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.
