by Hugh Walpole
Beyond all this there was the sense that Mark had, in a way, invaded the place. It was true that the family had, after that first eventful evening, pressed him to stay, but it had pressed him as though it had, upon itself, felt pressure — as though its breath had been caught by the impact of some new force and, before it could recover from its surprise, behold the force was there, inside the room with the doors closed behind it.
“It’s hardly decent for him to stay on like this,” thought Henry, “and yet after all we asked him. And ... he is jolly!”
Jolly was something that only Henry’s father and Uncle Tim of the Trenchard family could be said to be, and its quality was therefore both enlivening and alarming.
“Mother won’t like it, if he’s too jolly,” thought Henry, “I’m not sure if she likes it now.”
Henry had, upon this afternoon, an extra cause for anxiety; a friend of his, a friend of whom he was especially proud, was coming to tea. This friend’s name was Seymour and he was a cheerful young man who had written several novels and was considered ‘promising’ —
The Trenchards had a very slight knowledge of that world known as ‘the Arts’ and they had (with the exception of Henry) a very healthy distrust of artists as a race.
But young Seymour was another affair. He was a gentleman, with many relations who knew Trenchards and Faunders; his novels were proper in sentiment and based always upon certain agreeable moral axioms, as for instance “It is better to be good than to be bad” and “Courage is the Great Thing” and “Let us not despise others. They may have more to say for themselves than we know.”
It was wonderful, Mrs. Trenchard thought, that anyone so young should have discovered these things. Moreover he was cheerful, would talk at any length about anything, and was full of self-assurance. He was fat, and would soon be fatter; he was nice to everyone on principle because “one doesn’t know how much a careless word may harm others.” Above all, he was ‘jolly’. He proclaimed life splendid, wished he could live to a thousand, thought that to be a novelist was the luckiest thing in the world. Some people said that what he really meant was “To be Seymour was the luckiest thing in the world” ... but everyone has their enemies.
Henry was nervous about this afternoon because he felt — and he could not have given his reasons — that Mark and Seymour would not get on. He knew that if Mark disliked Seymour he, Henry, would dislike Mark. Mark would be criticising the Trenchard taste — a dangerous thing to do. And, perhaps, after all — he was not sure — he looked across the dark intervening shadow into the light where Mark was sitting — the fellow did look conceited, supercilious. No one in the world had the right to be so definitely at his ease.
There came in then Rocket and a maid with the tea, Katherine, and finally Aunt Aggie with Harvey Seymour.
“I found Mr. Seymour in the Hall,” she said, looking discontentedly about her and shivering a little. “Standing in the Hall.”
Seymour was greeted and soon his cheerful laugh filled the room. He was introduced to Mark. He was busy over tea. “Sugar? Milk?”
“Nice sharp twang in the air, there is. Jolly weather. I walked all the way from Knightsbridge. Delightful. Cake? Bread and butter? Hello, Henry! You ought to have walked with me — never enjoyed anything so much in my life.”
Mrs. Trenchard’s broad, impassive face was lighted with approval as a lantern is lit. She liked afternoon-tea and her drawing-room and young cheerful Seymour and the books behind the book-case and the ticking of the clock. A cosy winter’s afternoon in London! What could be pleasanter? She sighed a comfortable, contented sigh....
Mark was seized, as he sat there, with a drowsy torpor. The fire seemed to draw from the room all scents that, like memories, waited there for some compelling friendly warmth. The room was close with more than the Trenchard protection against the winter’s day — it was packed with a conscious pressure of all the things that the Trenchards had ever done in that room, and Mrs. Trenchard sat motionless, placid, receiving these old things, encouraging them and distributing them. Mark was aware that if he encouraged his drowsiness he would very shortly acquiesce in and submit to — he knew not what — and the necessity for battling against this acquiescence irritated him so that it was almost as though everyone in the room were subtly taking him captive and he would be lost before he was aware. Katherine, alone, quiet, full of repose, saying very little, did not disturb him. It was exactly as though all the other persons present were wishing him to break into argument and contradiction because then they could spring upon him.
His attention was, of course, directed to Seymour’s opinions, and he knew, before he heard them, that he would disagree violently with them all.
They came, like the distant firing of guns, across the muffled drowziness of the room.
“I assure you, Mrs. Trenchard.... I assure you ... assure you. You wouldn’t believe.... Well, of course, I’ve heard people say so but I can’t help disagreeing with them. One may know very little about writing oneself — I don’t pretend I’ve got far — and yet have very distinct ideas as to how the thing should be done. There’s good work and bad, you know — there’s no getting over it....
“But, my dear Henry ... dear old chap ... I assure you. But it’s a question of Form. You take my word a man’s nothing without a sense of Form ... Form ... Form.... Yes, of course, the French are the people. Now the Russians.... Tolstoi, Dostoevsky ... Dostoevsky, Mrs. Trenchard. Well, people spell him different ways. You should read ‘War and Peace’. Never read ‘War and Peace’? Ah, you should and ‘Crime and Punishment’. But compare ‘Crime and Punishment’ with ‘La maison Tellier’ ... Maupassant — The Russians aren’t in it. But what can you expect from a country like that? I assure you....”
Quite irresistibly, as though everyone in the room had said: “There now. You’ve simply got to come in now”, Mark was drawn forward. He heard through the sleepy, clogged and scented air his own voice.
“But there are all sorts of novels, aren’t there, just as there are all sorts of people? I don’t see why everything should be after the same pattern.”
He was violently conscious then of Seymour’s chin that turned, slowly, irresistibly as the prow of a ship is turned, towards him — a very remarkable chin for its size and strength, jutting up and out, surprising, too, after the chubby amiability of the rest of his face. At the same moment it seemed to Mark that all the other chins in the room turned towards him with stern emphasis.
A sharp little dialogue followed then: Seymour was eager, cheerful and good-humoured — patronising, too, perhaps, if one is sensitive to such things.
“Quite so. Of course — of course. But you will admit, won’t you, that style matters, that the way a thing’s done, the way things are arranged, you know, count?”
“I don’t know anything about writing novels — I only know about reading them. The literary, polished novel is one sort of thing, I suppose. But there is also the novel with plenty of real people and real things in it. If a novel’s too literary a plain man like myself doesn’t find it real at all. I prefer something careless and casual like life itself, with plenty of people whom you get to know....” Seymour bent towards him, his chubby face like a very full bud ready to burst with the eagerness of his amiable superiority.
“But you can’t say that your Russians are real people — come now. Take Dostoevsky — take him for a minute. Look at them. Look at ‘Les Frères Karamazoff’. All as mad as hatters — all of ’em — and no method at all — just chucked on anyhow. After all, Literature is something.”
“Yes, that’s just what I complain of,” said Mark, feeling as though he were inside a ring of eager onlookers who were all cheering his opponent. “You fellows all think literature’s the only thing. It’s entirely unimportant beside real life. If your book is like real life, why then it’s interesting. If it’s like literature it’s no good at all except to a critic or two.”
“And I suppose,” cried Seymour, scornfully, h
is chin rising higher and higher, “that you’d say Dostoevsky’s like real life?”
“It is,” said Mark, quietly, “if you know Russia.”
“Well, I’ve never been there,” Seymour admitted. “But I’ve got a friend who has. He says that Russian fiction’s nothing like the real thing at all. That Russia’s just like anywhere else.”
“Nonsense” — and Mark’s voice was shaking— “Your friend ... rot—” He recovered himself. “That’s utterly untrue,” he said.
“I assure you—” Seymour began.
Then Mark forgot himself, his surroundings, his audience.
“Oh — go to Blazes!” he cried. “What do you know about it? You say yourself you’ve never been there. I’ve lived in Moscow for years!”
There was then a tremendous silence, Mrs. Trenchard, Aunt Aggie, Henry, all looked at Seymour as though they said, “Please, please, don’t mind. It shall never happen again.”
Katherine looked at Mark. During that moment’s silence the winter afternoon with its frost and clear skies, its fresh colour and happy intimacies, seemed to beat about the house. In Mark, the irritation that he had felt ever since Seymour’s sentence, seemed now to explode within him, like the bursting of some thunder cloud. He was for a moment deluged, almost drowned by his impotent desire to make some scene, in short, to fight, anything that would break the hot stuffy closeness of the air and let in the sharp crispness of the outer world.
But the episode was at an end. Katherine closed it with:
“Tell Mr. Seymour some of those things that you were telling us last night — about Moscow and Russian life.”
Mrs. Trenchard’s eyes, having concluded their work of consoling Seymour, fastened themselves upon Mark, — watching like eyes behind closed windows; strangely in addition to their conviction that some outrage had been committed there was also a suspicion of fear — but they were the mild, glazed eyes of a stupid although kindly woman....
Mark that evening, going up to dress for dinner, thought to himself, “I really can’t stay here any longer. It isn’t decent, besides, they don’t like me.” He found, half in the dusk, half in the moonlight of the landing-window Katherine, looking for an instant before she went to her room, at the dark Abbey-towers, the sky with the stars frosted over, it seemed, by the coldness of the night, at the moon, faintly orange and crisp against the night blue.
He stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said abruptly, looking into her eyes, very soft and mild but always with that lingering humour behind their mildness. “I’m afraid I was rude to that fellow this afternoon.”
“Yes,” she said, turning to him but with her eyes still on the black towers. “You were — but it would have no effect on Mr. Seymour.”
He felt, as he stood there, that he wished to explain that he was not naturally so unpolished a barbarian.
“Russia,” he began, hesitating and looking at her almost appealingly, “is a sore point with me. You can’t tell — unless you’ve lived there how it grows upon you, holds you, and, at last, begs you to stand up for it whenever it may be attacked. And he didn’t know — really he didn’t—”
“You’re taking it much too seriously,” she said, laughing at him, he felt. “No one thought that he did know. But Mother likes him and he’s Henry’s friend. And we all stick together as a family.”
“I’m afraid your mother thought me abominable,” he said, looking up at her and looking away again.
“Mother’s old-fashioned,” Katherine answered. “So am I — so are we all. We’re an old-fashioned family. We’ve never had anyone like you to stay with us before.”
“It’s abominable that I should stay on like this. I’ll go to-morrow.”
“No, don’t do that. Father loves having you. We all like you — only we’re a little afraid of your ways” — she moved down the passage. “We’re very good for you, I expect, and I’m sure you’re very good for us.” She suddenly turned back towards him, and dropping her voice, quite solemnly said to him, “The great thing about us is that we’re fond of one another. That makes it all the harder for anyone from outside....”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said, carrying on her note of confidence, “I like people to like me. I’m very foolish about it. It’s the chief thing I want.”
“I like people to like me, too,” Katherine answered, raising her voice and moving now definitely away from him. “Why shouldn’t one?” she ended. “Don’t you be afraid, Mr. Mark. It’s all right.”
He dressed hurriedly and came down to the drawing-room, with some thought in the back of his mind that he would, throughout the evening, be the most charming person possible. He found, however, at once a check....
Under a full blaze of light Grandfather Trenchard and Great Aunt Sarah were sitting, waiting for the others. The old man, his silver buckles and white hair gleaming, sat, perched high in his chair, one hand raised before the fire, behind it the firelight shining as behind a faint screen.
Aunt Sarah, very stiff, upright and slim, was the priestess before the Trenchard temple. They, both of them, gazed into the fire. They did not turn their heads as Mark entered; they had watched his entry in the Mirror.
He shouted Good-evening, but they did not hear him. He sat down, began a sentence.
“Really a sharp touch in the air—” then abandoned it, seizing ‘Blackwood’ as a weapon of defence. Behind his paper, he knew that their eyes were upon him. He felt them peering into ‘Blackwood’s’ cover; they pierced the pages, they struck him in the face.
There was complete silence in the room. The place was thick with burning eyes. They were reflected, he felt, in the Mirror, again and again.
“How they hate me!” he thought.
CHAPTER III. KATHERINE
Katherine Trenchard’s very earliest sense of morality had been that there were God, the Trenchard’s and the Devil — that the Devil wished very much to win the Trenchards over to His side, but that God assured the Trenchards that if only they behaved well He would not let them go — and, for this, Troy had burnt, Carthage been razed to the ground, proud kings driven from their thrones and humbled to the dust, plague, pestilence, and famine had wrought their worst....
The Trenchards were, indeed, a tremendous family, and it was little wonder that the Heavenly Powers should fight for their alliance. In the county of Glebeshire, where Katherine had spent all her early years, Trenchards ran like spiders’ webs, up and down the lanes and villages.
In Polchester, the Cathedral city, there were Canon Trenchard and his family, old Colonel Trenchard, late of the Indian army, the Trenchards of Polhaze and the Trenchards of Rothin Place — all these in one small town. There were Trenchards at Rasselas and Trenchards (poor and rather unworthy Trenchards) at Clinton St. Mary. There was one Trenchard (a truculent and gout-ridden bachelor) at Polwint — all of these in the immediate neighbourhood of Katherine’s home. Of course they were important to God....
In that old house in the village of Garth in Roselands, where Katherine had been born, an old house up to its very chin in deep green fields, an old house wedded, hundreds of years ago to the Trenchard Spirit, nor likely now ever to be divorced from it, Katherine had learnt to adore with her body, her soul and her spirit Glebeshire and everything that belonged to that fair county, but to adore it, also, because it was so completely, so devoutly, the Trenchard heritage. So full were her early prayers of petitions for successive Trenchards, “God bless Father, Mother, Henry, Millie, Vincent, Uncle Tim, Uncle Wobert, Auntie Agnes, Auntie Betty, Cousin Woger, Cousin Wilfrid, Cousin Alice, etc., etc.,” that, did it ever come to a petition for someone unhappily not a Trenchard the prayer was offered with a little hesitating apology. For a long while Katherine thought that when Missionaries were sent to gather in the heathen they were going out on the divine mission of driving all strangers into the Trenchard fold.
Not to be a Trenchard was to be a nigger or a Chinaman.
And here I would remark with all possible emphasis
that Katherine was never taught that it was a fine and a mighty thing to be a Trenchard. No Trenchard had ever, since time began, considered his position any more than the stars, the moon and the sun consider theirs. If you were a Trenchard you did not think about it at all. The whole Trenchard world with all its ramifications, its great men and its small men, its dignitaries, its houses, its Castles, its pleasure-resorts, its Foreign Baths, its Theatres, its Shooting, its Churches, its Politics, its Foods and Drinks, its Patriotisms and Charities, its Seas, its lakes and rivers, its Morality, its angers, its pleasures, its regrets, its God and its Devil, the whole Trenchard world was a thing intact, preserved, ancient, immovable. It took its stand on its History, its family affection, its country Places, its loyal Conservatism, its obstinacy and its stupidity. Utterly unlike such a family as the Beaminsters with their preposterous old Duchess (now so happily dead) it had no need whatever for any self-assertion, any struggle with anything, any fear of invasion. From Without nothing could attack its impregnability. From Within? Well, perhaps, presently ... but no Trenchard was aware of that.
A young Beaminster learnt from the instant of its breaking the Egg that it must at once set about showing the world that it was a Beaminster.
A young Trenchard never considered for a single second that he was supposed to show anyone anything. He was ... that was enough.