by Hugh Walpole
“I believe I can carry it all through if I can get Katherine — get her and keep her and separate her from the family. She’s got to belong to me and not to the Trenchards. Moscow — The Trenchards! Oh, Paul, there’s a Comedy there — and a tragedy too perhaps. I’m an ass, but I’m frightened. I think I’m doing the finest things and, when they’re done, they turn out the rottenest. Supposing I become a Trenchard myself? Think of that night when Paul died. Afterwards we went up to the Kremlin, you remember. How quiet it was and how entirely I seemed to have died with Paul, and then how quickly life was the same again. But at any rate Moscow cared for me and told me that it cared — London cares nothing ... not even for the Trenchards....
“Think of me, Paul, as often as you can. Think of that afternoon in the restaurant when you first showed me how to drink Vodka and I told you in appalling German that Byron and Wilde weren’t as good as you thought them.... Think of me, old man. I believe I’m in for a terrible business. If Katherine loves me the family will fight me. If she doesn’t love me nothing else now seems to matter ... and, with it all, I’m as lonely as though I were a foreigner who didn’t know a word of English and hadn’t a friend.... I’ve got my Ikon up on the right corner — Near it is a print of ‘Queen Victoria receiving news of her accession to the throne of England’ ...”
Philip Mark sat, day after day, in his ugly sitting-room and thought of Katherine Trenchard. It was nearly a fortnight now since he had come to these rooms — he had not, during that time, seen Katherine; he had called once at the Trenchard’s house; he had spent then half an hour alone with Mrs. Trenchard and Aunt Aggie.
In these fourteen days she had grown from an attractive thought into a compelling, driving impulse. Because his rooms were unattractive and because he was sick for Moscow (although he would not admit that) therefore he had turned to the thought of her to comfort him; now he was a slave to the combination of it.... He must see her, he must speak to her, he must have something to remember.... He must not speak to her, he must not see her lest he should be foolish and ruin all his friendship with her by frightening her; and, meanwhile, in these long, long evenings the lamp from the street below trembled and trembled on his wall as though London, like some hostile policeman, were keeping its eye upon him, and warned him not to go too far.
The history of Philip Mark, its past, its present, and its future, is to be found clearly written in the character of his mother. His mother had been a woman of great force, resolve and determination. She had in complete subjection those who composed her world. She was kind as the skilful executioner is kind who severs a head with one neat blow; her good-humoured husband, her friendly, sentimental, idealistic son submitted, utterly, without question, to her kindness. She had died when Philip was twenty-one, and instantly Philip and his father had discovered, to their immense surprise, their immense relief. Philip’s father had married at once a young clergyman’s daughter of no character at all, and was compelled to divorce her four years later. Philip, to show his new and splendid independence, had discovered an opening in a cloth business in Moscow. He went there and so remained until, in his thirtieth year, the death of his father had presented him with fifteen hundred pounds a year.
Always, through all the Russian time, it had been his dream that he would one day be an English land-owner with a house and a wood, fields and children, white gates and a curving drive. He had come home now to realise this ambition.
The central motive of Philip’s existence was that he always desired, very seriously, sometimes desperately, to be all these things that the elements in his character would always prevent him from being. For instance, awaking, at his mother’s death, from her relentless domination, he resolved that he would never be influenced by anyone again; five minutes after this determination he was influenced by the doctor who had attended his mother, the lawyer who read her will, and the clergyman who buried her.
It had seemed to him, as he grew up in England, that the finest thing in the world was to be (when he was sixteen) like St. Francis of Assisi, (when he was nineteen) like Shelley, (when he was twenty-one) like Tolstoi, and the worst thing in the world was to be a commonplace English Squire. He went to Russia and, at once, concluded that there was nothing like the solid, sensible beef-eating English Squire for helping on the World, and that, as I have said, as soon as he was rich enough, he would settle down in England, with, his estate, his hunters and his weekly ‘Spectator’.
Meanwhile he was influenced more and more by Russia and the Russians. He did not really desire to be strong, sober, moral, industrious, strong-minded, but only kindly, affectionate, tolerant, with every one man for his friend.... He found in Russia that the only thing demanded of him was that he should love his brother. He made an immense number of friends, lived with a Russian girl, Anna Petrovna Semyonov, (she danced in the Moscow Imperial Ballet) for three years, and had, by her, a son who died. At the end of that time his father’s death gave him the opportunity of doing what he had always declared to every Russian was the ambition of his life — to settle in England as an English land-owner. Anna was fond of him now, but not at all in love with him — they were the best friends in the world. She believed, very seriously, that the greatest thing for him would be to find a nice English girl whom he could love, marry, and make the mother of his children.
Philip had, during these Russian years, grown stronger in character, and still was determined that the worst thing in the world was to be under anyone’s domination. He was however under the power of anyone who showed him affection; his outlook was now vehemently idealistic, romantic and sentimental, although, in the cloth business, he was hard-headed, cynical, and methodical. Did a human being care for him, and he would do anything for him; under the influence of anyone’s affection the world became so rosy to him that he lost all count of time, common-sense and digestion.
Anna was really fond of him, although often enough she was desperately bored with him. She had always mothered him, but thought now that an English girl would mother him better. She sent him home. He was very young for his thirty years, but then from the age of anyone who has lived in Russia for long, you may take away, always, twenty years.
He was resolved now to be the most English of all English — to be strong, hard-headed, a little cynical, unsentimental.... He had, of course, fallen in love with the first English girl whom he met. Meanwhile he did not entirely assist his cynical hardheadedness by writing long, introspective letters to his Russian friend. However, to support his resolute independence, he had always in front of him on his writing-table a photograph of his mother.
“It shall never be like that again”, he would say to himself, looking fixedly at the rather faded picture of a lady of iron-grey hair and a strong bosom clad in shining black silk. “Won’t it, my son?” said his mother, looking back at him with a steely twinkle somewhere in her eye. “Won’t it?”
Meanwhile there was no place in London where, at three in the morning, he might drink with his friends and discover that all the world loved him. He was very lonely in London, and wanted Katherine more desperately with every tick of the Ormolu clock on the marble mantelpiece; but he would not go to see her.... One glance at his mother’s photograph was enough to settle that. No, he would not....
Then he met her. Upon a lonely November afternoon he walked along the Embankment, past Lambeth Bridge, into the melancholy, deserted silences of Pimlico. He turned back, out of the little grey streets on to the river again, and stood, for a while, looking back over the broad still sheet of the river, almost white in colour but streaked with black lines of shadow that trembled and wavered as though they were rods about to whip the water into storm. The sky was grey, and all the buildings clustered against it were grey, but slowly, as though some unseen hand were tearing the sky like tissue paper, a faint red background was stealing into the picture and even a little faint gold that came from God knows where flitted, in and out, upon the face of the river.
Heavy black barges
lay, like ancient prehistoric beasts, in the slime left now by the retreating tide. One little tug pushed desperately up stream as though it would force some energy into this dreaming, dying world — a revolutionary striving to stir the dim silences that watched, from either bank, into protest.
The air was sharply cold and there was a smell of smoke somewhere — also of tar and cabbage and mud.... The red light pushed and pushed its way upwards.
The silence emphasised, with rather a pleasing melancholy, Philip’s loneliness. It seemed, down here, as though London were a dead city and he, only, alive in it. Katherine, too, was alive somewhere.... He looked and, as in one’s dreams absurdity tumbles upon the heels of absurdity, he saw her walking alone, coming, as yet without any recognition in her eyes, towards him.
The world was dead and he was dead and Katherine — let it stay so then.... No, the world was alive. She had recognised him; she had smiled — the air was suddenly warm and pulsating with stir and sound. As she came up to him he could think of nothing but the strange difference that his fortnight’s absorption in her had made for him. His being with her now was as though he had arrived at some long-desired Mecca after a desperate journey of dust and strain and peril. As he greeted her he felt “A fortnight ago we had only just met, but now we have known each other for years and years and years — but perhaps she does not know that yet.”
But he knew, as she gave him her hand, that she felt a little awkwardness simply because she was so glad to see him — and she had never been awkward with him before.
“You’ve been hiding from us,” she said. Her cheeks were flaming because she had walked fast, because the air was frosty — because she was glad to see him. Her coat and muff were a little old-fashioned and not very becoming to her — all the more did he praise the beautiful kindliness of her eyes. “I’m in love with you,” he wanted to say to her. “Do you care that I am?” ... He turned at her side and they faced together the reddening sky. The whole city lay in absolute silence about them as though they were caught together into a ball of grey evening cloud.
“I haven’t hidden,” he said, smiling, “I came and called, but you were not there.”
“I heard,” she answered, “Aunt Aggie said you were very agreeable and amusing — I hope you’re happy in your rooms.”
“They’re all right.”
“We miss you. Father’s always beginning to tell you something and then finding that you’re gone. Henry—”
“Your Mother?”
“Ah, you were quite wrong about Mother. You thought that she disliked you. You care much too much, by the way, whether people like you or no. But Mother’s hard, perhaps, to get to know. You shocked and disturbed her a little, but she didn’t dislike you.”
Although he had asserted so definitely that Mrs. Trenchard hated him, he had reassured himself, in his own heart, that she rather liked him — now when he saw in spite of Katherine’s words that she really had disliked him, he felt a little shock of dismay.
“You may say what you like,” he said, “I know—”
“No, you don’t understand. Mother is so absorbed by all of us. There are a great many of us, you know — that it takes a long time for her to realise anyone from outside. You were so much from outside. She was just beginning to realise you when you went away. We are all so much to her. In a family as big as ours there are always so many things....”
“Of course,” he said, “I know. As to myself, it’s natural enough. At present I miss Moscow — but that will be all right soon.”
She came a little closer to him, and her eyes were so kindly that he looked down upon the ground lest his own eyes should betray him.
“Look here — come to us whenever you like. Why, all this time, have you kept away? Wasn’t it what you were always telling us about your friends in Moscow that their houses were open to everyone always? You must miss that. Don’t be lonely whatever you do. There are ever so many of us, and some of us are sure to be in.”
“I will,” he said, stammering, “I will.”
“Henry’s always asking questions about Russia now. You’ve had a great effect upon him, and he wants you to tell him ever so much more. Then there’s Millie. She hasn’t seen you at all yet. You’ll like her so much. There’s Vincent coming back from Eton. Don’t be lonely or homesick. I know how miserable it is.”
They were in the Square by the Church outside her house; above the grey solid building the sky had been torn into streaming clouds of red and gold.
He took her hand and held it, and suddenly as she felt his pressure the colour flooded her face; she strove to beat it down — she could not. She tried to draw her hand away — but her own body, as though it knew better than she, defied her. She tried to speak — no words would come.
She tried to tell him with her eyes that she was indifferent, but her glance at him showed such triumph in his gaze that she began to tremble.
Then he released her hand. She said nothing — only with quick steps hurried into the house. He stood there until she had disappeared, then he turned round towards his rooms.
He strode down Victoria Street in such a flame of exultation as can flare this World into splendour only once or twice in a lifetime. It was the hour when the lights come out, and it seemed to him that he himself flung fire here, there, for all the world to catch, now high into a lamp-post, now low beneath some basement window, now like a cracker upon some distant trees, now, high, high into the very evening blue itself. The pavement, the broad street, the high, mysterious buildings caught and passed the flame from one to another.
An ancient newspaper man, ragged in a faded tail coat, was shouting “Finals! Finals! All the Finals!” but to Philip’s ear he was saying— “She cares for you! she cares for you! Praise God! What a world it is.”
He stumbled up the dark stairs of his house past the door from whose crevices there stole always the scent of patchouli, past the door, higher up, whence came, creeping up his stairs the suggestion of beef and cabbage, into his own dark lodging. His sitting-room had its windows still open and its blinds still up. The lamp in the street below flung its squares of white light upon his walls; papers on his table were blowing in the evening breeze, and the noise of the town climbed up, looked in through the open windows, fell away again, climbed up again in an eternal indifferent urgency. He was aware that a man stood by the window, a wavering shadow was spread against the lighted wall.
Philip stopped in the doorway.
“Hullo!” he said, “who’s there?”
A figure came forward. Philip, to whom all the world was, to-night, a fantasy, stared, for a moment, at the large bearded form without recognising it — wild and unreal as it seemed in the dim room. The man chuckled.
“Well, young man. I’ve come to call, I got here two minutes before you.”
It was Uncle Tim, Mrs. Trenchard’s brother, Timothy Faunder, Esq.
“I beg your pardon,” said Philip, “the room was dark and — and — as a matter of fact I was thinking of something rather hard as I came in. Wait a minute. You shall have some light, tea and a cigarette in a moment.”
“No, thanks.” Uncle Tim went back to the window again. “No tea — no cigarette. I hate the first. The second’s poisonous. I’ve got a pipe here — and don’t light up — the room’s rather pleasant like this. I expect it’s hideous when one can see it.”
Philip was astonished. He had liked Tim Faunder, but had decided that Tim Faunder was indifferent to him — quite indifferent. For what had he come here? Sent by the family?... Yes, he liked Uncle Tim, but he did not want him or anyone else in the world there just then. He desired to sit by the open window, alone, to think about Katherine, to worship Katherine!
They both sat down; Faunder on the window-seat, Philip near by. The noise of the town was distant enough to make a pleasant rumbling accompaniment to their voices. The little dark public-house opposite with its beery eye, a dim hanging lamp in the doorway, watched them.
“W
ell, how are you?” said Faunder, “lonely?”
“It was at first,” said Philip, who found it immensely difficult to tie his thoughts to his visitor. “And I hadn’t been lonely for so long — not since my first days in Moscow.”
“They were lonely then?”
“Oh, horribly. My first two months there were the worst hours in all my life. I wanted to learn Russian, so I kept away from English people — and Russian’s difficult to pick up at first.”
Faunder made one of the rumbling noises in his throat that always testified to his interest.
“I like what you said — over there, at my sister’s,” he waved his hand, “about Russia — and about everything. I listened, although perhaps you didn’t think it. I hope you’re going to stick to it, young man.”
“Stick to what?”
“Your ideas about things — everything being for the best. There’s a great time coming — and the Trenchards are damned fools.”
“But I never—”
“Oh, yes, you did. You implied it. Nobody minded, of course, because the Trenchards know so well that they’re not. They don’t bother what people think, bless them. Besides, you don’t understand them in the least — nor won’t ever, I expect.”
“But,” said Philip, “I really never thought for a moment.”
“Don’t be so afraid of hurting people’s feelings. I liked your confidence. I liked your optimism. I just came this afternoon to see whether a fortnight alone had damped it a little.”
Philip hesitated. It would be very pleasant to say that no amount of personal trouble could alter his point of view; it would be very pleasant to say that the drearier his personal life was the surer he was of his Creed. He hesitated — then spoke the truth.