“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.”