This was well enough, but the long summer evenings betrayed them. In earlier days, when relationships were so sure and so pleasant that the world swept by in a happy silence, those summer evenings had been lazy, intimate prologues to long nights of undisturbed sleep. They would sit in the drawing-room, the windows open to the garden scents and the salt twang of the sea, moths would flutter round the lamps, Millie would play and sing a little at a piano that was never quite in tune. Aunt Betty would struggle happily with her “Demon Patience,” George Trenchard would laugh at them for half-an-hour, and then slip away to his study. Mrs. Trenchard and Aunt Aggie would knit and discuss the village, Henry would lie back in an arm-chair, his nose deep in a book, Katherine would be at anybody’s service—the minutes would fly, then would come Rebekah with hot milk for some and toast-and-water for others, there would be prayers, and then “good-night, ma’am”. “Good-night, sir”, from the three maids, the cook and Rebekah, then candles lighted in the hall, then climbing slowly up the stairs, with clumsy jokes from Henry and last words from Mrs. Trenchard, such as “Don’t forget the Williams’ coming over to-morrow, Katie dear,” or “Some of that quinine for your cold, Aggie, I suggest,” or “I’ve put the new collars on your bed, Henry,” then the closing of doors, then a happy silence, utterly secure. That had been the old way.
Outwardly the August nights of this year resembled the old ones—but the heart of them beat with panic and dismay. Philip had thought at first that it was perhaps his presence that caused the uneasiness, and one evening he complained of a headache and went up to his room after dinner. But he learnt from Katherine that his absence had merely emphasised everything. They must be all there—it would never do to show that there was anything the matter. Millie played the piano, Aunt Betty attempted her “Patience” with her usual little “Tut-tut’s” and “Dear me’s.” Mrs. Trenchard and Aunt Aggie sewed or knitted, but now the minutes dragged in endless procession across the floor, suddenly someone would raise a head and listen, Henry, pretending to read a book, would stare desperately in front of him, then noticing that Aunt Aggie watched him, would blush and hold his book before his face; with relief, as though they had escaped some threatening danger, they would greet the milk, the ‘toast-and-water’, the maids and the family prayers.
There was now no lingering on the staircase.
There are many families, of course, to whom the rebellion or disgrace of one of its members would mean but little, so slightly had been felt before the dependence of one soul upon another. But with the Trenchards that dependence had been everything, the outside world had been a fantastic show, unreal and unneeded: as the pieces of a pictured puzzle fit one into another, so had the Trenchards been interwoven and dependent ... only in England, perhaps, had such a blind and superior insularity been possible ... and it may be that this was to be, in all the records of history, the last of such a kind—“Nil nisi bonum”....
To Philip these summer days were darkened by his consciousness of Mrs. Trenchard. When he looked back over the months since he had known her, he could remember no very dramatic conversation that he had had with her, nothing tangible anywhere. She had been always pleasant and agreeable to him, and, at times, he had tried to tell himself that, after all, he might ultimately be happy ‘eaten up by her,’ as Jonah was by the whale. Then, with a little shiver, he knew the truth—that increasingly, as the days passed, he both hated and feared her. She had caught his will in her strong hands and was crushing it into pulp.
He made one last effort to assert himself, even as he had tried his strength against Katherine, against Henry, against Aunt Aggie, against old Mr. Trenchard. This little conversation that he had in the Garth garden with Mrs. Trenchard upon one of those lovely summer evenings was of the simplest and most undramatic fashion. Nevertheless it marked the end of his struggle; he always afterwards looked back upon those ten minutes as the most frightening experience of his life. Mrs. Trenchard, in a large loose hat and gauntleted gardening gloves, made a fine cheerful, reposeful figure as she walked slowly up and down the long lawn; she asked Philip to walk with her; the sun flung her broad flat shadow like a stain upon the bright grass.
They had talked a little, and then he had suddenly, with a tug of alarm at his heart, determined that he would break his chains. He looked up at her placid eyes.
“I think,” he said—his voice was not quite steady—“that Katherine and I will live somewhere in the North after our marriage. Quite frankly I don’t think Glebeshire suits me.”
“And Katie,” said Mrs. Trenchard, smiling.
“Katie ... she—she’ll like the North when she’s tried it for a little.”