by Hugh Walpole
For days a steaming, clammy mist, with a weight and a melancholy peculiar to Glebeshire, hung over the world.
They lived in hot steam, their hair was damp and their hands chill. It was poor days for the beginning of August. Rebekah was in a bad temper; no one knew what it was that had displeased her, but she had a wicked nephew who wrote, at certain times, to plead for money, and always for many days after receiving a letter from him she was displeased with everyone. She walked now like a tragedy queen in her tall white cap and stiff white apron; only Mrs. Trenchard could be expected to deal with her, and Mrs. Trenchard had other things that occupied her mind.
Henry’s eye was now forever on his mother. He waited for the moment when Aunt Aggie would speak, that quite inevitable moment.
He thought that he had never truly seen his mother before. In old days, in that strange, dim world before Philip’s arrival, she had seemed to him someone to be cherished, to be protected, someone growing a little old, a little cheerless, a little lonely. Now she was full of vigour and dominion. When she said to him: “Did you put on that clean under-clothing this morning, Henry?” instead of sulking and answering her question with an obvious disgust, he assured her earnestly that he had done so. He admired now her strong figure, her pouring of tea at breakfast, her sharp rebukes to the gardener, and her chiding of Uncle Tim when he entered the drawing-room wearing muddy boots. Yes, he admired his mother. So he trembled at the thought of her cold, ironic anger when she heard of Philip’s past.
On the day after their arrival at Garth he told Millie what he had done. He had long ago realised that, since her return from Paris, Millie had been a quite unaccountable creature. It was not only her French education. He attributed this change also to the dire influence of Philip. He noticed with disgust that she behaved now as though she were a woman of the world, implying, at the same time, that he was still an uncleanly and ignorant schoolboy. He knew that she would be indignant and scornful at his indiscretion, nevertheless he was driven by loneliness to confide in her.
They walked together to the village that they might fetch the afternoon post, otherwise unrescued until the following morning.
Millie was in a bad temper.
“I never knew anyone walk in the mud as you do, Henry. Your boots are filthy in a minute. You walk into every puddle you can see. You always did.”
The trees hung ghostly out of the mist like mocking scarecrows. Every once and again moisture from somewhere trickled down between Henry’s neck and collar.
“Look here, Millie,” he said gloomily, “I want your advice.”
“You’ve done something silly again, I suppose,” she answered loftily.
Glancing shyly at her, he thought that she was looking very pretty. Strange, the number of new things that he was noticing now about the family. But she was pretty — a great deal prettier than Katherine; in fact, the only pretty one of the family. He liked her soft hair, so charming under her large flopping garden-hat, her little nose, her eyes black and sparkling, the colour of her cheeks, her tall and slim body that carried her old cotton dress so gracefully. Everything about her was right and beautiful in a way that no other members of the family could achieve. Katherine was always a little clumsy, although since her engagement to Philip she had taken more care.... There was something light and lovely about Millie that no care would produce if you had not got it. He was proud of her, and would have liked that she should be nice to him.
“Yes,” he said, “I’ve been an awful fool.... I’ve told Aunt Aggie about Philip.”
Millie stopped and stood, staring at him.
“You’ve told Aunt Aggie?” she cried furiously.
“Yes,” he repeated, blushing, as he always did when he was scolded.
“Oh! you silly ass!” She was so deeply exasperated that she could scarcely speak.
“You SILLY ass! I might have guessed it — And yet all the time I’d hoped that at least.... And Aunt Aggie of all people!... and now Katherine and mother!
“Oh, you chattering, blundering idiot!”
She walked forward at a furious pace; he plunged after her.
“That’s all right,” he said, “when you’ve done cursing you’ll be cooler. I know I’m an ass, but Aunt Aggie irritated me and got it all out of me. Aunt Aggie’s the devil!”
“Of course she is, and of course you’ll choose her out of everyone, when she hates Philip and would wring his neck to-morrow if her hands were strong enough.”
“Well, I hate him too,” said Henry.
“Oh, no you don’t,” answered Millie, “you think you do. You’re proud of thinking you hate him, and you lose your temper because he laughs at you, and then you throw books at his head, but you don’t really hate him.”
“How do you know I throw books at his head?”
“Oh, you don’t suppose we, any of us, believed that story about you and Philip having a kind of game in the drawing-room just for fun.... Father was furious about it, and said the mirror was unreplaceable, and the sooner you went to Cambridge and stopped there the better — and I think so too. Oh! you’ve just spoilt everything!”
“It’s only about Katie I’m thinking,” he answered doggedly. “It may, after all, be true what Aunt Aggie said, that it will be much better for her in the end for the thing to be broken off, even though it hurts her now.”
“Better for her!” cried Millie scornfully. “Don’t you know that, however deeply she loved Philip when it all began, it’s nothing to the way that she loves him now?... Of course now there’ll be a scene. Philip will be turned off for ever and—” She broke off, then said, staring at Henry: “Supposing, after all, Katie were to go with him!”
Henry shook his head. “She’d never do that, however much Philip is to her. Why, it would mean giving up Garth and us for ever! Mother would never forgive her! After all, she’s only known Philip six months, and I heard her say the other day in London she loves Garth more than ever. And even if Mother did forgive her, in the end she’d never be able to come back here as one of us again. You and I will love her whatever she does, but Mother and Father and the aunts ... I believe it would simply kill them—”
“I’m not so sure,” said Millie slowly, “that Mother thinks that. I believe she’s half afraid of Philip running off and then Katie following him. That’s why she’s been so nice to him lately, although she can’t bear him. Of course if she knew all this that we know he’d have to go — she wouldn’t have him in the house five minutes, and Father would do what Mother told him of course. And now that you’ve been an idiot enough to tell Aunt Aggie, it’s all up.... The only hope is that Katie will chuck it all and follow him!”
“What!” cried Henry aghast. “You’d like her to!”
“Why, of course,” said Millie, “there isn’t anything compared with the sort of thing Katie feels for Philip — Home and the family? Why, they’ve all got to go in these days! That’s what people like the aunts and fathers and the rest of the old fogeys round here don’t see. But they’ll have to see soon.... But mother’s cleverer than they are. At least she is about Katie, because she loves her so much.”
“My word!” said Henry, in the husky voice that always came when he admired anybody. “You’ve changed an awful lot lately, Millie.”
“Yes, I suppose I have,” she answered, complacently.
They talked very little after that, for the reason that in the village Henry bought Millie some bulls-eyes, because he felt in a confused kind of way that he admired her more than he had ever done.
Millie had also another reason for silence; she was thinking very hard. During those few days in London she had lived in a world of thrilling expectation. She hoped that every moment would announce the elopement of Katherine and Philip. After her conversation with her sister, it had seemed to her that this elopement was inevitable. On every occasion of the opening of a door in the London house her heart had leapt in her breast. She had watched the lovers with eyes that were absorbed. Ah! if only t
hey would take her more thoroughly into their confidence, would put themselves into her hands. She’d manage for them — she’d arrange everything most beautifully. This was the most romantic hour of her life....
But now, after Henry’s revelation, Millie’s thoughts were turned upon her mother. Of course her mother would expel Philip — then there was a danger that Philip would return to that living, fascinating creature in Russia, the mysterious, smiling Anna. Millie had created that figure for herself now, had thought and wondered and dreamed of her so often that she saw her bright and vivid and desperately dangerous, thin and dark and beautiful against a background of eternal snow.
There they were — her mother and Anna and Katherine, with Philip, poor Philip, in between them all. It was truly a wonderful time for Millie, who regarded all this as a prologue to her own later dazzling history. She did not know that, after all, she blamed Henry very desperately for his foolishness. The thrilling crisis was but brought the nearer.
Meanwhile the first thing that she did was to inform Katherine of Henry’s treachery.
Katherine received the news very quietly.
“And now,” said Millie eagerly, “what will you do, Katie darling?”
“Wait and see what Mother does,” said Katie.
“She’ll be simply horrified,” said Millie. “If she sends Philip away and forbids you ever to see him again, what will you do?”
But Katherine would not answer that.
“Let’s wait, Millie dear,” she said gently.
“But you wouldn’t let him go?” Millie pursued, “not back to Russia and that awful woman.”
“I trust Philip,” Katherine said.
“You can never trust a man,” Millie said gravely. “I know. One of our girls in Paris was let in terribly. She—”
Katherine interrupted her.
“Philip isn’t like anyone else,” she said.
And Millie was dismissed.
But when Katherine was alone she sat down and wrote a letter. This was it:
My darling Rachel,
Do you remember that a long time ago, one day when I came to see you in London, you said that if I were ever in trouble I was to tell you and you’d understand anything? Well, I’m in trouble now — bad trouble. Things are growing worse and worse, and it seems now that whichever way I act, something’s got to be hopelessly spoiled. To any ordinary outsider it would mean such a small business, but really it’s the whole of my life and of other people’s too. You’re not an outsider, and so I know that you’ll understand. I can’t tell you more now — I don’t know what will happen, how I’ll act, or anything. But I shall know soon, and then I shall want your help, dreadfully. I’m sure you’ll help me when I ask you to.
You do like Philip better now, don’t you? I know that you didn’t at first, but that was because you didn’t really know him. I didn’t really know him either then, but I know him now, and I love him twice as much as ever I did.
This will seem a silly letter to you, but I want to feel that I’ve got someone behind me. Millie’s a dear, but she isn’t old enough to understand. Don’t be frightened by this. If anything happens I’ll write at once.
Your loving
K.
Meanwhile the family life proceeded, outwardly, on its normal way. August was always a month of incident — picnics to Rafiel and St. Lowe and Damen Head, sometimes long expeditions to Borhaze or Pelynt, sometimes afternoons in Pendennis or Rothin Woods. There were expeditions in which relations from Polchester or Clinton, or friends from Liskane and Polewint shared, and, in the cover of them, the family supported quite successfully the Trenchard tradition of good manners, unruffled composure, and abundant leisure. As members of a clan so ancient and self-reliant that no enemy, however strong, however confident, could touch them, they sat about their luncheon baskets on the burning sand, whilst the fat pony cropped in the dark hedges above the beach and the gulls wheeled and hovered close at hand.
This was well enough, but the long summer evenings betrayed them. In earlier days, when relationships were so sure and so pleasant that the world swept by in a happy silence, those summer evenings had been lazy, intimate prologues to long nights of undisturbed sleep. They would sit in the drawing-room, the windows open to the garden scents and the salt twang of the sea, moths would flutter round the lamps, Millie would play and sing a little at a piano that was never quite in tune. Aunt Betty would struggle happily with her “Demon Patience,” George Trenchard would laugh at them for half-an-hour, and then slip away to his study. Mrs. Trenchard and Aunt Aggie would knit and discuss the village, Henry would lie back in an arm-chair, his nose deep in a book, Katherine would be at anybody’s service — the minutes would fly, then would come Rebekah with hot milk for some and toast-and-water for others, there would be prayers, and then “good-night, ma’am”. “Good-night, sir”, from the three maids, the cook and Rebekah, then candles lighted in the hall, then climbing slowly up the stairs, with clumsy jokes from Henry and last words from Mrs. Trenchard, such as “Don’t forget the Williams’ coming over to-morrow, Katie dear,” or “Some of that quinine for your cold, Aggie, I suggest,” or “I’ve put the new collars on your bed, Henry,” then the closing of doors, then a happy silence, utterly secure. That had been the old way.
Outwardly the August nights of this year resembled the old ones — but the heart of them beat with panic and dismay. Philip had thought at first that it was perhaps his presence that caused the uneasiness, and one evening he complained of a headache and went up to his room after dinner. But he learnt from Katherine that his absence had merely emphasised everything. They must be all there — it would never do to show that there was anything the matter. Millie played the piano, Aunt Betty attempted her “Patience” with her usual little “Tut-tut’s” and “Dear me’s.” Mrs. Trenchard and Aunt Aggie sewed or knitted, but now the minutes dragged in endless procession across the floor, suddenly someone would raise a head and listen, Henry, pretending to read a book, would stare desperately in front of him, then noticing that Aunt Aggie watched him, would blush and hold his book before his face; with relief, as though they had escaped some threatening danger, they would greet the milk, the ‘toast-and-water’, the maids and the family prayers.
There was now no lingering on the staircase.
There are many families, of course, to whom the rebellion or disgrace of one of its members would mean but little, so slightly had been felt before the dependence of one soul upon another. But with the Trenchards that dependence had been everything, the outside world had been a fantastic show, unreal and unneeded: as the pieces of a pictured puzzle fit one into another, so had the Trenchards been interwoven and dependent ... only in England, perhaps, had such a blind and superior insularity been possible ... and it may be that this was to be, in all the records of history, the last of such a kind— “Nil nisi bonum”....
To Philip these summer days were darkened by his consciousness of Mrs. Trenchard. When he looked back over the months since he had known her, he could remember no very dramatic conversation that he had had with her, nothing tangible anywhere. She had been always pleasant and agreeable to him, and, at times, he had tried to tell himself that, after all, he might ultimately be happy ‘eaten up by her,’ as Jonah was by the whale. Then, with a little shiver, he knew the truth — that increasingly, as the days passed, he both hated and feared her. She had caught his will in her strong hands and was crushing it into pulp.
He made one last effort to assert himself, even as he had tried his strength against Katherine, against Henry, against Aunt Aggie, against old Mr. Trenchard. This little conversation that he had in the Garth garden with Mrs. Trenchard upon one of those lovely summer evenings was of the simplest and most undramatic fashion. Nevertheless it marked the end of his struggle; he always afterwards looked back upon those ten minutes as the most frightening experience of his life. Mrs. Trenchard, in a large loose hat and gauntleted gardening gloves, made a fine cheerful, reposeful figure as sh
e walked slowly up and down the long lawn; she asked Philip to walk with her; the sun flung her broad flat shadow like a stain upon the bright grass.
They had talked a little, and then he had suddenly, with a tug of alarm at his heart, determined that he would break his chains. He looked up at her placid eyes.
“I think,” he said — his voice was not quite steady— “that Katherine and I will live somewhere in the North after our marriage. Quite frankly I don’t think Glebeshire suits me.”
“And Katie,” said Mrs. Trenchard, smiling.
“Katie ... she — she’ll like the North when she’s tried it for a little.”
“You’ll rob us of her?”
“Not altogether, of course.”
“She’ll be very miserable away from Glebeshire ... very miserable. I’ve seen such a nice little house — Colve Hall — only two miles from here — on the Rafiel road. I don’t think you must take Katie from Glebeshire, Philip.”
That was a challenge. Their eyes met. His dropped.
“I think it will be better for her to be away after we are married.”
“Why? Do you hate us all?”
He coloured. “I’m not myself with you. I don’t know what to do with your kind of life. I’ve tried — I have indeed — I’m not happy here.”
“Aren’t you selfish? If you rob Katie of everything — will you be happy then?”
Yes, that was it. He could see their future life, Katherine, longing, longing to return, excited, homesick!
Although he did not look up, he knew that she was smiling at him.
“You are very young, Philip,” she said. “You want life to be perfect. It can’t be that. You must adapt yourself. I think that you will both be happier here in Glebeshire — near us.”
He would have broken out, crying that Katherine was his, not theirs, that he wanted her for himself, that they must be free.... Of what use? That impassivity took his courage and flattened it all out as though he were a child of ten, still ruled by his mother.