by Hugh Walpole
“Shall we go in?” said Mrs. Trenchard. “It’s a little cold.”
It was after this conversation that he began to place his hope upon the day when his Moscow misdeeds would be declared — that seemed now his only road to freedom.
Upon one lovely summer evening they sat there and had, some of them, the same thought.
Millie, slim and white, standing before the long open window, stared into the purple night, splashed with stars and mysterious with tier-like clouds. She was thinking of Anna, of all that life that Philip had, of what a world it must be where there are no laws, no conventions, no restraints. That woman now had some other lover, she thought no more, perhaps, of Philip — and no one held her the worse. She could do what she would — how full her life must be, how adventurous, packed with colour, excitement, battle and victory. And, after all, it might be, to that woman, that this adventure meant so little that she did not realise it as an adventure. Millie’s heart rose and fell; her heart hurt her so that she pressed her hand against her frock. She wanted her own life to begin — at once, at once. Other girls had found the beginning of it during those days in Paris, but some English restraint and pride — she was intensely proud — had held her back. But now she was on fire with impatience, with longing, with, courage.... As she stared into the night she seemed to see the whole world open, like a shining silver plate, held by some dark figure for her acceptance. She stretched out her hands.
“Take care you don’t catch cold by that open window, Millie dear,” said her mother.
Henry also was thinking of Anna. From where he sat he could, behind his book, raising his eyes a little, see Philip. Philip was sitting, very straight and solid, with his short thick legs crossed in front of him, reading a book. He never moved. He made no sound. Henry had, since the day when he had broken the mirror, avoided Philip entirely. He did not want to consider the man at all; of course he hated the man because it was he who had made them all miserable, and yet, had the fellow never loved Katherine, had he remained outside the family, Henry knew now that he could have loved him.
This discovery he had made exactly at the moment when that book had fallen crashing into the mirror — it had been so silly, so humiliating a discovery that he had banished it from his mind, had refused to look into it at all.
But that did not mean that he did not contemplate Philip’s amazing life. He contemplated it more intensely every day. The woman had all the mystery of invisibility, and yet Henry thought that he would know her if he saw her. He coloured her according to his fancy, a laughing, tender figure who would recognize him, did she meet him, as the one man in the world for whom she had been searching.
He imagined to himself ridiculous conversations that he should have with her. He would propose to marry her, would declare, with a splendid nobility, that he knew of her earlier life, but that “that meant nothing to him.” He would even give up his country for her, would live in Russia, would ... Then he caught Philip’s eye, blushed, bent to pull up his sock, said, in a husky, unconcerned voice:
“Do play something, Millie. Something of Mendelssohn.”
Philip also was thinking of Anna. Through the pages of his stupid novel, as though they had been of glass, he saw her as she had last appeared to him on the platform of the Moscow station. She had been wearing a little round black fur hat and a long black fur coat, her cheeks were pale, her eyes mocking, but somewhere, as though in spite of herself, there had been tenderness. She had laughed at him, but she had, for only a moment perhaps, wished that he were not going. It was that tenderness that held him now. The evening, through which he was now passing, had been terrible — one of the worst that he had ever spent — and he had wondered whether he really would be able to discipline himself to that course on which he had determined, to marry Katherine under the Trenchard shadow, to deliver himself to Mrs. Trenchard, even as the lobster is delivered to the cook. And so, with this desperation, had come, with increasing force, that memory of Anna’s tenderness.
He did not want to live with her again, to renew that old life — his love for Katherine had, most truly, blotted out all the fire and colour of that earlier passion, but he wanted — yes, he wanted most passionately, to save his own soul.
Might it not, after all, be true, as that ghostly figure had urged to him, that it would be better for him to escape and so carry Katherine after him — but what if she did not come?
He heard Mrs. Trenchard’s voice as she spoke to Millie, and, at that sound, he resigned himself ... but the figure still smiled at him behind that glassy barrier.
Katherine also thought of Anna. She was sitting just behind Aunt Betty watching, over the old lady’s shoulder, the ‘Patience’.
“There,” said Aunt Betty, “there’s the ten, the nine, the eight. Oh! if I only had the seven!”
“You can get it,” said Katherine, “if you move that six and five.”
“How stupid I am!” said Aunt Betty, “thank you, my dear, I didn’t see.”
Katherine saw dancing in and out between the little cards a tiny figure that was yet tall and strong, moving there a teasing, taunting puppet, standing also, a motionless figure, away there, by the wall, watching, with a cynical smile, the room. Beneath the thin hands of the old lady the cards fluttered, shifted, lay with their painted colours on the shining table, and, in accompaniment with their movement, Katherine’s thoughts also danced, in and out, round and round, chasing the same old hopeless riddle. Sometimes she glanced across at her mother. Perhaps already Aunt Aggie had told her.... No, she had not. Her mother’s calm showed that she, as yet, knew nothing. Katherine, like the others, did not doubt what her mother would do. She would demand that the engagement should be broken off; they would all, ranged behind her broad back, present their ultimatum — And then what would Katherine do?... Simply, sitting there, with her fingers fiercely interlaced, her hands pressed against her knee, she did not know. She was exhausted with the struggle that had continued now for so many weeks, and behind her exhaustion, waiting there, triumphant in the expectation of her success, was her rival.
Then, suddenly, as they waited there came to them all the idea that the hall door had been opened and gently closed. They all, Mrs. Trenchard, Aunt Aggie, Millie, Henry, Katherine, started, looked up.
“Did someone come in?” said Mrs. Trenchard, in her mild voice. “I thought I heard the hall door — Just go and see, Henry.”
“I’ll go,” said Katherine quickly.
They all waited, their heads raised. Katherine crossed the room, went into the hall that glimmered faintly under a dim lamp, paused a moment, then turned back the heavy handle of the door. The door swung back, and the lovely summer night swept into the house. The stars were a pattern of quivering light between the branches of the heavy trees that trembled ever so gently with the thrilling sense of their happiness. The roses, the rich soil soaked with dew, and the distant murmur of the stream that ran below the garden wall entered the house.
Katherine waited, in the open door, looking forward. Then she came in, shutting the door softly behind her.
Had someone entered? Was someone there with her, in the half-light, whispering to her: “I’m in the house now — and I shall stay, so long as I please — unless you can turn me out.”
She went back into the drawing-room.
“There was no one,” she said. “Perhaps it was Rebekah.”
“There’s rather a draught, dear,” said Aunt Aggie, “my neuralgia ... thank you, my dear.”
“I’ve done it!” cried Aunt Betty, flushed with pleasure. “It’s come out! If you hadn’t shown me that seven, Katie, it never would have come!”
Upon the very next afternoon Aunt Aggie made up her mind. After luncheon she went, alone, for a walk; she climbed the fields above the house, threaded little lanes sunk between high hedges, crossed an open common, dropped into another lane, was lost for awhile, finally emerged on the hill above that tiny Cove known as Smuggler’s Button. Smuggler’s Button is the
tiniest cove in Glebeshire, the sand of it is the whitest, and it has in the very middle a high jagged rock known as the Pin. Aunt Aggie, holding an umbrella, a black bonnet on her head and an old shabby rain-coat flapping behind her, sat on the Pin. It was a long way for her to have come — five miles from Garth — and the day was windy, with high white clouds that raced above her head like angry birds ready to devour her. Aunt Aggie sat there and looked at the sea, which approached her in little bowing and beckoning white waves, as though she were a shrivelled and pouting Queen Victoria holding a drawing-room. Once and again her head trembled, as though it were fastened insecurely to her body, and her little fat, swollen cheeks shook like jelly. Sometimes she raised a finger, encased in a black glove, and waved it in the air, as though she were admonishing the universe.
She clutched vigorously in one hand her umbrella.
She gazed at the sea with passion. This love for the sea had been a dominant power in her ever since she could remember, and had come she knew not whence. It had been, in earlier days, one of the deep, unspoken bonds between herself and Katherine, and it had been one of her most active criticisms of Millie that ‘the girl cared nothing about the sea whatever’. But she, Aunt Aggie, could not say why she loved it. She was no poet, and she knew not the meaning of the word ‘Enthusiasm’. She was ashamed a little of her passion, and, when she had walked five miles to Smuggler’s Button or seven miles to Lingard Sand ‘just to look at it’, she would walk stiffly home again, would give no answer to those who asked questions, and, if driven into a corner would say she had been ‘just for a walk.’ But she loved it in all its moods, grave, gay and terrible, loved it even when it was like a grey cotton garment designed for the poor or when it slipped into empty space under a blind and soaking mist. She loved the rhythm of it, the indifference of it, above all, the strength of it. Here at last, thank God, was something that she could admire more than herself.
She had, nevertheless, always at the back of her mind the thought that it would be bad for it if it knew how much she thought of it; she was always ready to be disappointed in it, although she knew that it would never disappoint her — she was grim and unbending in her attitude to it lest, in a moment of ecstasy, she should make cheap of her one devotion. To-day she did not actively consider it. She sat on the rock and made up her mind that she would take steps ‘that very day.’ Harriet, her sister-in-law, had, during these last months, often surprised her, but there would be no question of her action in this climax of the whole unfortunate business.
“The young man,” as she always called Philip, would never show his face in Trenchard circles again. Harriet might forgive, because of her love for Katherine, his impertinence, his conceit, his irreligion, his leading Henry into profligacy and drunkenness, she would not — could not — forgive his flagrant and open immorality, an immorality that had extended over many years. As she thought of this vicious life she gave a little shiver — a shiver of indignation, of resolution, of superiority, and of loneliness. The world — the gay, vital, alluring world, had left her high and dry upon that rock on which she was sitting, and, rebuke and disapprove of it as she might, it cared little for her words.
It was, perhaps, for this reason that she felt strangely little pleasure in her approaching triumph. She had hated “the young man” since her first meeting with him, and at last, after many months of patient waiting, the means had been placed in her hands for his destruction.... Well, she did not know that she cared to-day very greatly about it. She was old, she was tired, she had neuralgia in one side of her face, there was a coming headache in the air. Why was it that she, who had always held so steadily for right, whose life had been one long struggle after unselfishness, who had served others from early morning until late at night, should now find no reward, but only emptiness and old age and frustration? She had not now even the pleasure of her bitternesses. They were dust and ashes in her mouth.
She resolved that at once, upon that very afternoon, she would tell Harriet about Philip — and then suddenly, for no reason, with a strange surprise to herself, she did a thing that was quite foreign to her; she began to cry, a desolate trickling of tears that tasted salt in her mouth, that were shed, apparently, by some quite other person.
It seemed to her as she turned slowly and went home that that same Woman who had encountered life, had taken it all and tasted every danger, now, watching her, laughed at her for her wasted, barren days....
By the time, however, that she reached Garth she had recovered her spirits; it was the sea that had made her melancholy. She walked into the house with the firm step of anticipated triumph. She went up to her bedroom, took off her bonnet, washed her face and hands, peeped out on to the drive as though she expected to see someone watching there, then came down into the drawing-room.
She had intended to speak to her sister-in-law in private. It happened, however, that, on going to the tea-table, she discovered that the tea had been standing for a considerable period, and nobody apparently intended to order any more — at the same time a twinge in her left jaw told her that it had been foolish of her to sit on that rock so long.
Then Philip, who had the unfortunate habit of trying to be friendly at the precisely wrong moment, said, cheerfully:
“Been for a walk all alone, Aunt Aggie?”
She always hated that he should call her Aunt Aggie. To-day it seemed a most aggravated insult.
“Yes,” she said. “You’ve had tea very early.”
“George wanted it,” said Mrs. Trenchard, who was writing at a little table near a window that opened into the sunlit garden. “One never can tell with you, Aggie, what time you’ll like it — never can tell, surely.”
There! as though that weren’t directly charging her with being a trouble to the household. Because they’d happened to have it early!
“I call it very unfair—” she began nibbling a piece of bread and butter.
But the unfortunate Philip gaily continued: “When we are married, Aunt Aggie, and you come to stay with us, you shall have tea just when you like.”
He was laughing at her, he patronised her! He dared — ! She trembled with anger.
“I shall never come and stay with you,” she said.
“Aunt Aggie!” cried Katherine, who was sitting near her mother by the window.
“No, never!” Aunt Aggie answered, her little eyes flashing and her cheeks shaking. “And if I had my way you should never be married!”
They all knew then that at last the moment had come. Henry started to his feet as though he would escape, Katherine turned towards her mother, Philip fixed his eyes gravely upon his enemy — only Mrs. Trenchard did not pause in her writing. Aunt Aggie knew then that she was committed. She did not care, she was glad if only she could hurt Philip, that hateful and intolerable young man.
Her hands trembled, her rings making a tiny clatter against the china; she saw only her sister-in-law and Philip.
Philip quietly said:
“Why do you hope that Katherine and I will never marry, Aunt Aggie?”
“Because I love Katherine — because I — we want her to make a happy marriage. Because if she — knew what I know she would not marry you.”
“My dear Aggie!” said Mrs. Trenchard, softly, from the writing-table — but she stayed her pen and waited, with her head turned a little, as though she would watch Katherine’s face without appearing to do so.
“And what do you know,” pursued Philip quietly, “that would prevent Katherine from marrying me?”
“I know,” she answered fiercely, the little gold cross that hung round her throat jumping against the agitation of her breast, “that you — that you are not the man to marry my niece. You have concealed things from her father which, if he had known, would have caused him to forbid you the house.”
“Oh! I say!” cried Henry, suddenly jumping to his feet.
“Well,” pursued Philip, “what are these things?”
She paused for a moment, wondering
whether Henry had had sufficient authority for his statements. Philip of course would deny everything — but she had now proceeded too far to withdraw.
“I understand,” she said, “that you lived in Russia with a woman to whom you were not married — lived for some years, and had a child. This is, I am ashamed to say, common talk. I need scarcely add that I had not intended to bring this disgraceful matter up in this public fashion. But perhaps after all it is better. You have only yourself to blame, Mr. Mark,” she continued, “for your policy of secrecy. To allow us all to remain in ignorance of these things, to allow Katherine — but perhaps,” she asked, “you intend to deny everything? In that case—”
“I deny nothing,” he answered. “This seems to me a very silly manner of discussing such a business.” He addressed his words then to Mrs. Trenchard. “I said nothing about these things,” he continued, “because, quite honestly, I could not see that it was anyone’s affair but my own and Katherine’s. I told Katherine everything directly after we were engaged.”
At that Aunt Aggie turned upon her niece.
“You knew, Katherine? You knew — all these disgraceful — these—” Her voice broke. “You knew and you continued your engagement?”
“Certainly,” answered Katherine quietly. “Whatever life Philip led before he knew me, was no business of mine. It was good of him to tell me as he did, but it was not my affair. And really, Aunt Aggie,” she continued, “that you could think it right to speak like this before us all — to interfere—”
Her voice was cold with anger. They had none of them ever before known this Katherine.
Aunt Aggie appealed to her sister-in-law.
“Harriet, if I’ve been wrong in mentioning this now, I’m sorry. Katherine seems to have lost her senses. I would not wish to condemn anyone, but to sit still and watch whilst my niece, whom I have loved, is given to a profligate—”
Katherine stood, with the sunlight behind her; she looked at her aunt, then moved across the room to Philip and put her hand on his shoulder.