george trenchard’s study expressed, very pleasantly, his personality. the room’s walls were of a deep warm red, and covering three sides ran high book-cases with glass fronts; within these book-cases were beautiful new editions, ugly old ones, books, for the greater part, relating to his favourite period, all ranged and ordered with the most delicate care. the windows of the room were tall and bright even on dull and foggy days, the carpet soft and thick, the leather chairs large and yielding, the fireplace wide and shining. most significant of all was his writing-table; upon this lay everything that any writer could possibly desire, from the handsomest of gold inkstands to the minutest of elastic bands. there was also here a little bust of sir walter scott. within this room george trenchard knew, always, perfect happiness—a very exceptional man, indeed, that he could know it so easily. he knew it by the simple expedient of shutting off entirely from his consciousness the rest of mankind; his study door once closed, he forgot his family absolutely. no one was allowed to disturb or interrupt him; it was understood that he was at work upon a volume that would ultimately make another of that series that contained already such well-known books as “william wordsworth and his circle,” “hazlitt—the man in his letters” and “the life of thomas de quincey.” these had appeared a number of years ago; he had been indeed a young man when he had written them. it was supposed that a work entitled “the lake poets, a critical survey” would appear ‘next autumn’.
for some time now the literary schemes of the weekly journals had announced this. george trenchard only laughed at enquiries: “it takes a damned long time, you know,” he said, “?’tisn’t any use rushing the thing.” he enjoyed, however, immensely, making notes. from half-past nine in the morning until half-past one, behind his closed doors, he considered the early nineteenth century, found it admirable (scott seemed to him the perfect type) took first one book, then another from his book-shelves, wrote a few lines, and before his fire imagined the trenchards of that period, considered their food and their drink, their morals, their humour and their literature. hazlitt’s essays seemed to him the perfection, not of english prose, but of a temporal and spiritual attitude. “hang it all,” he would conclude, “we’re a rotten lot now-a-days.” he did not worry over this conclusion, but it gave him the opportunity of a superior attitude during the rest of the day when he joined the world. “if you knew as much about the early nineteenth century as i do,” he seemed to say, “you wouldn’t be so pleased with yourselves.” he did not, however, express his superiority in any unpleasant manner. there was never anyone more amiable. all that he wanted was that everyone should be happy, and to be that, he had long ago discovered, one must not go too deep. “keep out of close relationships and you’re safe” might be considered his advice to young people. he had certainly avoided them all his life, and avoided them by laughing at them. he couldn’t abide “gloomy fellows” and on no account would he allow a ‘scene’. he had never lost his temper.
during the months that he spent at his place in glebeshire he pursued a plan identically similar. he possessed an invaluable ‘factotum’, a certain james ritchie, who took everything in a way of management off his hands. ritchie in glebeshire, mrs. trenchard and rocket in london. life was made very simple for him.
as has been said elsewhere, katherine, alone of his family, had in some degree penetrated his indifferent jollity; that was because she really did seem to him to have some of the early nineteenth century characteristics. she seemed to him (he did not know her very well) tranquil, humorous, unadventurous, but determined. she reminded him of elizabeth bennet, and he always fancied (he regarded her, of course, from a distance,) that she would make a very jolly companion. she seemed to him wiser than the others, with a little strain of satirical humour in her comment on things that pleased him greatly. “she should have been the boy, and henry the girl,” he would say. he thought henry a terrible ass. he was really anxious that katherine should be happy. she deserved it, he thought, because she was a little wiser than the others. he considered sometimes her future, and thought that it would be agreeable to have her always about the place, but she must not be an old maid. she was too good for that. “she’d breed a good stock,” he would say. “she must marry a decent fellow—one day.” he delighted in the gentle postponement of possibly charming climaxes. his size, geniality and good appetite may be attributed very largely to his happy gifts of procrastination. “always leave until to-morrow what ought to be done to-day” had made him the best-tempered of men.
after luncheon on the day that followed philip’s tea with aunt aggie, george trenchard retired to his study “to finish a chapter”. he intended to finish it in his head rather than upon paper, and it was even possible that a nap would postpone the conclusion; he lit his pipe and preferred to be comfortable—it was then that rocket informed him that mr. mark had called, wished to see him alone, would not keep him long, apologised, but it was important.
“why the devil couldn’t he come to lunch? what a time to appear!” but trenchard liked philip, philip amused him—he was so alive and talked such ridiculous nonsense. “of course he would see him!”
then when trenchard saw philip mark standing inside the room, waiting, with a smile half-nervous, half-friendly, the sight of that square, sturdy young man gave him to his own uneasy surprise a moment of vague and unreasonable alarm. george trenchard was not accustomed to feelings of alarm; it was his principle in life that he should deny himself such things.
he connected now, however, this very momentary sensation with other little sensations that he had felt before in philip’s company. the young man was so damnably full of his experiences, so eager to compare one thing with another, so insistent upon foreign places and changes in england and what we’d all got to do about it. trenchard did not altogether dislike this activity. that was the devil of it. it would never do to change his life at this time of day....
he stood, large, genial, and rosy, in front of his fire. “well, young man, what are you descending upon us at this hour for? why couldn’t you come to lunch?”
“i wanted to speak to you seriously about something. i wanted to see you alone.”
“well, here i am. sit down. have a cigar.” trenchard saw that philip was nervous, and he liked him the better for that. “he’s a nice young fellow, nice and clean and healthy—not too cocksure either, although he’s clever.”
philip, on his part, felt, at this moment, a desperate determination to make all the trenchard family love him. they must.... they must.
his heart was bursting with charity, with fine illusions, with self-deprecation, with trenchard exultation. he carried the flaming banner of one who loves and knows that he is loved in return.
he looked round upon george trenchard’s book-cases and thought that there could, surely, be nothing finer than writing critical books about early nineteenth century literature.
“i love katherine,” he said, sitting on the very edge of his arm-chair. “and she loves me. we want to be married.”
george trenchard stared at him.
“well, i’m damned!” he said at last, “you’ve got some cheek!” his first impression was one of a strange illumination around and about katherine, as though his daughter had been standing before him in the dark and then had suddenly been surrounded with blazing candles. although he had, as has been said, already considered the possibility of katherine’s marriage, he had never considered the possibility of her caring for someone outside the family. that struck him, really, as amazing. that made him regard his daughter, for a moment, as someone quite new and strange.
he burst into laughter.
“it’s ridiculous!” he said. “why! you two have scarcely seen one another!”
philip blushed, but looked up into trenchard’s face with eyes that were strangely pleading for a man who could, at other times, be so firmly authoritative.
“i know that it must seem so to you,” he said. “but really we have met a good deal. i knew from the very beginning.... i’ll make her happy,” he ended, almost defiantly, as though he were challenging some unseen enemy.
“well, state your case,” said trenchard.
“i love her,” he stammered a little, then his voice cleared and he stared straight before him at trenchard’s velvet waistcoat. “of course there’ve been people in my life before, but i’ve never felt anything like this. i should like to tell you that my life is absolutely free from any entanglements—of any kind. i’m thirty and as fit as a fiddle. my share in the business and some other things come to about fifteen hundred a year. it’s all very decently invested, but, of course, i’d show you all that. i’m not bad about managing those things, although you mightn’t think so. i want to buy a little place somewhere in england and settle down—a little place with a bit of land. i do think i could make katherine happy—i’d devote myself to that.”
“she cares for you?” asked trenchard.
“yes,” said philip quite simply.
“well, i’m damned,” said trenchard.
this was not so rude as it appeared to be. he was not thinking about philip at all—only about katherine. she had fallen in love, she, katherine, the staid, humorous, comfortable companion. he had not realised, until now, that he had always extracted much complacent comfort from the belief that she cared for him more than for any other member of the family. he did not know that every individual member extracted from katherine the same comfort. he looked at philip. what did she see in the man to lead her to such wild courses? he was nice enough to look at, to listen to—but to love? it seemed to him that his quiet daughter must have been indulging in melodrama.
“why, you know,” he cried at last, “it never entered my head—katherine’s marrying anybody. she’s very young—you’re very young too.”
“i don’t know,” said philip, “i’m thirty—lots of men have families by then.”
“no, but you’re young though—both of you,” persisted trenchard. “i don’t think i want katherine to marry anybody.”
“isn’t that rather selfish?” said philip.
“yes. i suppose it is,” said trenchard, laughing, “but it’s natural.”
“it isn’t, you see,” said philip eagerly, “as though i wanted to take her away to russia or in any way deprive you of her. i know how much she is to all of you. she’s sure to marry some day, isn’t she? and it’s much better that she should marry someone who’s going to settle down here and live as you all do than someone who’d go right off with her.”
“it’s all right, i shouldn’t let him,” said trenchard. he bent his eyes upon the eager lover, and again said to himself that he liked the young man. it would certainly be much pleasanter that katherine should care about a fine healthy young fellow, a good companion after dinner, a good listener with a pleasant sense of humour, than that she should force into the heart of the family some impossibility—not that katherine was likely to care about impossibilities, but you never knew; the world to-day was so full of impossibilities....
“i think we’ll send for katherine,” he said.
he rang the bell, rocket came, katherine was summoned. as they waited trenchard delivered himself of a random, half-humorous, half-conscious, half-unconscious discourse:
“you know, i like you—and i don’t often like modern young men. i wouldn’t mind you at all as a son-in-law, and you’d suit me as a son much better than henry does. at least i think so, but then i know you very slightly, and i may dislike you intensely later on. we none of us know you, you see. we never had anybody drop in upon us as you did.... it doesn’t seem to me a bit like katherine—and i don’t suppose she knows you any better than the rest of us do. she mayn’t like you later on. i can’t say that marriage is going to be what you think it is. you’re very unsettling. you won’t keep quiet and take things easily, and katherine is sure not to like that. she’s as quiet as anything.... if it were millie now. i suppose you wouldn’t care to have millie instead? she’d suit you much better. then, you know, the family won’t like your doing it. my wife won’t like it.” he paused, then, standing, his legs wide apart, his hands deep in his pockets, roared with laughter: “it will disturb them all—not that it won’t be good for them perhaps. you’re not to think though that i’ve given my consent—at any rate you’re not to marry her for a long time until we see what you’re like. i’m not to give her just to anyone who comes along, you know. i rather wish you’d stayed in russia. it’s very unsettling.”
the door opened—katherine entered. she looked at philip, smiled, then came across to her father and put her arm through his. she said nothing, but was radiant; her father felt her hand tremble as it touched his, and that suddenly moved him as, perhaps, nothing had ever moved him before.
“do you want to marry him?” he asked.
“yes,” she answered.
“but you hardly know him.”
“i know him very well indeed,” she said, looking at philip’s eyes.
“but i don’t want you to marry anyone,” her father went on. “we were all very nice as we were.... what’ll you do if i say you’re not to marry him?”
“you won’t say that,” she answered, smiling at him.
“what do you want to marry him for?” he asked. “he’s just an ordinary young man. you don’t know him,” he repeated, “you can’t yet, you’ve seen so little of him. then you’ll upset us all here very much—it will be very unpleasant for everybody. do you really think it’s worth it?”
katherine laughed. “i don’t think i can help it, father,” she answered.
deep in trenchard’s consciousness was the conviction, very common to men of good digestion over fifty, that had he been god he would have managed the affairs of the world very agreeably for everybody. he had not, often, been in the position of absolute power, but that was because he had not often taken the trouble to come out of his comfortable shelter and see what people were doing. he felt now that he could be jove for a quarter of an hour without any discomfort to himself—a very agreeable feeling.
he was also the most kind-hearted of men. “seriously, katherine,” he said, separating himself from her, drawing his legs together and frowning, “you’re over age. you can do what you like. in these days children aren’t supposed to consider their parents, and i don’t really see why they should ... it’s not much i’ve done for you. but you’re fond of us. we’ve rather hung together as a family.... i like your young man, but i’ve only known him a week or two, and i can’t answer for him. you know us, but you don’t know him. are you sure you’re making a wise exchange?”
here philip broke in eagerly but humbly. “it isn’t that there need be any change,” he said. “katherine shall belong to you all just as much as ever she did.”
“thank you,” said trenchard laughing.
“i’ll be proud,” philip cried, impulsively, jumping up from his chair, “if you’ll let me marry katherine, but i’ll never forget that she was yours first. of course i can’t come into the family as though i’d always been one of you, but i’ll do my best.... i’ll do my best....”
“my dear boy,” said trenchard, touched by the happy atmosphere that he seemed, with a nod of his head, to fling about him, “don’t think i’m preventing you. i want everyone to be pleased, i always have. if you and katherine have made up your minds about this, there isn’t very much for me to say. if i thought you’d make her miserable i’d show you the door, but i don’t think you will. all i say is—we don’t know you well enough yet. nor does she. after all, does she?” he paused, and then, enjoying the sense of their listening attention, thought that he would make a little speech. “you’re like children in a dark wood, you know. you think you’ve found one another—caught hold of one another—but when there’s a bit of a moon or something to see one another by you may find out you’ve each of you caught hold of someone quite different. then, there you are, you see. that’s all i can tell you about marriage; all your lives you’ll be in the forest, thinking you’ve made a clutch at somebody, just for comfort’s sake. but you never know whom you’re catching—it’s someone different every five minutes, even when it’s the same person. well, well—all i mean is that you mustn’t marry for a year at least.”
“oh! a year!” cried philip.
“yes, a year. won’t hear of it otherwise. what do you say, katherine?”
“i think philip and i can wait as long as that quite safely,” she answered, looking at her lover.
trenchard held out his hand to philip. “i congratulate you,” he said. “if you’ve made katherine love you you’re a lucky fellow. dear me—yes, you are.” he put his hand on philip’s shoulder. “you’d better be good to her,” he said, “or there’ll be some who’ll make you pay for it.”
“be good to her! my god!” answered philip.
“now you’d better clear. reveal yourselves to the family.... there, katherine, my dear, give me a kiss. don’t neglect me or i shall poison the villain.... there, there—god bless you.”
he watched them depart with real affection both for them and for himself.
“i’m not such a bad father after all,” he thought as he settled down into his chair.
outside the study door, in the dark corner of the little passage, philip kissed katherine. her lips met his with a passion that had in it complete and utter self-surrender.
they did not speak.
at last, drawing herself gently away from him, she said: “i’ll tell mother—i think it would be better not for both of us....”
“yes,” he whispered back, as though they were conspirators. “i don’t think i’ll face them all now—unless you’d like me to help you. i’ll come in to-night.”
with a strange, fierce, almost desperate action she caught his arm and held him for a moment with his cheek against hers.
“oh! philip ... my dear!” her voice caught and broke. they kissed once again, and then, very quietly, went back into the world.
meanwhile they had been watched; henry had watched them. he had been crossing at the farther end of the little passage, and stopping, holding himself back against the wall, had seen, with staring eyes, the two figures. he knew instantly. they were philip and katherine. he saw katherine’s hand as it pressed into philip’s shoulder; he saw philip’s back set with so fierce a strength that henry’s knees trembled before the energy of it. he was disgusted—he was wildly excited. “this is real life.... i’ve seen something at last. i didn’t know people kissed like that, but they oughtn’t to do it in the passage. anyone might see them.... katherine!”
staggered by the contemplation of an utterly new katherine with whom, for the rest of his life, he would be compelled to deal, he slipped into a room as he heard their steps. when they had gone he came out; he knocked on his father’s door:
“i’m sorry to bother you, father,” he began. “i wanted to know whether i might borrow—” he stopped; his heart was beating so wildly that his tongue did not belong to him.
“well, get it and cut.” his father looked at him. “you’ve heard the news, i see.”
“what news?” said henry.
“philip and katherine. they’re engaged, they tell me. not to marry for a year though.... i thought you’d heard it by the look of you. what a mess you’re in! why can’t you brush your hair? look at your tie up the back of your collar! get your book and go! i’m busy!”
but henry went without his book.
katherine went up to her mother’s room. she would catch her alone now for half an hour before tea-time, when many of the family would be assembled, ready for the news. with such wild happiness was she surrounded that she saw them all in the light of that happiness; she had always shared so readily in any piece of good fortune that had ever befallen any one of them that she did not doubt that now they too would share in this fortune—this wonderful fortune!—of hers. she stopped at the little window in the passage where she had had the first of her little personal scraps of talk with philip. little scraps of talks were all that they had been, and yet now, looking back upon them, how weighted they seemed with heavy golden significance. the sky was amber-coloured, the abbey tower sharply black, and the low archway of dean’s yard, that she could just catch with her eye, was hooped against the sky, pushing upwards to have its share in the evening light. there was perfect quiet in the house and beyond it, as she went to her mother’s room. this room was the very earliest thing that she could remember, this, or her mother’s bedroom in the glebeshire house. it was a bedroom that exactly expressed mrs. trenchard, large, clumsy, lit with five windows, mild and full of unarranged trifles that nevertheless arranged themselves. at the foot of the large bed, defended with dark sateen faded curtains, was a comfortable old-fashioned sofa. further away in the middle of a clear space was a table with a muddle of things upon it—a doll half-clothed, a writing-case, a silver ink-stand, photographs of millie, henry and katherine, a little younger than they were now, a square silver clock, a pile of socks with a needle sticking sharply out of them, a little oak book-case with ‘keble’s christian year’, charlotte yonge’s ‘pillars of the house’, two volumes of bishop westcott’s ‘sermons’ and mrs. gaskell’s ‘wives and daughters’. there was also a little brass tray with a silver thimble, tortoiseshell paper-knife, a little mat made of bright-coloured beads, a reel of red silk and a tiny pocket calendar. beside the bed there was a small square oaken table with a fine silver crucifix and a bible and a prayer book and copy of ‘before the throne’ in dark blue leather. the pictures on the walls—they hung against a wall-paper of pink roses, faded like the bedroom curtains and the dark red carpet, but comfortably, happily faded—were prints of ‘ulysses deriding polyphemus’, ‘crossing the brook’, and ‘christ leaving the temple’. these three pictures were the very earliest things of katherine’s remembrance. there were also several photographs of old-fashioned but sturdy ladies and gentlemen—an officer in uniform, a lady with high shoulders against a background of a grey rolling sea. there were photographs of the children at different ages. there were many cupboards, and these, although they were closed, seemed to bulge, as though they contained more clothes than was comfortable for them.
there was a faint scent in the room of eau-de-cologne and burning candles. the little clock on the table gave an irritating, self-important whirr and clatter now and then, and it had been doing that for a great many years.
mrs. trenchard was lying upon her sofa making a little crimson jacket for the half-clothed doll. she did not move when katherine came in, but went on with her work, her fat, rather clumsy-looking fingers moving very comfortably up and down the little piece of red cloth.
“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.
