philip had never had any conceit of himself—that is, he could not remember the time when he had been satisfied with what he had done, or pleased with the figure that he presented. the selfish actions in his life had always arisen from unselfish motives, because he had been afraid of hurting or vexing other people, because he thought other people finer than himself. even when, as in the case of seymour, he burst out in indignation at something that he felt to be pretentious and false, he, afterwards, on thinking it over, wondered whether the man hadn’t after all been right ‘from his point of view.’ it was this ability to see the other person’s point of view that had been, and would always be, the curse of his life.
such men as philip are not among the fine creatures of the world. very rightly they are despised for their weakness, their lack of resistance, their inability to stand up for themselves. it is possible, nevertheless, that in heaven they will find that they, too, have their fine side. and this possibility of an ultimate divine comprehension irritates, very naturally, their fellow human beings who resent any defence of weakness. philip himself would have been the first to resent it. he never consoled himself with thought of heaven, but took, now and then, a half-humorous, half-despairing glance at himself, swore, as he had in those long-ago days sworn about his mother, ‘how this shall never happen again’, and then once more was defeated by his imagination.
in this matter of the trenchards he saw only too plainly, everyone’s point of view; even with aunt aggie he saw that she was an old disappointed woman who disliked change and loved power so long as she need not struggle for it. mrs. trenchard he did not understand, because he was afraid of her. his fear of her had grown and grown and grown, and in that fear was fascination, hatred, and admiration. he felt now quite definitely that he was beaten by her. he had felt that, after she had taken no notice whatever of his public scene with aunt aggie. she would now, he believed, take no notice of anything. he knew also, now, of her hold over katherine. he must stay with katherine because he loved her. therefore he must submit to mrs. trenchard ... it was all quite simple.—meanwhile to submit to mrs. trenchard meant, he knew, to such a character as his, extinction. he knew. oh!... better than anyone else in the world—the kind of creature that, under her influence, he would become. he saw the others under her influence, the men and women of the village, the very chickens and pigs in the neighbouring farms. he knew what he had been under his mother, he knew what he had been under anna, he knew what now he would be under mrs. trenchard. well, extinction was a simple thing enough if you made up your mind to it—why struggle any further?
but day and night, increasingly, as the weeks passed, he was being urged to escape. all this summer, anna, no longer a suggestion, no longer a memory, but now a vital, bodily presence, was urging him. her power over him was not in the least because he was still in love with her—he loved only katherine in all the world—but because of the damnable common-sense of what she said. what she said was this:
“here you are amongst all these funny people. you are too much in the middle of them to see it plainly for yourself, but i’m a ghost and can see everything quite clearly; i know you—better than you know yourself. this mrs. trenchard is determined never to let her daughter go. you say that you love this young woman, although what you can see in her stupid english solidity i can’t imagine. however, you were always a fool.... all the same, if you love her it’s for her sake that you must escape. you know the kind of creature you’re going to be if you stay. what does she want with such a man? when she wakes up, about a week after marriage, and finds you under the thumb of her mother, what will happen to her love? she may continue to love you—english women are so stupid—but she’ll certainly despise you. come back to russia. it isn’t that i want you, or will take you back into my life, but she’ll find out what you’re worth then. if she really loves you she’ll have to come after you. then you’ll have broken with the family and will be free. run away, i tell you. it’s the only thing to do.”
all this he heard during a terribly heavy three weeks with relatives in the north, during a hot and glittering july in london when the world seemed to gyrate with the flashing cabs, the seething crowds, the glass and flowers and scents of a london season. katherine seemed dreadfully far away from him. he was aware very vividly how bad it was for a healthy young man of his age to have no definite occupation. the men whom he knew in town seemed to him both uninteresting and preoccupied. a day in england seemed of so vast a length. in russia time had been of no importance at all, and one day had vanished into another without any sound or sign. here every clock in the town seemed to scream to him that he must take care to make the most of every second. this practical english world, moreover, could offer no friendly solution for the troubles that beset him.
he knew very well that if he asked any man at the club for advice he would be frankly dismissed for a fool. “what! you like the girl but can’t bear the mother-in-law! my dear boy, any music hall will tell you how common that is. wait till you’re married, then you can clear off all right—let the old woman scream as much as you like. what! the girl wants to stay with the mother? well, again, wait till you’re married. the girl will follow you fast enough then!”
how could he expect that any ordinary healthy englishman would understand the soft, billowy, strangling web that the trenchard family had, by this time, wound about him? yes, another six months would complete the business....
one hope remained to him—that when they knew of his immoral life in moscow they would definitely insist on katherine’s leaving him—and, if it came to that, she would stand by him. he knew that she would stand by him. he would himself long ago have told trenchard had he not been sure that someone else would do that for him, and that then the sense of his own subterfuge and concealment would add to their horror and disgust.
the stronger their disgust the better for him.
the day of that disclosure seemed now his only hope. let them fling him off and he knew what katherine would do!...
upon a torrid afternoon, two days after the trenchard-faunder wedding, an irresistible desire to see katherine drove him to the westminster house. he rang the bell, and was told by rocket, who always treated him with an air of polite distrust, that the ladies were out, but might be in at any time.
“i will wait,” said philip.
“very good, sir,” said rocket reluctantly, and showed him into the drawing-room, cool and damp like a green cave. to rocket’s own restrained surprise, old mr. trenchard was there sitting quite alone, with a shawl covering his knees, in a large arm-chair near the empty fireplace.
the old gentleman showed no interest whatever in the opening of the door, and continued to stare in front of him through his gold-rimmed eye-glasses, his hands pressed fiercely into his knees. rocket hesitated a moment, then withdrew, closing the door behind him.
philip advanced slowly into the room. one of his difficulties with old mr. trenchard had always been that he was not sure whether he were truly deaf or no. on certain occasions there had been no question old mr. trenchard was not at all deaf, and then again on others deaf as a crab! he had never shown any marked signs of being aware of philip’s existence. there were many weeks that he spent in his own room, and he could not be said to show a very active consciousness of anyone except katherine, whom he adored, and aunt aggie, whom he hated.
but, altogether, he was to philip a terrible old man. like a silver-grey shadow, beautiful perhaps, with the silver buckles on his shoes, his delicate hands and his snow-white hair, but emphatically terrible to philip, who throve and blossomed under warm human intercourse, and shrivelled into nothing at all under a silent and ghostly disapproval.
but to-day philip was desperate and defiant. this old man would never die any more than this old drawing-room, reflected in the green mirror, would ever change.
“i’d like to smash that mirror,” thought philip, “smash it into pieces. that would change the room if anything would. why, i believe the whole family would tumble like a pack of cards if i smashed that mirror. i believe the old man himself would vanish into thin air.”
“good afternoon, sir,” philip said—and then thought to himself: “why should i be afraid of the old image? he can’t eat me!”
he walked over, close to him, and shouted:
“good afternoon, sir.”
the old man never stirred, not an eyelid quivered, but he replied in his clear, silvery voice, “good afternoon to you.”
he might indeed have been an idol in his old particular temple—the old green room waited around him with the patient austerity that a shrine pays to its deity. the lamp on a distant table flung a mild and decent glow.
“i’m damned if i’m going to be afraid of him,” thought philip, and, taking a chair, he dragged it very close to the other’s throne. sitting there, near to him, it seemed to him that the light, mild though it was, really did go right through the old fellow, his cheeks, like the finest egg-shell china, seemed to catch the glow, store it for an instant in some fine inner receptacle and then pass it out on the other side. it was only the eyes that were not fine. they were true trenchard eyes, and now, in old age, they were dull and almost dead.
they, ever so faintly, hinted that the beauty, fine as the present glass, was of the surface only, and had, behind it, no soul.
“it’s a very hot day,” said philip, in a voice that was intended for a shout if the old man were really deaf and pleasant cheerfulness if he were not, “really very hot indeed. but this room’s so very cool. delightful.”
mr. trenchard did then very slowly raise his head and look at philip through his glasses. then very slowly lowered his eyes again.
“my daughter will be here very shortly to receive you,” he said.
“i’d like to talk to you,” philip said, still very cheerfully. “we’ve not had many talks together, have we? and that really isn’t right, considering that i’m engaged to your grand-daughter.”
the old man picked up a magazine that lay on the little table that was in front of him. “do you ever see blackwood?” he said, as though he were very politely making conversation for a complete stranger. “it’s a magazine for which i have a great liking. it seems to me to keep up its character wonderfully—most agreeable reading—most agreeable reading.”
it was then that philip, looking up, caught a reflection of mr. trenchard’s face in the mirror. it may have been imagination or it may have been the effect of shadow, or again it may have been nothing but truth—in any case it seemed to philip that the old man’s expression was an amazing mixture of pathos and wickedness—a quite intolerable expression. philip made a movement with his hands as though he were brushing away a confusion of cobwebs, then burst out: “look here, i don’t know whether you’re deaf or not—if you are it won’t matter, and if you aren’t we’ll have a straight talk at last. you can’t move until someone comes in to move you, and that may be a long while yet. you aren’t strong enough to knock me down, so that i’m afraid you’ll just have to stay here for a while and listen.... of course you know by this time who i am. it’s no use your pretending.”
philip paused and looked, but the old man had not stirred at all. his hands were still pressed into his knees, his eyes staring through his glasses, and, as his delicate breathing rose and fell, one black button shone in the lamplight and faded again. this immobility seemed to stir more profoundly philip’s anger.
“i’m going to marry your grand-daughter katherine, and of course you hate it and me too. you’re just as selfish as all the others, and more too, i daresay. and you think you can frighten me by just doing nothing except showing you dislike me. but you won’t frighten me—no, never—so you needn’t expect it. i’m going to marry katherine and take her right away from you all, so you may as well make up your mind to it.”
philip, flushed in the face and half expecting that the walls of the house would fall in upon him, paused—but there was no change at all in mr. trenchard’s attitude, unless possibly one shining hand was driven a little more deeply into the knee. there was perhaps some unexpected pathos in the intensity of those pressing fingers, or, perhaps, philip’s desperate challenge was, already, forsaking him. at any rate he went on.
“why can’t you like me? i’m ready enough to like you. i’m not a bad kind of man, and i’ll be very good to katherine, no one could ever be better to anyone than i’ll be to her. but why can’t we lead our own life? you’re an old man—you must have seen a lot in your time—you must know how times alter and one way of thinking gives way to another. you can’t keep a family together by just refusing to listen to anything or anybody. i know that you love katherine, and if you love her really, surely you’ll want her to lead her own life. your life’s nearly over—why should you spoil hers for her?”
he paused again, but now he could not tell whether the eyes were closed or no. was the old man sleeping? or was he fiercely indignant? or was he satirical and smiling? or was he suddenly going to cry aloud for rocket?
the uncertainty and the silence of the room worked terribly upon philip’s nerves. he had begun courageously, but the sound of his voice in all that damp stillness was most unpleasant. moreover, he was a poor kind of fellow, because he always, even in the heat of anger, thought a friend better than an enemy. he was too soft to carry things through.
“he really does look very old,” he thought now, looking at the thin legs, the bones in the neck, the lines on the forehead of the poor gentleman, “and after all it can’t be pleasant to lose katherine.”
“if you’d only,” he went on in a milder voice, “give me a chance. katherine’s much too fond of all of you to give you up simply because she’s married. she isn’t that sort at all. you knew that she’d marry some day. all the trouble has come because you don’t like me. but have you ever tried to? i’m the sort of man that you’ve got to like if you’re to see the best of me. i know that’s my fault, but everyone has to have allowances made for them.”
philip paused. there was a most deadly stillness in the room. philip felt that even the calf-bound thackeray and the calf-bound waverley novels behind the glass screens in the large book-case near the door were listening with all their covers.
not a movement came from the old man. philip felt as though he were addressing the whole house—
he went on. “when you were young you wanted to go on with your generation just as we do now. you believed that there was a splendid time coming, and that none of the times that had ever been would be so fine as the new one. you didn’t want to think the same as your grandfather and be tied to the same things. can’t you remember? can’t you remember? don’t you see that it’s just the same for us?”
still no movement, no sound, no quiver of a shadow in the mirror.
“i’ll be good to her, i swear to you, i don’t want to do anyone any harm. and after all, what have i done? i was rude one sunday night, henry drank too much once, i don’t always go to church, i don’t like the same books—but what’s all that? isn’t everyone different, and isn’t it a good thing that they are?”
he bent forward—“i know that you can do a lot with them all. just persuade them to help, and be agreeable about it. that’s all that’s wanted—just for everyone to be agreeable. it’s such a simple thing, really.”
he had touched mr. trenchard’s knee. with that touch the whole room seemed to leap into hostile activity. he had, quite definitely, the impression of having with one step plunged into a country that bristled with foes behind every bush and tree. the warmth of the old man’s knees seemed to fling him off and cast him out.
old mr. trenchard raised his head with a fierce, furious gesture like the action of a snake striking.
in a voice that was not silvery nor clear, but shaking and thick with emotion, he said:
“i warn you, young man—if you dare to take my grand-daughter away—you’ll kill me!”
before philip could do more than start back with a gesture of dismay, the door had opened and mrs. trenchard and aunt aggie had entered.
meanwhile there was henry.
important events had occurred in henry’s life since that sunday when he had told millie about philip’s terrible past and had shared in that disastrous supper. he was to go to cambridge.
this important decision had apparently followed on aunt aggie’s disclosure of his evil courses, therefore it may be considered that philip was, in this as in the other recent events in the trenchard history, responsible. quite suddenly george trenchard had lifted up his head and said: “henry, you’re to go to cambridge next october. i think that jesus college shall bear the burden of your company. i believe that there are examinations of a kind that you must pass before they will admit you. i have written for papers.”
this declaration should, of course, have been enough to fling henry into a wild ecstasy. before the arrival of philip it would undoubtedly have done so. now, however, he seemed to himself to have progressed already so far beyond jesus college, cambridge. to have troubles and experiences so deep and weighty as compared with anything that anyone at cambridge could possibly have known, and that to propose that he should go there was very little less than an insult.... and for this he blamed philip.
nevertheless the papers arrived. he was, in reality, no fool, and the cambridge ‘little go’ is not the most difficult examination under the sun. at the end of may he went up to cambridge. if one may judge by certain picturesque romances concerned with university life and recently popular amongst us, one is to understand that that first vision of a university thrills with all the passion of one’s first pipe, one’s first beer and one’s first bedmaker or scout, as the case may be. the weather was chill and damp. he was placed in a tiny room, where he knocked his head against the fine old rafters and listened to mice behind the wainscot. his food was horrible, his bedmaker a repulsive old woman, and the streets were filled with young men, who knew not henry and pushed him into the gutter. he hated everyone whom he saw at the examination, from the large, red-faced gentleman who watched him as he wrote, down to the thin and uncleanly youth who bit his nails at the seat next to his own. he walked down petty cury and hated it; he strolled tip the king’s parade and hated that too. he went to king’s college chapel and heard a dull anthem, was spoken to by an enormous porter for walking on the grass and fell over the raised step in the gateway. he was conceited and lonely and hungry. he despised all the world, and would have given his eyes for a friend. he looked forward to his three years in this city (“the best time of your life, my boy. what i would give to have those dear old days over again”) with inexpressible loathing.
he knew, however, three hours of happiness and exultation. this joy came to him during the english essay—the last paper of the examination. there were four subjects from which he might choose, and he selected something that had to do with ‘the connection between english history and english literature.’ of facts he had really the vaguest notion. he seemed to know, through hearsay rather than personal examination, that oliver cromwell was something responsible for ‘the pilgrim’s progress’, that that dissolute monarch charles ii. had to do with the brilliance and audacity of mr. congreve and mr. wycherley, that queen anne in some way produced pope and robespierre, wordsworth, and queen victoria, charlotte mary yonge (he had cared very deeply for ‘the daisy chain’), and our indian empire mr. rudyard kipling. he knew it all as vaguely as this, but he wrote—he wrote divinely, gloriously ecstatically, so that the three hours were but as one moment and the grim nudity of the examination-room as the marbled palaces of his own fantastic dreams. such ecstasy had he known when he began that story about the man who climbed the ricketty stairs. such ecstasy had been born on that day when he had read the first page of the novel about forests—such ecstasy had, he knew in spite of itself, received true nourishment from that enemy of their house, philip.
his spirits fell when he came to himself, saw how many other gentlemen had also written essays and with what indifference and languor the red-faced gentleman hustled his pages in amongst all the others. nevertheless, he did come out of that examination-room with some conviction as to the course that his future life would take, and with a kindness, almost a tenderness, towards this grey town that was going to allow him, even to command him, to write essays for the next three years. with henry one mood succeeded another as rapidly as, in his country, wet weather succeeds fine.
he returned to garth in an outrageous temper. his main feeling now was that philip had spoiled cambridge for him. philip and his immoral life ‘got in’ between all that he saw and dropped a misty veil, so that he could think of nothing in the way that tradition had taught him. he had always had a great respect for tradition.
then as the weeks passed by he was made increasingly unhappy by the strange condition in which he found the family. he was, at heart, the crudest sentimentalist, and his sentimentalism had been fed by nothing so richly as by the cherished conviction that the george trenchards were the most united family in england. he had always believed this; and had never, until now, considered the possibility of any division. but what now did he find? his mother stern, remote, silent, millie irritable, uneasy and critical, aunt aggie always out of temper, aunt betty bewildered and tactless, even his father disturbed and unlike himself. and katie?... he could not have believed that six months would change anyone so utterly.
instead of the reliable, affectionate and stolid sister who had shared with him all her intimacies, her plans, her regrets, her anticipations, he beheld now a stranger who gave him no intimacies at all, avoided him and hid from him her undoubted unhappiness. it was true of him now as it had ever been that ‘he would give his life to make katherine happy,’ but how was he to do anything for her when she would tell him nothing, when she treated him like a stranger, and then blamed him for his hostilities.
if it had been clear that now, after these months of her engagement, she no longer loved philip, the matter would have been simple. he would have proceeded at once to his father and told him all that he knew about philip’s moscow life. but she did love philip—more, yes, far more, than ever—nothing could be clearer than that. this love of katherine’s burned, unceasingly, in henry’s brain. with no other human being could he have felt, so urgently, the flame of it but katherine, whom he had known as he had known himself, so sure, so undramatic, so happily sexless, as she had always seemed to him, that it should be she whom this passion had transformed! from that moment when he had seen her embrace of philip, his imagination had harried him as a dog harries a rabbit, over the whole scale of the world.... love, too, that he had believed was calm, domestic, friendly, reassuring, was in truth unhappy, rebellious, devastating. in the very hearty of her unhappiness seemed to be the fire of her love. this removed her from him as though he had been flung by it into a distant world. and, on every side, he was attacked by this same thing. there were the women whom he had seen that night with philip, there was the woman who had given philip a son in russia, there was here a life, dancing before him, now near him, now far away from him, intriguing him, shaming him, stirring him, revolting him, removing him from all his family, isolating him and yet besetting him with the company of wild, fantastic figures.
he walked the glebeshire roads, spoke to no one, hated himself, loathed philip, was lashed by his imagination, aroused at last to stinging vitality, until he did not know whither to turn for safety.
he came up to london for the faunder-trenchard wedding. late in the afternoon that had seen philip’s conversation with old mr. trenchard henry came into the drawing-room to discover that tea was over and no one was there. he looked into the tea-pot and saw that there was nothing there to cheer him. for a moment he thought of russia, in which country there were apparently perpetual samovars boiling upon ever-ready tables. this made him think of philip—then, turning at some sudden sound, there was aunt aggie in the doorway.
aunt aggie looked cold in spite of the warm weather, and she held her knitting-needles in her hand defiantly, as though she were carrying them to reassure a world that had unjustly accused her of riotous living.
“it’s simply rotten,” said henry, crossly. “one comes in expecting tea and it’s all over. why can’t they have tea at the ordinary time?”
“that’s it,” said aunt aggie, settling herself comfortably into the large arm-chair near the fireplace. “thinking of yourself, henry, of course. learn to be unselfish or you’ll never be happy in this world. i remember when i was a girl—”
“look here!” henry interrupted. “has philip been here this afternoon?”
“mr. mark? yes, he has.”
“did he come to tea?”
“yes.”
she dug her needles viciously into an innocent ball of wool.
“yes,” said henry fiercely, “that’s why they had it early, i suppose—and why i don’t get any—of course.”
“all i know is,” continued aunt aggie, “that he’s put your grandfather into the most dreadful state. he was alone in here with him it seems, and i’m sure i don’t know what he’s said to him, but it upset him dreadfully. i’ve not been well myself to-day, and to have your grandfather—”
but henry again interrupted.
“what did he want coming to-day at all for? he might have waited.”
aunt aggie, however, did not like to be interrupted when she was discussing her health, so she said now sharply: “just look at your hands, henry—why can’t you keep them clean. i should have thought going up to cambridge—”
“oh! i’m all right,” he answered, impatiently. “anyway, i wonder what he told grandfather.”
“why, what could he have told him?” said aunt aggie, eagerly, looking up.
“oh, i don’t know—nothing—only ... oh, rocket, ask them to make some fresh tea. let me have it in here.”
“certainly, mr. henry,” said rocket, removing the tea-pot with an air of strong disapproval.
“really, henry!” aunt aggie exclaimed. “and simply for yourself! why, even though i’ve had the most trying headache all day, i’d never venture to give so much trouble simply for myself.”
“oh, i daresay you’ll have some when it comes,” henry answered, carelessly—then, pursuing his thoughts, he continued: “well, he won’t be coming back to garth with us—that’s one comfort.”
“oh, but he is!” cried aunt aggie, excitedly. “he is! your mother’s asked him to come back with us, and he’s accepted. i simply don’t understand it. your mother dislikes him as much as the rest of us do, and why she should ask him! it can’t be for poor katie’s sake. she’s miserable enough when he’s at garth. i’m sure if things go on like this much longer i shall go and take a little house by myself and live alone. i’d really rather than all this unpleasantness.”
this threat did not apparently alarm henry very greatly, for, bursting out suddenly, he cried: “it’s beastly! perfectly beastly! there we’ve all got to sit watching him make katie miserable. i won’t stand it! i won’t stand it!”
“why you!” said aunt aggie, scornfully. “how can you prevent it! you’re only a boy!”
this epithet stung henry to madness. ah, if aunt aggie only knew all, she’d see that he was very far from being ‘only a boy’—if she only knew the burden of secret responsibility that he’d been bearing during all these weeks. he’d keep secret no longer—it was time that everyone should know the kind of man to whom katherine was being sacrificed. he turned round to his aunt, trembling with anger and excitement.
“you talk like that!” he cried, “but you don’t know what i know!”
“what don’t i know?” she asked eagerly.
“about philip—this man mark—he’s wicked, he’s awful, he’s—abominable!”
“well,” said aunt aggie, dropping her needles. “what’s he done?”
“done!” henry exclaimed, sinking his voice into a horrified and confidential whisper. “he’s been a dreadful man. before, in russia, there’s nothing he didn’t do. i know, because there’s a friend of mine who knew him very well out there. he lived a terribly immoral life. he was notorious. he lived with a woman for years who wasn’t his wife, and they had a baby. there’s nothing he didn’t do—and he never told father a word.” henry paused for breath.
aunt aggie’s cheeks flushed crimson, as they always did when anyone spoke, before her, of sexual matters.
at last she said, as though to herself: “i always knew it—i always knew it. you could see it in his face. i warned them, but they wouldn’t listen.”
henry meanwhile had recovered himself. he stood there looking into the mirror. it was a tragic moment. he had done, after all, what, all these months, he had determined to prevent himself from doing. he saw now, in a flash of accusing anger, what would most certainly follow. aunt aggie would tell everyone. philip would be dismissed—katherine’s heart would be broken.
he saw nothing but katherine, katherine whom he loved with all the ardour of his strange undisciplined quixotic soul. he saw katherine turning to him, reproaching him, then, hiding her grief, pursuing her old life, unhappy for ever and ever. (at this stage in his development, he saw everything in terms of ‘for ever and for ever’.) it never occurred to him that if philip were expelled out of the trenchard eden katherine might accompany him. no, she would remain, a heart-broken monument to henry’s lack of character.
he scowled at his aunt, who sat there thrilled and indignant and happy.
“i say!” he burst out. “of course you mustn’t tell anybody!”
aunt aggie nodded her head and her needles clicked.
“it must remain with wiser and older heads than yours, henry, as to what ought to be done ...” then to herself again: “ah, they’ll wish they’d listened to me now.”
“but i say,” repeated henry, red in the face, standing in front of her, “you really mustn’t. i told it you as a secret.”
“a secret! when everyone in london knows! a nice thing they’ll all think—letting katherine marry a man with such a reputation!”
“no, but look here—you wouldn’t have known anything if i hadn’t told you—and you mustn’t do anything—you mustn’t really. katie loves him—more than ever—and if she were to lose him—”
“much better for her to lose him,” said aunt aggie firmly, “than for her to be miserable for life—much better. besides, think of the abominable way the man’s deceived us! why, he’s no better than a common thief! he—”
“perhaps he hasn’t deceived her,” interrupted henry. “perhaps he’s told her—”
“told her!” cried his aunt. “and do you really suppose that katherine would stay for one moment with a man whose life—my dear henry, how little you know your sister. she certainly has changed lately under that dreadful man’s influence, but she’s not changed so fundamentally as to forget all principles of right and wrong, all delicate feeling.”
“i don’t know,” said henry slowly, “i don’t believe we do know katie a bit. girls are so queer. you think they don’t know a thing about anything, and really they know more than you do.... anyway,” he went on eagerly, “you mustn’t say a word. you mustn’t really. you must give me your promise.”
but before aunt aggie could do more than shake her head there was an interruption. the door opened and philip entered. aunt aggie at once rose from her chair, and, with a rustle and a quiver, without looking at the young man, without speaking left the room.
henry remained, staring at philip, confused and bewildered, furious with himself, furious with aunt aggie, furious with philip. yes, now he had ruined katherine’s life—he and philip between them. that he should not consider it possible that katherine should have her life in her own hands to make or mar was characteristic of the trenchard point of view.
philip, conscious of aunt aggie’s exit, said: “i was just going—i came back to fetch a book that i left here—one that katherine lent me.”
henry made his usual lurching movement, as though he would like to move across the room and behave naturally, but was afraid to trust himself.
“that it?” he asked, pointing gloomily to a novel on the table near him.
“that’s it,” said philip.
“hullo!” cried henry, looking at it more closely. “that’s mine!” it was indeed the novel that had to do with forests and the sea and the liberty of the human soul, the novel that had been to henry the first true gospel of his life and that had bred in him all the troubles, distrusts and fears that a true gospel is sure to breed. henry, when the original book had been delivered back to mudie’s had with ceremony and worship bought a copy for himself. this was his copy.
“it’s my book,” henry repeated, picking it up and holding it defiantly.
“i’m very sorry,” said philip stiffly. “of course i didn’t know. katherine spoke as though it were hers.”
“oh, you can take it,” henry said, frowning and throwing it back on the table.
philip looked at him, then suddenly, laughing, walked over to him, “what’s the matter, henry?” he said catching his arm. “i’ll have it out with the lot of you, i swear i will. you, none of you, say anything—you all just look as though you didn’t know me. you yourself, these last months, have looked as though you’d like to stick a dagger into my back. now, really, upon my word, i don’t know what i’ve done. i’m engaged to katherine, but i’ve behaved as decently about it as i can. i’m not going to take her away from you all if i can help it. i’ve made up my mind to that, now that i see how much she cares for you all. i’ve done my best ... i really have. now, what is it?”
henry was, in spite of himself, touched by this appeal. he glanced at philip’s face and thought, again in spite of himself, what a nice one it was. a horrible suspicion came to him that he liked philip, had always liked him, and this abominable whisper, revealing treachery to all his principles, to all his traditions, to all his moral code, above all to katherine, infuriated him. he tore his arm away.
“if you want to know,” he cried, “it’s because i think you’re a beast, because you’re not fit to touch katie—because—because—i know all about you!”
philip stood there; for a moment a smile trembled to his lips, then was dismissed.
“what do you mean?” he said, sternly.
“mean?” cried henry, allowing himself to be carried along on a tide of indignation that seemed, in some way, in spite of itself, to be quite genuine. “mean? i mean that i’ve known for weeks and weeks the kind of man you are! i know what you did in moscow for years and years, although you may look so quiet. do you think you’re the sort of man to marry katherine? why, you aren’t fit to touch her hand.”
“would you mind,” said philip quietly, “just telling me exactly to what you are referring?”
“why,” said henry, dropping his voice and beginning to mumble, “you had—you had a mistress—in moscow for years, and everyone knew it—and you had a baby—and it died. everyone knows it.”
“well,” said philip quietly, “and what then?”
“oh, you’re going to deny it, i suppose,” said henry, “but i tell you—”
“no,” said philip, “i’m not going to think of denying it. i don’t know where you got your information from, but it’s perfectly true. at the same time i can’t see that it’s your particular business or, indeed, anyone’s. the affair’s absolutely done with—old history.”
“no, i suppose,” cried henry, “it doesn’t seem to be anything to you. you don’t know what a decent family thinks of such things. it’s nothing to you, of course. but we happen to care for katherine more than—more than—you seem to know. and—and she’s everything to us. and we’re not going to let her—to let her marry someone who’s notoriously a—a bad man. no, we’re not. it may seem odd to you, but we’re not.”
philip was standing now beneath the mirror, in front of the fireplace, his hands behind his back.
“my dear henry,” he said, “it’s extremely pleasant to me to hear that you’re so fond of katherine—but has it ever occurred to any of you that she may possibly have a life of her own, that she isn’t going to be dependent on all of you for ever?... and as for you, henry, my boy, you’re a nice character, with charming possibilities in it, but i’m afraid that it can’t be denied that you’re a bit of a prig—and i don’t know that cambridge is exactly the place to improve that defect.”
philip could have said nothing more insulting. henry’s face grew white and his hands trembled.
his voice shaking, he answered: “you can say what you like. all i can tell you is that if you don’t give up katherine i’ll tell father at once the sort of man you are—tell them all. and then you’ll have to go.”
at philip’s heart there was triumph. at last the crisis was threatened for which he had, all this time, been longing. he did not for an instant doubt what katherine would do. ah! if they drove him away she was his, his for ever! and, please god, they would never see glebeshire again!
he was triumphant, but he did not give henry his mood.
“you can do what you please, my son,” he answered, scornfully. “tell ’em all. but brush your hair next time you come down to the drawing-room for tea. even in russia we do that. you don’t know how wild it looks.... now, just hand me that book and i’ll clear out. meanwhile don’t be so childish. you’re going to cambridge, and really must grow up. take my advice. brush your hair, put on a clean collar, and don’t be a prig.”
henry, white with passion, saw nothing but philip’s face. philip the enemy and scorn of the house, philip the ravisher of katherine, philip author of all evil and instigator of all wickedness.
he picked up the book and flung it at philip’s head.
“there’s your book!” he screamed. “take it!... you—you cad!”
the book crashed into the centre of the mirror.
there was a tinkle of falling glass, and instantly the whole room seemed to tumble into pieces, the old walls, the old prints and water-colours, the green carpet, the solemn book-cases, the large arm-chairs—and with the room, the house, and with the house westminster, garth, glebeshire, trenchard and trenchard tradition—all represented now by splinters and fragments of glass, by broken reflections of squares and stars of green light, old faded colours, deep retreating shadows.
“oh!” cried henry! “oh!”
“thank heaven!” laughed philip triumphantly. “one of you’ve done something at last!”
