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 to him—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.”
“they were 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. they don’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 it was dimmed 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. you woke 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 do want things 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.
