by Hugh Walpole
“No — no — nothing at all.”
“I saw her this morning. She seemed quite well.”
“A little headache, Father dear. She thought she was better by herself.”
“Dear Katie — never do to have her ill. Well, George. What’s the matter with ‘ee? Looking quite hipped. Dig your father in the ribs, Millie, my dear, and cheer him up a bit.”
So seldom was old Mr. Trenchard in his merry mood, and so difficult of him to be in it now. So often he was consumed with his own thoughts, his death, perhaps, the present degradation of the world, the tyranny of aches and pains, impatience with the monotonous unvariety of relations, past Trenchard glories, old scenes and days and hours ... he, thus caught up into his own life, would be blind to them all. But to-night, pleased with his food because he was hungry, and because his body was not paining him anywhere just now, he was interested in them. His bright little eyes darted all about the table.
There came at last the question that they dreaded:
“Why, where’s the young man? Katie’s young man?”
A moment’s silence, and then Mrs. Trenchard said quietly, and with her eyes upon the new ‘girl,’ introduced into the house only last week and fresh to the mysteries of a dinner-table:
“He’s dining with Timothy to-night, Father.”
Rocket could be heard whispering to Lucy, the ‘girl’:
“Potatoes first — then the sauce.”
Of them all, it was George Trenchard who covered with least success the yawning chasm, even Aunt Betty, although her hands shook as she crumbled her bread, had not surrendered her control.
But for George this was the first blow, in all his life, to reach his heart. Nothing really had ever touched him before. And he could not understand it — he simply could not understand it. It had been as sudden as an earthquake, and then, after all, there had been nothing to be done. That was the awful thing. There had been nothing to be done.... It was also so mysterious. Nothing had ever been mysterious to him before. He had been dimly aware that during these last months all had not been well, but he had pursued his old safe plan, namely, that if you didn’t mention things and just smiled upon life without inviting it to approach you closely, all would, in the end, be well.
But now he could no longer hold aloof — he was in the middle of something, as surely as though he had been plunged into a deep tab of tossing, foaming water. Katherine ... Katie ... dear, devoted Katie ... who had always loved him and done as he wished; Katie, nearest of all human beings to his heart, and nearest because he had always known that she cared for him more than for any other human being. And now it was obvious that that was not so, it was obvious that she cared more for that young man, that abominable young man.... O, damn it! damn it! damn it! Katherine was gone, and for no reason, for nothing at all except pride and impatience. Already, as he sat there, he was wondering how soon, by any means whatever, he could establish pleasant relations with her, and so make his life comfortable once more. But, beyond Katherine, there was his wife. What was he to do about Harriet? For so many years now he had decided that the only way to deal comfortably with Harriet was not to deal with her, and this had seemed to work so well ... but now ... now ... he must deal with her. He saw that she was in terrible distress; he knew her well enough to be sure of that. He would have liked to have helped and comforted her; it really distressed him to see anyone in pain, but he discovered now, with a sharp surprise, that she was a complete stranger, that he did not know any more about the real Harriet Trenchard than he did about Lucy, the maid-servant. There was approaching him that awful moment when he would be compelled to draw close to her ... he was truly terrified of this.
It was a terrible dinner for all of them; once Lucy dropped a knife, and they started, all of them, as though a bomb had screamed through the ceiling. And perhaps, to the older ones, there was nothing in it more alarming than the eyes, the startled, absorbed and challenging eyes, of Millie and Henry....
Slowly, as the dinner progressed, old Mr. Trenchard discovered that something was the matter. He discovered it as surely by the nervous laughter and chatter of Aunt Betty as by the disconcerted discomfort of his son George. His merriment fell away from him; he loved ‘Angels on Horseback’ — to-night there were ‘Angels on Horseback’, and he ate them with a peevish irritation. Whatever was the matter now? He felt lost without Sarah; she knew when and why things were the matter more quickly than anyone, aware of her deafness, would consider possible. But before he was assisted from the table he was sure that the ‘something’ was connected with his dear Katherine.... The men did not stay behind to-night. In the hall they were grouped together, on the way to the drawing-room, waiting for the old man’s slow progress.
He paused suddenly beside the staircase.
“George,” he said, “George, just run up and see how Katie is. Give her my love, will ‘ee?”
George turned, his face white. Mrs. Trenchard said:
“She’s probably asleep, Father. With her headache — it would be a pity to wake her.”
At that moment the hall door pushed slowly open, and there, the wind eddying behind him, his ulster up over his neck, his hair and beard wet with the rain, stood Uncle Timothy.
“Hullo!” he cried, seeing them all grouped together. But old Mr. Trenchard called to him in a voice that trembled now with some troubled anticipation:
“Why, your dinner’s soon done? Where’s the young man?”
Uncle Timothy stared at them; he looked round at them, then, at a loss for the first time in his life, stammered: “Why, don’t you know...?”
The old man turned, his stick shaking in his hand: “Where’s Katherine? Katie.... What’s happened to Katie? What’s this mean?”
Mrs. Trenchard looked at him, then said:
“It’s all right, Father — really. It’s quite all right.”
“It’s not all right.” Fright like the terror of a child alone in the dark was in his eyes. “What have you done with her?”
Her voice cold, without moving, she answered:
“Katherine went up by the eight o’clock train to London with Philip. She has gone to Rachel Seddon.”
“With Philip?... What do you say? I can’t hear you.”
“Yes. She is to stay with Rachel Seddon.”
“But why? What have you done? Why did you tell me lies?”
“We have done nothing. We did not know that she was going.”
“You didn’t know?... then she’s left us?”
Mrs. Trenchard said nothing.
He cried: “I told him — what it would be — if he took her ... Katie!”
Then, his stick dropping with a rattle on to the stone floor, he fell back. Rocket caught him.
There was a movement forward, but Mrs. Trenchard, saying swiftly, “George ... Rocket,” had swept them all outside the figure — the figure of an old, broken, tumbled-to-pieces man, held now by his son and Rocket, huddled, with his white, waxen hand trailing across George Trenchard’s strong arm.
Harriet Trenchard said to her brother:
“You knew!” then turned up the stairs.
In the drawing-room Aunt Aggie, Aunt Betty, Millie and Henry faced Uncle Timothy.
“Well!” said Aunt Aggie, “so you know all about it.... You’ve killed Father!” she ended with a grim, malignant triumph.
He answered fiercely: “Yes, I knew. That’s why I came. She said that she would send up a note from the village. I thought that you wouldn’t have heard it yet. I came up to explain.”
They all burst upon him then with questions:
“What?” “Did you see her?” “What did she say?” “Where was she?”
“Of course I saw her. She came to me before she went off.”
“She came and you didn’t stop her!” This from Aunt Aggie. He turned then and addressed himself solely to her.
“No. I didn’t stop her. I gave her my blessing.”
Aunt Aggie would have spoken, but he went on:
“Yes, and it’s you — you and Harriet and the others — who are responsible. I warned Harriet months ago, but she wouldn’t listen. What did you expect? Do you think the world’s always going on made for you and you alone? The more life’s behind you the more important you think you are, whereas it doesn’t matter a damn to anybody what you’ve done compared with what others are going to do. You thought you could tie Katherine and Philip down, take away their freedom? Well, you couldn’t, that’s all.”
“Yes,” cried Aunt Aggie, who was shaking with anger, “it’s such doctrines as yours, Timothy, that lead to Katherine and others doing the dreadful things they do. It’s all freedom now and such words, and young men like Mr. Mark, who don’t fear God and have no morals and make reprobates of themselves and all around them, can do what they please, I suppose. You talk about common-sense, but what about God? What about the Commandments and duty to your parents? They may think what they like abroad, but, Heaven be praised, there are some of us still in England who know our duty.”
He had recovered his control before she ended her speech. He smiled at her.
“The time will come,” he answered, “and I daresay it isn’t so distant as you think, when you and you fellow-patriots, Aggie, will learn that England isn’t all alone, on her fine moral pedestal, any longer. There won’t be any pedestal, and you and your friends will have to wake up and realise that the world’s pushed a bit closer together now-a-days, that you’ve got to use your eyes a bit, or you’ll get jostled out of existence. The world’s going to be for the young and the independent and the unprejudiced, not the old and narrow-minded.
“Philip Mark’s woken you all up, and thank God he has!”
“Heaven forgive you,” Aunt Aggie answered, “for taking His name. You’ve got terrible things to answer to Him for, Timothy, when the time comes.”
“I’m not afraid, Aggie,” he said.
But it was Millie who spoke the final word.
“Oh, what are you all talking about!” she broke in. “What does it matter who’s good or bad or right or wrong. It’s Katie’s happiness that matters, nothing else. Of course, she’s gone. She ought to have gone months ago. You all wanted to make her and Phil live your life just as you wished it, and Phil, because he loved Katie so much, was ready to, but why should they? You say you all loved her, but I think it was just selfishness. I’ve been as bad as the rest of you. I’ve been thinking of myself more than Katie, but at heart now I’m glad, and I hope they’ll be happy, happy for ever.”
“And your Mother?” said Aunt Aggie. “Did Katherine owe her nothing?”
“Yes,” answered Millie, stoutly, “but she didn’t owe her all her life. Mother’s still got her if she wants her. Katie will never change — she isn’t that kind. It’s mother’s pride that’s hurt, not her love.”
Aunt Betty, who had been quite silent, said:
“I do indeed hope that she will be very happy ... but life will never be the same again. We mustn’t be selfish, of course, but we shall miss her — terribly.”
At a later hour George Trenchard, in pyjamas and a dressing gown, knocked on his wife’s door. She opened it, and he found her fully clothed; she had, it seemed to him, been reading.
He looked at her; he felt very wretched and uncomfortable.
“Father’s asleep,” he said.
“I’m glad of that,” she answered.
“I think he’ll be none the worse in the morning.”
“I hope not. Dr. Pierson seemed reassured.”
There was a pause; in spite of his bedroom slippers, his feet were cold.
“Harriet.”
“Yes, George.”
“I only wanted to say — well, I don’t know — only that — I’m sorry if this — this business of Katherine’s — has been a great blow to you.”
Her mind returned to that day, now so long ago, when, after her visit to the Stores, she had gone to his study. Their position now was reversed. But she was tired; she did not care. George did not exist for her.
“It has surprised me, of course,” she answered, in her even, level voice. “I thought Katherine cared more for us all than she has shown that she does. I certainly thought so. Perhaps my pride is hurt.”
By making this statement — not especially to George, but to the world in general — she could say to herself: “You see how honest you are. You are hiding nothing.”
He meanwhile hated his position, but was driven on by a vague sense that she needed comfort, and that he ought to give it her.
“See here, Harriet,” he said, awkwardly, “perhaps it needn’t be so bad. Nothing very terrible’s happened, I mean. After all, they were going to marry anyway. They’ve only done it a bit sooner. They might have told us, it’s true — they ought to have told us — but, after all, young people will be young people, won’t they? We can’t be very angry with them. And young Mark isn’t quite an Englishman, you know. Been abroad so long.”
As he spoke he dwindled and dwindled before her until his huge, healthy body seemed like a little speck, a fly, crawling upon the distant wall.
“Nothing very terrible’s happened” ... “Nothing very terrible’s happened” ... “NOTHING VERY TERRIBLE’S HAPPENED.”
George, who, during these many years had been very little in her life, disappeared, as he made that speech, utterly and entirely out of it. He was never to figure in it again, but he did not know that.
He suddenly sat down beside her on the old sofa and put his arm round her. She did not move.
They sat there in utter silence. At last desperately, as though he were committing the crime of his life, he kissed her. She patted his hand.
“You look tired,” he said, feeling an immense relief, now that he had done his duty. “You go to bed.”
“Good night, George dear,” she said.
He raised his big body from the sofa, smiled at her and padded away....
When he had gone and she was alone, for a terrible time she fought her defeat. She knew now quite clearly that her ruling passion during all these months had not been, as she had supposed, her love of Katherine, but her hatred of Philip.
From the first moment of seeing him she had known him for her enemy. He had been, although at the time she had not realised it, the very figure whose appearance, all her life, she had dreaded; that figure, from outside, of whose coming Timothy had long ago prophesied. How she had hated him! From the very first she had made her plans, influencing the others against him, watching how she might herself most securely influence him against himself, breaking in his will, using Katherine against him; finally, when Seymour had told her the scandal, how she had treasured it up for the moment when he, because of his love for Katherine, should be completely delivered over to her!
And the moment had come. She had had her triumph! She had seen his despair in his eyes! She had got him, she thought, securely for ever and ever.
Then how she had known what she would do in the future, the slave that she would make of him, the ways that she would trouble him with Katherine, with that Russian woman, with Aggie, with all of them!
Ah! it had been so perfect! and — at the very moment of her triumph — he had escaped!
That love for Katherine that had been a true motive in her earlier life, a true motive even until six months ago, was now converted into a cold, implacable resentment, because it was Katherine who had opened the door of Philip’s cage. Strange the complexities of the human heart! That very day, as she won her triumph she had loved her daughter. She had thought: “Now that I have beaten him I can take you back to my heart. We can be, my dear, as we used to be” — but now, had Katherine entered the room, she would have been spurned, dismissed for ever.
In the lust of love there is embedded, as the pearl is embedded in its shell, a lust of hate. Very closely they are pressed together. Mrs. Trenchard was beaten — beaten by her daughter, by a new generation, by a new world, by a new age — beaten in the very moment of her victory.
; She would never forgive.
What was left to her?
Her heart was suddenly empty of love, of hatred, of triumph, of defeat. She was tired and lonely. Somewhere, dimly, from the passage, the cuckoo-clock proclaimed the hour.
The house! That at least was left to her. These rooms, these roofs, the garden, the village, the fields, the hedges the roads to the sea. The Place had not deceived her, had not shared in the victory over her; it had, rather, shared in her defeat.
It seemed, as she stood there, to come up to her, to welcome her, to console her.
She put a shawl over her shoulders, went softly through the dark passages, down into the drawing-room.
There, feeling her way, she found candles and lit them. She went to her cabinet, opened drawers, produced papers, plans, rows of figures. Here was a plan of a new barn behind the house, here the addition of a conservatory to the drawing-room. Before her was a map of South Glebeshire, with the roads, the fields, the farms. She began to work, adding figures, following the plans, writing....
The light of the summer morning found her working there in the thin candle-light.
CHAPTER VI. THE CEREMONY
At about half-past four upon the afternoon of November 8th, 1903, the drawing-room of No. 5 Rundle Square Westminster, was empty. November 8th was, of course, Grandfather Trenchard’s birthday; a year ago on that day Philip Mark had made his first entrance into the Trenchard fastnesses. This Eighth of November, 1903, did not, in the manner of weather, repeat the Eighth of November, 1902. There had been, a year ago, the thickest of fogs, now there was a clear, mildly blue November evening, with the lamps like faint blurs of light against a sky in which tiny stars sparkled on a background that was almost white. It was cold enough to be jolly, and there was a thin wafer-like frost over the pools and gutters.
A large fire roared in the fireplace; the room seemed strangely altered since that day when Henry had read his novel and thought of his forests. In what lay the alteration? The old green carpet was still there; in front of the fireplace was a deep red Turkey rug — but it was not the rug that changed the room. The deep glass-fronted book-cases were still there, with the chilly and stately classics inside them; on the round table there were two novels with gaudy red and blue covers. One novel was entitled “The Lovely Mrs. Tempest”, the other “The Mystery of Dovecote Mill” — but it was not the novels that changed the room. The portraits of deceased Trenchards, weighted with heavy gold, still hung upon the walls; there was also, near the fireplace, a gay water-colour of some place on the Riviera, with a bright parasol in the foreground and the bluest of all blue seas in the background — but it was not the water-colour that changed the room.
