some entries in millie’s diary:
march 12th. wind and rain like anything. been in most of the day patching up the screen in my bedroom with new pictures—got them as much like the old ones as possible. went for an hour’s tussle with the wind out to the cross, and it was fine. wish i could have got over to rafiel. the sea must have been fine to-day coming in over the peak. father drove philip over to polchester in the morning. felt bored and out of temper in the evening.
march 13th. katie and philip had their first tiff this morning—at least first i’ve seen. he wanted her to go off with him for the day. she’d got to stop and help mother with the merrimans from polneaton, coming to tea. mother said it didn’t matter, but i could see that she was awfully pleased when k. stayed. but if i’d been k. i’d have gone. what does a family matter when one’s in love? and she is in love, more than anyone i’ve ever seen. but i think she’s disappointed with phil for not caring more about garth, although she never owns it. i’m sorry for him. he wanders about not knowing what to do with himself, and everyone’s too busy to think of him. i try, but he doesn’t want me, he wants katherine, and thinks he ought to have her all the time. aunt aggie makes things worse in every way she can....
march 15th. cross all day. garth isn’t quite so nice this time somehow. is it because of paris? i don’t think so—it used to make one care all the more. i think philip upsets one. when you see someone criticising something you’ve always loved, it makes you hot defending it, but also, although you’d never own it, it makes you see weak spots. then he stirs my imagination as no one ever has done before. i believe he always sees the place he’s not in much more vividly than the place he is. if i were katie i’d marry him to-morrow and make sure of him. not that he isn’t in love with her—he is—more every day—but he doesn’t want to divide her with us, and she doesn’t understand it and we won’t have it—so there you are!
march 16th. henry very queer to-day. i wish they’d send him to oxford or do something with him. it’s so hard on him to let him hang around doing nothing—it’s so bad for him, too. i think he hates philip, but is fascinated by him. he took me into the garden after lunch to-day as though he were going to tell me something very important. he was so very mysterious, and said i could advise him, and he was dreadfully worried. then he suddenly stopped, said it was nothing, and wasn’t it a fine day? i know i shall kill henry one day. he thinks he’s so important and has got a great destiny, whereas he can’t even keep his face clean. so i told him, and then i wanted to hug him and comfort him. i’m really awfully fond of him, but i do wish he was nice and smart like other men.
march 17th. had a long walk with philip this afternoon. really i do like him most tremendously, partly, i think, because he always treats me as though i’d come out years ago and knew all about everything. he talked all the time about katherine, which was natural enough, i suppose. he said (what he’d told me in london) that he was frightened by her idea of him, and wished she thought him more as he was. he said he hated a long engagement, that he wished it were over—then he said that he was a poor sort of fellow for anyone so fine as katherine, and i said that i didn’t think it did to be too humble about oneself and that i always made myself out as grand as i could in my mind.
he said that it was russia made one like that, that after you’d been in russia a little you doubted everyone and everything, most of all yourself. i said that i thought that rather flabby ... but i do like him. i don’t think katie ought to insist so much on his liking garth. she’ll frighten him off it altogether if she does that.
march 19th. rachel seddon arrived. mother asked her down. she doesn’t generally come at this time, and she’s only just back from abroad, but i think she wants to see how the engagement’s getting on. of course she doesn’t like philip—you can see that in a moment—and of course he knows it. but he wants to make her like him. i wish he didn’t care so much whether people like him or no. henry quite his old self to-night, and we danced (i tried to teach him a cake-walk) in my room, and smashed a lamp of aunt aggie’s—i’d quite forgotten her ceiling was my floor. the house is awfully old and shaky—letter from rose la touche—paris does seem funny to think of here....
part of a letter that was never posted—
“i haven’t written to you all these weeks because i was determined not to write to russia until i was settled and happy and married for life. then, also, you yourself have not written. have you all, over there, forgotten me? russians never do write letters, do they? i don’t suppose i ought to be disappointed—you warned me. if i’d forgotten all of you there—but i haven’t. i thought for a time that i had, but i haven’t ... then a bell rings, and all the servants troop in and kneel down in a row with their heels up, and george trenchard reads a bit out of the new testament and, very fast, a prayer about ‘thy humble servants’, and he has his eye on the weather out of the window all the time. afterwards there is the post—also eggs, bacon, marmalade, brown bread and white and the family arriving one by one with ‘sorry i’m late!’ fancy a russian saying: ‘sorry i’m late’!... so the day’s begun. afterwards, everyone has their own especial job. i don’t know what my especial job is supposed to be. george has his writing and the whole place—fences, weeds, horses, dogs—anything yon like. he fancies himself walter scott at abbotsford, and is as happy as the day is long; mrs. trenchard has the village and the inside of the house (with katherine her lieutenant). there is no living soul from the infant of a week to the old man of ninety-seven (john wesley moyle—he sees visions) who does not have his or her life exactly and precisely arranged. mrs. trenchard has a quiet hypnotic power that fills me with terror, because i know that i shall soon be ranged with all the others. she is kindness itself i am sure, and no cloud passing across the sun’s face makes less sound—and yet she has always her way. oh, paul, old man, i’m frightened of her as i have never been of anyone before. when i see her here i want to run. i had a horrible dream last night. the terror of it is with me still. i thought that i said good-night to everyone and went up to my bedroom. to my surprise i found mrs. trenchard there, and instead of my usual bed was an enormous feather-bed—an enormous one stretching from wall to wall. ‘you will sleep on that to-night,’ said mrs. trenchard, pointing to it. in some way i knew that if i once lay down upon it i should never get up again. i said ‘no, i would not lie down.’ ‘i think you’d better,’ she said in her slow way. ‘i think you’d better.’ ‘no!’ i cried, ‘i defy you!’ instantly the feather-bed like a cloud rose, filled the room, was above me, under me, around me. it pressed in upon me. i tore at it, and the feathers floated in a great stifling fog against my eyes, up my nose, in my mouth. i screamed for mercy, i fought, i fell, i was suffocating, death was driving down upon me ... i woke. there’s nonsense for you! and yet not such nonsense neither. on a stuffy day here, when everything steams and the trees and grass and hedges close up about the house like an army, when mrs. trenchard, with katherine, is arranging meals and lives, birth and death, when, trying to escape down one of the lanes, they rise so high above one’s head that it’s like being drowned in a green bath, i tell you the feather-bed is not so far away—suffocation seems no idle dream. the fact of the matter is that there’s nothing here for me to do. it didn’t matter having nothing to do in russia—although, as a matter of fact, i always had plenty, because no one else had anything to do that couldn’t be stopped at any moment for the sake of a friend, or a drink, or a bit of vague thinking. i suppose it’s the order, the neatness, the punctuality and, at the same time, the solid, matter-of-fact assumption that things must be exactly what they look (which they never are) that fusses me. but really of course i came down here to make love to katherine—and i only get a bit of her. she cherishes the faith that i want the family as badly as i want her, and that the family want me as badly as she does. she has got a thousand little duties here that i had never reckoned on, and they are like midges on a summer’s evening. i would throw myself into their life if they would let me, but there doesn’t seem any real place for me. it’s fighting with shadows. george trenchard takes me for drives, millie, katherine’s sister, takes me for walks—katie herself is, i do believe, with me whenever she can be.... i ought to be satisfied. but only last night great aunt sarah, who is in her dotage (or pretends to be), said, in the drawing-room to millie, in a loud whisper, ‘who is that young man, my dear, sitting over there? i seem to know his face.’ that sort of thing doesn’t exactly make you feel at home. with all this, i feel the whole time that they are criticising me and waiting for me to make some big blunder. then they’ll say to katherine, ‘you see, my dear!’ oh, of course, i’m an ass to make a fuss. any sensible fellow would just wait his year, marry katherine and say good-bye to the lot. but i shan’t be able to say good-bye to the lot. that’s the whole business ... partly because i’m weak, partly because katherine adores them, partly because that is, i believe, mrs. t.’s plan. to absorb me, to swallow me, to have me ever afterwards, somewhere about the place, a colourless imitation of the rest of them. so they’ll keep katie, and i’m not important enough to matter. that’s her plan. is she stronger than i? perhaps after all i shall snatch katherine from them and escape with her—and then have her homesick for ever after.... why am i always imagining something that isn’t here? russia poisoned my blood—sweet poison, but poison all the same. you’ll understand this letter, but if george trenchard, or indeed any ordinary sensible englishman were to read it, what an ass he’d think me! ‘if he thought more about the girl he was going to marry than about himself he wouldn’t have all this worry.’ but isn’t it just that. if, in nine months from now, i, swallowed whole by mrs. t., marry katie, will that be much fun for her? i shall be a sort of shadow or ghost. i can see myself running mrs. trenchard’s errands, hurrying down to be in time for breakfast (although she never scolds anyone), sometimes waking, seeing myself, loathing, despising myself. ah! anna would understand ... anna, even when she laughed, understood ... anna ... i don’t think i shall send this. i’m determined to drive you all from me until, in a year’s time, i can think of you safely again. i described moscow to katherine in the train, and speaking of it, has reminded me ...”
katherine could not remember that there had ever been a year since her eighth birthday when she had missed “the feast” at rafiel. “the feast” was held always on the 24th of march, unless that day were a sunday: it had been held, old dr. pybus, the antiquarian of pelynt, said, ever since phoenician days. to katherine the event was the crowning day of the spring. after the 24th there would be, of course, many cold, blustering days: nevertheless the spring, with primroses, violets, anemones thick in the four valleys that ran down to rafiel, the sky blue with white clouds like bubbles, the stream running crystal-clear over the red soil, the spring was here, and “the feast” was its crowning.
for the fishermen and their families “the feast” meant a huge tea in the schools, great bonfires on the peak, and a dance on the fish-market, a drink at ‘the pilchards,’ and, above all, for the younger men and women, love and engagements. it was on “the feast” day that the young men of rafiel asked the young women whether ‘they would walk out’, and the young women said ‘yes’ or ‘no’ according to their pleasure. on a fine night, with the bonfires blazing to the sky and showers of golden sparks like fire-flies over the quiet sea, there was no happier village in the world than rafiel. in its little square harbour the stars, and the fires and the amphitheatre-shaped village looked down and the ghosts of the phoenicians peered over the brow of the hill, sighed for the old times that they once knew, and crept at last, shivering, back into their graves.
this was to be the greatest “feast” that katherine had ever known, because philip was, of course, to be with her. it was to be, for them both, the crowning of their love by the place, the soil, the good glebeshire earth. to katherine it seemed that if anything untoward happened on this day, it would be as though glebeshire itself rejected them. she would confess to no one how solemn it seemed to her....
uncle tim was in charge of the party. timothy faunder had not, for many, many years missed a “feast”; thither he went, his outward appearance cynical and careless as ever, but obeying, inwardly, more sacred instincts than he would acknowledge. he would be in charge of katherine, millie, philip, rachel—henry did not care to go.
the 24th of march was wonderful weather. uncle tim, coming over from his house up the road, to luncheon, said that he had never seen a finer day. he said this to his sister harriet, standing before the window of her little room, looking down upon the lawn that reflected the sunny shadows like a glass, looking down upon the clumps of daffodils that nodded their heads to him from the thick grass by the garden wall. harriet was very fond of her brother; she had an intimate relationship with him that had never been expressed in words by either of them. she was a little afraid of him. she was sitting now writing notes. she did not pause as she talked to him, and sometimes she rubbed the side of her nose with her fingers in a puzzled way. she wrote a large sprawling hand, and often spelt her words wrongly.
this conversation was before luncheon.
“well, harriet,” tim said. “how are you?”
she looked up for a moment at his big, loose, untidy body, his shaggy beard, his ruffled hair.
“why do you never brush your hair, tim? it’s such a bad example for henry. and you’re standing in the light.... thank you.... oh—i’m very well. why didn’t you come in last night, as you said you would?... yes, i’m quite well, thank you.”
“i went walking,” said timothy. “i do brush my hair, only i am not going to put grease on it for anybody ... how do you like the young man?”
mrs. trenchard nodded her head several times as though she were adding up a sum.
“he likes it here, i think, although of course it must be quiet for him—‘and if tuesday—isn’t convenient—suggest—another day—next week!’?”
“so you don’t like him even so much as you expected to?”
“no.” she answered quite abruptly, spreading her large hand flat out upon the table as though, by her sudden pounce, she had caught a fly. “he’s weaker than i had fancied, and vainer.... more insignificant altogether.... miss propert, the close, polchester....”
“he’s weak, yes,” said tim, staring down upon his sister. “but he isn’t insignificant. he’s weak because his imagination paints for him so clearly the dreadful state of things it would be if affairs went wrong. he wants then terribly to make them right. but he hasn’t the character to do much himself, and he knows it. a man who knows he’s weak isn’t insignificant.”
mrs. trenchard made no reply.
“well, what are you going to do about it?” at last said tim.
“oh, he’ll marry katherine of course.”
“and then?”
“and then they’ll live here.... ‘dear canon, i wonder whether ...’—”
“and then?”
“and then—why then it will be just as it is now.”
“oh! i see!”
timothy turned his back upon her, staring down upon all the green that came up like a river to the walls of the house. his eyes were grave, his back square, his hands locked tight. he heard the scratching of his sister’s pen—otherwise there was deep silence about them. he wheeled round.
“harriet, look here! i’ve never—no, i think, never—asked you a favour.”
she turned in her chair and faced him, looking up to him with her wide, rather sleepy, kindly eyes—now a little humorous, even a little cynical.
“no, tim—never,” she said.
“well, i’m going to ask you one now.”
“yes?” her eyes never flickered nor stirred from his.
“it’s this. i like the young man—like him, for god knows what reason. i think i must myself once have seen the world as he does. i know i believed that it could be such a splendid world with such a little effort—if only everyone were nice to everyone. i understand young philip—i believe that this is a crisis in his life and in katherine’s. there are three possible endings to the engagement. he can marry her, carry her off and live his own life. he can marry her, not carry her off and live your life. the engagement can break down, and he disappear back to where he came from. you love katherine, you are determined not to lose her, therefore you intend to make the first impossible. you see that katherine is so deeply attached to him that it will break her heart if he goes—therefore the last is not to be. there remains only the second. to that you devote all your energies. you are quite selfish about it. you see only yourself and katherine in the matter. you see that he is weak and afraid of you.... you will break him in, then turn him into the paddock here to graze for the rest of his life. it would serve you right if katherine were to run away with him.”
“she won’t do that,” said mrs. trenchard quietly.
“who knows? i wish she would, but she’s faithful, faithful, faithful down to the soles of her shoes.... bless her!”
mrs. trenchard smiled. “dear tim. you are fond of her, i know.... there’s the luncheon-bell.”
“wait a minute.” he stood over her now. “just listen. i believe you’re wrong about katherine, harriet. she’s old-fashioned and slow compared with the modern girl—we’re an old-fashioned family altogether, i suppose. it’s the first time she’s been in love in her life, and, as i said just now, she’s faithful as death—but she’ll be faithful to him as well as to you. let him have his fling, let him marry her and carry her off, go where he likes, develop himself, be a man she can be proud of! it’s the crisis of his life and of hers too—perhaps of yours. you won’t lose her by letting her go off with him. she’ll stick to you all the more firmly if she knows that you’ve trusted him. but to keep him here, to break his spirit, to govern him through his fear of losing her—i tell you, harriet, you’ll regret it all your life. he’ll either run away and break katie’s heart or he’ll stay and turn into a characterless, spiritless young country bumpkin, like thousands of other young fellows in this county. it isn’t even as though he had the money to be a first-class squire—just enough to grow fat (he’s rather fat now) and rotten on. worse than dear george, who at least has his books.
“and he isn’t a stupid fool neither ... he’ll always know he might have been something decent. if i thought i had any influence over him i’d tell him to kidnap katie to-morrow, carry her up north, and keep her there.”
mrs. trenchard had listened to him with great attention; her eyes had never left his face, nor had her body moved. she rose, now, very slowly from her chair, gathered her notes together carefully, walked to the door, turned to him, saying:
“how you do despise us all, tim!” then left the room.
after luncheon they started off. philip, sitting next to katherine in the waggonette, was very silent during the drive; he was silent because he was determined that it was on this afternoon that he would tell katherine about anna.
without turning directly round to her he could see her profile, her dark hair a little loose and untidy, her cheek flushed with pleasure, her eyes smiling. “no, she’s not pretty,” he thought. “but she’s better than that. i can’t see what she’s like—it’s as though she were something so close to me and so precious that i could never see it, only feel that it was there. and yet, although i feel that she’s unattainable too—she’s something i can never hold completely, because i shall always be a little frightened of her.”
he made this discovery, that he was frightened, quite suddenly, sitting there on that lovely afternoon; he saw the shadows from the clouds, swooping, like black birds, down over the valley beneath him: far beyond him he saw a thread of yellow running beside the water of the stream that was now blue in the sunshine and now dark under the hill; there were hosts of primroses down there, and the hedges that now closed the carriage were sheeted with gold: when the hedges broke the meadows beyond them flowed, through the mist, like green clouds, to the hazy sea; the world throbbed with a rhythm that he could hear quite clearly behind the clap-clap of the horses’ hoofs—‘hum—hum—hum—hum’—the air was warm, with a little breath of cold in it; the dark soil in the ditches glistened as though, very lately, it had been frozen.
riding there through this beautiful day he was frightened. he was aware that he did not know what katherine would do when he told her. during his years in russia he had grown accustomed to a world, inevitably, recklessly, voluble. russians spoke, on any and ever occasion, exactly what was in their mind; they thought nothing of consequences whether to themselves or any other; their interest in the ideas that they were pursuing, the character that they were discussing, the situation that they were unravelling, was always so intense, so eager, so vital that they would talk for days or weeks, if necessary, and lose all sense of time, private feelings, restraint and even veracity. philip had become used to this. had katherine been a member of a russian family he would, two days after his engagement, have had everything out with them all—he would have known exactly where he stood. with the trenchards he did not know anything at all; from the moment of his engagement he had been blindfolded, and now he felt as though in a monstrous game of “blind man’s buff” he were pushed against, knocked on the elbows, laughed at, bumped against furniture, always in black, grim darkness. since he had come down to garth he had lost even katherine. he felt that she was disappointed in some way, that she had never been quite happy since their journey together in the train. well, he would put everything straight this afternoon. he would tell her about moscow, anna, all his life—tell her that he could not, after their marriage, live at garth, that it would stifle him, make him worthless and useless, that she must show him that she definitely cared for him more than for her family....
he felt as though, with a great sweeping stroke of his arm, all the cobwebs would be brushed away and he would be free. he rehearsed to himself some of the things that he would say: “you must see, dear, that the family don’t like me. they’re jealous of me. much better that we go away for a year or two—right away—and allow them to get used to the idea. then we can come back.”
but what would she say about anna? did she know anything about men, their lives and affairs? would her fine picture of him be dimmed? he hoped a little that it would. he wanted simply to love her, that she should understand him and that he should understand her, and then they two together (the world, garth, the trenchards blown to the wind) should—
“that’s tredden cove, that dip beyond the wood,” said katherine. “we used to go there—”
yes, he was frightened. he felt as though this afternoon would be the crisis of his life. (there had been already a great many crises in his life.) he was impatient; he wanted to begin, now, in the waggonette. he could imagine turning to her, saying: “katie, darling, i want to tell you—”
he was conscious that lady seddon was watching him. “jolly day, isn’t it?” he said. he thought to himself. “she hates me as the others do.”
they had come to the cross-roads. jacob put on the drag, and they began, very slowly, to creak down a precipitous hill. the fantastic element in the affair that philip had been expecting as a kind of reply to his own sense of his personal adventure seemed to begin with this hill. it resembled no ordinary hill; it plunged down with a sudden curve that seemed to defy the wheels of any carriage; on their right the bank broke sheer away far down to one of the rafiel four valleys, vivid green now with tufted trees. there was no fence nor wall, and one slip of the wheels would have hurled the carriage over. at a turn of the road a cluster of white cottages, forming one figure together as though they had been a great stone flung from the hill-top by some giant, showed in the valley’s cup. at his sense of that remoteness, of that lifting wildness of the rising hills, at the beauty of the green and grey and silver and white, he could not restrain a cry.
katherine laughed. “that’s blotch end,” she said. “one turn and we’re at the bottom.” the carriage wheeled round, crossed a brown bridge and had started down the road to rafiel.... on one side of the road was a stream that, hurrying down from the valley, hastened past them to the sea; on the other side of them a wooded hill, with trees like sentinels against the sky—then the village street began, ugly at first, as are the streets of so many glebeshire villages, the straight, uniform houses, with their grey slate roofs, now and then hideous-coloured glass over the doorways, and, ugliest of all, the methodist chapel with ‘1870’ in white stone over the door. but even with such a street as this rafiel could do something: the valley stream, hidden sometimes by houses, revealed itself suddenly in chuckling, leaping vistas. before the houses there were little gardens, thick now with daffodils and primroses and hyacinths: through the deep mouth of the forge fires flamed, and a sudden curve of the street brought a bridge, a view of the harbour and a vision of little houses rising, tier on tier, against the rock, as though desperately they were climbing to avoid some flood. this contrast of the wild place itself, with the ugly patches of civilisation that had presented themselves first, was like the voice of the place chuckling at its visitors’ surprise.
first the row of villas, the tailor’s shop with a pattern picture in the window, the sweet shop, the ironmonger’s—now this sudden huddle of twisted buildings, wildly climbing to the very sky, a high, rugged peak guarding the little bay, two streams tossing themselves madly over the harbour ridges, the boats of the fleet rocking as though dancing to some mysterious measure, a flurry of gulls, grey and white, flashing, wheeling, like waves and foam against the sky, the screaming of the birds, the distant thud of the sea ... this was rafiel.
they left the carriage and turned to go back to the schools, where the tea had already begun. katherine slipped her arm into philip’s: he knew that she was waiting for him to speak about the place, and he knew, too, that she was not expecting his praise as confidently as she would have expected it three weeks ago. a little of her great trust in him was shadowed by her surprise that he had not surrendered to glebeshire more completely. now he could tell her that it was to the trenchards and not to glebeshire that he had refused to surrender.
she could not tell, of course, that all his attention now was fixed on his determination to tell her everything as soon as he was alone. walking with him up the road was that secret figure who attends us all—the fine, cherished personality whom we know ourselves to be.
to philip, more than many others, was the preservation of that secret personality essential. he was, this afternoon, determined to live up to the full height of it.
in the schools, at two long tables, the whole village was feeding: the room was steaming with heat: huge urns at the ends of the tables were pouring out tea with a fierce, scornful indifference, as though they would show what they could do but despised their company. the fishermen, farmers, their wives and families, shining with soap, perspiration and excitement, sat, packed so tightly together that eating seemed an impossibility: there were plates of bread and butter, saffron buns, seed-cake piled up and running over: there were the ladies of the village, who said: “now, mr. trefusis, do try another,” or “mary’s rather tired, i think, mrs. maxwell. shall i lift her down?” or “well, mrs. pascoe, out and about again, i see,” or “how’s the new cottage, henry? better than the old one, i expect.”
from the other side of the world came: “aw, thank ’ee, ma’am—not so bad, thank ’ee. up to glossen’s farm they ’ad it praper wild, so they tell me”—“yes ... true enough. all over spots ’er arms was, poor worm”—“didn’t worry we, thank ’ee, miss. marnin’ or evenin’ all the same to we ... ah, yes, poor mr. izards—’e did suffer terrible, poor dear....”
philip perceived with a sense of irritated isolation how instantly and how easily the other members of his party were swallowed up by the ceremony. he himself was introduced to a prim young woman in a blue hat, who flung remarks to him over a tea-tray and seemed to regard his well-cut clothes with contempt. the fishermen did not look happy in their stiff sunday clothes, but he liked their faces. they reminded him more of russian peasants than any people whom he had seen since his landing in england. no, he must not think about that ... russia was banished for ever.
uncle timothy, millie, even lady seddon were warmly welcomed, but katherine was adored. he understood, perhaps for the first time, what that place must mean to her. they called her ‘miss kathie’, they shouted to her across the room, they cracked jokes with her; an old man, with a long white beard like a prophet, stood up and put his hand on her shoulder as he talked to her. once she broke away from them and came to him.
“phil, i want you to come and be introduced to a great friend of mine,” she said.
he followed her, feeling that all eyes watched him, with criticism and even with hostility. a large, immensely broad man, in a navy blue suit, with a red, laughing face, hair cut very close to his head, and eyes of the honestest, stood up as they came across. he looked at katherine with the devotion and confidence of a faithful dog.
“this is mr. richard curtis,” katherine said. “he used to pick up shells for me when i was three. he has a boat here with his brother. he’s always in good spirits, aren’t you, dick, even when you scald your arm with boiling water?”
this was an allusion to some confidence between them, and as their eyes met, philip felt a pang of ridiculous jealousy. the man’s face was flaming, and his eyes were more devoted than ever. he held out a large, horny hand to philip. “excuse me, sir,” he said. “i’m proud to shake ’ands with the man wot miss katherine is goin’ to marry. we thought, once on a time, p’raps as she’d always be ’ere, along with we, but wot we want most is fer ’er to be ’appy—and that we knows now she will be. i ’ope you’ll be often down—along, sir, in time to come—that is, sir, if you’re not goin’ to take ’er right away from us.”
“why, of course not, dick,” said katherine. “when we’re married we’re going to live quite close. you’ve only got to find us a house.”
philip knew that he should say something pleasant; he could think of nothing; he muttered a few words and then turned away, confused, irritated, embarrassed. what had happened to him? he was always so pleasant with everyone, especially with strangers; now, at every turn, he seemed compelled by someone stronger than he to show his worst side. “oh, if i can only get katherine out of all this,” he thought passionately, “even for a little time. then i’ll come back another man. to have her to myself. everything’s coming between us. everything’s coming between us....”
at last he had his desire. they had left the others. she had led him, out past the row of white cottages, to a rock on the side of the hill, high over the sea, with the harbour below them, the village, curved like a moon in the hills’ hollow, behind the harbour, and a little cluster of trees at the hill top striking the blue night sky: opposite them was the peak rock, black and jagged, lying out into the water like a dragon couchant. they could see the plateau above the peak where the bonfire was to be, they could see the fish-market silver grey in the evening light, and the harbour like a green square handkerchief with the boats painted upon it. the houses, like an amphitheatre of spectators, watched and waited, their lights turning from pale yellow to flame as the evening colours faded; crying, singing, laughing voices came up to their rock, but they were utterly, finally remote. she leaned her head against his shoulder, and they sat there in silence.
at last, half-dreamily, gazing forward into the sea that, stirred by no wind, heaved ever and again, with some sigh, some tremor born of its own happiness, she talked. “you can see the bonfire and the figures moving around it. soon the moon will be right above the peak.... isn’t everything quiet? i never knew last year how different this one would be from any that i had ever known before.” she turned half towards him, caught his hand and held it. “phil, you must be very patient with me. i’ve felt so much that you were part of me that i’ve expected you to see things always as i do. of course that was ridiculous of me. you can’t love this place quite as i do—it must take time.... you aren’t angry with me, are you?”
“angry?” he laughed.
“because the closer i get to you—the longer we’re engaged, the less, in some ways, i seem to know you. i never realised until you came how shut up as a family we’ve been, how wrapt up in ourselves. that must be hard for you to understand....”
“there it goes!” he broke in suddenly.
the bonfire leapt into fire: instantly the village glowed with flame, a golden pool burnt beneath the peak, the houses that had been blue-grey in the dusk now reflected a rosy glow, and whirling, dancing sparks flew up to join the stars. little black figures were dancing round the blaze; down on the fish-market other figures were moving, and the faint echo of a fiddle and a horn was carried across the water.
something said to philip, ‘tell her—now.’
he plunged with the same tightening of the heart that he would have known had he sprung from their rock into the pools of the sea below them. he put his arm more tightly around her, and there was a desperate clutch in the pressure of his fingers, as though he were afraid lest she should vanish and he be left with sky, land and sea flaming and leaping beneath the fire’s blaze.
“katie, i’ve something i must tell you,” he said. he felt her body move under his arm, but she only said, very quietly: “yes, phil?” then in the little fragment of silence that followed she said, very cosily and securely: “so long as it isn’t to tell me that you don’t love me any more, i don’t mind what it is?”
“no—it isn’t that. it’s something i should have told you, i suppose, long ago. i would have told you, only it was all so over and done with for me that i couldn’t imagine its mattering to anyone. i told your father that there was no complication in my life, and that’s true—there is none. there’s nothing i have nor think nor do that isn’t yours.”
she said very quietly: “you were in love with someone before you knew me?”
he was surprised and immensely reassured by the quietness and tranquillity of her voice.
“that’s it—that’s it,” he said, eagerly, his heart bounding with relief and happiness. “look here, katie. i must tell you everything—everything, so that there can’t be anything between us any more that you don’t know. you see, when i went to russia first i was very young—very young for my age too. russia isn’t much of a place when you don’t know the language and the weather’s bad—and i’d gone expecting too much. i’d heard so much about russia’s hospitality and kindness, but i was with english people at first, and most of them were tired to death of russia, and only saw its worst side and didn’t paint it very cheerfully. then the russians i did meet had to struggle along in bad french or english (it’s all rot about russians being great linguists), and if a russian isn’t spontaneous he isn’t anything at all. then when i did go to their houses their meals simply killed me. they make one eat such a lot and drink such a lot and sit up all night—i simply couldn’t stand it. so at first i was awfully lonely and unhappy—awfully unhappy.”
she sighed in sympathy and pressed closer to him.
“i’m not the sort of man,” philip went on, “to stand being lonely. it’s bad for me. some men like it. it simply kills me. but after about six months or more i knew a little russian, and i got to know one or two russians individually. there’s one thing i can tell you—that until you know a russian personally, so that he feels that he’s got some kind of personal part in you, you simply don’t know him at all. it’s so easy to generalise about russians. wait until you’ve made a friend.... i made a friend, several friends. i began to be happier.”
katherine pressed his hand. the bonfire was towering steadily now in a great golden pillar of smoke and flame to heaven. the music of the fiddle and the horn, as though they were its voice, trembled dimly in the air: all the stars were shining, and a full moon, brittle like glass, flung a broad silver road of light across the black peak and the sea. there was no breeze, but the scent of the flowers from the gardens on the rocks mingled with the strong briny odour of the sea-pinks that covered the ground at their feet.
“the spring came all in a moment, like a new scene at the play. i was introduced to some theatre people, who had a house in the country near moscow. you’ve no idea of the slackness and ease of a russian country house. people just come and go—the doors are all open, meals are always going on—there’s always a samovar, and sweets in little glass dishes, and cold fish and meat and little hot pies. in the evening there was dancing, and afterwards the men would just sleep about anywhere. i met a girl there, the first russian woman who had attracted me. her name was anna mihailovna, and she was a dancer in the moscow ballet.”
he paused, but katherine said nothing nor did she move.
“she attracted me because she had never known an englishman before, and i was exactly what she had always thought an englishman would be. that pleased me then—i wanted, i even felt it my duty, to be the typical englishman. it wasn’t that she admired the typical englishman altogether: she laughed at me a great deal, she laughed at my having everything so cut and dried, at my dogmatising so easily, at my disliking russian unpunctuality and lack of method.
“she thought me rather ridiculous, i fancy, but she felt motherly to me, and that’s what most russian women feel to most men. i was just beginning to love russia then. i was beginning to dream of its wonderful secrets, secrets that no one ever discovers, secrets the pursuit of which make life one long, restless search. anna fascinated me—she let me do always as i pleased. she seemed to me freedom itself: i fell madly in love with her.”
katherine’s hand gave then a sudden leap in his; he felt the ends of her fingers pressing against his palm. some of his confidence had left him: some of his confidence not only in himself but in his assurance of the remoteness of his story and the actors in it. he felt as though some hand were dragging him back into scenes that he had abandoned, situations that had been dead. the fire and the sea were veiled, and his eyes, against their will, were fastened upon other visions.
“that year was a very wonderful one for me. we took a flat together, and life seemed to be realised quite completely for me. this, i thought, was what i had always desired ... and i grew slack and fat and lazy—outside my business—i always worked at that decently. early in the next year we had a boy. anna took him with the same happy indifference that she had taken me: she loved him, i know, but she was outside us all, speculating about impossibilities, then suddenly coming to earth and startling one with her reality. i loved her and i loved moscow—although sometimes too i hated it—but we used also to have the most awful quarrels; i was angry with her, i remember, because i thought that she would never take me seriously, and she would laugh at me for wanting her to. i felt that russia was doing me no good. our boy died, quite suddenly, of pneumonia, and then i begged her to marry me and come and live in england. how she laughed at the idea! she didn’t want to be married to anyone. but she thought that perhaps england would be better for me. she did not seem to mind at all if i went. that piqued me, and i stayed on, trying to make myself essential to her. i did not care for her then so much as for my idea of myself, that she would break her heart if i went. but she knew that—how she would laugh as she looked at me.... she refused to take me seriously. russia was doing me harm—i got slack, sleepy, indifferent. i longed for england. the chance came. anna said that she was glad for me to go, and laughed as she said it. i took my chance.... i’ve told you everything,” he suddenly ended.
he waited. the tune across the water went: ‘la-la-la, la, la-la-la-la, la, la.’ many, many little black figures were turning on the fish-market. the blaze of the bonfire was low and its reflection in the sea smoking red.
when he had finished katherine had very gently drawn her hand away from his, then suddenly, with a little fierce gesture, pushed it back again.
“what was your boy’s name?” she asked, very quietly.
“paul.”
“poor little boy. did you care for him very much?”
“yes, terribly.”
“it must have been dreadful his dying.”
he felt then a sudden dismay and fear. perhaps, after all she was going to dismiss him; he fancied that she was retreating from him—he felt already that she was farther away from him than she had ever been, and, with a desperate urgency, his voice trembling, his hand pressing her arm, he said:
“katie—katie—you’re disgusted with me. i can feel it. but you must go on loving me—you must, you must. i don’t care for anything but that. all men have had affairs with women. it’s all dead with me, as though it had been another man. there’s no one in the world but you. i—i—”
his hand shook; his eyes, if she could have seen them, were strained with terror.
she turned to him, put her arms round his neck, drew his head towards her, kissed him on his eyes, his mouth, his cheeks.
“phil—phil,” she whispered. “how little you understand. my dear—my dear.”
then raising her eyes away from him and staring again in front of her, she said:
“but i want to know, phil. i must know. what was she like?”
“like?” he repeated, puzzled.
“yes. her appearance, her clothes, her hair, everything. i want to be able to see her—with my own eyes—as though she were here....”
he stared at her for a moment—then, very slowly, almost reluctantly, he began his description....
