His spirits fell when he came to himself, saw how many other gentlemen had also written essays and with what indifference and languor the red-faced gentleman hustled his pages in amongst all the others. Nevertheless, he did come out of that examination-room with some conviction as to the course that his future life would take, and with a kindness, almost a tenderness, towards this grey town that was going to allow him, even to command him, to write essays for the next three years. With Henry one mood succeeded another as rapidly as, in his country, wet weather succeeds fine.
He returned to Garth in an outrageous temper. His main feeling now was that Philip had spoiled Cambridge for him. Philip and his immoral life ‘got in’ between all that he saw and dropped a misty veil, so that he could think of nothing in the way that tradition had taught him. He had always had a great respect for tradition.
Then as the weeks passed by he was made increasingly unhappy by the strange condition in which he found the family. He was, at heart, the crudest sentimentalist, and his sentimentalism had been fed by nothing so richly as by the cherished conviction that the George Trenchards were the most united family in England. He had always believed this; and had never, until now, considered the possibility of any division. But what now did he find? His mother stern, remote, silent, Millie irritable, uneasy and critical, Aunt Aggie always out of temper, Aunt Betty bewildered and tactless, even his father disturbed and unlike himself. And Katie?... He could not have believed that six months would change anyone so utterly.
Instead of the reliable, affectionate and stolid sister who had shared with him all her intimacies, her plans, her regrets, her anticipations, he beheld now a stranger who gave him no intimacies at all, avoided him and hid from him her undoubted unhappiness. It was true of him now as it had ever been that ‘he would give his life to make Katherine happy,’ but how was he to do anything for her when she would tell him nothing, when she treated him like a stranger, and then blamed him for his hostilities.
If it had been clear that now, after these months of her engagement, she no longer loved Philip, the matter would have been simple. He would have proceeded at once to his father and told him all that he knew about Philip’s Moscow life. But she did love Philip—more, yes, far more, than ever—nothing could be clearer than that. This love of Katherine’s burned, unceasingly, in Henry’s brain. With no other human being could he have felt, so urgently, the flame of it but Katherine, whom he had known as he had known himself, so sure, so undramatic, so happily sexless, as she had always seemed to him, that it should be she whom this passion had transformed! From that moment when he had seen her embrace of Philip, his imagination had harried him as a dog harries a rabbit, over the whole scale of the world.... Love, too, that he had believed was calm, domestic, friendly, reassuring, was in truth unhappy, rebellious, devastating. In the very hearty of her unhappiness seemed to be the fire of her love. This removed her from him as though he had been flung by it into a distant world. And, on every side, he was attacked by this same thing. There were the women whom he had seen that night with Philip, there was the woman who had given Philip a son in Russia, there was here a life, dancing before him, now near him, now far away from him, intriguing him, shaming him, stirring him, revolting him, removing him from all his family, isolating him and yet besetting him with the company of wild, fantastic figures.
He walked the Glebeshire roads, spoke to no one, hated himself, loathed Philip, was lashed by his imagination, aroused at last to stinging vitality, until he did not know whither to turn for safety.
He came up to London for the Faunder-Trenchard wedding. Late in the afternoon that had seen Philip’s conversation with old Mr. Trenchard Henry came into the drawing-room to discover that tea was over and no one was there. He looked into the tea-pot and saw that there was nothing there to cheer him. For a moment he thought of Russia, in which country there were apparently perpetual samovars boiling upon ever-ready tables. This made him think of Philip—then, turning at some sudden sound, there was Aunt Aggie in the doorway.
Aunt Aggie looked cold in spite of the warm weather, and she held her knitting-needles in her hand defiantly, as though she were carrying them to reassure a world that had unjustly accused her of riotous living.
“It’s simply rotten,” said Henry, crossly. “One comes in expecting tea and it’s all over. Why can’t they have tea at the ordinary time?”