“My daughter will be here very shortly to receive you,” he said.
“I’d like to talk to you,” Philip said, still very cheerfully. “We’ve not had many talks together, have we? and that really isn’t right, considering that I’m engaged to your grand-daughter.”
The old man picked up a magazine that lay on the little table that was in front of him. “Do you ever see Blackwood?” he said, as though he were very politely making conversation for a complete stranger. “It’s a magazine for which I have a great liking. It seems to me to keep up its character wonderfully—most agreeable reading—most agreeable reading.”
It was then that Philip, looking up, caught a reflection of Mr. Trenchard’s face in the Mirror. It may have been imagination or it may have been the effect of shadow, or again it may have been nothing but truth—in any case it seemed to Philip that the old man’s expression was an amazing mixture of pathos and wickedness—a quite intolerable expression. Philip made a movement with his hands as though he were brushing away a confusion of cobwebs, then burst out: “Look here, I don’t know whether you’re deaf or not—if you are it won’t matter, and if you aren’t we’ll have a straight talk at last. You can’t move until someone comes in to move you, and that may be a long while yet. You aren’t strong enough to knock me down, so that I’m afraid you’ll just have to stay here for a while and listen.... Of course you know by this time who I am. It’s no use your pretending.”
Philip paused and looked, but the old man had not stirred at all. His hands were still pressed into his knees, his eyes staring through his glasses, and, as his delicate breathing rose and fell, one black button shone in the lamplight and faded again. This immobility seemed to stir more profoundly Philip’s anger.
“I’m going to marry your grand-daughter Katherine, and of course you hate it and me too. You’re just as selfish as all the others, and more too, I daresay. And you think you can frighten me by just doing nothing except showing you dislike me. But you won’t frighten me—no, never—so you needn’t expect it. I’m going to marry Katherine and take her right away from you all, so you may as well make up your mind to it.”
Philip, flushed in the face and half expecting that the walls of the house would fall in upon him, paused—but there was no change at all in Mr. Trenchard’s attitude, unless possibly one shining hand was driven a little more deeply into the knee. There was perhaps some unexpected pathos in the intensity of those pressing fingers, or, perhaps, Philip’s desperate challenge was, already, forsaking him. At any rate he went on.
“Why can’t you like me? I’m ready enough to like you. I’m not a bad kind of man, and I’ll be very good to Katherine, no one could ever be better to anyone than I’ll be to her. But why can’t we lead our own life? You’re an old man—you must have seen a lot in your time—you must know how times alter and one way of thinking gives way to another. You can’t keep a family together by just refusing to listen to anything or anybody. I know that you love Katherine, and if you love her really, surely you’ll want her to lead her own life. Your life’s nearly over—why should you spoil hers for her?”
He paused again, but now he could not tell whether the eyes were closed or no. Was the old man sleeping? or was he fiercely indignant? or was he satirical and smiling? or was he suddenly going to cry aloud for Rocket?
The uncertainty and the silence of the room worked terribly upon Philip’s nerves. He had begun courageously, but the sound of his voice in all that damp stillness was most unpleasant. Moreover, he was a poor kind of fellow, because he always, even in the heat of anger, thought a friend better than an enemy. He was too soft to carry things through.