The Green Mirror E-Book

Hugh Walpole

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Mrs. Trenchard’s figure contains all the jealous stubbornness of a strong parent who does not want to let go of his child. Her strength lies mainly in her ability, as she is understood to be unsympathetic, to impose creative possibilities on those whom she loves, and singles out a caring Catherine as a person whose fate she wants to control. When Katherine agrees to be engaged during the year, she realizes the need to pay any reasonable price to keep her mother and Trenchards.

Leseprobe

Contents

BOOK I

THE RAID

CHAPTER I THE CEREMONY

CHAPTER II THE WINTER AFTERNOON

CHAPTER III KATHERINE

CHAPTER IV THE FOREST

CHAPTER V THE FINEST THING

CHAPTER VI THE SHOCK

BOOK II

THE FEATHER BED

CHAPTER I KATHERINE IN LOVE

CHAPTER II MRS. TRENCHARD

CHAPTER III LIFE AND HENRY

CHAPTER IV GARTH IN ROSELANDS

CHAPTER V THE FEAST

CHAPTER VI SUNDAY

CHAPTER VII ROCHE ST. MARY MOOR

BOOK III

KATHERINE AND ANNA

CHAPTER I KATHERINE ALONE

CHAPTER II THE MIRROR

CHAPTER III ANNA AND MRS. TRENCHARD

CHAPTER IV THE WILD NIGHT

CHAPTER V THE TRENCHARDS

CHAPTER VI THE CEREMONY

BOOK I

THE RAID

CHAPTER I. THE CEREMONY

I

The fog had swallowed up the house, and the house had submitted. So thick was this fog that the towers of Westminster Abbey, the river, and the fat complacency of the church in the middle of the Square, even the three Plane Trees in front of the old gate and the heavy old-fashioned porch had all vanished together, leaving in their place, the rattle of a cab, the barking of a dog, isolated sounds that ascended, plaintively, from a lost, a submerged world.

The House had, indeed, in its time seen many fogs for it had known its first one in the days of Queen Anne and even then it had yielded, without surprise and without curiosity, to its tyranny. On the brightest of days this was a solemn, unenterprising, unimaginative building, standing four-square to all the winds, its windows planted stolidly, securely, its vigorous propriety well suited to its safe, unagitated surroundings. Its faded red brick had weathered many London storms and would weather many more: that old, quiet Square, with its uneven stones, its church, and its plane-trees, had the Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, the river for its guardians... the skies might fall, the Thames burst into a flaming fire, Rundle Square would not stir from its tranquillity.

The old house–No. 5, Rundle Square–had for its most charming feature its entrance. First came an old iron gate guarded, on either side, by weather-beaten stone pillars. Then a cobbled path, with little green lawns to right and left of it, ran to the door whose stolidity was crowned with an old porch of dim red brick. This was unusual enough for London, but there the gate, the little garden, the Porch had stood for some hundreds of years, and that Progress that had already its throttling fingers about London’s neck, had, as yet, left Rundle Square to its staid propriety.

Westminster abides, like a little Cathedral town, at the heart of London. One is led to it, through Whitehall, through Victoria Street, through Belgravia, over Westminster Bridge with preparatory caution. The thunder of London sinks, as the traveller approaches, dying gradually as though the spirit of the town warned you, with his finger at his lip. To the roar of the traffic there succeeds the solemn striking of Big Ben, the chiming of the Abbey Bells; so narrow and winding are many of the little streets that such traffic as penetrates them proceeds slowly, cautiously, almost sleepily; there are old buildings and grass squares, many clergymen, schoolboys in black gowns and battered top hats, and at the corners one may see policemen, motionless, somnolent, stationed one supposes, to threaten disturbance or agitation.

There is, it seems, no impulse here to pile many more events upon the lap of the day than the poor thing can decently hold. Behind the windows of Westminster life is passing, surely, with easy tranquillity; the very door-bells are, many of them, old and comfortable, unsuited to any frantic ringing; there does not sound, through every hour, the whirring clang of workmen flinging, with eager haste, into the reluctant air, hideous and contemptuous buildings; dust does not rise in blinding clouds from the tortured corpses of old and happy houses... Those who live here live long.

No. 5, Rundle Square then, had its destiny in pleasant places. Upon a fine summer evening the old red brick with its windows staring complacently upon a comfortable world showed a fine colour. Its very chimneys were square and solid, its eaves and water pipes regular and mathematical. Whatever horrid catastrophe might convulse the rest of London, No. 5 would suffer no hurt; the god of propriety–the strongest of all the gods–had it beneath His care.

Now behind the Fog it waited, as it had waited so often before, with certain assurance, for its release.

II

Inside the house at about half-past four, upon this afternoon November 8th, in the year 1902, young Henry Trenchard was sitting alone; he was straining his eyes over a book that interested him so deeply that he could not leave it in order to switch on the electric light; his long nose stuck into the book’s very heart and his eyelashes almost brushed the paper. The drawing-room where he was had caught some of the fog and kept it, and Henry Trenchard’s only light was the fading glow of a red cavernous fire. Henry Trenchard, now nineteen years of age, had known, in all those nineteen years, no change in that old drawing-room. As an ugly and tiresome baby he had wailed before the sombre indifference of that same old stiff green wall-paper–a little brighter then perhaps,–had sprawled upon the same old green carpet, had begged to be allowed to play with the same collection of little scent bottles and stones and rings and miniatures that lay now, in the same decent symmetry, in the same narrow glass-topped table over by the window. It was by shape and design a heavy room, slipping into its true spirit with the London dusk, the London fog, the London lamp-lit winter afternoon, seeming awkward, stiff, almost affronted before the sunshine and summer weather. One or two Trenchards–two soldiers and a Bishop–were there in heavy old gold frames, two ponderous glass-fronted book-cases guarded from any frivolous touch high stiff-backed volumes of Gibbons and Richardson and Hooker.

There were some old water-colours of faded green lawns, dim rocks and seas with neglected boats upon the sand–all these painted in the stiff precision of the ‘thirties and the ‘forties, smoked and fogged a little in their thin black frames.

Upon one round-table indeed there was a concession to the modern spirit in the latest numbers of the “Cornhill” and “Blackwood” magazines, the “Quarterly Review” and the “Hibbert Journal.”

The chairs in the room were for the most part stiff with gilt backs and wore a “Don’t you dare to sit down upon me” eye, but two arm-chairs, near the fire, of old green leather were comfortable enough and upon one of these Henry was now sitting. Above the wide stone fireplace was a large old gold mirror, a mirror that took into its expanse the whole of the room, so that, standing before it, with your back to the door, you could see everything that happened behind you. The Mirror was old and gave to the view that it embraced some old comfortable touch so that everything within it was soft and still and at rest. Now, in the gloom and shadow, the reflection was green and dark with the only point of colour the fading fire. Before it a massive gold clock with the figures of the Three Graces stiff and angular at its summit ticked away as though it were the voice of a very old gentleman telling an interminable story. It served indeed for the voice of the mirror itself...

Henry was reading a novel that showed upon its back Mudie’s bright yellow label. He was reading, as the clock struck half-past four, these words:–

“I sat on the stump of a tree at his feet, and below us stretched the land, the great expanse of the forests, sombre under the sunshine, rolling like a sea, with glints of winding rivers, the grey spots of villages, and here and there a clearing, like an islet of light amongst the dark waves of continuous tree-tops. A brooding gloom lay over this vast and monotonous landscape; the light fell on it as if into an abyss. The land devoured the sunshine; only far off, along the coast, the empty ocean, smooth and polished within the faint bays, seemed to rise up to the sky in a wall of steel.

“And there I was with him, high on the sunshine on the top of that historic hill...”

The striking of the clock brought him away from the book with a jerk, so deep had he been sunk in it that he looked now about the dusky room with a startled uncertain gaze. The familiar place settled once more about him and, with a little sigh, he sank back into the chair. His thin bony legs stuck out in front of him; one trouser-leg was hitched up and his sock, falling down over his boot, left bare part of his calf; his boots had not been laced tightly and the tongues had slipped aside, showing his sock. He was a long thin youth, his hair untidy, his black tie up at the back of his collar; one white and rather ragged cuff had slipped down over his wrist, the other was invisible. His eyes were grey and weak, he had a long pointed nose with two freckles on the very end of it, but his mouth was kindly although too large and indeterminate. His cheeks were thin and showed high cheek-bones; his chin was pronounced enough to be strong but nevertheless helped him very little.

He was untidy and ungainly but not entirely unattractive; his growth was at the stage when nature has not made up its mind as to the next, the final move. That may, after all, be something very pleasant...

His eyes now were dreamy and soft because he was thinking of the book. No book, perhaps, in all his life before had moved him so deeply and he was very often moved–but, as a rule, by cheap and sentimental emotions.

He knew that he was cheap; he knew that he was sentimental; he, very often, hated and despised himself.

He could see the Forests “rolling like a sea”. It was as though he, himself, had been perched upon that high, bright hill, and he was exalted, he felt, with that same exultation; the space, the freedom, the liberty, the picture of a world wherein anything might happen, where heroes, fugitives, scoundrels, cowards, conquerors all alike might win their salvation. “Room for everyone... no one to pull one up–No one to make one ashamed of what one says and does. No crowd watching one’s every movement. Adventures for the wishing and courage to meet them.”

He looked about the room and hated it,–the old, shabby, hemmed-in thing! He hated this life to which he was condemned; he hated himself, his world, his uninspiring future.

“My God, I must do something!... I will do something!... But suppose I can’t!” His head fell again–suppose he were out in that other world, there in the heart of those dark forests, suppose that he found that he did no better there than here!... That would be, indeed, the most terrible thing of all!

He gazed up into the Mirror, saw in it the reflection of the room, the green walls, the green carpet, the old faded green place like moss covering dead ground. Soft, damp, dark,–and beyond outside the Mirror, the world of the Forests–“the great expanse of Forests” and “beyond, the Ocean–smooth and polished... rising up to the sky in a wall of steel.”

His people, his family, his many, many relations, his world, he thought, were all inside the Mirror–all embedded in that green, soft, silent enclosure. He saw, stretching from one end of England to the other, in all Provincial towns, in neat little houses with neat little gardens, in Cathedral Cities with their sequestered Closes, in villages with the deep green lanes leading up to the rectory gardens, in old Country houses hemmed in by wide stretching fields, in little lost places by the sea, all these persons happily, peacefully sunk up to their very necks in the green moss. Within the Mirror this... Outside the Mirror the rolling forests guarded by the shining wall of sea. His own family passed before him. His grandfather, his great-aunt Sarah, his mother and his father, Aunt Aggie and Aunt Betty, Uncle Tim, Millicent, Katherine... He paused then. The book slipped away and fell on to the floor.

Katherine... dear Katherine! He did not care what she was! And then, swept by a fresh wave of feeling springing up, stretching his arms, facing the room, he did not care what any of them were! He was the Idiot, the discontented, ungrateful Idiot! He loved them all–he wouldn’t change one of them, he wouldn’t be in any other family in all the world!

The door opened; in came old Rocket, the staff and prop of the family, to turn up the lights, to poke up the fire. In a minute tea would come in...

“Why, Mr. Henry, no fire nor lights!” He shuffled to the windows, pulling the great heavy curtains across them, his knees cracking, very slowly he bent down, picked up the book, and laid it carefully on the table next to the “Hibbert Journal.”

“I hope you’ve not been reading, Mr. Henry, in this bad light,” he said.

III

Later, between nine and half-past, Henry was sitting with his father and his uncle, smoking and drinking after dinner. To-night was an evening of Ceremony–the Family Ceremony of the year–therefore, although the meal had been an extremely festive one with many flowers, a perfect mountain of fruit in the huge silver bowl in the centre of the table, and the Most Sacred Of All Ports (produced on this occasion and Christmas Day) nevertheless only the Family had been present. No distant relations even, certainly no friends... This was Grandfather Trenchard’s birthday.

The ladies vanished, there remained only Henry, his father and Uncle Tim. Henry was sitting there, very self-conscious over his glass of Port. He was always self-conscious when Uncle Tim was present.

Uncle Tim was a Faunder and was large-limbed and absent-minded like Henry’s father. Uncle Tim had a wild head of grey hair, a badly-kept grey beard and clothed his long, loose figure in long, loose garments. He was here to-day and gone to-morrow, preferred the country to the town and had a little house down in Glebeshire, where he led an untidy bachelor existence whose motive impulses were birds and flowers.

Henry was very fond of Uncle Tim; he liked his untidiness, his careless geniality, his freedom and his happiness.

Henry’s father–George Trenchard–was “splendid”–that, thought Henry, was the only possible word–and the boy, surveying other persons’ fathers, wondered why Katherine, Millicent, and himself should have been chosen out of all the world to be so favoured.

George Trenchard, at this time about sixty years of age, was over six feet in height and broad in proportion. He was growing too stout; his hair was grey and the top of his head bald; his eyes were brown and absent-minded, his mouth large with a lurking humour in its curves; his cheeks were fat and round and there was the beginning of a double chin. He walked, always, in a rambling, rolling kind of way, like a sea-captain on shore, still balancing himself to the swing of his vessel, his hands deep sunk in his trouser-pockets. Henry had been privileged, sometimes, to see him, when, absorbed in the evolution of an essay or the Chapter of some book (he is, of course, one of our foremost authorities on the early Nineteenth Century period of English Literature, especially Hazlitt and De Quincey) he rolled up and down his study, with his head back, his hand sunk in his pockets, whistling a little tune... very wonderful he seemed to Henry then.

He was the most completely careless of optimists, refused to be brought down to any stern fact whatever, hated any strong emotion or stringent relations with anyone, treated his wife and children as the most delightful accidents against whom he had, most happily tumbled; his kindness of heart was equalled only by the lightning speed with which he forgot the benefits that he had conferred and the persons upon whom he had conferred them... like a happy bird, he went carolling through life. Alone, of all living beings, his daughter Katherine had bound him to her with cords; for the rest, he loved and forgot them all.

Now, on this family occasion of his father’s birthday–his father was eighty-seven to-day–he was absolutely happy. He was proud of his family when any definite occasion, such as this, compelled him to think of it; he considered that it had all been a very jolly, pleasant dinner, that there would certainly follow a very jolly, pleasant evening. He liked, especially, to have his brother, Timothy, with him–he loved them all, bless their hearts–he felt, as he assured them, “Not a day more than twenty.”

“How do you really think Father is, George?” asked Timothy.

“Sound as a bell,” said Henry’s father, “getting deaf of course–must expect that–but it’s my belief that the harder his hearing the brighter his eyes–never knew anyone so sharp. Nothing escapes him, ‘pon my soul.”

“Well,” said George Trenchard, “I think it a most satisfactory thing that here we should all be again–healthy, happy, sound as so many bells–lively as crickets–not a happier family in England.”

“Don’t say that, George,” said Uncle Tim, “most unlucky.”

“Nonsense,” said George Trenchard, brushing Uncle Tim aside like a fly, “Nonsense. We’re a happy family, a healthy family and a united family.”

“I drink my gratitude to the God of Family Life, who-ever He is...” He finished his glass of Port. “Here, Timothy, have another glass. It’s a Port in a million, so it is.”

But Uncle Tim shook his head. “It’s all very well, George, but you’ll have to break up soon. The girls will be marrying–Katherine and Millicent–”

“Rot,” said George, “Millie’s still at school.”

“She’s coming home very soon–very shortly I believe. And besides you can’t keep a family together as you used to. You can’t. No one cares about the home at all now-a-days. These youngsters will find that out soon enough. You’ll be deserting the nest immediately, Henry, my friend, won’t you?”

This sudden appeal, of course, confused Henry terribly. He choked over his wine, coloured crimson, stammered out:

“No, Uncle Tim–Of course–Of course–not.”

George Trenchard looked at his son with approval.

“That’s right. Stick to your old father while you can. The matter with you, Tim, is that you live outside the world and don’t know what’s going on.”

“The matter with you, George, is,” his brother, speaking slowly and carefully, replied, “That you haven’t the ghost of an idea of what the modern world’s like–not the ghost. Up in the clouds you are, and so’s your whole family, my sister and all–But the young ones won’t be up in the clouds always, not a bit of it. They’ll come down one day and then you’ll see what you will see.”

“And what’ll that be?” said George Trenchard, laughing a little scornfully.

“Why you and Harriet doing Darby and Joan over the dying fire and no one else within a hundred miles of you–except a servant who’s waiting for your clothes and sleeve-links.”

“There, Henry–Listen to that!” said his father, still laughing–“See what an ungrateful fellow you’re going to be in a year or two!”

Henry blushed, swallowed in his throat, smiled idiotically. They were all, he thought, laughing at him, but the effect was very pleasant and genial...

Moreover he was interested. He was, of course, one of the young ones and it was his future that was under discussion. His mind hovered over the book that he had been reading that afternoon. Uncle Tim’s words had very much the same effect upon Henry’s mind that that book’s words had had, although from a different angle so to speak... Henry’s eyes lingered about a little silver dish that contained sugared cherries... He liked immensely sugared cherries. Encouraged by the genial atmosphere he stretched out his hand, took two cherries, and swallowed them, but, in his agitation, so swiftly that he did not taste them at all.

Then he drank two glasses of Port–he had never before drunk so much wine. He was conscious now that he must not, under any circumstances, drink any more. He was aware that he must control, very closely, his tongue; he told himself that the room was not in reality so golden and glowing a place as it now seemed to him, that it was only the same old dining-room with which he had all his life, been familiar. He convinced himself by a steady gaze that the great silver dish with the red and purple and golden fruit piled upon it was only a silver dish, was not a deep bowl whose sides, like silver walls stretched up right into the dim electric clusters of electric light hanging from the ceiling. He might convince himself of these facts, he might with a great effort steady the room that very, very slightly swayed about him... what he could not deny was that Life was gorgeous, that this was an Evening of all the Evenings, that he adored his father, his uncle and all the family to such a height and depth of devotion that, were he not exceedingly careful, he would burst into tears–burst into tears he must not because then would the stud in his shirt most assuredly abandon its restraints and shame him, for ever, before Uncle Tim.

At this moment his father gave the command to move. Henry rose, very carefully, from his seat, steadied himself at the table for an instant, then, very, very gravely, with his eye upon his shirt-stud, followed his uncle from the room.

IV

He retained, throughout the rest of that eventful evening, the slightly exaggerated vision of the world. It was not that, as he followed his father and uncle into the drawing-room, he did not know what he would see. He would find them sitting there–Grandfather in his chair, his feet on a stool, his bony hands pressed upon his thin knees with that fierce, protesting pressure that represented so much in his grandfather. There would be, also, his Great-Aunt Sarah with her high pyramid of white hair, her long black ear-trumpet and her hard sharp little eyes like faded blue pebbles, there would be his mother, square and broad and placid with her hands folded on her lap, there would be Aunt Aggie, with her pouting, fat little face, her cheeks quivering a little as she moved her head, her eyes searching about the room, nervously, uneasily, and there would be Aunt Betty, neat and tiny, with her little trembling smile and her quiet air of having something very important to do of which no one else in the family had the ghost of an idea! Oh! he knew them all so well that they appeared to him, now, to be part of himself and to exist only as his ideas of the world and life and his own destiny. They could not now do anything that would ever surprise or disconcert him, he knew their ideas, their schemes, their partialities, their disgusts, and he would not–so he thought now with the fire of life burning so brightly within him–have them changed, no, not in any tiniest atom of an alteration.

He knew that they would sit there, all of them, and talk quietly about nothing, and then when the gold clock was approaching half-past nine they would slip away,–save only grandfather and Aunt Sarah–and would slip up to their rooms and then they would slip down again with their parcels in their hands and at half-past nine the Ceremony would take place. So it had been for years and years and so it would continue to be until Grandfather’s death, and, after that, Henry’s father would take his place, and then, one day, perhaps, it would be the turn of Henry himself.

He paused for a moment and looked at the room–Katherine was not there. She was always until the very last moment, doing something to Grandfather’s present, tying it up in some especial ribbon, writing something on the paper wrapping, making it, in some way, more perfect. He knew that, as he came in, his mother would look up and smile and say “Well, Henry,” and then would resume her placidity, that Uncle Tim would sit down beside Aunt Betty and begin, very gently, to chaff her, which would please her immensely, and that Aunt Sarah would cry “What did you say, Timothy?” and that then he would shout down her ear-trumpet, with a good-humoured smile peeping down from his beard as though he were thinking “One must humour the old lady you know.”

All these things occurred. Henry himself sat in a low chair by the fire and looked at his father, who was walking up and down the other end of the room, his hands deep in his pockets, his head back. Then he looked at his two aunts and wondered, as he had wondered so many times before, that they were not the sisters of his mother instead of his father. They were so small and fragile to be the sisters of such large-limbed, rough-and-tumble men as his father and Uncle Timothy. They would have, so naturally, taken their position in the world as the sisters of his mother.

Aunt Aggie, who thought that no one was paying her very much attention, said:

“I can’t think why Katherine wouldn’t let me get that silk for her at Liberty’s this afternoon. I could have gone up Regent Street so easily–it wouldn’t have been very much trouble–not very much, but Katherine always must do everything for herself.”

Mrs. Trenchard said: “It was very kind of you, Aggie dear, to think of it–I’m sure it was very kind,” and Aunt Betty said: “Katherine would appreciate your thinking of her.”

“I wonder, with the fog, that any of you went out at all,” said Uncle Tim, “I’m sure I was as nearly killed as nothing just coming back from the Strand.”

Aunt Aggie moved her hands on her lap, looked at them, suspiciously, to see whether they meant what they said, and then sighed–and, to Henry, this all seemed to-night wonderful, magical, possessed of some thrilling, passionate quality; his heart was beating with furious, leaping bounds, his eyes were misty with sentimental happiness. He thought that this was life that he was realising now for the first time... It was not–it was two glasses of Port.

He looked at his grandfather and thought of the wonderful old man that he was. His grandfather was very small and very thin and so delicate was the colour of his white hair, his face, and his hands that the light seemed to shine through him, as though he had been made of glass. He was a silent old man and everything about him was of a fine precious quality–his black shoes with the silver buckles, the gold signet ring on his finger, the black cord with the gold eye-glasses that lay across his shirt-front; when he spoke it was with a thin, silvery voice like a bell.

He did not seem, as he sat there, to be thinking about any of them or to be caring for anything that they might do.

His thoughts, perhaps, were shining and silver and precious like the rest of him, but no one knew because he said so little. Aunt Betty, with a glance at the clock, rose and slipped from the room. The moment had arrived...

V

Very soon, and, indeed, just as the clock, as though it were summoning them all back, struck the half-hour, there they all were again. They stood, in a group by the door and each one had, in his or her hand, his or her present. Grandfather, as silent as an ivory figure, sat in his chair, with Aunt Sarah in her chair beside him, and in front of him was a table, cleared of anything that was upon it, its mahogany shining in the firelight. All the Trenchard soldiers and the Trenchard Bishop looked down, with solemn approval, upon the scene.

“Come on, Henry, my boy, time to begin,” said his father.

Henry, because he was the youngest, stepped forward, his present in his hand. His parcel was very ill-tied and the paper was creased and badly folded. He was greatly ashamed as he laid it upon the table. Blushing, he made his little speech, his lips together, speaking like an awkward schoolboy. “We’re all very glad, Grandfather, that we’re all–most of us–here to–to congratulate you on your birthday. We hope that you’re enjoying your birthday and that–that there’ll be lots more for you to enjoy.”

“Bravo, Henry,” came from the back of the room. Henry stepped back still blushing. Then Grandfather Trenchard, with trembling hands, slowly undid the parcel and revealed a purple leather blotting-book with silver edges.

“Thank you, my boy–very good of you. Thank you.”

Then came Katherine. Katherine was neither very tall nor very short, neither fat nor thin. She had some of the grave placidity of her mother and, in her eyes and mouth, some of the humour of her father. She moved quietly and easily, very self-possessed; she bore herself as though she had many more important things to think about than anything that concerned herself. Her hair and her eyes were dark brown, and now as she went with her present, her smile was as quiet and unself-conscious as everything else about her.

“Dear Grandfather,” she said, “I wish you many, many happy returns–” and then she stepped back. Her present was an old gold snuff-box.

“Thank you, my dear,” he said. “Very charming. Thank you, my dear.”

Then came Aunt Aggie, her eyes nervous and a little resentful as though she had been treated rather hardly but was making the best of difficult circumstances. “I’m afraid you won’t like this, Father,” she said. “I felt that you wouldn’t when I got it. But I did my best. It’s a silly thing to give you, I’m afraid.”

She watched as the old man, very slowly, undid the parcel. She had given him a china ink-stand. It had been as though she had said: “Anything more foolish than to give an old man who ought to be thinking about the grave a china ink-stand I can’t imagine.”

Perhaps her father had felt something of this in her voice–he answered her a little sharply–

“Thank ‘ye–my dear Aggie–Thank ‘ye.”

Very different Aunt Betty. She came forward like a cheerful and happy sparrow, her head just on one side as though she wished to perceive the complete effect of everything that was going on.

“My present is handkerchiefs, Father. I worked the initials myself. I hope you will like them,” and then she bent forward and took his hand in hers and held it for a moment. As he looked across at her, a little wave of colour crept up behind the white mask of his cheek. “Dear Betty–my dear. Thank ‘ye–Thank ‘ye.”

Then followed Mrs. Trenchard, moving like some fragment of the old house that contained her, a fragment anxious to testify its allegiance to the head of the family–but anxious–as one must always remember with Mrs. Trenchard–with no very agitated anxiety. Her slow smile, her solid square figure that should have been fat but was only broad, her calm soft eyes–cow’s eyes–from these characteristics many years of child-bearing and the company of a dreamy husband had not torn her.

Would something ever tear her?... Yes, there was something.

In her slow soft voice she said: “Father dear, many happy returns of the day–many happy returns. This is a silk muffler. I hope you’ll like it, Father dear. It’s a muffler.”

They surveyed one another calmly across the shining table. Mrs. Trenchard was a Faunder, but the Faunders were kin by breeding and tradition to the Trenchards–the same green pastures, the same rich, packed counties, the same mild skies and flowering Springs had seen the development of their convictions about the world and their place in it.

The Faunders... The Trenchards... it is as though you said Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Mrs. Trenchard looked at her father-in-law and smiled, then moved away.

Then came the men. Uncle Tim had a case of silver brushes to present and he mumbled something in his beard about them. George Trenchard had some old glass, he flung back his head and laughed, gripped his father by the hand, shouted something down Aunt Sarah’s trumpet. Aunt Sarah herself had given, at an earlier hour, her offering because she was so deaf and her brother’s voice so feeble that on earlier occasions, her presentation, protracted and embarrassing, had affected the whole evening. She sat there now, like an ancient Boadicea, looking down grimly upon the presents, as though they were so many spoils won by a raid.

It was time for the old man to make a Speech: It was–“Thank ‘ye, Thank ‘ye–very good of you all–very. It’s pleasant, all of us together–very pleasant. I never felt better in my life and I hope you’re all the same... Thank ‘ye, my dears. Thank ‘ye.”

The Ceremony was thus concluded; instantly they were all standing about, laughing, talking, soon they would be all in the hall and then they would separate, George and Timothy and Bob to talk, perhaps, until early hours in the morning... Here is old Rocket to wheel grandfather’s chair along to his bedroom.

“Well, Father, here’s Rocket come for you.”

“All right, my dear, I’m ready...”

But Rocket had not come for his master. Rocket, perplexity, dismay, upon his countenance, was plainly at a loss, and for Rocket to be at a loss!

“Hullo, Rocket, what is it?”

“There’s a gentleman, sir–apologises profoundly for the lateness of the hour–wouldn’t disturb you but the fog–his card...”

VI

Until he passes away to join the glorious company of Trenchards who await him, will young Henry Trenchard remember everything that then occurred–exactly he will remember it and to its tiniest detail. It was past ten o’clock and never in the memory of anyone present had the Ceremony before been invaded... Astonishing impertinence on the part of someone! Astonishing bravery also did he only realise it!

“It’s the fog, you know,” said Henry’s mother.

“What’s the matter!” screamed Aunt Sarah.

“Somebody lost in the fog.”

“Somebody what?”

“Lost in the Fog.”

“In the what?”

“In the Fog!”

“Oh!... How did you say?”

“Fog!”

George Trenchard then returned, bringing with him a man. The man stood in the doorway, confused (as, indeed, it was only right for him to be), blushing, holding his bowler hat nervously in his hand, smiling that smile with which one seeks to propitiate strangers.

“I say, of all things,” cried George Trenchard. “What do you think, all of you? Of all the coincidences! This is Mr. Mark. You know, mother dear (this to Mrs. Trenchard, who was waiting calmly for orders), son of Rodney Mark I’ve so often told you of... Here’s his son, arrived in London yesterday after years’ abroad, out to-night, lost his way in the fog, stopped at first here to enquire, found it of all remarkable things ours where he was coming to call to-morrow!... Did you ever!”

“I really must apologise–” began Mr. Mark, smiling at everyone.

“Oh no! you mustn’t,” broke in George Trenchard–“Must he, mother? He’s got to stop the night. Of course he has. We’ve got as much room as you like. Here, let me introduce you.”

Mr. Mark was led round. He was, most certainly, (as Aunt Betty remarked afterwards upstairs) very quiet and pleasant and easy about it all. He apologised again to Mrs. Trenchard, hadn’t meant to stop more than a moment, so struck by the coincidence, his father had always said first thing he must do in London...

Rocket was summoned–“Mr. Mark will stop here to-night.” “Certainly–of course–anything in the world–”

Grandfather was wheeled away, the ladies in the hall hoped that they would see Mr. Mark in the morning and Mr. Mark hoped that he would see them. Good-night–good-night...

“Come along now,” cried George Trenchard, taking his guest’s arm. “Come along and have a smoke and a drink and tell us what you’ve been doing all these years!... Why the last time I saw you!...”

Mrs. Trenchard, unmoved by this ripple upon the Trenchard waters, stopped for a moment before leaving the drawing-room and called Henry–

“Henry dear. Is this your book?” She held up the volume with the yellow Mudie’s label.

“Yes, Mother.”

“I hope it’s a nice book for you, dear.”

“A very nice book, Mother.”

“Well I’m sure you’re old enough to know for yourself now.”

“Good-night, Mother.”

“Good-night, dear.”

Henry, with the book under his arm, went up to bed.

CHAPTER II. THE WINTER AFTERNOON

Extracts from a letter written by Philip Mark to Mr. Paul Alexis in Moscow:–

“... because, beyond question, it was the oddest chance that I should come–straight out of the fog, into the very house that I wanted. That, mind you, was a week ago, and I’m still here. You’ve never seen a London fog. I defy you to imagine either the choking, stifling nastiness of it or the comfortable happy indifference of English people under it. I couldn’t have struck, if I’d tried for a year, anything more eloquent of the whole position–my position, I mean, and theirs and the probable result of our being up against one another...

“This will be a long letter because, here I am quite unaccountably excited, unaccountably, I say, because it’s all as quiet as the grave–after midnight, an old clock ticking out there on the stairs. Landseer’s “Dignity and Impudence’ on the wall over my bed and that old faded wall-paper that you only see in the bedrooms of the upper middles in England, who have lived for centuries and centuries in the same old house. Much too excited to sleep, simply I suppose because all kinds of things are beginning to reassert themselves on me–things that haven’t stirred since I was eighteen, things that Anna and Moscow had so effectually laid to rest. All those years as a boy I had just this wall-paper, just this ticking-clock, just these faded volumes of “Ivanhoe,’ “Kenilworth’, “The Scarlet Letter’ and Lytton’s “Night and Morning’ that I see huddled together in the window. Ah, Paul, you’ve never known what all that means–the comfort, the safety, the muffled cosiness, the gradual decline of old familiar things from shabbiness to shabbiness, the candles, and pony-traps and apple-lofts and going to country dances in old, jolting cabs with the buttons hopping off your new white gloves as you go... it’s all back on me to-night, it’s been crowding in upon me all the week–The Trenchards are bathed, soaked, saturated with it all–they ARE IT!... Now, I’ll tell you about them, as I’ve seen them so far.

“Trenchard, himself, is fat, jolly, self-centred, writes about the Lake Poets and lives all the morning with Lamb, Hazlitt and De Quincey, all the afternoon with the world as seen by himself, and all the evening with himself as seen by the world. He’s selfish and happy, absent-minded and as far from all reality as any man could possibly be. He likes me, I think, because I understand his sense of humour, the surest key to the heart of a selfish man. About Mrs. Trenchard I’m not nearly so sure. I’ve been too long out of England to understand her all in a minute. You’d say right off that she’s stupider than any one you’d ever met, and then afterwards you’d be less and less certain... Tremendously full of family (she was a Faunder), muddled, with no power over words at all so that she can never say what she means, outwardly of an extremely amiable simplicity, inwardly, I am sure, as obstinate as a limpet... not a shadow of humour. Heaven only knows what she’s thinking about really. She never lets you see. I don’t think she likes me.

“There are only two children at home, Henry and Katherine. Henry’s at “the awkward age’. Gauche, shy, sentimental, rude, frightfully excitable from the public school conviction that he must never show excitement about anything, full of theories, enthusiasms, judgments which he casts aside, one after the other, as fast as he can get rid of them–at the very crisis of his development–might be splendid or no good at all, according as things happen to him. He’s interested in me but isn’t sure of me.

“Then there’s Katherine. Katherine is the clue to the house–know Katherine and you know the family. But then Katherine is not easy to know. She is more friendly than any of them–and she is farther away. Very quiet with all the calm security of someone who knows that there are many important things to be done and that you will never be allowed, however insistent you may be, to interfere with those things. The family depends entirely upon her and she lives for the family. Nor is she so limited as that might seem to make her. She keeps, I am sure, a great many things down lest they should interfere, but they are all there–those things. Meanwhile she is cheerful, friendly, busy, very, very quiet–and distant–miles. Does she like me? I don’t know. She listens to all that I have to say. She has imagination and humour. And sometimes when I think that I have impressed her by what I have said I look up and catch a glimpse of her smiling eyes, as though she thought me, in spite of all my wisdom, the most awful fool. The family do more than depend upon her–they adore her. There is no kind of doubt–they adore her. She alone in all the world awakes her father’s selfish heart, stirs her mother’s sluggish imagination, reassures her brother’s terrified soul. They love her for the things that she does for them. They are all–save perhaps Henry–selfish in their affection. But then so are the rest of us, are we not? You, Paul, and I, at any rate...

“And, all this time, I have said nothing to you about the guardians of the House’s honour. Already, they view me with intense suspicion. There are two of them, both very old. An aged, aged man, bitter and sharp and shining like a glass figure, and his sister, as aged as he. They are, both of them, deaf and the only things truly alive about them are their eyes. But with these they watch everything, and above all, they watch me. They distrust me, profoundly, their eyes never leave me. They allow me to make no advances to them. They cannot imagine why I have been admitted–they will, I am sure, take steps to turn me out very soon. It is as though I were a spy in a hostile country. And yet they all press me to stay–all of them. They seem to like to have me. What I have to tell them interests them and they are pleased, too, to be hospitable in a large and comfortable manner. Trenchard was deeply attached to my father and speaks of him to me with an emotion surprising in so selfish a man. They like me to stay and yet, Paul, with it all I tell you that I am strangely frightened. Of what? Of whom?... I have no idea. Isn’t it simply that the change from Russia and, perhaps, also Anna is so abrupt that it is startling? Anna and Miss Trenchard–there’s a contrast for you! And I’m at the mercy–you know, of anyone–you have always said it and it is so–most unhappily. Tell Anna from me that I am writing.

“Because I couldn’t, of course, explain to her as I do to you the way that these old, dead, long-forgotten things are springing up again in me. She would never understand. But we were both agreed–she as strongly as I–that this was the right thing, the only thing... You know that I would not hurt a fly if I could help it. No, tell her that I won’t write. I’ll keep to my word. Not a line from either of us until Time has made it safe, easy. And Stepan will be good to her. He’s the best fellow in the world, although so often I hated him. For his sake, as well as for all the other reasons, I will not write... Meanwhile it is really true enough that I’m frightened for, perhaps, the first time in my life...”

Suspicion was the key-note of young Henry Trenchard at this time. He was so unsure of himself that he must needs be unsure of everyone else. He was, of course, suspicious of Philip Mark. He was suspicious and he also admired him. On the day after Mark had sat up writing his letter “half the night because he was excited’, on the afternoon of that day they were sitting in the green dim drawing-room waiting for tea. Mark was opposite Henry, and Henry, back in the shadow, as he liked to sit, huddled up but with his long legs shooting out in front of him as though they belonged to another body, watched him attentively, critically, inquisitively. Mark sat with a little pool of electric light about him and talked politely to Mrs. Trenchard, who, knitting a long red woollen affair that trailed like a serpent on to the green carpet, said now and then such things as:

“It must be very different from England” or “I must say I should find that very unpleasant,” breaking in also to say: “Forgive me a moment. Henry, that bell did ring, didn’t it?” or “Just a little more on the fire, Henry, please. That big lump, please.” Then, turning patiently to Mark and saying: “I beg your pardon, Mr. Mark–you said?”

Henry, having at this time a passion for neatness and orderly arrangements, admired Mark’s appearance. Mark was short, thick-set and very dark. A closely-clipped black moustache and black hair cut short made him look like an officer, Henry thought. His thick muscular legs proved him a rider, his mouth and ears were small, and over him from head to foot was the air of one who might have to be “off’ on a dangerous expedition at any moment and would moreover know exactly what to do, having been on many other dangerous expeditions before. Only his eyes disproved the man of action. They were dreamy, introspective, wavering eyes–eyes that were much younger than the rest of him and eyes too that might be emotional, sentimental, impetuous, foolish and careless.

Henry, being very young, did not notice his eyes. Mark was thirty and looked it. His eyes were the eyes of a boy of twenty... From Henry his dark neat clothes, his compact and resourceful air compelled envy and admiration–yes, and alarm. For Henry was, now, entirely and utterly concerned with himself, and every fresh incident, every new arrival was instantly set up before him so that he might see how he himself looked in the light of it. Never before, within Henry’s memory, had anyone not a relation, not even the friend of a relation, been admitted so intimately into the heart of the house, and it seemed to Henry that now already a new standard was being set up and that, perhaps, the family by the light of this dashing figure, who knew Russia like an open book and could be relied upon at the most dangerous crisis, might regard himself, Henry, as something more crudely shabby and incompetent than ever. Moreover he was not sure that Mark himself did not laugh at him...

Beyond all this there was the sense that Mark had, in a way, invaded the place. It was true that the family had, after that first eventful evening, pressed him to stay, but it had pressed him as though it had, upon itself, felt pressure–as though its breath had been caught by the impact of some new force and, before it could recover from its surprise, behold the force was there, inside the room with the doors closed behind it.

“It’s hardly decent for him to stay on like this,” thought Henry, “and yet after all we asked him. And... he is jolly!”

Jolly was something that only Henry’s father and Uncle Tim of the Trenchard family could be said to be, and its quality was therefore both enlivening and alarming.

“Mother won’t like it, if he’s too jolly,” thought Henry, “I’m not sure if she likes it now.”

Henry had, upon this afternoon, an extra cause for anxiety; a friend of his, a friend of whom he was especially proud, was coming to tea. This friend’s name was Seymour and he was a cheerful young man who had written several novels and was considered “promising’–

The Trenchards had a very slight knowledge of that world known as “the Arts’ and they had (with the exception of Henry) a very healthy distrust of artists as a race.

But young Seymour was another affair. He was a gentleman, with many relations who knew Trenchards and Faunders; his novels were proper in sentiment and based always upon certain agreeable moral axioms, as for instance “It is better to be good than to be bad” and “Courage is the Great Thing” and “Let us not despise others. They may have more to say for themselves than we know.”

It was wonderful, Mrs. Trenchard thought, that anyone so young should have discovered these things. Moreover he was cheerful, would talk at any length about anything, and was full of self-assurance. He was fat, and would soon be fatter; he was nice to everyone on principle because “one doesn’t know how much a careless word may harm others.” Above all, he was “jolly’. He proclaimed life splendid, wished he could live to a thousand, thought that to be a novelist was the luckiest thing in the world. Some people said that what he really meant was “To be Seymour was the luckiest thing in the world”... but everyone has their enemies.

Henry was nervous about this afternoon because he felt–and he could not have given his reasons–that Mark and Seymour would not get on. He knew that if Mark disliked Seymour he, Henry, would dislike Mark. Mark would be criticising the Trenchard taste–a dangerous thing to do. And, perhaps, after all–he was not sure–he looked across the dark intervening shadow into the light where Mark was sitting–the fellow did look conceited, supercilious. No one in the world had the right to be so definitely at his ease.

There came in then Rocket and a maid with the tea, Katherine, and finally Aunt Aggie with Harvey Seymour.

“I found Mr. Seymour in the Hall,” she said, looking discontentedly about her and shivering a little. “Standing in the Hall.”

Seymour was greeted and soon his cheerful laugh filled the room. He was introduced to Mark. He was busy over tea. “Sugar? Milk?”

“Nice sharp twang in the air, there is. Jolly weather. I walked all the way from Knightsbridge. Delightful. Cake? Bread and butter? Hello, Henry! You ought to have walked with me–never enjoyed anything so much in my life.”

Mrs. Trenchard’s broad, impassive face was lighted with approval as a lantern is lit. She liked afternoon-tea and her drawing-room and young cheerful Seymour and the books behind the book-case and the ticking of the clock. A cosy winter’s afternoon in London! What could be pleasanter? She sighed a comfortable, contented sigh...

Mark was seized, as he sat there, with a drowsy torpor. The fire seemed to draw from the room all scents that, like memories, waited there for some compelling friendly warmth. The room was close with more than the Trenchard protection against the winter’s day–it was packed with a conscious pressure of all the things that the Trenchards had ever done in that room, and Mrs. Trenchard sat motionless, placid, receiving these old things, encouraging them and distributing them. Mark was aware that if he encouraged his drowsiness he would very shortly acquiesce in and submit to–he knew not what–and the necessity for battling against this acquiescence irritated him so that it was almost as though everyone in the room were subtly taking him captive and he would be lost before he was aware. Katherine, alone, quiet, full of repose, saying very little, did not disturb him. It was exactly as though all the other persons present were wishing him to break into argument and contradiction because then they could spring upon him.

His attention was, of course, directed to Seymour’s opinions, and he knew, before he heard them, that he would disagree violently with them all.

They came, like the distant firing of guns, across the muffled drowziness of the room.

“I assure you, Mrs. Trenchard... I assure you... assure you. You wouldn’t believe... Well, of course, I’ve heard people say so but I can’t help disagreeing with them. One may know very little about writing oneself–I don’t pretend I’ve got far–and yet have very distinct ideas as to how the thing should be done. There’s good work and bad, you know–there’s no getting over it...

“But, my dear Henry... dear old chap... I assure you. But it’s a question of Form. You take my word a man’s nothing without a sense of Form... Form... Form... Yes, of course, the French are the people. Now the Russians... Tolstoi, Dostoevsky... Dostoevsky, Mrs. Trenchard. Well, people spell him different ways. You should read “War and Peace’. Never read “War and Peace’? Ah, you should and “Crime and Punishment’. But compare “Crime and Punishment’ with “La maison Tellier’... Maupassant–The Russians aren’t in it. But what can you expect from a country like that? I assure you...”

Quite irresistibly, as though everyone in the room had said: “There now. You’ve simply got to come in now”, Mark was drawn forward. He heard through the sleepy, clogged and scented air his own voice.

“But there are all sorts of novels, aren’t there, just as there are all sorts of people? I don’t see why everything should be after the same pattern.”

He was violently conscious then of Seymour’s chin that turned, slowly, irresistibly as the prow of a ship is turned, towards him–a very remarkable chin for its size and strength, jutting up and out, surprising, too, after the chubby amiability of the rest of his face. At the same moment it seemed to Mark that all the other chins in the room turned towards him with stern emphasis.

A sharp little dialogue followed then: Seymour was eager, cheerful and good-humoured–patronising, too, perhaps, if one is sensitive to such things.

“Quite so. Of course–of course. But you will admit, won’t you, that style matters, that the way a thing’s done, the way things are arranged, you know, count?”

“I don’t know anything about writing novels–I only know about reading them. The literary, polished novel is one sort of thing, I suppose. But there is also the novel with plenty of real people and real things in it. If a novel’s too literary a plain man like myself doesn’t find it real at all. I prefer something careless and casual like life itself, with plenty of people whom you get to know...” Seymour bent towards him, his chubby face like a very full bud ready to burst with the eagerness of his amiable superiority.

“But you can’t say that your Russians are real people–come now. Take Dostoevsky–take him for a minute. Look at them. Look at “Les Frères Karamazoff’. All as mad as hatters–all of ’em–and no method at all–just chucked on anyhow. After all, Literature is something.”

“Yes, that’s just what I complain of,” said Mark, feeling as though he were inside a ring of eager onlookers who were all cheering his opponent. “You fellows all think literature’s the only thing. It’s entirely unimportant beside real life. If your book is like real life, why then it’s interesting. If it’s like literature it’s no good at all except to a critic or two.”

“And I suppose,” cried Seymour, scornfully, his chin rising higher and higher, “that you’d say Dostoevsky’s like real life?”

“It is,” said Mark, quietly, “if you know Russia.”

“Well, I’ve never been there,” Seymour admitted. “But I’ve got a friend who has. He says that Russian fiction’s nothing like the real thing at all. That Russia’s just like anywhere else.”

“Nonsense”–and Mark’s voice was shaking–“Your friend... rot–” He recovered himself. “That’s utterly untrue,” he said.

“I assure you–” Seymour began.

Then Mark forgot himself, his surroundings, his audience.

“Oh–go to Blazes!” he cried. “What do you know about it? You say yourself you’ve never been there. I’ve lived in Moscow for years!”

There was then a tremendous silence, Mrs. Trenchard, Aunt Aggie, Henry, all looked at Seymour as though they said, “Please, please, don’t mind. It shall never happen again.”

Katherine looked at Mark. During that moment’s silence the winter afternoon with its frost and clear skies, its fresh colour and happy intimacies, seemed to beat about the house. In Mark, the irritation that he had felt ever since Seymour’s sentence, seemed now to explode within him, like the bursting of some thunder cloud. He was for a moment deluged, almost drowned by his impotent desire to make some scene, in short, to fight, anything that would break the hot stuffy closeness of the air and let in the sharp crispness of the outer world.

But the episode was at an end. Katherine closed it with:

“Tell Mr. Seymour some of those things that you were telling us last night–about Moscow and Russian life.”

Mrs. Trenchard’s eyes, having concluded their work of consoling Seymour, fastened themselves upon Mark,–watching like eyes behind closed windows; strangely in addition to their conviction that some outrage had been committed there was also a suspicion of fear–but they were the mild, glazed eyes of a stupid although kindly woman...

Mark that evening, going up to dress for dinner, thought to himself, “I really can’t stay here any longer. It isn’t decent, besides, they don’t like me.” He found, half in the dusk, half in the moonlight of the landing-window Katherine, looking for an instant before she went to her room, at the dark Abbey-towers, the sky with the stars frosted over, it seemed, by the coldness of the night, at the moon, faintly orange and crisp against the night blue.

He stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said abruptly, looking into her eyes, very soft and mild but always with that lingering humour behind their mildness. “I’m afraid I was rude to that fellow this afternoon.”

“Yes,” she said, turning to him but with her eyes still on the black towers. “You were–but it would have no effect on Mr. Seymour.”

He felt, as he stood there, that he wished to explain that he was not naturally so unpolished a barbarian.

“Russia,” he began, hesitating and looking at her almost appealingly, “is a sore point with me. You can’t tell–unless you’ve lived there how it grows upon you, holds you, and, at last, begs you to stand up for it whenever it may be attacked. And he didn’t know–really he didn’t–”

“You’re taking it much too seriously,” she said, laughing at him, he felt. “No one thought that he did know. But Mother likes him and he’s Henry’s friend. And we all stick together as a family.”

“I’m afraid your mother thought me abominable,” he said, looking up at her and looking away again.

“Mother’s old-fashioned,” Katherine answered. “So am I–so are we all. We’re an old-fashioned family. We’ve never had anyone like you to stay with us before.”

“It’s abominable that I should stay on like this. I’ll go to-morrow.”

“No, don’t do that. Father loves having you. We all like you–only we’re a little afraid of your ways”–she moved down the passage. “We’re very good for you, I expect, and I’m sure you’re very good for us.” She suddenly turned back towards him, and dropping her voice, quite solemnly said to him, “The great thing about us is that we’re fond of one another. That makes it all the harder for anyone from outside...”