i have said before that one of the chief complaints that henry had against life was the abrupt fashion in which it jerked him from one set of experiences and emotions into another. when christina laid her head on her arms and cried and he kissed her time stood still and history was no more.
he had been here for one purpose and one alone, namely to guard, protect and cherish christina so long as she might need him.
half an hour later he was in his room in panton street.
a telephone message said that his mother was very ill and that he was to go at once to the westminster house.
he knew what that meant. the moment had, at last, come. his mother was dying, was perhaps even then dead. as he stood by his shabby little table staring at the piece of paper that offered the message, flocks of memories—discordant, humorous, vulgar, pathetic—came to him, crowding about him, insisting on his notice, hiding from him the immediate need of his action. no world seemed to exist for him as he stood there staring but that thick scented one of garth and rafiel and the westminster house and the aunts—and through it all, forcing it together, the strong figure of his mother fashioning it all into a shape upon which she had already determined, crushing it until suddenly it broke in her hands.
then he remembered where he should be. he put on his overcoat again and hurried down the dark stairs into the street. the first of the autumn fogs was making a shy, half-confident appearance, peeping into panton street, rolling a little towards the comedy theatre, then frightened at the lights tumbling back and running down the hill towards westminster. in whitehall it plucked up courage to stay a little while, and[pg 223] bunched itself around the bookshop on one side and the horse guards on the other and became quite black in the face peeping into scotland yard. near the houses of parliament it was shy again, and crept away after writhing itself for five minutes around st. margaret's, up into victoria street, where it suddenly kicked its heels in the air, snapped its fingers at the army and navy stores, and made itself as thick and confusing as possible round victoria station, so that passengers went to wrong destinations and trains snorted their irritation and annoyance.
to henry the fog had a curious significance, sweeping him back to that evening of grandfather's birthday, when, because of the fog, a stranger had lost himself and burst in upon their family sanctity for succour—the most important moment of young henry's life perhaps! and here was the moment that was to close that earlier epoch, close it and lock it up and put it away and the fog had come once again to assist at the ceremony.
in rundle square the fog was a shadow, a thin ghostly curtain twisting and turning as though it had a life and purpose all of its own. it hid and revealed, revealed and hid a cherry-coloured moon that was just then bumping about on a number of fantastically leering chimney-pots. the old house was the same, with its square set face, its air of ironic respectability, sniggering at its true british hypocrisy, alive though the family spirit that it had once enshrined was all but dead, was to-night to squeak its final protest. the things in the house were the same, just the same and in the same places—only there was electric light now where there had been gas and there was a new servant-maid to take off his coat, a white-faced little creature with a sniffling cold.
she knew him apparently. "please, mr. henry, they're all upstairs," she said. but he went straight into his father's study. there was no human being there, but how crammed with life it was, and a life so far from christina and her affairs! it was surely only yesterday that he had stood there and his father had told him of the engagement between katherine and philip, and afterwards he had gone out into the passage and seen them kissing. . . . that too was an event in his life.
[pg 224]
the books looked at him and remained aloof knowing so much that he did not know, tired and sated with their knowledge of life.
he went upstairs. on the first landing he met millie. they talked in whispers.
"shall i go up?"
"yes, you'd better for a moment."
"how is she?"
"oh, she doesn't know any of us. she can't live through the night."
"who's there?"
"father and katherine and the aunts."
"and she didn't know you?"
"none of us. . . ."
he went suddenly stepping on tip-toe as though he were afraid of waking somebody.
the long dim bedroom was green-shaded and very soft to the tread. beside the bed katherine was sitting; nearer the window in an armchair henry's father; on the far side of the bed, against the wall like images, staring in front of them, the aunts; the doctor was talking in a low whisper to the nurse, who was occupied with something at the wash-hand stand—all these figures were flat, of one dimension against the green light. when henry entered there was a little stir; he could not see his mother because katherine was in the way, but he felt that the bed was terrible, something that he would rather not see, something that he ought not to see.
the thought in his brain was: "why are there so many people here? they don't want all of us. . . ."
apparently the doctor felt the same thing because he moved about whispering. he came at last to henry. he was a little man, short and fat. he stood on his toes and whispered in henry's ear, "better go downstairs for a bit. no use being here. i'll call you if necessary."
the aunts detached themselves from the wall and came to the door. then henry noticed that something was going on between his sister katherine and the little doctor. she was shaking her head violently. he was trying to persuade her. no, she would not be persuaded. henry suddenly seemed to see[pg 225] the old katherine whom through many years now he had lost—the old katherine with her determination, her courage, her knowledge of what she meant to do. she stayed, of course. the others filed out of the door—aunt aggie, aunt betty, his father, himself.
they were down in the dining-room, sitting round the dining-room table. millie had joined them.
aunt aggie looked just the same, henry thought—as thin and as bitter and as pleased with herself—still the little mole on her cheek, the tight lips, the suspicious eyes.
they talked in low voices.
"well, henry."
"well, aunt aggie."
"and what are you doing for yourself?"
"secretarial work."
"dear, dear, i wouldn't have thought you had the application."
his father was fatter, yes, a lot fatter. he had been a jolly-looking man once. running to seed. . . . he'd die too, one day. they'd all die . . . all . . . himself. die? what was it? where was it?
"oh yes, we like long-masterman very much, thank you, millie dear. it suits aggie's health excellently. you really should come down one day—only i suppose you're so busy."
"yes indeed." aunt aggie's old familiar snort. "millie always was too busy for her poor old aunts."
how disagreeable aunt aggie was and how little people changed although you might pretend. . . . but he felt that he was changing all the time. suppose he wasn't changing at all? oh, but that was absurd! how different the man who sat out in the garden at duncombe from the boy who, at that very table, had sat after dinner on grandfather's table looking for sugared cherries? really different? . . . but, of course. . . . yes, but really?
aunt aggie stood up. "i really don't know what we're all sitting round this table for. they'll send for us if anything happens. i'm sure poor harriet wouldn't want us to be uncomfortable."
henry and millie were left there alone.
[pg 226]
"how quiet the house is!" millie gave a little shiver. "poor mother! i wish i felt it more. i suppose i shall afterwards."
"it's what people always call a 'happy release,'" said henry. "it really has been awful for her these last years. when i went up to see her a few weeks ago her eyes were terrible."
"poor mother," millie repeated again. they were silent for a little, then millie said: "you know, i've been thinking all the evening what peter once said to us about our being enchanted—because we are young. there's something awfully true about it. when things are at their very worst—when i'm having the most awful row with bunny or victoria's more tiresome than you can imagine—although i say to myself, 'i'm perfectly miserable,' i'm not really because there's something behind it all that i'm enjoying hugely. i wouldn't miss a moment of it. i want every scrap. it is like an enchantment really. i suppose i'll wake up soon."
henry nodded.
"i feel it too. and i feel as though it must all have its climax in some wonderful adventure that's coming to me. an adventure that i shall remember all the rest of my life. it seems silly, after the war, talking of adventures, but the war was too awful for one to dare to talk about oneself in connection with it, although it was immensely personal all the time. but we're out of the war now and back in life again, and if i can keep that sense of magic i have now, nothing can hurt me. the whole of life will be an adventure."
"we must keep it," said millie. "we must remember we had it. and when we get ever so old and dusty and rheumatic we can say: 'anyway we knew what life was once.'"
"yes, i know," said henry. "and be one of those people who say to their children and other people's children if they haven't any of their own: 'ah, my dear, there's nothing like being young. my school-days were the happiest.' rot! as though most people's school-time wasn't damnable."
"oh it's nothing to do with age," said millie scornfully. "the enchanted people are any age, but they're always young. the only point about them is that they're the only people who really know what life is. all the others are wrong."
"we're talking terribly like the virtuous people in books,"[pg 227] said henry. "you know, books like seymour's, all about courage and tolerance and all the other things with capital letters. why is it that when a russian or scandinavian talks about life it sounds perfectly natural and that when an englishman does it's false and priggish?"
"i'm sure i don't know," said millie in an absent-minded voice. "isn't the house quiet? and isn't it cold? . . . poor mother! it's so horrid being not able to do anything. katherine's feeling it terribly. she's longing for her to say just one word."
"she won't," said henry. "she'll hold out to the very last."
at that moment aunt betty appeared in the doorway, beckoning to them.
a moment later they were all there gathered round the bed.
now henry could see his mother. she was lying, her eyes closed, but with that same determined expression in the face that he had so often seen before. she might be dead or she might be asleep. he didn't feel any drama in connection with his vision of her. too many years had now intervened since his time with her. he did indeed recall with love and affection some woman who had been very good to him, who had taken him to our boys' clothing company to be fitted on, who had written to him and sent him cake when he was at school, and of whom he had thought with passionate and tearful appeal when he had been savagely bullied. but that woman had died long ago. this stern, remorseless figure, who had cursed her children because they would not conform to the patterns that she had made for them, had confronted all his love of justice, of tolerance, of freedom. there had been many moments when he had hated her, and now when he was seeing her for the last time he could not summon false emotion and cry out at a pain that he did not feel. and yet he knew well that when she was gone remorse would come sweeping in and that he would be often longing for her to return that he might tell her that he loved her and wished to atone to her for all that he had done that was callous and selfish and unkind.
worst of all was the unreality of the scene, the dim light, the faint scent of medicine, the closed-in seclusion as though they were all barred from the outside world which they were never[pg 228] to enter again. he looked at the faces—at aunt betty upset, distressed, moved deeply because in her tender heart she could not bear to see any one or any thing unhappy; aunt aggie, severe, fancying herself benign and dignified, thinking only of herself; the doctor and the nurse professionally preoccupied, wondering perhaps how long this tiresome old woman would be "pegging out"; his father struggling to recover something of the old romance that had once bound him, tired out with the effort, longing for it all to be over; millie, perfectly natural, ready to do anything that would help anybody, but admitting no falseness nor hypocrisy; katherine——!
it was katherine who restored henry to reality. katherine was suffering terribly. she was gazing at her mother, an agonized appeal in her eyes.
"come back! come back! come and say that you forgive me for all i have done, that you love me still——"
she seemed to have shed all her married life, her home with philip, her bearing of children to him, her love for him, her love for them all. she was the daughter again, in an agony of repentance and self-abasement. was the victory after all to mrs. trenchard?
katherine broke into a great cry:
"mother! mother; speak to me! forgive me!"
she fell on her knees.
mrs. trenchard's eyes opened. there was a slight movement of the mouth: it seemed, in that half light, ironical, a gesture of contempt. her head rolled to one side and the long, long conflict was at an end.
