Seymour was greeted and soon his cheerful laugh filled the room. He was introduced to Mark. He was busy over tea. “Sugar? Milk?”
“Nice sharp twang in the air, there is. Jolly weather. I walked all the way from Knightsbridge. Delightful. Cake? Bread and butter? Hello, Henry! You ought to have walked with me—never enjoyed anything so much in my life.”
Mrs. Trenchard’s broad, impassive face was lighted with approval as a lantern is lit. She liked afternoon-tea and her drawing-room and young cheerful Seymour and the books behind the book-case and the ticking of the clock. A cosy winter’s afternoon in London! What could be pleasanter? She sighed a comfortable, contented sigh....
Mark was seized, as he sat there, with a drowsy torpor. The fire seemed to draw from the room all scents that, like memories, waited there for some compelling friendly warmth. The room was close with more than the Trenchard protection against the winter’s day—it was packed with a conscious pressure of all the things that the Trenchards had ever done in that room, and Mrs. Trenchard sat motionless, placid, receiving these old things, encouraging them and distributing them. Mark was aware that if he encouraged his drowsiness he would very shortly acquiesce in and submit to—he knew not what—and the necessity for battling against this acquiescence irritated him so that it was almost as though everyone in the room were subtly taking him captive and he would be lost before he was aware. Katherine, alone, quiet, full of repose, saying very little, did not disturb him. It was exactly as though all the other persons present were wishing him to break into argument and contradiction because then they could spring upon him.
His attention was, of course, directed to Seymour’s opinions, and he knew, before he heard them, that he would disagree violently with them all.
They came, like the distant firing of guns, across the muffled drowziness of the room.
“I assure you, Mrs. Trenchard.... I assure you ... assure you. You wouldn’t believe.... Well, of course, I’ve heard people say so but I can’t help disagreeing with them. One may know very little about writing oneself—I don’t pretend I’ve got far—and yet have very distinct ideas as to how the thing should be done. There’s good work and bad, you know—there’s no getting over it....
“But, my dear Henry ... dear old chap ... I assure you. But it’s a question of Form. You take my word a man’s nothing without a sense of Form ... Form ... Form.... Yes, of course, the French are the people. Now the Russians.... Tolstoi, Dostoevsky ... Dostoevsky, Mrs. Trenchard. Well, people spell him different ways. You should read ‘War and Peace’. Never read ‘War and Peace’? Ah, you should and ‘Crime and Punishment’. But compare ‘Crime and Punishment’ with ‘La maison Tellier’ ... Maupassant—The Russians aren’t in it. But what can you expect from a country like that? I assure you....”
Quite irresistibly, as though everyone in the room had said: “There now. You’ve simply got to come in now”, Mark was drawn forward. He heard through the sleepy, clogged and scented air his own voice.
“But there are all sorts of novels, aren’t there, just as there are all sorts of people? I don’t see why everything should be after the same pattern.”