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.