Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

Nevertheless it had not been all Katherine’s imagination. There had been in the affair some other agency. Again and again Katherine had been conscious that, in opposition to her will, she was being driven to hunt for that figure. In the middle of some work or pleasure she would start, half frightened, half excited, conscious that someone was behind her, watching her. She would turn, and in the first flash of her glance it would seem to her that she caught some vanishing figure, the black hair, the thin, tall body, the laughing, mocking eyes.

  It was simply, she would tell herself, that her curiosity refused to be quiet. If only she might have known whether Philip thought of Anna, whether Anna thought of Philip, whether Anna wanted Philip to return to her, whether Anna really despised him, whether ... and then with a little shudder of dismissal, she would banish the Phantom, summoning all her admirable Trenchard common-sense to her aid.... “That was past, that was gone, that was dead.”

  She was, upon this afternoon, at the point of summoning this resolution when the door opened and Millie came in. For a moment so dark was the room that she could not see, and cried: “Katie, are you there?”

  “Yes. Here by the window.”

  Millie came across the room and stood by Katherine’s chair. In her voice there was the shadow of that restraint that there had been now between them ever since the Sunday with the Awful Supper.

  “It’s only the Post. It’s just come. Two letters for you — one from Philip that I thought that you’d like to have.”

  Katherine took the letters, laid them on her lap, looking up at her sister with a little smile.

  “Well ...” said Millie, hesitating, then, half turning, “I must go back to Aunt Betty — I’m helping her with the things.”

  “No. Don’t go.” Katherine, who was staring in front of her now into the black well of a garden, lit by the quivering, shaking light, put out her hand and touched Millie’s sleeve. Millie stood there, awkwardly, her white cotton dress shining against the darkness, her eyes uncertain and a little timid.

  “I ought to go, Katie dear.... Aunt Betty—”

  “Aunt Betty can wait. Millie, what’s the matter?”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Yes, between us. For a long time it’s been — and worse since Philip went away.”

  “Nothing,” said Millie, slowly, then, quite suddenly, with one of those movements so characteristic of her, she flung herself on to her knees, caught Katherine’s hands, then stretched forward and pulled Katherine’s head down to hers — then kissed her again and again. The two sisters held one another in a close embrace, cheek against cheek, breast to breast. So they stayed for some time.

  At last Millie slid down on to the floor and rested there, her head, with all its fair hair ruffled and disordered, on Katherine’s lap.

  “Well ...” said Katherine at last, her head against her sister’s cheek. “Why, all this time, have you been so queer? Is it because you hate Philip?”

  “No, I like him.”

  “Is it because you hate me?”

  “No, I love you.”

  “Is it because you hate my marrying Philip?”

  “No — if you’d do it at once.”

  “Do it at once?”

  “Yes — now — go up to London — Marry him to-morrow—”

  “My dear Millie!... our year isn’t up — nearly.”

  “What does it matter about your year? Better to break your year than to have us all at one another’s throats — miserable. And then perhaps after all to lose Philip.”

  “Lose Philip?”

  “Yes. He’ll go back to Russia.”

  The words flashed before Katherine’s eyes like lightning through the garden. Her heart gave a furious jump and then stopped.

  “Why do you think he’d do that?” she asked at last. “Do you think he doesn’t love me?”

  “No, it’s because he loves you so much that he’d do it. Because he’d rather have none of you than only a bit of you, rather have none of you than share you with us.” She turned round, staring into Katherine’s eyes. “Oh, I understand him so well! I believe I’m the only one in all the family who does! You think that I’m not grown up yet, that I know nothing about life, that I don’t know what people do or think, but I believe that I do know better than anyone! And, after all, it’s Philip himself that’s made me see! He understands now what he’s got to give up if he marries you — all his dreams, all his fun, all his travels, all his imagination. You don’t want to give up anything, Katie. You want to keep all this, Garth and the sea, even the oldest old man and woman in the place, above all, you want to keep all of us, mother most of all. You know that mother hates Philip and will always make him unhappy, but still you think that it’s fair that you should give up nothing and he everything. But you’re up against more than Philip, Katie — you’re up against all his imagination that won’t let him alone however much he wants it to — and then,” Millie finally added, turning her eyes back to the other garden— “There’s the other woman.”

  “Why!” Katherine cried— “You know?... Who told you?”

  “And you know?” cried Millie. “He told you after all?”

  “But who told you?” Katherine insisted, her hand on Millie’s shoulder.

  “Henry.”

  “Then he knows. Who else?”

  “None of the family, I think, unless Henry’s told the others. I’ve never said a word.”

  “Who told him?”

  “A man at his Club.”

  There was silence. Then Katherine said:

  “So that’s why you’ve been so queer?”

  “Yes. I didn’t know whether he’d told you or no. I was afraid to say anything. I thought perhaps he’d told you and it was making you miserable. Then I thought that you ought to know. I thought sometimes that I’d speak to Philip, and then I was afraid of Henry doing something awful, blurting it all out to everybody. I haven’t known what to do. But, Katie darling, you aren’t unhappy about it, are you?”

  “No — not unhappy,” said Katherine.

  “Because you mustn’t be. What does it matter what Phil did before he loved you, whom he knew? What does it matter so long as you take her place? If ever anybody loved anybody, Philip loves you....” Then she said quickly, eagerly: “What was she like, Katie? Did he tell you? Did he describe her? Was she lovely, clever? What was her name?”

  “Anna,” Katie said.

  “Does he think of her still? Does he want to see her again?”

  “I don’t know,” Katherine said slowly. “That’s what’s been so hard all these months. We simply don’t talk of her. He doesn’t want to think of her, nor of Russia, nor of any of that past life. He says it’s all dead—”

  “Well,” said Millie, eagerly.

  “But it isn’t to me. I don’t hate her, I’m not jealous, it doesn’t alter one scrap of my love for Phil, but — I don’t know — I feel as though if we talked about it everything would clear away. I’d see then that she was just an ordinary person like anyone else, and I wouldn’t bother about her any more, as it is, simply because I don’t know anything, I imagine things. I don’t know whether Philip thinks of her or not, but I expect that he does, or thinks of my thinking of her, which is the same thing.”

  “Well, I’ve thought of her!” Millie declared, “again and again. I’ve wondered a thousand things, why she gave Philip up, whether she loves him still, whether she hates his being in love with someone else, whether she writes to him, what she’s like, what she wears.... Doesn’t it prove, Katie, how shut up we’ve always been? Why, even in Paris I never really thought about anybody whom I couldn’t actually see, and life used to seem too simple if you just did the things in front of your nose — and now it’s only the things that aren’t anywhere near you that seem to matter.” Millie said all this as though she were fifty years old at least. It was indeed a real crisis that she should be admitted into the very heart of all this thrilling affair; she was rewarded at last with her flaming desire,
that ‘she should share in life.’ It was almost as though she herself had a lover.

  Katherine waited, then she broke out suddenly: “But it’s all so stupid this. Why can’t things be perfectly simple? Why can’t Philip like them and they like Philip? Why can’t Philip and I marry and spend part of the year here and part of the year away?”

  “You’ve got to choose,” Millie said, “Mother or Philip — Philip or the family — Philip or Glebeshire. The old life or the new one. You’ve tried to mix it all up. You can’t. Philip can change us. He is changing us all, but mix with us never. If he is forced to, he’ll simply disappear.”

  “My dear, what’s happened to you?” Katherine cried. “How wise you’ve become! How you’ve grown up!”

  “I am,” said Millie, with a solemnity that proved that ‘grown-up’ was the last thing that she really was. She sprang to her feet. She spoke as though she were delivering a challenge.

  “Katie, if you let things go, if you let Mother have her way, one of two things will happen; either Philip won’t be able to stand it and will vanish to Russia, or he’ll endure it, will be smothered by us all, and there’ll only be the corpse left for your enjoyment.

  “Katie!” Her eyes shone with excitement, her voice quivered with the thrill of her intensity. “You must marry him now — whilst you’re in London. You must chuck us all, show Mother that Philip comes before everything, take it into your own hands, send that Russian woman’s ghost back to Russia ... just as Browning and Mrs. Browning did, slip off one day, buy some smelling-salts at the chemist’s and be married!”

  She laughed. She clapped her hands.

  “Oh! Katie! Katie!... It’s the only way, the only possible way!”

  But Katherine replied: “You’re wrong, Millie. I can keep it all. I will keep it all. I love Phil, but I love Mother and you and Henry and This — This — all of it. If I were to marry Phil now Mother would never forgive me — you know that she would not. I could never come back. I must lose it all.”

  “You’d rather lose Philip then?”

  “No. That never!”

  “Well — Anna’s after him, Katie. Russia’s after him. He’s awfully unhappy — and you’re unfair. You’re giving him nothing, not even himself. You say that you love him, but you want things all your way. I tell you you deserve to lose ...” then suddenly softening again: “But I’ll help you, Katie dear, whatever way it is. Oh! I’m so glad that we’ve spoken. We’re together now, and nothing can part us.”

  Katherine caught her hand and held her close. “What would Mother do, do you think, if she knew about Anna?” she said, at last.

  “I don’t know,” Millie answered, “Mother’s so strange. I believe she’d do nothing. She’d know that if she dismissed him she’d lose you.”

  Then Katherine suddenly, holding Millie so close to her that their hearts beat as one, said: “I love him so. I love him so.... Everything must go if he wants it to.”

  And then, as though the house, the land, the place that had always been hers, answered her challenge, a lightning flash struck the darkness and the rain broke in a thunder of sound.

  All through the wedding-ceremony Katherine felt insanely that she was no longer a Trenchard — insanely because if she was not a Trenchard what was she? Always before in these Trenchard gatherings she had known herself wonderfully at home, sinking down with the kind of cosy security that one greets as one drops into a soft, familiar bed. Every Trenchard was, in one way or another, so like every other Trenchard that a Trenchard gathering was in the most intimate sense of the word a family party. At a Beaminster gathering you were always aware of a spirit of haughty contempt for the people who were still outside, but at a Trenchard or Faunder assembly the people outside did not exist at all. “They were not there.” The Beaminsters said: “Those we don’t know are not worth knowing.” The Trenchards said: “Those we can’t see don’t exist” — and they could only see one another. All this did not mean that the Trenchards were not very kind to the human beings in the villages and towns under their care. But then these dependents were Trenchards, just as old Trenchard chairs and tables in old Trenchard houses were Trenchards.

  The Beaminsters had been broken all in a moment because they had tried to do something that their Age no longer permitted them to do. The Trenchards were much more difficult to break, because they were not trying to do anything at all. There was no need for them to be “Positive” about anything....

  As old Mrs. Trenchard, mother of Canon Trenchard of Polchester, once said to a rebellious daughter: “My dear, it’s no use your trying to do anything. People say that new generations have come and that we shall see great changes. For myself, I don’t believe it. England, thank God, is not like one of those foreign countries. England never changes about the Real Things,” and by ‘England’ of course she meant ‘Trenchards.’

  Katherine knew exactly whom she would see at St. Margaret’s, Westminster. From Glebeshire there would be Canon Trenchard, his wife and his two girls, also the Trenchards of Rothin Place, Polchester. There would be Sir Guy Trenchard from Truxe, and Miss Penelope Trenchard from Rasselas. There would be the head of all the Trenchards — Sir Henry Trenchard of Ruston Hall, in Norfolk, and there would be Garth Trenchard, Esq., from Bambury Towers, in Northumberland. There would be the Medlicott Trenchards of South Audley Street, the Robert Trenchards from somewhere in South Kensington (he was a novelist), and the Ruston Trenchards from Portland Place. Of the Faunders there was no end — Hylton Faunder, the famous painter, one of the props of the Royal Academy, the Rev. William Faunder of St. Mary’s, Monkston, one of the best of London’s preachers, the Misses Faunder of Hampstead, known for their good work, and others, others ... from Hampshire, Wiltshire, Kent, Suffolk, Durham, Cumberland, every county in England.

  Well, there they all were in rows; again and again you beheld the same white high forehead, the same thin and polished nose, the same mild, agreeable, well-fed, uncritical eyes. How well Katherine knew those eyes! She herself had them, of course, but her mother had them so completely, so magnificently, that once you had seen Mrs. Trenchard’s eyes you would be able, afterwards, to recognise a Trenchard anywhere. But now, as Katherine looked about the church, it suddenly struck her, with a little shiver of alarm, that all the eyes were blind. She was sitting with her mother and Millie, and she looked at them quickly to see whether they’d noticed anything strange or unusual — but no, very placidly and agreeably, they were enjoying the comfort and ‘rightness’ of the whole affair....

  She was lonely, then, with a sudden shock of acute distress. She felt suddenly, with positive terror, that she did not belong to anyone at all. Philip was miles and miles away; as though it were the voice of prophecy, something seemed to tell her that she would never see him again. The service then seemed endless — she waited desperately for it to close. At last, when they all moved on to 22 Bryanston Square, her impatience simply seemed more than she could control. The presents were there, and many, many beautiful clothes and shining collars and cakes that no one wanted to eat, and over and over again, a voice (it seemed always the same voice) saying: “How nice! How delightful!... so glad ... so fortunate....” At last she was on her way back to Westminster. She had now only this one thought, that unless she were very quick she would never see Philip again. He had said that he would come to her for a moment after the wedding, and, when at the doorway of the drawing-room she caught a reflection of his figure in the mirror, her heart bounded with relief. How silly of her. What had she supposed? Nevertheless, quite breathlessly, she caught his hand.

  “Oh, Phil! I’m so glad!... Come up to the schoolroom. We shall be alone there!”

  The schoolroom, that had once been the nursery, packed away at the very top of the house, was bathed with the rich evening glow. He caught her in his arms, held her, and she kissed him, passionately, with clinging, eager kisses. Then, with a little happy sigh, she released him.

  The old shabby room, with its old shabby books, Char
lotte Mary Yonge and Mrs. Ewing and Henry, and the Christmas Supplements on the walls and the old grate that seemed still to be sunk in happy reveries of roasted chestnuts and toffee and toast, reassured her.

  “Oh, Phil!” she cried. “I thought I was never going to get to you!”

  She looked at him, carefully, luxuriously, with all the happiness of possessing something known and proved and loved. Why, were it the ugliest face in the world, the oldest, shabbiest body, nothing now could change her attachment. That was why, with true love, old age and decay did not, could not matter — and here, after all, was her possession, as far from old age as anyone could be, strong and thick-set and with the whole of life before it! But he seemed tired and depressed. He was very quiet, and sat there close to her, holding her hand, loving her, but subdued, saying very little. He had changed. He was not now that eager, voluble figure that had burst through the fog on that first wonderful evening so long ago.

  “Phil — you’re tired!” she said quickly, looking up into his eyes.

  “Yes. I am rather,” he answered. “It’s been awfully hot. Was it very splendid?”

  “The wedding?... No, horrid.... Just like any other, and I can’t tell you anything about it, because I didn’t notice a thing.”

  But he didn’t ask her. He didn’t want to know anything about it. He only wanted to have her there. They sat quietly, very close to one another. Her terror and her loneliness left her. The Abbey clock boomed the hour, and a little clock in the room gave a friendly, intimate echo.

  “Your mother’s asked me to go back to Garth with you,” he suddenly said.

  Katherine remembered how triumphant she had been when, upon a certain earlier occasion, he had told her that. Now her alarm returned; her hand trembled on his knee.

  “What did you say?”

  “Oh! I’m going of course. You’ll be there, and I want to do what your mother wishes.”

  He said this very quietly, and looked at her with a little smile.

  “Phil, don’t go!” she said suddenly. “You’re happier here. We’ll be up in October.”