by Hugh Walpole
“Now, look here,” his eyes said, “I’m the dreadful young man who is teaching your boy Henry to drink, who’s ruining your domestic peace — surely you’re not, without protest, going to allow me a whole day with Katherine!”
And her eyes answered him.
“Oh, I’m not afraid.... You’ll come back. You’re a weak young man.”
In the train he considered, with a beating heart, his project. The day encouraged adventure, boldness, romance; he was still young enough to believe in the intangible illusion of a Deity Who hangs His signs and colours upon the sky to signify His approval of one bold mortal’s projects, and no ironic sense of contrast attacked, as yet, his belief. If the Trenchards refused to make the incident of Sunday night a crisis, he would, himself, force them to recognise it. He had been passive long enough ... he did not know that, all his life, he had never been anything else.
In the train they talked to one another very little. He watched her and was bewildered, as are all lovers, by her proximity and her remoteness. The very love that brought her so close to him made her the more remote because it clothed her in strange mystery.
She was further from him than Anna had ever been, because he loved her more deeply ... and at the thought of Anna — so constant now and so sinister — he had a sudden fear of the success of his project....
Clinton St. Mary is a village, with one ugly street, on the very edge of Roche St. Mary Moor. It has visitors from the outside world because, in a hollow in the moor, lie the remains of St. Arthe Church, one of the earliest Christian buildings in Great Britain, ‘buried until lately in the sand, but recently excavated through the kind generosity of Sir John Porthcullis, Bart., of Borhaze, and shown to visitors, 6d. a head — Wednesday and Saturday afternoons free.’ Tourists therefore continually patronise ‘The Hearty Cow’ in Clinton, where there is every day a cold luncheon — ham, chicken, beef, tart, junket, cheese — for half-a-crown a-head. Katherine also had relations here, the Vicar, the Rev. James Trenchard, being a cousin ‘and a dear old man’. However, to-day the world should be for themselves alone. In the village they bought ginger-beer, ham-sandwiches, saffron buns, chocolate. They set off across the Moor.
When they had walked a very little way they were suddenly engulfed. Behind them the road, the trees, the village were wrapped in blue haze: to the right, very faintly the yellow sand-hills hovered. In the sandy ground at their feet little pools that caught blue fragments of sky shone like squares of marble: out of the tufts of coarse grass larks rose, circling, like sudden sprays of some flashing into the air as a fountain flashes: no mortal being was visible in this world.
They walked for two hours and exchanged scarcely a word. Philip felt as though he had never had Katherine alone with him before since the day of their engagement — always there had been people between them, and, if not people, then his own silly fancies and imaginations. As he looked his love was now neither reasoning nor hesitating. “I am stronger than you all,” he could shout to the ironical heavens, for the first time in all his days. Then she spoke to him, and her voice reminded him of his desperate plans.... His confidence left him. It was his great misfortune that he never believed in himself.
Very little, this morning, was Katherine troubled about dreams or fancies. She was happy, as she had always been happy, with absolute simplicity, her trust in the ultimate perfection of the world being so strong in her that a fine day, her closeness to Philip, her own bodily health and fitness were enough to sweep all morbidities far away. She had not been happy lately — some new force had been stirring in her that was strange to her and unreal, like a bad dream.
But now her unhappiness of the last weeks was as faint as the hazy mist, as shadowy as the thin curtain of sea that now spread before them, hung like gauze between two humped and staring sand-hills. They rushed down the deep cup of the sand-valley and up, through the thin wiry grass, to the top, then down again, then up once more to be perched on the very edge of the path that twisted down to their Cove. The sea-breeze, warm and soft, invited them.... Down they went.
The Cove was hidden by black rocks, piled together, seeming, through the mist, to be animals herded together to guard its sanctity. Under the rocks the Cove lay, curved like a small golden saucer, the sea forming here a thin glassy lake, protected by a further range of rocks that extended, as though placed there by human agency, across the mouth of the tiny circle. The water within the rocks was utterly clear, the seaweed, red-gold and green, covering the inside of the cup: when the waves broke beyond the barrier they were echoed here by a faint ripple that trembled, in green shadows, like a happy sigh across the surface, and, with this ripple, came the echo of the dull boom that the surging tide was making in the distant caves: this echo was a giant’s chuckle, sinister, malevolent, but filtered. When the tide was coming in, the ripples, running in faint lines from side to side, covered the shining surface of the rocks and stones, with layers of water, thin and fine like silk, now purple, now golden, now white and grey.
The silk stretched over the rocks, drew itself taut, then spilt itself suddenly, with a delighted ecstasy, in cascades of shining water, into the breast of the retreating tide. As the tide went out, very reluctantly the colour withdrew from the rocks, leaving them, at last, hard and dry beneath the sun ... but at the heart of the smooth, glassy cup, on these warm spring days, there was a great peace and content: birds, sea-gulls, sparrows, thrushes, came to the edge of the golden sand, and with trembling, twittering happiness listened to the hollow booming in the distant caves.
Lying there, on the little beach, upon such a spring day as this, man might be assured that the world had been made only for his especial comfort and safety. The intense blue of the sky, the green wall of hill behind him, these things could not change: for an hour of his journey, life, gay rather than solemn, humorous rather than ironic, satisfying and complete, would seem to be revealed to him. He would wonder that he had ever doubted it....
Katherine and Philip lay, for a long time, saying very little, listening to the gentle hiss of the water, watching the line, beyond the rocks, where the sea was suddenly deep blue, feeling the sun upon their faces, and the little breeze that, once and again, with a sudden gesture of merriment ruffled the faces of the golden pools with a flurry of grey splashes and shadows. They ate their sandwiches and saffron buns and drank their ginger-beer, which resembled hot-soap-and-water: Katherine waited. She knew that Philip had something to say to her, that he had brought her here with some purpose, and she seemed to know also that that gentle sunny hour of the late morning was to be the last moment in some stage in her life. Her first meeting with him, his proposal to her, her talk afterwards with her mother, her coming to Garth with him, his confession at Rafiel, their first quarrel yesterday — all these had been stages in her growth. She waited now with a struggle, a maturity that had been far from her experience a year ago.
He began at last, holding her hand covered by both of his, searching her eyes with his, very grave; she saw with a little loving smile to herself that he intended to be of an immense seriousness, that his sense of humour was very far away. He began as though he were carrying through the most tremendous business of his life — and a sparrow, perched on the water’s edge, seemed to watch his gravity with a twitter of superior amusement.
“Do you mind my talking now a little? There’s something I’ve got to say.”
“It’s a beautiful place for talking. There’s no Aunt Aggie ... only one sparrow to overhear us.”
“But it’s really important — terribly important. It’s simply this — that last night was a crisis. I’m never going back to Garth again.”
Katherine laughed, but her eyes were suddenly frightened.
“My dear Phil ... What do you mean?”
“No, I’m not — I mean — at least not until certain things have happened. You’re not going back either—”
“I’m not going back?”
“No, not as Miss Katherine Trenchard — one
day as Mrs. Philip Mark, perhaps.”
Katherine drew her hand from his, sat up, looked out to the deep blue line of sea, said, at last, quietly:
“Now please, Philip, explain the joke. The afternoon’s too lovely to be wasted.”
“There is no joke. I’m perfectly serious. I can’t stand it any longer. I cannot stand it — and when I say ‘it’ I mean the family, their treatment of me, their dislike of me, their determination to swallow me up in their feather-bed and make an end of me — the whole long engagement; you’re suffering. I’m suffering. You were wretched yesterday — so was I. When you’re wretched I could burn the whole family, Garth and Glebeshire and all included and waste no pity whatever.”
But Katherine only laughed:
“Do you know, Phil, you’re exaggerating the whole thing in the most ridiculous manner. It’s quite natural — it’s because you don’t know our habits and manners. Aunt Aggie lost her temper last night — we were all rather worked up — Sunday can be awful. She won’t lose her temper again. We had a quarrel. Well, I suppose all lovers have quarrels. You think they’ll all be terribly shocked because you let Henry drink too much that night in London. That shows that you simply don’t know the family at all, because if you did you’d know that it’s never shocked at anything that it hasn’t seen with its own eyes. Aunt Aggie saw Henry, so she was shocked — but for the others.... If they were to know — well, what you told me at Rafiel — then — perhaps—”
“Then?” Philip cried eagerly.
“They might be — I don’t know what they’d do.” She turned her eyes to his face again. “But you’re so impatient, Phil. You want everything to happen in a minute — You’re discontented because they all have their own lives, which you can’t share. But you’re so strange. I’m the person whose life you ought to share, and yet you don’t. You’ve hardly looked at all this. You’ve taken no interest at all in the fishermen or the villagers. Garth is nothing to you—”
“I hate Garth!” he broke out furiously. “I—” Then he dropped his voice. “That’ll all come later.... I’ll just say this about myself. It’s only what I’ve always told you, that I’m simply not worthy for you to care about me. You may have had some illusions about me at first. You can’t have any now. I’m weak and backboneless, always wanting things better than I can have them, ready to be influenced by simply anyone if they’re nice to me, hating it when people aren’t nice. I’m no good at all, except for one thing — my love for you.”
He bent forward and drew her towards him.
“I have never known anything like it before. I shall never know anything like it again — and just because I do know myself so well I’m going to hold on to it and let nothing take it from me. They, all of them — are doing their best to take it from me. Your mother knows me much better than you do.... She despises me completely and she knows the way to influence me.”
Katherine would have spoken, but he stopped her.
“Oh, yes, she does. Have you noticed that she and I are never alone together, that we never have talks nor walks nor anything? She is always perfectly kind, but she knows, and I know that she knows, that if I were once to get really intimate with her I might overcome my fright of her, that it’s by my imagination of her that she’s influencing me. And she is ... she is ... she is.” His hand trembled against Katherine. “You don’t know. You don’t see! You love her and think that she’s simply your mother. But you don’t know.... Already she can get me to do anything she likes. If she wants me to waste every day doing nothing, thinking nothing, becoming a stupid bore, with no ambitions, no lips of his own, no energy — and that’s what she does want — she’s making me exactly that. I feel her when she’s not there — all over the house, in the garden, in the roads. I can’t escape her. In half a year’s time, when the wedding day comes, all I shall want is to be allowed to cut the flowers for the dinner-table and to hold your mother’s wool when she’s winding it.”
He paused, stood suddenly upon his feet: “It’s like my own mother over again — only Mrs. Trenchard’s cleverer ... but I tell you, Katie, you shan’t marry a man like that. If you marry me down there, and we’re to spend all our lives there, a year after marriage you’ll despise me, hate me for the thing I’ve become.... I’ve thought it all out. That scene last night decided me. You shan’t go back — not until we’re married.”
He stood proudly facing her, his whole body stirred to his decision. But even then, as she looked at him she saw that his upper lip trembled a little — his upper lip had always been weak. He looked down at her, then sat very close to her, leaning towards her as though he were pleading with her.
“I know that ever since our engagement you’ve been thinking that I’ve imagined things. Perhaps I have. Perhaps that’s my way, and always has been. And Russia increased my tendency. But if that’s true then it ought to be taken into account just as much as though I’d got a game leg or was blind of one eye. You can’t just dismiss it and say: ‘He’s a silly ass — he oughtn’t to imagine things’. I know that if I were sensible I should just hang on for six months more, marry you and then take you right off. But I know myself — by that time I shall simply do exactly what your mother tells me — and she’ll tell me to dig potatoes in the garden.”
“You’re unjust to yourself, Phil,” looking up at him. “You’re not so weak ... and soon you’ll love Garth. You’ll understand the family, even perhaps mother. It must come — it must. I want it so.”
“It will never come,” he answered her firmly. “You can make up your mind to that now for ever. The only way we can live altogether like a happy family in the future is for me to become a chair or table or one of your aunt’s green cushions. That’s what I shall become if I don’t do something now.”
She waited because she saw that he had more to say.
“And do you suppose that even then any of us would be happy? See already how everyone is changed! Millie, Henry, Aunt Aggie, you, even your father. Isn’t he always wondering now what’s come over everyone? There’s a surprised look in his eyes. And it’s I!... I!... I! It’s like a pebble in your shoe that you can’t find. I’m the pebble, and they’ll never be comfortable so long as I’m here. They’re not only threatened with losing you, they’re threatened with losing their confidence, their trust, their superstitions.”
“I’m one of them,” Katherine said. “You forget that. We may be slow and stupid and unimaginative, as you say, but we are fond of one another. You’re impatient, Phil. I tell you to wait ... wait!”
“Wait!” He looked out to sea, where the bar of blue was now sown with white dancing feathers. “I can’t wait ... there’s something else. There’s Anna.”
Katherine nodded her head as though she had known that this would come.
“Ever since that day at Rafiel she’s been between us; you’ve known it as well as I. It hasn’t been quite as I’d expected. I thought perhaps that you’d be shocked. You weren’t shocked. I thought that I’d be confused myself. I haven’t been confused. You’ve wanted to know about her — anything I could tell you. You’ve simply been curious, as you might, about anyone I’d known before I met you — but the business has been this, that the more you’ve asked the more I’ve thought about her. The more she’s come back to me. It hasn’t been that I’ve wanted her, even that I’ve thought tenderly about her, only that your curiosity has revived all that life as though I were back in it all again. I’ve remembered so much that I’d forgotten.”
Katherine took his hand and came close to him. “Yes. I knew that it was like that,” she said. “I knew that it was foolish of me to ask questions, to make you talk about her, and I couldn’t help myself — I knew that it was foolish, and I couldn’t help myself. And the strange thing is that I don’t suppose I’ve ever wondered about anyone whom I didn’t know in my life before. I’ve never been able to imagine people unless I had pictures or something to help me. But now — I seem to see her as though I’d known her all my days. And
I’m not jealous — no, truly, truly, I’m not jealous. And yet I don’t like her — I grudge — I grudge—”
She suddenly hid her face in the sleeve of his coat and her hand went up to his cheek.
Philip, holding her with his arm as though he were protecting her, went on: “And you’ve felt that I didn’t want you to ask me questions about her — and you’ve been silent. I knew that you were silent because you were afraid of my restlessness, and that has made restraint between us. You wouldn’t speak and I wouldn’t speak, and we’ve both been thinking of Anna until we’ve created her between us. It’s so like her — so like her. Why,” he went on, “you’ll think this absurd perhaps — but I don’t know — it’s not so absurd when you’ve lived with her. I wrote and told her about us — about our engagement. I’ve never had an answer from her, but I can fancy her saying to herself: ‘It would be amusing to bring him back to me — not that I want him. I should be bored to death if I had to live with him again — but just for the humour of it. He was always so weak. He’ll come if I ask him.’
“I can imagine her saying that, and then I can imagine her just projecting herself over here into the middle of us — simply for the fun of it. I can see her laughing to herself in the way she used to when she saw people behaving in what she thought was a childish fashion. So now she’ll think us all childish, and she’ll simply come here, her laughing, mocking spirit — and do her best to break us all up.”
“You’re afraid of her!” Katherine cried, as though she were challenging him.
“Yes. I’m afraid of her,” he acknowledged.
“Well, I’m not,” she answered. “She can do her utmost. She can laugh as much as she pleases.”
“She shall be given no chance,” he answered eagerly. “See, Katherine! Listen!... All that matters is that we should be married. She can’t touch us then — Garth can’t touch us, the family can’t touch us. I suddenly saw it as an inspiration — that you’ve got to come up with me now — to London. We’ll get a special licence. We’ll be married to-morrow. If we catch the five-thirty from Truxe we’ll be up there soon after midnight. We can get a trap in Clinton to drive us over. It’s got to be. It’s just got to be. There can be no alternative.”