it happened that in the middle of july there was to be a trenchard-faunder wedding in london. it was to be a quite especial trenchard-faunder wedding that no trenchard or faunder must miss. a miss dorothy faunder, daughter of colonel faunder of foxley park, wilts, was to marry her cousin humphrey trenchard, second son of sir geoffrey trenchard of tredent hall, truxe, in glebeshire, and 22 bryanston square, w....

the wedding was to be towards the end of the season, before goodwood and cowes; and st. margaret’s, westminster, was to be the scene of the ceremony. of course the george trenchards of garth would be present—there was never any question of that—but at the same time it was an inconvenient interference with normal life. trenchards and faunders saw, as a rule, little of london in the season unless there was a daughter coming out or a wedding or a presentation at court. george trenchard greatly disliked being torn from garth during july and august, and it was only an exceptional demand that could uproot him.

this demand was exceptional. of course they must all be there.

on the evening before the departure for london katherine sat alone in her bedroom looking through her bright window on to the garden beneath her. the july evening was close and oppressive—the garden was almost black, with a strange quivering bar of pale yellow light behind the trees. the scents came up to the open window heavily—there was no breeze. now and then a dog barked as though it were challenging someone. although there was no breeze, the trees sometimes shivered very faintly.

one star glittered between the black clouds.

katherine sat at the open window smelling the pinks and the roses, her room dim behind her with a pale metallic glow. she felt oppressed by the evening, and at the same time strangely excited, as though something was about to happen. but beyond this she was conscious of a curious combative loneliness that should have been a miserable thing, but was in reality something challenging and almost defiant. defiant of what? defiant of whom? she thought of it as she sat there.

her thoughts went back to that day that she had spent with philip at roche st. mary moor. her loneliness had begun quite definitely from that day. only a fortnight later philip had departed. she had not seen him since then. but even had he been with her she thought that he would not, very greatly, have affected her loneliness. he might even have accentuated it. for philip had behaved very strangely since that afternoon at roche st. mary. it was, katherine thought, as though, having made his bolt for freedom and failed, he simply resigned himself. he only once afterwards alluded to the affair. one day he said to her quite suddenly: “after all, it’s worth it—so long as you’re there.”

“what’s worth it?” she had asked him.

“but if you were to leave me,” he went on, and stopped and looked at her.

“what’s worth it?” she had repeated.

“being swallowed up,” he had answered her. “your mother and i are going to pay calls together this afternoon.”

he had during these last weeks been wonderful about her mother; he had agreed to everything that she proposed, had run errands for her, supported her opinions, “been quite a son to her,” aunt betty, happy at this transformation, had declared—and he had been perfectly miserable. katherine knew that.

and his misery had kept them apart. katherine had never loved him so intensely as she did during those last days, and he had loved her with a kind of passionate, almost desperate, intensity. but their love had never brought them together. there had always been someone between.

it was as good as though he had said to her: “we have still another six months before our marriage. you have told me definitely that you will not give up the family. your mother is determined not to surrender a bit of you to me, therefore i am to be surrendered to your mother. i am willing that this should be so because i love you, but if i change, if i am dull and lifeless you mustn’t be surprised.

“there’s the earlier life, which one can’t forget all at once, however deeply one wants to. meanwhile, i hate your mother and your mother hates me. but she’ll never let me go unless you force her to. she knows that i can’t break away so long as you’re here. and she means you to be here always. what would a strong man do? forget the earlier life, i suppose. so would i if i had you all to myself. but i have to share you—and that gives the earlier life a chance.”

although he had never opened his lips, katherine heard him saying all this as though he were there in front of her, there with his charm and his hopeless humours about himself, his weakness that she had once thought was strength, and for which now she only loved him all the more.

but the terrible thing about those last weeks had been that, although she knew exactly what he was thinking, they had simply avoided all open and direct discussion. she had wished for it, but what could she say? only the same things again—that it would be all right when they were married, that he would love the family then, that she would be his then and not the family’s.... always at this point in her argument she was pulled up sharply, because that was a lie. she would not be his when they were married. she knew now, quite definitely, that her mother was utterly, absolutely resolved never to let her go.

and meanwhile there was anna....

katherine, putting philip aside for a moment, thought of the members of the family one by one. they were all separated from her. she summoned this ghostly truth before her, there in her dim room with the hot scented air surrounding her, quite calmly without a shudder or a qualm. her mother was separated from her because, during the last six months, they had never, with one exception, spoken the truth to one another. aunt aggie was separated from her because, quite definitely, ever since that horrible sunday night, she hated aunt aggie. henry was separated from her because during these last months he had been so strange with his alternate moods of affection and abrupt rudeness that she now deliberately avoided him. aunt betty was separated from her because she simply didn’t see things in the least as they were. her father was separated from her because he laughed at the situation and refused to consider it at all. millie—ah! millie, the friend of all her life!—was separated from her because they were concealing things the one from the other as they had never done in all their days before.

katherine faced these facts. she had an illusion about her life that she had always been right in the very heart of her family. she did not know that it had been their need of her that had put her there, and that now that she was turning away from them to someone else, they were all rejecting her. they also were unaware of this. they thought and she thought that it had been always a matter of love between them all—but of course love in most cases is only a handsome name for selfishness.

so katherine sat alone in her room and waited for the thunder to come. meanwhile she was immensely surprised that this discovery of her loneliness did not immediately depress her, but rather aroused in her a pugnacity and an independence that seemed to her to be quite new qualities. and then, following immediately upon her pugnacity, came an overwhelming desire to kiss them all, to do anything in the world that they wished, to love them all more than she had ever done before. and following upon that came an aching, aching desire for philip, for his presence, his eyes, his hair, his neck, his hands, his voice....

and following upon that came anna. anna had become an obsession to katherine. if, in her earlier life, she had thought very intently of persons or countries remote from her, she would, perhaps, have known how to deal with the woman, but never before, in any crisis or impulse, had her imagination been stirred. if she had ever thought about imagination, she had decided that rachel seddon’s “imagination!... you haven’t got a scrap, my dear!” hurled at her once in the middle of some dispute, was absolutely true. but her love for philip had proved its preserver, had proved it, roused it, stirred it into a fierce, tramping monster, with whom she was simply unable to deal.

if only, she felt, she had been able to speak of her to philip! surely then the questions and the answers would have stripped anna of her romance, would have shown her to be the most ordinary of ordinary women, someone unworthy of philip, unworthy of anyone’s dreams. but bringing anna into the air had been forbidden—anything better than to start philip thinking of her—so that there she had lingered, somewhere in the shadow, romantic, provoking, mocking, dangerous, coloured with all the show of her foreign land, with the towers and plains and rivers of romance.

nevertheless it had not been all katherine’s imagination. there had been in the affair some other agency. again and again katherine had been conscious that, in opposition to her will, she was being driven to hunt for that figure. in the middle of some work or pleasure she would start, half frightened, half excited, conscious that someone was behind her, watching her. she would turn, and in the first flash of her glance it would seem to her that she caught some vanishing figure, the black hair, the thin, tall body, the laughing, mocking eyes.

it was simply, she would tell herself, that her curiosity refused to be quiet. if only she might have known whether philip thought of anna, whether anna thought of philip, whether anna wanted philip to return to her, whether anna really despised him, whether ... and then with a little shudder of dismissal, she would banish the phantom, summoning all her admirable trenchard common-sense to her aid.... “that was past, that was gone, that was dead.”

she was, upon this afternoon, at the point of summoning this resolution when the door opened and millie came in. for a moment so dark was the room that she could not see, and cried: “katie, are you there?”

“yes. here by the window.”

millie came across the room and stood by katherine’s chair. in her voice there was the shadow of that restraint that there had been now between them ever since the sunday with the awful supper.

“it’s only the post. it’s just come. two letters for you—one from philip that i thought that you’d like to have.”

katherine took the letters, laid them on her lap, looking up at her sister with a little smile.

“well ...” said millie, hesitating, then, half turning, “i must go back to aunt betty—i’m helping her with the things.”

“no. don’t go.” katherine, who was staring in front of her now into the black well of a garden, lit by the quivering, shaking light, put out her hand and touched millie’s sleeve. millie stood there, awkwardly, her white cotton dress shining against the darkness, her eyes uncertain and a little timid.

“i ought to go, katie dear.... aunt betty—”

“aunt betty can wait. millie, what’s the matter?”

“what’s the matter?”

“yes, between us. for a long time it’s been—and worse since philip went away.”

“nothing,” said millie, slowly, then, quite suddenly, with one of those movements so characteristic of her, she flung herself on to her knees, caught katherine’s hands, then stretched forward and pulled katherine’s head down to hers—then kissed her again and again. the two sisters held one another in a close embrace, cheek against cheek, breast to breast. so they stayed for some time.

at last millie slid down on to the floor and rested there, her head, with all its fair hair ruffled and disordered, on katherine’s lap.

“well ...” said katherine at last, her head against her sister’s cheek. “why, all this time, have you been so queer? is it because you hate philip?”

“no, i like him.”

“is it because you hate me?”

“no, i love you.”

“is it because you hate my marrying philip?”

“no—if you’d do it at once.”

“do it at once?”

“yes—now—go up to london—marry him to-morrow—”

“my dear millie!... our year isn’t up—nearly.”

“what does it matter about your year? better to break your year than to have us all at one another’s throats—miserable. and then perhaps after all to lose philip.”

“lose philip?”

“yes. he’ll go back to russia.”

the words flashed before katherine’s eyes like lightning through the garden. her heart gave a furious jump and then stopped.

“why do you think he’d do that?” she asked at last. “do you think he doesn’t love me?”

“no, it’s because he loves you so much that he’d do it. because he’d rather have none of you than only a bit of you, rather have none of you than share you with us.” she turned round, staring into katherine’s eyes. “oh, i understand him so well! i believe i’m the only one in all the family who does! you think that i’m not grown up yet, that i know nothing about life, that i don’t know what people do or think, but i believe that i do know better than anyone! and, after all, it’s philip himself that’s made me see! he understands now what he’s got to give up if he marries you—all his dreams, all his fun, all his travels, all his imagination. you don’t want to give up anything, katie. you want to keep all this, garth and the sea, even the oldest old man and woman in the place, above all, you want to keep all of us, mother most of all. you know that mother hates philip and will always make him unhappy, but still you think that it’s fair that you should give up nothing and he everything. but you’re up against more than philip, katie—you’re up against all his imagination that won’t let him alone however much he wants it to—and then,” millie finally added, turning her eyes back to the other garden—“there’s the other woman.”

“why!” katherine cried—“you know?... who told you?”

“and you know?” cried millie. “he told you after all?”

“but who told you?” katherine insisted, her hand on millie’s shoulder.

“henry.”

“then he knows. who else?”

“none of the family, i think, unless henry’s told the others. i’ve never said a word.”

“who told him?”

“a man at his club.”

there was silence. then katherine said:

“so that’s why you’ve been so queer?”

“yes. i didn’t know whether he’d told you or no. i was afraid to say anything. i thought perhaps he’d told you and it was making you miserable. then i thought that you ought to know. i thought sometimes that i’d speak to philip, and then i was afraid of henry doing something awful, blurting it all out to everybody. i haven’t known what to do. but, katie darling, you aren’t unhappy about it, are you?”

“no—not unhappy,” said katherine.

“because you mustn’t be. what does it matter what phil did before he loved you, whom he knew? what does it matter so long as you take her place? if ever anybody loved anybody, philip loves you....” then she said quickly, eagerly: “what was she like, katie? did he tell you? did he describe her? was she lovely, clever? what was her name?”

“anna,” katie said.

“does he think of her still? does he want to see her again?”

“i don’t know,” katherine said slowly. “that’s what’s been so hard all these months. we simply don’t talk of her. he doesn’t want to think of her, nor of russia, nor of any of that past life. he says it’s all dead—”

“well,” said millie, eagerly.

“but it isn’t to me. i don’t hate her, i’m not jealous, it doesn’t alter one scrap of my love for phil, but—i don’t know—i feel as though if we talked about it everything would clear away. i’d see then that she was just an ordinary person like anyone else, and i wouldn’t bother about her any more, as it is, simply because i don’t know anything, i imagine things. i don’t know whether philip thinks of her or not, but i expect that he does, or thinks of my thinking of her, which is the same thing.”

“well, i’ve thought of her!” millie declared, “again and again. i’ve wondered a thousand things, why she gave philip up, whether she loves him still, whether she hates his being in love with someone else, whether she writes to him, what she’s like, what she wears.... doesn’t it prove, katie, how shut up we’ve always been? why, even in paris i never really thought about anybody whom i couldn’t actually see, and life used to seem too simple if you just did the things in front of your nose—and now it’s only the things that aren’t anywhere near you that seem to matter.” millie said all this as though she were fifty years old at least. it was indeed a real crisis that she should be admitted into the very heart of all this thrilling affair; she was rewarded at last with her flaming desire, that ‘she should share in life.’ it was almost as though she herself had a lover.

katherine waited, then she broke out suddenly: “but it’s all so stupid this. why can’t things be perfectly simple? why can’t philip like them and they like philip? why can’t philip and i marry and spend part of the year here and part of the year away?”

“you’ve got to choose,” millie said, “mother or philip—philip or the family—philip or glebeshire. the old life or the new one. you’ve tried to mix it all up. you can’t. philip can change us. he is changing us all, but mix with us never. if he is forced to, he’ll simply disappear.”

“my dear, what’s happened to you?” katherine cried. “how wise you’ve become! how you’ve grown up!”

“i am,” said millie, with a solemnity that proved that ‘grown-up’ was the last thing that she really was. she sprang to her feet. she spoke as though she were delivering a challenge.

“katie, if you let things go, if you let mother have her way, one of two things will happen; either philip won’t be able to stand it and will vanish to russia, or he’ll endure it, will be smothered by us all, and there’ll only be the corpse left for your enjoyment.

“katie!” her eyes shone with excitement, her voice quivered with the thrill of her intensity. “you must marry him now—whilst you’re in london. you must chuck us all, show mother that philip comes before everything, take it into your own hands, send that russian woman’s ghost back to russia ... just as browning and mrs. browning did, slip off one day, buy some smelling-salts at the chemist’s and be married!”

she laughed. she clapped her hands.

“oh! katie! katie!... it’s the only way, the only possible way!”

but katherine replied: “you’re wrong, millie. i can keep it all. i will keep it all. i love phil, but i love mother and you and henry and this—this—all of it. if i were to marry phil now mother would never forgive me—you know that she would not. i could never come back. i must lose it all.”

“you’d rather lose philip then?”

“no. that never!”

“well—anna’s after him, katie. russia’s after him. he’s awfully unhappy—and you’re unfair. you’re giving him nothing, not even himself. you say that you love him, but you want things all your way. i tell you you deserve to lose ...” then suddenly softening again: “but i’ll help you, katie dear, whatever way it is. oh! i’m so glad that we’ve spoken. we’re together now, and nothing can part us.”

katherine caught her hand and held her close. “what would mother do, do you think, if she knew about anna?” she said, at last.

“i don’t know,” millie answered, “mother’s so strange. i believe she’d do nothing. she’d know that if she dismissed him she’d lose you.”

then katherine suddenly, holding millie so close to her that their hearts beat as one, said: “i love him so. i love him so.... everything must go if he wants it to.”

and then, as though the house, the land, the place that had always been hers, answered her challenge, a lightning flash struck the darkness and the rain broke in a thunder of sound.

all through the wedding-ceremony katherine felt insanely that she was no longer a trenchard—insanely because if she was not a trenchard what was she? always before in these trenchard gatherings she had known herself wonderfully at home, sinking down with the kind of cosy security that one greets as one drops into a soft, familiar bed. every trenchard was, in one way or another, so like every other trenchard that a trenchard gathering was in the most intimate sense of the word a family party. at a beaminster gathering you were always aware of a spirit of haughty contempt for the people who were still outside, but at a trenchard or faunder assembly the people outside did not exist at all. “they were not there.” the beaminsters said: “those we don’t know are not worth knowing.” the trenchards said: “those we can’t see don’t exist”—and they could only see one another. all this did not mean that the trenchards were not very kind to the human beings in the villages and towns under their care. but then these dependents were trenchards, just as old trenchard chairs and tables in old trenchard houses were trenchards.

the beaminsters had been broken all in a moment because they had tried to do something that their age no longer permitted them to do. the trenchards were much more difficult to break, because they were not trying to do anything at all. there was no need for them to be “positive” about anything....

as old mrs. trenchard, mother of canon trenchard of polchester, once said to a rebellious daughter: “my dear, it’s no use your trying to do anything. people say that new generations have come and that we shall see great changes. for myself, i don’t believe it. england, thank god, is not like one of those foreign countries. england never changes about the real things,” and by ‘england’ of course she meant ‘trenchards.’

katherine knew exactly whom she would see at st. margaret’s, westminster. from glebeshire there would be canon trenchard, his wife and his two girls, also the trenchards of rothin place, polchester. there would be sir guy trenchard from truxe, and miss penelope trenchard from rasselas. there would be the head of all the trenchards—sir henry trenchard of ruston hall, in norfolk, and there would be garth trenchard, esq., from bambury towers, in northumberland. there would be the medlicott trenchards of south audley street, the robert trenchards from somewhere in south kensington (he was a novelist), and the ruston trenchards from portland place. of the faunders there was no end—hylton faunder, the famous painter, one of the props of the royal academy, the rev. william faunder of st. mary’s, monkston, one of the best of london’s preachers, the misses faunder of hampstead, known for their good work, and others, others ... from hampshire, wiltshire, kent, suffolk, durham, cumberland, every county in england.

well, there they all were in rows; again and again you beheld the same white high forehead, the same thin and polished nose, the same mild, agreeable, well-fed, uncritical eyes. how well katherine knew those eyes! she herself had them, of course, but her mother had them so completely, so magnificently, that once you had seen mrs. trenchard’s eyes you would be able, afterwards, to recognise a trenchard anywhere. but now, as katherine looked about the church, it suddenly struck her, with a little shiver of alarm, that all the eyes were blind. she was sitting with her mother and millie, and she looked at them quickly to see whether they’d noticed anything strange or unusual—but no, very placidly and agreeably, they were enjoying the comfort and ‘rightness’ of the whole affair....

she was lonely, then, with a sudden shock of acute distress. she felt suddenly, with positive terror, that she did not belong to anyone at all. philip was miles and miles away; as though it were the voice of prophecy, something seemed to tell her that she would never see him again. the service then seemed endless—she waited desperately for it to close. at last, when they all moved on to 22 bryanston square, her impatience simply seemed more than she could control. the presents were there, and many, many beautiful clothes and shining collars and cakes that no one wanted to eat, and over and over again, a voice (it seemed always the same voice) saying: “how nice! how delightful!... so glad ... so fortunate....” at last she was on her way back to westminster. she had now only this one thought, that unless she were very quick she would never see philip again. he had said that he would come to her for a moment after the wedding, and, when at the doorway of the drawing-room she caught a reflection of his figure in the mirror, her heart bounded with relief. how silly of her. what had she supposed? nevertheless, quite breathlessly, she caught his hand.

“oh, phil! i’m so glad!... come up to the schoolroom. we shall be alone there!”

the schoolroom, that had once been the nursery, packed away at the very top of the house, was bathed with the rich evening glow. he caught her in his arms, held her, and she kissed him, passionately, with clinging, eager kisses. then, with a little happy sigh, she released him.

the old shabby room, with its old shabby books, charlotte mary yonge and mrs. ewing and henry, and the christmas supplements on the walls and the old grate that seemed still to be sunk in happy reveries of roasted chestnuts and toffee and toast, reassured her.

“oh, phil!” she cried. “i thought i was never going to get to you!”

she looked at him, carefully, luxuriously, with all the happiness of possessing something known and proved and loved. why, were it the ugliest face in the world, the oldest, shabbiest body, nothing now could change her attachment. that was why, with true love, old age and decay did not, could not matter—and here, after all, was her possession, as far from old age as anyone could be, strong and thick-set and with the whole of life before it! but he seemed tired and depressed. he was very quiet, and sat there close to her, holding her hand, loving her, but subdued, saying very little. he had changed. he was not now that eager, voluble figure that had burst through the fog on that first wonderful evening so long ago.

“phil—you’re tired!” she said quickly, looking up into his eyes.

“yes. i am rather,” he answered. “it’s been awfully hot. was it very splendid?”

“the wedding?... no, horrid.... just like any other, and i can’t tell you anything about it, because i didn’t notice a thing.”

but he didn’t ask her. he didn’t want to know anything about it. he only wanted to have her there. they sat quietly, very close to one another. her terror and her loneliness left her. the abbey clock boomed the hour, and a little clock in the room gave a friendly, intimate echo.

“your mother’s asked me to go back to garth with you,” he suddenly said.

katherine remembered how triumphant she had been when, upon a certain earlier occasion, he had told her that. now her alarm returned; her hand trembled on his knee.

“what did you say?”

“oh! i’m going of course. you’ll be there, and i want to do what your mother wishes.”

he said this very quietly, and looked at her with a little smile.

“phil, don’t go!” she said suddenly. “you’re happier here. we’ll be up in october.”

“october!” he answered, still very quietly, “that’s a long time to wait—and i haven’t had very much of you lately. it won’t help things very much my staying here—and i want to please your mother,” he ended. “i’ve a kind of idea,” he went on, “that she’ll get to like me later, when she really gets to know me. i’ve been thinking all this time in london that i behaved very badly when i was down there before. wanted everything my own way.”

katherine could say nothing. in between them once more was that shadow. to speak right out would mean the old business all over again, the business that they had both resolutely dismissed. to speak out would mean anna and the family, and that same demand once more—that katherine should choose. one word and she knew that he would be pleading with all his force: “marry me now! come off with me! slip out of the house and have it over.”

but she could not—she was not ready. give them all up, cut her life in half, fling them all away? no, still she clung desperately to the belief that she would keep them both, the family and philip, the old life and the new. she heard millie urging her, she saw philip quietly determined to say nothing now until she led the way—but she could not do it, she could not, could not do it!

so they sat there, holding hands, his shoulder against hers, until at last it was time for him to go. after he had left her, whilst she was dressing for dinner, she had a moment of panic and almost ran out of the house, just as she was, to find him. but the trenchard blood reasserted itself; she went down to dinner calm and apparently at ease.

that night, when they had all gone up to their rooms, she stood for a moment waiting outside her bedroom door, then, as though some sudden resolve had come to her, turned and walked to her mother’s door. she knocked, entered and found her mother standing in front of her looking-glass. she had slipped off her evening dress, there with her short white sleeves, from which her stout, firm, bare arms stood out strong and reliant, with her thick neck, her sturdy legs, she seemed, in spite of her grey hair, in the very plenitude of her strength. her mild eyes, large and calm, her high white forehead, the whole poise of her broad, resolute back seemed to katherine to have something defiant and challenging in it. her mouth was full of hair-pins, but she nodded and smiled to her daughter.

“may i come in, mother,” said katherine, “i want to speak to you.”

katherine thought of that earlier occasion in that same room when she had first spoken of her engagement. how far apart since then they had grown! it seemed to her to-night, as she looked at that broad white back, that she was looking at a stranger.... yes, but an extraordinary stranger, a really marvellous woman. how curious that katherine should have been living during all those years of intimate affection with her mother and have thought of her never—no, never at all. she had taken her, her love, her little habits, her slow voice, her relentless determination, her ‘managing’—all these things and many more—as though they had been inevitably outside argument, statement or gratitude. but now, simply because of the division that there was between them, she saw her as a marvellous woman, the strangest mingling of sweetness and bitterness, of tenderness and hardness, of unselfishness and relentless egotism. she saw this, suddenly, standing there in the doorway, and the imminent flash of it struck her for an instant with great fear. then she saw philip and gained her courage.

“i want to speak to you, mother,” she repeated, moving into the middle of the room.

“well, dear ...” said mrs. trenchard, through the hair-pins. she did not let down her hair, but after another glance into the mirror, moved away, found a pink woolly dressing-gown, which she put on. then sat down on the old sofa, taking up, as she always did, a little piece of work—this time it was some long red worsted that she was knitting. it curled away from her, like a scarlet snake, under the flickering light of the candles on her dressing-table, disappearing into darkness.

katherine stood in front of her mother, with her hands behind her, as she had done when she was a very little girl.

“well, dear, what is it?” said mrs. trenchard again.

“mother—i don’t want you to have philip down at garth.”

“why not, dear? i thought you would like it.”

“he isn’t happy there.”

“well, he’s only got to say so.... he needn’t come.”

“if he doesn’t—he’s afraid.”

“afraid of what?”

“afraid of losing me.” katherine, as she said this, made a little forward movement with her hand as though she were asking for help, but mrs. trenchard’s eyes were wide and cold.

“afraid of losing you?... my dear, he can’t trust you very much!”

“no, no, it isn’t that!... he knows that you, the others don’t like him. he hates garth—at least he hates it if he’s always got to live there. if he’s alone here in london he thinks that you’ll persuade me never to leave you, that you’ll get the tighter hold of me, that—oh! i can’t explain it all!” she broke off quite desperately. “but it isn’t good for him to be there, he’s unhappy, he’s depressed. mother, why do you hate him?” she cried, suddenly challenging the whole room, with its old familiar pictures, its books and furniture to answer her.

“i think,” said mrs. trenchard, very quietly, counting her stitches and nodding her head at her stocking, “that you’re taking all this in a very exaggerated fashion—and you never used to be exaggerated, katie, my dear—no, you never used to be. i often used to say what a comfort and help i always found you, because you saw things as they were—not like millie and henry, who would get excited sometimes over very little. but your engagement’s changed you, katie dear—it really has—more than i should have expected.”

katherine, during this speech, had summoned her control. she spoke now with a voice low and quiet—ridiculously like her mother’s an observer might have thought.

“mother, i don’t want to be exaggerated—i don’t indeed. but, all these last six months, we’ve never said to one another what we’ve thought, have never spoken openly about anything—and now we must. it can’t go on like this.”

“like what, katie dear?”

“never knowing what we’re really thinking. we’ve become a dreadful family—even father’s noticed it.”

“certainly,” said mrs. trenchard slowly. “we were all happier before philip came.”

katherine’s cheeks flushed. “that’s unkind, mother!” she cried. her voice grew harder. “please don’t say anything about philip unless you must. it makes everything very difficult. i know that you don’t like him. you see him strangely, you put him in the wrong whatever he does. but, mother,” her voice softened again. “it isn’t that. we can’t alter that. phil will never be at his best at garth—not as things are now. but if we were married. oh! you would see how fine things would be!” her voice was eager, excited now. “he would be happy and quite, quite different with everyone. i know him. he depends so much—too much—on what people think of him. he knows that you don’t like him, and that makes him embarrassed and cross—at his worst. but he’s splendid, really, he is, indeed, and you’d see it if we were married and this horrid engagement were over. he’s fine in every way, but he’s different from us—he’s seen so much more, knows life that we can’t know, has other standards and judgments. everyone can’t be like us, mother. there must be people who want different things and think different things. why should he be made into something like us, forced to think as we do?... mother, let us be married soon, at once, perhaps, and then everything will be right—” she stopped, breathless then, in her eagerness, bent down and kissed her mother’s cheek.

but mrs. trenchard’s cheek was very cold.

“your father said a year,” she answered, counting her stitches, “four, five, six—yes, a year. and you agreed to that, you know.”

katherine turned, with a sharp movement, away, clenching her hands. at that moment she hated her mother, hated with a hot, fiery impulse that urged her to leave the room, the house, the family at that very instant, flinging out, banging the door, and so settle the whole affair for ever.

mrs. trenchard made no sound. her needles clicked. then she said, as though she had been looking things over:

“do you think it’s good of you, katherine, considering how much all these years we’ve all been to one another, to persist in marrying a man whom, after really doing our best, we all of us—yes, all of us—dislike? you’re of age, my dear—you can do as you please. it was your father who consented to this engagement, i was not asked. and now, after all these months, it is hardly a success, is it? you are losing us all—and i believe we still mean something to you. and philip. how can you know about him, my dear? you are in love now, but that—that first illusion goes very quickly after marriage. and then—when it has gone—do you think that he will be a good companion for you, so different from us all, with such strange ideas picked up in foreign countries? you don’t know what he may have done before he met you.... i don’t appeal to your love for us, as once i might have done, but to your common-sense—your common-sense. is it worth while to lose us, whom you know, in exchange for a man of whom you can know nothing at all?... just give me those scissors off the dressing-table. the little ones, dear.”

katherine turned at the dressing-table. “but,” she cried, her voice full of passionate entreaty, “why must i give you up because i marry him? why can’t i have you—all of you—and him as well? why must i choose?” then she added defiantly: “millie doesn’t dislike him—nor aunt betty.”

“millie’s very young,” answered her mother. “thank you, my dear, and as you are there, just that thimble. thank you ... and your aunt betty likes everyone.”

“and then,” katherine went on, “why do you see it from everyone’s point of view except mine? it’s my life, my future. you’re settled—all of you, you, father, aunt aggie, aunt betty—but with millie and henry and i everything’s to come. and yet you expect us to do all the things, think all the things that you’ve done and thought. we’re different, we’re another generation. if we weren’t behind everyone else there wouldn’t be anything to talk about at all. all parents now,” katherine ended, with an air of profound knowledge, “think of their children. life isn’t what it was fifty years ago.”

mrs. trenchard smiled a grim little smile. “these are the things, my dear, i suppose, that philip’s been telling you. you must remember that he’s been living for years in a country where one can apparently do anything one pleases without being thought wicked, and where you’re put in prison a great deal, but only for rather innocent crimes. i don’t pretend to understand all that. we may be—perhaps we are—an old-fashioned family, but the fact remains that we were all happy enough a year ago.”

she picked up the long trailing serpent, then concluded: “but you’re free, katie dear. perfectly free.”

“if i were to go,” said katie, staring at her mother’s face, so like that of an uneloquent baby, “if i were to go off now. if we were to be married at once—would you—would you—turn us out—have no more to do with us?”

she waited as though her whole life hung on her mother’s answer.

“i really don’t know what’s happened to you, katie,” mrs. trenchard answered very quietly. “you’re like a young woman in a play—and you used to be so sensible. just give me those scissors again, dear. certainly if you were to marry philip to-morrow, without waiting until the end of the year, as you promised, i should feel—we should all feel—that you had given us up. it would be difficult not to feel that.”

“and if we wait until the end of the year and then marry and don’t live in glebeshire but somewhere else—will you give us up then?”

“my dear, isn’t it quite simple? we’ve given philip every opportunity of knowing us—we’re now just going to give him another. if he loves you he will not want to take you away from all of us who love you also. he’ll do his best to like us—to settle—”

“to settle!” katherine cried. “don’t you see that that’s what he’s tried to do—and he can’t—he can’t! it’s killing him—and you want him to be killed!... you’d like him to leave me, and if he won’t do that you’ll break his will, keep him under you, ruin his spirit.... mother, let him alone—if we marry, after six months, let us lead our own lives. you’ll see i shall be as much yours as ever, more than ever. it will be all right. it must be!”

mrs. trenchard said then her final word.

“if you leave us for philip that is your affair. i do my best to keep you both. you’ve talked much, katie dear, about our dislike of philip—what of his dislike of us? is that nothing? doesn’t he show it every moment of the day? unless he hates us less you’ll have to choose. you’ll have to choose—let him come down to garth then—we’ll do everything for him.”

katherine would have answered, but a sudden catch in her mother’s voice, a sudden, involuntary closing of the eyes, made her dart forward.

“mother, you’re tired.”

“yes, my dear, very.”

they sat down on the old sofa together. mrs. trenchard, her arms folded, leant back against her daughter’s shoulder.

“just a moment, katie dear,” she murmured, “before i undress.”

suddenly she was asleep.

katherine sat stiffly, staring before her into the room. her arm was round her mother, and with the pressure of her hand she felt the soft firmness of the shoulder beneath the dressing-gown. often in the old days her mother had thus leant against her. the brushing of her hair against katherine’s cheek brought back to the girl thronging memories of happy, tranquil hours. those memories flung before her, like reproaching, haunting ghosts, her present unhappiness. her love for her mother filled her heart; her body thrilled with the sense of it. and so, there in the clumsy, familiar room, the loneliest hour of all life came to her.

she was separated from them all. she seemed to know that she was holding her mother thus for the last time.... then as her hands tightened, in very protest, about the slumbering body, she was conscious of the presence, behind her, just then where she could not see, of the taunting, laughing figure. she could catch the eyes, the scornful lips, the thin, defiant attitude.

“i’ll take him back! i’ll take him back!” the laughing figure cried.

but katherine had her bravery. she summoned it all.

“i’ll beat you!” she answered, her arms tight around her mother. “i’ve made my choice. he’s mine now whatever you try!”