by Hugh Walpole
“Yes, dear Aggie, I am. I don’t think things as bad as you say. For instance,” and a wonderful recovery would reassure suspicion. The real core of her life was Katherine and Katherine’s future. There was to be, one day, for Katherine a most splendid suitor — a Lord, perhaps, a great politician, a great Churchman, she did not know — but someone who would realise first Katherine’s perfection, secondly the honour of being made a Trenchard, thirdly the necessity of spending all his life in the noble work of making Katherine happy. “I shall miss her — we shall all miss her — but we mustn’t be selfish — hum, hum — she’ll have one to stay, perhaps.”
Very often she came peeping into Katherine’s room as she came to-day. She would take Katherine into her confidence; she would offer her opinion about the events of the hour. She took her stand in the middle of the room, giving little excited pecks at one of her fingers, the one that suffered most from her needle when she sewed, a finger scarred now by a million little stabs. So she stood now, and Katherine, sitting on the edge of her bed, looked up at her.
“I came in, my dear, because you hardly ate any luncheon. I watched you — hardly any at all.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Aunt Betty. I wasn’t hungry.”
“I don’t like your not eating — hum, hum. No, I don’t. Mother always used to say ‘Don’t Eat, can’t Beat’ — of military forces, you know, dear, or anything that had a hard task to perform.”
She looked about her with an aimless and rather nervous smile, which meant that she had something to say but was afraid of it.
“Katie, dear, do you know?” (This with an air of intense importance.) “I don’t think I’ll show Millie my room — not just at first at any rate.”
“Oh, but you must. She’ll be longing to see it.”
“Well, but — will she, do you think? Oh, no, she won’t, not after Paris.... Paris is so grand. Perhaps, later I will — show it her. I mean when she’s more accustomed to the old life.”
But even now it was plain that she had not delivered her purpose. It was imprisoned, like a mouse in a very woolly moth-eaten trap. Soon there will be a click and out it will come!
Her wandering, soft, kindly eyes looked gravely upon Katherine.
“My dear, I wish you’d eaten something. Only a little mince and two of those cheese biscuits.... Katie dear, did you hear what Mr. Mark said at luncheon about leaving us?”
“Yes, Aunt Betty.”
“He said he’d got somewhere from next Monday. Poor young man — not so young now either — but he seems lonely. I’m glad we were able to be kind to him at first. Katie, I have an ‘Idea’.” Impossible to give any picture of the eagerness with which now her eyes were lit and her small body strung on a tiptoe of excitement, “I have an idea.... I think he and Millie — I think he might be just the man for Millie — adventurous, exciting, knowing so much about Russia — and, after Paris, she’ll want someone like that.”
Katherine turned slowly away from her aunt, gazing vaguely, absent-mindedly, as though she had not been thinking of the old lady’s words.
“Oh, no, Aunt Betty. I don’t think so — What an old matchmaker you are!”
“I love to see people happy. And I like him. I think it’s a pity he’s going on Monday. He’s been here a fortnight now. I like him. He’s polite to me, and when a young man is polite to an old woman like me that says a lot — hum, hum — yes, it does. But your mother doesn’t like him — I wonder why not — but she doesn’t. I always know when your mother doesn’t like anybody. Millie will.... I know she will. But I don’t think I’ll show her my things — not at first, not right after Paris.”
“Perhaps it would be better to wait a little.” Katherine went and sat in front of her mirror. She touched the things on her dressing-table.
“I’ll go now, dear — I can’t bear to think of you only having had that mince. My eye will be on you at dinner, mind.”
She peeped out of the door, looked about her with her bright little eyes, then whisked away.
Katherine sat before her glass, gazing. But not at herself. She did not know whose face it was that stared back at her.
Millie’s entrance that afternoon was very fine. There were there to receive her, her grandfather, her great-aunt (in white boa), her father, her mother, Henry, Katherine, Aunt Betty and Aggie, Philip Mark, Esq. She stood in the doorway of the drawing-room radiant with health, good spirits and happiness at being home again — all Trenchards always are. Like Katherine in the humour of her eyes, otherwise not at all — tall, dark, slim in black and white, a little black hat with a blue feather, a hat that was over one ear. She had her grandfather’s air of clear, finely cut distinction, but so alive, so vibrating with health was she that her entrance extinguished the family awaiting her as you blow out a candle. Her cheeks were flushed, her black eyes sparkled, her arms were outstretched to all of them.
“Here I am!” she seemed to say, “I’m sure you’ve forgotten in all this time how delightful I am! — and indeed I’m ever so much more delightful than I was before I went away. In any case here I am, ready to love you all. And there’s no family in the world I’d be gladder to be a member of than this!”
Her sharp, merry, inquisitive eyes sought them all out — sought out the old room with all the things in it exactly as she had always known them, and then the people — one after the other — all of them exactly as she had always known them....
She was introduced to Philip Mark. Her eyes lingered up him, for an instant, mischievously, almost interrogatively. To him she seemed to say: “What on earth are you doing inside here? How did you ever get in? And what are you here for?” She seemed to say to him: “You and I — we know more than these others here — but just because of that we’re not half so nice.”
“Well, Henry,” she said, and he felt that she was laughing at him and blushed. He knew that his socks were hanging loosely. He had lost one of his suspenders.
“Well, Millie,” he answered, and thought how beautiful she was.
It was one of the Trenchard axioms that anyone who crossed the English Channel conferred a favour — it was nice of them to go, as though one visited a hospital or asked a poor relation to stay. Paris must have been glad to have had Millie — it must have been very gay for Paris — and that not because Millie was very wonderful, but simply because Paris wasn’t English.
“It must be nice to be home again, Millie dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard comfortably.
Millie laughed and for a moment her eyes flashed across at Philip Mark, but he was looking at Katherine. She looked round upon them all, then, as though she were wondering how, after all, things were going to be now that she had come home ‘for good’ — now that it would be always and always — well, perhaps not always. She looked again at Philip Mark and liked him. She surrendered herself then to the dip and splash and sparkle of the family waters of affection. They deluged and overwhelmed her. Her old grandfather and the great-aunt sat silently there, watching, with their bird-like eyes, everything, but even upon their grim features there were furrowed smiles.
“And the crossing was really all right?” “The trees in the Park were blowing rather ...” “And so, Milly dear, I said you’d go. I promised for you. But you can get out of it as easily as anything....”
“You must have been sorry, as it was the last time, but you’ll be able to go back later on and see them....”
And her father. “Well, they’ve had her long enough, and now it’s our turn for a bit. She’s been spoiled there.... She won’t get any spoiling here....”
He roared with laughter, flinging his head back, coming over and catching Millie’s head between his hands, laughing above her own laughing eyes. Henry watched them, his father cynically, his sister devotedly. He was always embarrassed by the family demonstrations, and he felt it the more embarrassing now because there was a stranger in their midst. Philip was just the man to think this all odd.... But Henry was anxious about the family behaviour simply becaus
e he was devoted to the family, not at all because he thought himself superior to it.
Then Milly tore herself away from them all. She looked at Katherine.
“I’m going up to my room. Katy, come up and help me—”
“I’d better come and help you, dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard. “There’s sure to be a mess....”
But Milly shook her head with a slight gesture of impatience. “No, no, Mother ... Katy and I will manage.”
“Hilda will do everything if—”
“No, I want to show Katy things....”
They went.
When the two girls were alone in the bedroom and the door was closed Milly flung her arms round Katherine and kissed her again and again. They stood there, in the silence, wrapped in one another’s arms.
“Katy — darling — if you only knew, all this time, how I’ve longed for you. Sometimes I thought ‘I must — I must — see her’ — that’s you. I’d run away — I’d do anything. I don’t think anything matters now that I’ve got you again — and I’ve so much to tell you!”
They sat down on the bed, Millie vibrating with the excitement of her wonderful experiences, Katherine quiet, but with one hand pressing Millie’s and her eyes staring into distance.
Suddenly Millie stopped.
“Katie, dear, who’s this man?”
“What man?”
“The nice-looking man I saw downstairs.”
“Oh, he’s a Mr. Mark. Son of a great friend of father’s. He’s lived in Russia — Moscow — for years. He came in by mistake one night in a fog and found that ours was the house he was coming to next day — then Father asked him to stay—”
“Do you like him?”
“Yes. He’s very nice.”
“He looks nice.”
Milly went on again with her reminiscences. Katherine, saying only a word now and then, listened.
Then, exactly as though she had caught some unexpected sound, Milly broke off again.
“Katy — Katy.”
“Yes.”
“You’re different, something’s happened to you.”
“My dear! — nothing, of course.”
“Yes, something has. — Something ... Katy!” And here Milly flung her arms again about her sister and stared into her eyes. “You’re in love with someone.”
But Katherine laughed. “That’s Paris, Milly dear — Paris — Paris.”
“It isn’t. It isn’t. It’s you. There is someone. Katy, darling, tell me — you’ve always told me everything: who is he? tell me.”
Katherine drew herself away from Milly’s embrace, then turned round, looking at her sister. Then she caught her and kissed her with a sudden urgent passion. “There’s no one, of course there’s no one. I’m the old maid of the family. You know we, long ago, decided that. I’m not ...” she broke off, laughed, got up from the bed. She looked at Milly as though she were setting, subduing some thoughts in her mind. “I’m just the same, Milly. You’re different, of course.”
At a sudden sound both the girls looked up. Their mother stood in the doorway, with her placidity, her mild affection; she looked about the room.
“I had to come, my dears, to see how you were getting on.” She moved forward slowly towards them.
CHAPTER IV. THE FOREST
Part of a letter that Philip Mark wrote to his friend: —
“... I couldn’t stay any longer. They’d had me there a fortnight and then one of the daughters came home from being ‘finished’ in Paris, so that they’ve really no room for strangers. I’ve moved here — not very far away — three furnished rooms in an upper part in a small street off Victoria Street. It’s quiet with an amazing quietness considering its closeness to all the rattle. The Roman Catholic Cathedral is just round the corner — hideous to look at, but it’s nice inside. There’s a low little pub. opposite that reminds me comfortably of one of our beloved ‘Trakteer’ — you see I’m sentimental about Moscow already — more so every day.
“I’ve so much to tell you, and yet it comes down to one very simple thing. I’ve found, I believe, already the very soul I set out to find, set out with yours and Anna’s blessing, remember. You mayn’t tell her yet. It’s too soon and it may so easily come to nothing, but I do believe that if I’d searched England through and through for many years I could never have found anyone so — so — exactly what I need. You must have guessed in that very first letter that it had, even then, begun. It began from the instant that I saw her — it seems to me now to be as deeply seated in me as my own soul itself. But you know that at the root of everything is my own distrust in myself. Perhaps if I had never gone to Russia I should have had more confidence, but that country, as I see it now, stirs always through the hearts of its lovers, questions about everything in heaven or earth and then tells one at the end that nothing matters. And the Englishman that is in me has always fought that distrust, has called it sentimental, feeble, and then again I’ve caught back the superstition and the wonder. In Russia one’s so close to God and the Devil — in England there is business and common-sense. Between the two I’m pretty useless. If you had once seen Katherine you’d know why she seems to me a refuge from all that I’ve been fighting with Anna for so long. She’s clear and true as steel — so quiet, so sure, so much better and finer than myself that I feel that I’m the most selfish hound in the world to dream of attaching her to me. Mind you, I don’t know at present that she’s interested; she’s so young and ignorant in so many ways, with all her calm common-sense, that I’m terrified of alarming her, and if she doesn’t care for me I’ll never disturb her — never. But if she should — well, then, I believe that I can make her happy — I know myself by now. I’ve left my Moscow self behind me just as Anna said that I must. There’s nothing stranger than the way that Anna foretold it all. That night when she shewed me that I must go she drew a picture of the kind of woman whom I must find. She had never been to England, she had only, in all her life, seen one or two Englishwomen, but she knew, she knew absolutely. It’s as though she had seen Katherine in her dreams....
“But I’m talking with absurd assurance. Putting Katherine entirely aside there is all the family to deal with. Trenchard himself likes me — Mrs. Trenchard hates me. That’s not a bit too strong, and the strange thing is that there’s no reason at all for it that I can see, nor have we been, either of us, from the beginning anything but most friendly to one another. If she suspected that I was in love with Katherine I might understand it, but that is impossible. There has been nothing, I swear, to give anyone the slightest suspicion. She detects, I think, something foreign and strange in me. Russia of course she views with the deepest suspicion, and it would amuse you to hear her ideas of that country. Nothing, although she has never been near it nor read anything but silly romances about it, could shake her convictions. Because I don’t support them she knows me for a liar. She is always calm and friendly to me, but her intense dislike comes through it all. And yet I really like her. She is so firm and placid and determined. She adores her family — she will fight for them to the last feather and claw. She is so sure and so certain about everything, and yet I believe that in her heart she is always afraid of something — it’s out of that fear, I am sure, that her hatred of me comes. For the others, the only one who troubled about me was the boy, and he is the strangest creature. He’d like me to give him all my experiences: he hasn’t the slightest notion of them, but he’s morbidly impatient of his own inexperience and the way his family are shutting him out of everything, and yet he’s Trenchard enough to disapprove violently of that wider experience if it came to him. He’d like me, for instance, to take him out and show him purple restaurants, ladies in big hats, and so on. If he did so he’d feel terribly out of it and then hate me. He’s a jumble of the crudest, most impossible and yet rather touching ideas, enthusiasms, indignations, virtues, would-be vices. He adores his sister. About that at least he is firm — and if I were to harm her or make her unhappy!...
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��I suppose it’s foolish of me to go on like this. I’m indulging myself, I can talk to no one. So you ... just as I used to in those first days such years ago when I didn’t know a word of Russian, came and sat by the hour in your flat, talked bad French to your wife, and found all the sympathy I wanted in your kind fat face, even though we could only exchange a word or two in the worst German. How good you were to me then! How I must have bored you!... There’s no one here willing to be bored like that. To an Englishman time is money — none of that blissful ignoring of the rising and setting of sun, moon, and stars that for so many years I have enjoyed. ‘The morning and the evening were the first day....’ It was no Russian God who said that. I’ve found some old friends — Millet, Thackeray, you’ll remember — they were in Moscow two years ago. But with them it is ‘Dinner eight o’clock sharp, old man — got an engagement nine-thirty.’ So I’m lonely. I’d give the world to see your fat body in the doorway and hear your voice rise into that shrill Russian scream of pleasure at seeing me. You should sit down — You should have some tea although I’ve no Samovar to boil the water in, and I’d talk about Katherine, Katherine, Katherine — until all was blue. And you’d say ‘Harosho’ ‘Harosho’ — and it would be six in the morning before we knew.... God help us all, I mustn’t talk about it. It all comes to this, in the end, as to whether a man can, by determination and resolve, of his own will, wipe out utterly the old life and become a new man. All those Russian years — Anna, Paul, Paul’s death, all the thought, the view, the vision of life, the philosophy that Russia gave me — those things have got to disappear.... They never existed. I’ve got again what, all those years, you all said that I wanted — the right to be once again an English citizen with everything, morals and all, cut and dried. I can say, like old Vladimir after his year in Canada, ‘I’d never seen so many clean people in my life.’ I’ve got what I wanted, and I mustn’t — I musn’t — look back.