things being different. Are things going to be different now?... Rachel Seddon came to tea. Don’t like her. Thinks she owns Katie—and Katie’s let her. Went with the Aunts to the Messiah. Very long, with nice bits. Aunt Aggie had a crick in the neck, and wriggled all the time. Hope I get some money on Christmas Day or I shall be in an awful hole.
Dec. 26th. Two pounds from father, one from grandfather, ten shillings Cousin Alice, five Aunt Grace, kettle-holder Aunt Aggie, two dozen handkerchiefs Uncle Bob, fountain-pen father, new hat mother (quite hopeless), photo-gravure ‘Happy Warrior’ Aunt Betty, two books ‘Reuben Hallard’ by Westcott (Mudie second-hand) ‘Rossetti’s Poems’ from Henry—lovely amethyst brooch Katie (darling!) two novels by Turgenieff from Philip—lots of other things.
Nice day on the whole, but not quite right somehow. Wish mother didn’t always look so anxious when there’s a dinner party. You always expect things to happen wrong, and really Rocket knows his business by this time. All of us a little forced, I think. It seemed funny not being at Garth and Philip the first person we’ve ever had not of the family. Aunt Sarah keeps forgetting who he is, or pretends to. I wish he didn’t make up to mother quite so much. That isn’t the way to make her like him. I really do understand him much better than anyone else does—much better than Katie.
Dec. 31st. Going to the Savoy party to-night. Hope it will be fun. Never expected mother to let me, but she’s awfully sweet to me lately. She’s a darling, but we’re really always just a little afraid of one another. Of course I’m not out yet, so I’ll have to be quiet to-night. Mother never would have dreamt of letting me go six months back. End of the year—made several resolutions. Not to be snappy, nor superior, nor cynical, nor selfish. That’s enough for anyone to look after! Wonder what things will be like this year, and how Katie and Philip will turn out. Feel as though things will all go wrong, and yet I don’t know why. Bought the hat I saw a fortnight ago. Finished ‘House of Gentlefolks’. Adored it. Discussed it with Philip. Going to get all the other Turgenieffs. Think Russia must be a wonderful country. Time to dress. I know I’ll just love the party....
Only Mrs. Trenchard herself could say whether or no she had enjoyed this Christmas. She displayed the same busy placidity as on other occasions; of her fears, disappointments, surprises, she said nothing. The turkey was a success, the plum-pudding burnt with a proper glow, no one was ill, she had forgotten, in sending out her parcels, no single Trenchard relation—surely all was well.
Her brother, Timothy, who knew her better than anyone else did, had long abandoned the penetration of her motives, aims, regrets. There had been a time when she had been almost intimate with him, then something (he never knew what) had driven her in more obstinately than ever upon herself. Something he had said.... He could point almost exactly to the day and hour. She had been a stranger to him from that moment.
Her history was, however, very simple.
When she had been a very, very small child she had decided for herself that the way to give life a real value was to fix one’s affection upon someone: perhaps there had been also the fear of life as a motive, the discovery that the best way to be protected from all kinds of perils was to be so fond of someone that nothing else mattered. With a quiet, undemonstrative but absolutely tenacious hold she attached herself to her nurse, who deserted her on the appearance of a younger sister, to her mother, who died, to her father, who was always so busy that loving him was like being devoted to a blotting pad. When she was ten years of age she went to school, and clung to a succession of older girls, who, however, found, in her lack of all demonstrations, her almost cynical remarks, her inability to give any expression whatever to her emotions, something, at first, terrifying, and afterwards merely tiresome.
When she was about eighteen she discovered that the person to whom a woman should be properly attached was her husband. She waited then very calmly until she was twenty, when George Trenchard appeared, proposed to her, and was accepted. She took it so utterly for granted that her devotion to him would fill sufficiently the energy of her remaining days that it wasn’t until the end of a year of married life that she discovered that, although he liked her very much, he could do quite beautifully without her, and did, indeed, for three-quarters of every day forget her altogether. No one, except herself, knew whether that discovery hurt her. She, of course, said nothing to anyone about it. She waited for the arrival of her children. Katherine, Henry and Mildred came, and at last it seemed that Mrs. Trenchard’s ship had come into port. During their early years, at any rate, they clung to her tenaciously, did not in the least mind that she had nothing to say to them: they found her sure and safe and, best of all possible things in a parent, always the same. It was when Katherine was six years old that Timothy said to her one day:
“Look here, Harriet, don’t get so wrapt in the children that you’ll never be able to unwrap yourself again. I’ve seen it happen dozens of times, and it always gives endless trouble later on. It’s all very well now, but the time will come when they’ll break away—it must come, and you’ll suffer horribly unless you’re ready for it. I’m not married myself, it’s true, but I see all the more for that very reason.”
This was the speech that severed Mrs. Trenchard from her brother. She never forgot nor forgave it. She never forgave it because she could not forget it: his words were to haunt her from the moment of their utterance until the last conscious instant of her life. She had been born entirely without imagination, but she had not been born without the wish for romance. Moreover, the Faunder tradition (which is the same as the Trenchard tradition) taught her to believe that there was something enfeebling and dangerous about imagination, and that the more one thought about things not immediately within sight the less likely one was to do one’s daily task with efficiency. Her longing for a romantic life therefore (that is for the justification of her own personal existence) was assisted by no private dreams nor castle-building. No Faunder or Trenchard had ever built a castle in the air when there were good square manors and vicarages waiting to be constructed on good solid ground. She directed the whole of her passionate life towards her relations with her children, but never even to herself would she admit that she had any passionate life at all. Take away the children and there was nothing left for her except her religion; because the loss of them would be the one tragedy that would drive her to question the justice of her God was justification of itself for her passionate determination.
Now Timothy had said that she would lose them—well, Timothy should see. With other children, with other mothers, it might be so. God Himself should not take them from her.
Nevertheless, as the children grew, the shadows of his words ever pursued her and hemmed her in. She watched, with close attention, other families, and saw that Timothy’s warning was justified often enough, but always she was able to find for herself some reason. The weakness of selfishness or carelessness of the parent. Not weak, nor selfish, nor careless could any watching Powers, waiting to pounce, accuse her of being!
When the children grew older she discovered certain things about them. Henry often annoyed her with his untidiness and strangely unjustified egotism. He always thought about himself, and yet never did anything. She liked Henry least of her children.
Mildred was delightful, clever, the “show child”, but for that very reason would in all probability be, afterwards, the most restless of them. As the two girls grew Mrs. Trenchard told herself that, perhaps, Millie would have to be sacrificed, and in telling herself this she implied that if she would only, when the time came, allow Millie without a murmur to depart, the Gods would be satisfied with that and Katherine would remain.
It came to this, that by the time that Katherine was twelve she was the centre of her mother’s existence. Mildred and Henry would be held as long as it was possible to hold them, but, if the worst came, they should go. Katherine would always remain....
It seemed indeed that she would. She loved her home, her parents, her relations, Glebeshire, the whole of the Trenchard inheritance. She placed her mother first in her life, and she was able to satisfy the love in her mother’s heart without saying anything about it or drawing anyone’s attention towards it. She had all the qualities that her mother admired—sincerity, trust, common-sense, practical punctuality, moral as well as physical: above all, she took things for granted without asking endless questions, as was Henry’s unfortunate habit. There grew then in the lives both of Mrs. Trenchard and Katherine a passionate affection, which was never allowed by either of them to find outward expression. This became, behind the commonplace matter-of-fact of all their days, a kind of romantic conspiracy. Even when Katherine was still a child Mrs. Trenchard knew that the hours that they spent alone together had some strange almost incoherent quality, something that was mixed, inextricably, with the high lanes, the grassy lawns, the distant strip of sea beyond the fields, the rooks in the high trees, the smell of the village shop, boot-laces, liquorice, tallow, cheese and cotton, the dark attic bedroom of Katherine’s, the cries of village children beyond the garden wall, afternoon Sunday school upon hard benches under glazed lamps to the accompaniment of the harmonium; all the things that belonged to Garth belonged also to the love between Mrs. Trenchard and Katherine. Katherine had been first taken to the sea when she had been a very little girl; she had been shown Rafiel and the Pirates’ Cove with its cave (too small for any but very thin pirates), and the village with the cottages cut out of the rock and the sea advancing and retreating as a lazy cat stretches and withdraws its paws upon the pebbled beach. Driving home through the twilight in the high dog-cart behind the fat and beloved family pony, Katherine had been besieged with questions. What had she thought of it all? What had she liked best? Had it been wonderful? She had said nothing. She was obstinately silent. At last, persecuted beyond bearing, she looked, imploringly, at her mother. Her eyes had met her mother’s, and, as complete understanding passed between them, it seemed that they made, there and then, a compact of mutual help and protection that was never afterwards to be broken. Mrs. Trenchard had never, never been known to mention scenery, sunsets or buildings, except for strictly practical reasons. She would say: “Come in, children, you’ll catch cold, the sun’s setting”, or “I don’t think we’ll have rain to-day. There’s not a cloud”, or “It’s so hot, there’s quite a mist. I hope there’ll be enough strawberries and cream for everyone.” That was her attitude, and yet she loved Glebeshire, every stone and tree, with an unfaltering and unarguing devotion. She never said “Glebeshire is the loveliest spot in the world”. But only: “Oh! you’ve never been to Glebeshire? You don’t know the Clarence Faunders then? They’re only five miles from us”, or “Yes. We live in Glebeshire—a little village not far from Polchester. We’re very lucky in our clergyman, a Mr. Smart, one of the Smarts, etc.” Moreover, she never when she was quite alone said to herself: “Oh! what a heavenly day!” or “How lovely the new leaves are”, or “Look at the primroses!” She only said to herself: “Lucy Cartwright’s Annie has got to have that ointment”, or “I must tell Rebekah about the poor Curtises. She could take them the things.”
Nevertheless, when she discovered that Katherine cared for Glebeshire with a love as deep as her own, how happy she was! How firmly that discovery bound them together! For them both that journey twice a year from London to Garth was as exciting as though they had never taken it before. The stations, whose names were like the successive wrappers that enclose a splendid present, Rasselas, the little windy station where they changed from the London Express into the halting, stumbling little train that carried them towards the sea; then Stoep in Roselands, tiniest station of all, with the sea smell blowing across the dark fields, the carriage with its lights and Jacob, the coachman, the drive through the twilight lanes, the gleaming white gates, the house itself and old Rebekah on the doorstep ... yes, of all these things was the love between Mrs. Trenchard and her daughter made.
Most wonderful of all was it that, with Katherine, Mrs. Trenchard never knew a moment’s awkwardness or embarrassment. With everyone else in the world and, perhaps especially with her own family, Mrs. Trenchard was often awkward and embarrassed, although no one but herself was aware of it. Of this embarrassment Mrs. Trenchard had a horrible dread: it was to her as though she were suddenly lifted off her feet by a giant hand and held dangling: she felt that all the world must see how her skirts blew in the wind. With Katherine she was always safe: she grew, most urgently, to depend upon this safety. Then, as the years passed she felt that she might, with justice, consider Katherine secure. Katherine seemed to have no interest in young men: already she adopted a rather motherly attitude towards them and, perhaps because Henry was the young man immediately before her, considered them rather helpless, rather clumsy, rather unwieldy and ungainly. She was always kind but a little satirical in her relations to the other sex: young men were, perhaps, afraid of her.
Mrs. Trenchard did, of course, consider the possibility of Katherine’s marriage, but, if that ever occurred, it would be, she knew, with someone in the family, someone like themselves, who would live near by, who would worship Katherine but never interfere with her, who would give her children, to whom Mrs. Trenchard could be a delightful grandmother. This surrender the Gods might demand—it would need more than such a marriage to separate, now, Katherine from her mother. Mrs. Trenchard, like all unimaginative people, relied very strongly upon little facts and well-accustomed places and familiar family relations. She did not believe that Victoria Street would walk away or that the old woman (Mrs. Pengello, an ancient widow with a pension, two granddaughters and a cast in her eye) at the Garth post office would appear one morning as a radiant young beauty, or that her brother Timothy would go on to the music halls. Her world was thus a place of security, and Katherine was one of the most secure things in it. “Ah! Timothy, you’re wrong after all,” she would sometimes, in the watches of the night, think to herself. “Nothing can take Katherine from me now. You may be as right as you like about Millie and Henry. Katherine is enough....”
She had, during these last years, been wrapped in with a strange, placid content: Millie had been at school in Paris: there was nothing inside the Trenchard fortress that spoke of the outside world. No secret spirit ever whispered to Mrs. Trenchard: “Are you not being selfish in keeping your daughter? You will die some day, and then she will have a lonely old maid’s life when she might have been so happy. The children’s lives are their own. What right have you to Katherine’s life and ambitions and love? Would you, in your youth, have given up your future for your parents? Why should she?”
There was nothing that Mrs. Trenchard desired more than Katherine’s happiness. If Katherine had not loved her she would have let her go, but now ... Katherine’s life was bound up with hers so tightly that nothing, nothing could part them....
Then there came a night of fog, a stranger bowing in the doorway, and all the old days were dead. Mrs. Trenchard was still stunned, the fog was yet about her eyes, and in her heart was a dread that had not yet found its voice nor driven her to determine what she would do.... Meanwhile there was no one in the world who knew her. She did not know herself. Until now there had been in her life no crisis strong enough to force open that realisation.
One morning early in January Mrs. Trenchard said to Katherine at breakfast: “Will you come to the Stores with me this afternoon, Katherine? I have to buy some hot-water bottles and one or two other things. Two of them leak badly ... some hot-water bottles ... and I’d like you to help me.”
“I’m lunching with Rachel, mother,” Katherine said. “But I’ll be back by three if that’s time enough.”
“Three o’clock. Very well, dear. They oughtn’t to leak—we’ve had them quite a short time. Shall I meet you there?”
“No. I’ll come back. We might miss there. I’ll be back by three.”
At ten minutes past three in a large rather confused hat with a black bird and white feathers Mrs. Trenchard was seated waiting in the drawing-room. The fire had had coal poured upon it by Rocket, and it was very black: the room was cold and dark, and Mrs. Trenchard, feeling like an unwelcome guest in her own house, shivered. At twenty minutes past three Mrs. Trenchard began to be afraid that there had been an accident. Katherine was always so punctual. Millie came in.
“Dear mother, what on earth!”
“I’m waiting for Katherine. She was to be back at three from Rachel Seddon’s. We are—were—going to the Stores. You don’t think there can have been an accident?”
“Katherine! Why, I saw her twenty minutes ago. I’ve just come back from Lady Carloes. Katie was at Hyde Park Corner with Philip.”
“Philip!”
Mrs. Trenchard got up, took off one black glove, then put it on again. She looked at the clock.
“Will you come to the Stores with me, Millie? I’ve got to get some hot-water bottles and some other things.... Two of ours leak.... I’d like you to help me.”
Millie looked once at the clock, and her mother saw her. Then Millie said:
“Of course I will. We won’t be very long, will we?”
“Why, no, dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard, who would have been happy to spend a week at the Stores had she the opportunity. “Quite a little time.”
They set off together.
Millie was not yet of such an age that she could disguise her thoughts. She was wondering about Katherine, and Mrs. Trenchard knew that this was so. Mrs. Trenchard always walked through the streets of London as a trainer in the company of his lions. Anything might happen, and one’s life was not safe for a moment, but a calm, resolute demeanour did a great deal, and, if trouble came, one could always use the whip: the whip was the Trenchard name. To-day, however, she gave no thought to London: she was very gentle and kind to Millie—almost submissive and humble. This made Millie very uncomfortable.
“I’m rather foolish about the Stores, I’m afraid. I know several places where you can get better hot-water bottles and cheaper. But they know me at the Stores now.”
Once she said: “I hope, Millie dear, I’m not keeping you from anything. We shall be home by half-past four.”
In exchange for these two little remarks Millie talked a great deal, and the more she talked the more awkward she seemed. She was very unhappy about her mother, and she wished that she could comfort her, but she knew her so little and had been always on such careless terms with her that now she had no intuition about her.
“What is she thinking?... I know Katherine has hurt her terribly. She oughtn’t to wear a hat like that: it doesn’t suit her a bit. Why isn’t it I who have forgotten, and Katie here instead to console her? Only then she wouldn’t want consolation....”
As they walked up the steps of the Stores they were stared at by a number of little dogs on chains, who all seemed to assert their triumphant claims on somebody’s especial affections. The little dogs stirred Mrs. Trenchard’s unhappiness, without her knowing why. All down Victoria Street she had been thinking to herself: “Katherine never forgot before—never. It was only this morning—if it had even been yesterday—but this morning! Millie doesn’t understand, and she didn’t want to come—Katie....”
She walked slowly into the building, and was at once received by that friendly, confused smell of hams and medicines which is the Stores’ note of welcome. Lights shone, warmth eddied in little gusts of hot air from corner to corner: there was much conversation, but all of a very decent kind: ladies, not very grand ones and not very poor ones, but comfortable, motherly, housekeeping ladies were everywhere to be seen.
No wonder, surely, that Mrs. Trenchard loved the Stores! Here was everything gathered in from the ends of the earth that was solid and sound and real. Here were no extravagances, no decadencies, no flowing creations with fair outsides and no heart to them, nothing foreign nor degenerate. However foreign an article might be before it entered the Stores, once inside those walls it adopted itself at once to the claims of a Cathedral City—even the Eastern carpets, stained though their past lives might be with memories of the Harem, recognised that their future lay along the floor of a Bishop’s study, a Major’s drawing-room or the dining-room of a country rectory. If ever Mrs. Trenchard was alarmed by memories of foreign influences, of German invasions, or Armenian atrocities, she had only to come to the Stores to be entirely reassured. It would be better for our unbalanced and hysterical alarmists did they visit the Stores more frequently....
But frequent visits had bred in Mrs. Trenchard a yet warmer intimacy. Although she had never put her feeling into words, she was determined now that the Stores was maintained solely in the Trenchard and Faunder interests. So pleasant and personally submissive had the young men and young women of the place been to her all these years, that she now regarded them with very nearly the personal benevolence that she bestowed upon her own Rebekah, Rocket, Jacob and so on. She felt that only Trenchards and Faunders could have produced an organisation whose spirit was so entirely sprung from their own views and observances. She did not defend or extol those views. There simply they were! and out of them the Stores were born. She paid her call here, therefore, rather as a Patroness visits a Hospital in which she is interested—with no conceit or false pride, but with a maternal anxiety that everything should be well and prosperous. Everything always was well and prosperous.... She was a happy Patroness!
“That’s a splendid ham!” were invariably her first words, and “I do like the way they arrange things here,” her second. She could have wandered, very happily, all day from compartment to compartment, stopping continually to observe, to touch, to smile, to blow her nose (being moved, very often, quite emotionally) to beam happily upon the customers and then to turn, with a little smile of intimacy, to the young men in frock coats and shiny hair, as though she would say: “We’ve got a good crowd to-day. Everyone seems comfortable ... but how can they help it when everything is so beautifully done?”
Her chief pride and happiness found its ultimate crown in the furniture department. Here, hung as it was somewhere up aloft, with dark bewildering passages starting into infinity on every side of it, was the place that her soul truly loved. She could gaze all day upon those sofas and chairs. Those wonderful leather couches of dark red and dark blue, so solid, so stern in their unrelenting opposition to flighty half-and-half, so self-supporting and self-satisfying, so assured of propriety and comfort and solid value for your money. She would sink slowly into a huge leather arm-chair, and from her throne smile upon the kind gentleman who washed his hands in front of her.
“And how much is this one?”
“Nine pounds, eight and sixpence, ma’am.”
“Really. Nine pounds, eight and sixpence. It’s a splendid chair.”
“It is indeed, ma’am. We’ve sold more than two dozen of this same article in this last fortnight. A great demand just now.”
“And so there ought to be—more than two dozen! Well, I’m not surprised—an excellent chair.”
“Perhaps we can send it for you? Or you prefer—?”
“No, thank you. Not to-day. But I must say that it’s wonderful for the money. That sofa over there—”
Up here, in this world of solid furniture, it seemed that England was indeed a country to be proud of! Mrs. Trenchard would have made no mean Britannia, seated in one of the Stores’ arm-chairs with a Stores’ curtain-rod for her trident!
Upon this January afternoon she found her way to the furniture department more swiftly than was usual with her. The Stores seemed remote from her to-day. As she passed the hams, the chickens, the medicines and powders, the petticoats and ribbons and gloves, the books and the stationery, the cut-glass and the ironware, the fancy pots, the brass, the Chinese lanterns, the toys, the pianos and the gramophones, the carpets and the silver, the clocks and the pictures, she could only be dimly aware that to-day these things were not for her, that all the treasures of the earth might be laid at her feet and she would not care for them, that all the young men and young women in England might bow and smile before her and she would have no interest nor pleasure in them. She reached the furniture department. She sank down in the red-leather arm-chair. She said, with a little sigh:
“She has never forgotten before!”
This was, considering her surroundings and the moment of its expression, the most poignant utterance of her life.
Millie’s chief emotion, until this moment, had been one of intense boredom. The Stores seemed to her, after Paris, an impossible anachronism; she could not understand why it was not instantly burnt up and destroyed, and all its solemn absurdities cast, in dirt and ashes, to the winds.
She followed her mother with irritation, and glances of cynical contempt were flung by her upon the innocent ladies who were buying and chatting and laughing together. Then she remembered that her mother was in trouble, and she was bowed down with self-accusation for a hard heartless girl who thought of no one but herself. Her moods always thus followed swiftly one upon another.
When, in the furniture department, she heard that forlorn exclamation she wanted to take her mother’s hand, but was shy and embarrassed.
“I expect Katie had to go with Philip.... Something she had to do, and perhaps it only kept her a moment or two and she got back just after we’d left. We didn’t wait long enough for her. She’s been waiting there, I expect, all this time for us.”
Mrs. Trenchard’s cheek flushed and her eyes brightened.
“Why, Millie, that’s most likely! We’ll go back at once ... that’s most likely.... We’ll go back at once.”
“This is a very cheap article,” said the young man, “or if Madame would prefer a chair with—”
“No, no,” said Mrs. Trenchard quite impatiently. “Not to-day. Not to-day, thank you.”
“There are the hot-water bottles,” said Millie.
“Oh, of course.... I want some hot-water bottles. Ours leak ... three of them....”
“In the rubber department, Madam, first to the right, second to the left....”
But Mrs. Trenchard hurried through the hot-water bottles in a manner utterly foreign to her.
“Thank you. I’m sure they’re very nice. They won’t leak, you say? How much?... Thank you ... no, I prefer these.... If you’re sure they won’t leak.... Yes, my number is 2157.... Thank you.”
Outside in Victoria Street she said: “I might have given her until quarter to four. I daresay she’s been waiting all this time.”
But Millie for the first time in all their days together was angry with Katherine. She said to herself: “She’s going to forget us all like this now. We aren’t, any of us, going to count for anything. Six months ago she would have died rather than hurt mother....”
And behind her anger with Katherine was anger with herself because she seemed so far away from her mother, because she was at a loss as to the right thing to do, because she had said that she had seen Philip with Katherine. “You silly idiot!” she thought to herself. “Why couldn’t you have kept your mouth shut?”
Mrs. Trenchard spoke no word all the way home.
Katherine was not in the house when they returned. Millie went upstairs, Mrs. Trenchard stared at the desolate drawing-room. The fire was dead, and the room, in spite of its electric light, heavy and dark. Mrs. Trenchard looked at the reflection of her face in the mirror; with both hands she pushed her hat a little, then, with a sudden gesture, took it off, drawing out the pins slowly and staring at it again. Mrs. Trenchard glanced at the clock, and then slowly went out, holding her hat in her hand, advancing with that trailing, half-sleepy movement that was peculiarly hers.
She did then what she had not done for many years: she went to her husband’s study. This hour before tea he always insisted was absolutely his own: no one, on any pretext, was ever to disturb him. To-day, cosily, with a luxurious sense that the whole world had been made for him, and made for him exactly as he liked it, he was, with a lazy pencil, half-writing, half-thinking, making little notes for an essay on William Hazlitt.
As his wife entered he was reading: “How fine it is to enter some old town, walled and turreted, just at the approach of nightfall, or to come to some straggling village, with the lights streaming through the surrounding gloom; and then, after enquiring for the best entertainment the place affords, to take one’s ease at one’s inn! These eventful moments in our lives’ history are too precious, too full of solid, heartfelt happiness to be frittered and dribbled away in imperfect sympathy. I would have them all to myself, and drain them to the last drop.”
How thoroughly George Trenchard agreed with that. How lucky for him that he was able to defend himself from so much of that same “imperfect sympathy”. Not that he did not love his fellow-creatures, far from it, but it was pleasant to be able to protect oneself from their too constant, their too eager ravages. Had he been born in his beloved Period, then he fancied that he might, like magnificent Sir Walter, have built his Castle and entertained all the world, but in this age of telephones and motorcars one was absolutely compelled.... He turned Hazlitt’s words over on his tongue with a little happy sigh of regret, and then was conscious that his wife was standing by the door.
“Hullo!” he cried, starting up. “Is anything the matter?”
It was so unusual for her to be there that he stared at her large, heavy figure as though she had been a stranger. Then he jumped up, laughing, and the dark blue Hazlitt fell on to the carpet.
“Well, my dear,” he said, “tea-time?”
She came trailing across the room, and stood beside him near the fire.
“No ...” she said, “not yet ... George.... You, look very cosy here,” she suddenly added.
“I am,” he answered. He looked down at the Hazlitt, and her eyes followed his glance. “What have you been doing?”
“I’ve been to the Stores.”
“Why, of course,” he said, chaffing her. “You live there. And what have you been buying this time?”
“Hot-water bottles.”
“Well, that’s exciting!”
“Ours leaked.... Two of them, and we’d had them a very short time. I took Millie with me!”
“Very good for her. Clear some of her Parisian fancies.”
There was a pause then, and he bent forward as though he would pick up the book, but he pulled himself up again.