She was gone—Rachel watched her demure, careful progress until she was caught and hidden by the trees.
There had been a little truth in her words when she told Rachel that she dreaded Millie’s arrival. If she had ever, in the regular routine of her happy and busy life, looked forward to any event as dramatic or a crisis, that moment had always been Millie’s return from Paris. Millie had been happy and affectionate at home, but nevertheless a critic. She had never quite seen Life from inside the Trenchard Mirror nor had she quite seen it from the vision of family affection. She loved them all—but she found them slow, unadventurous, behind the times. That was the awful thing—‘behind the times’—a terrible accusation. If Millie had felt that (two years ago) how vehemently would she feel it now!... and Katherine knew that as she considered this criticism of Millie’s she was angry and indignant and warm with an urgent, passionate desire to protect her mother from any criticism whatever. “Behind the times”, indeed—Millie had better not.... And then she remembered the depth of her love for Millie ... nothing should interfere with that.
She was in her bedroom, after luncheon, considering these things when there was a tap on the door and Aunt Betty entered. In her peep round the door to see whether she might come in, in the friendly, hopeful, reassuring butterfly of a smile that hovered about her lips, in the little stir of her clothes as she moved as though every article of attire was assuring her that it was still there, and was very happy to be there too, there was the whole of her history written.
It might be said that she had no history, but to such an assertion, did she hear it, she would offer an indignant denial, could she be indignant about anything. She had been perfectly, admirably happy for fifty-six years, and that, after all, is to have a history to some purpose. She had nothing whatever to be happy about. She had no money at all, and had never had any. She had, for a great number of years, been compelled to live upon her brother’s charity, and she was the most independent soul alive. In strict truth she had, of her own, thirty pounds a year, and the things that she did with those thirty pounds are outside and beyond any calculation. “There’s always my money, George,” she would say when her brother had gloomy forebodings about investments. She lived, in fact, a minute, engrossing, adventurous, flaming life of her own, and the flame, the colour, the fire were drawn from her own unconquerable soul. In her bedroom—faded wall-paper, faded carpet, faded chairs because no one ever thought of her needs—she had certain possessions, a cedar-wood box, a row of books, a water-colour sketch, photographs of the family (Katherine 3½, Vincent 8 years old, Millicent 10 years, etc., etc.), a model of the Albert Memorial done in pink wax, a brass tray from India, some mother-of-pearl shells, two china cats given to her, one Christmas day, by a very young Katherine—those possessions were her world. She felt that within that bedroom everything was her own. She would allow no other pictures on the wall, no books not hers in the book-case. One day when she had some of the thirty pounds ‘to play with’ she would cover the chairs with beautiful cretonne and she would buy a rug—so she had said for the last twenty years. She withdrew, when life was tiresome, when her sister Aggie was difficult, when there were quarrels in the family (she hated quarrels) into this world of her own, and would suddenly break out in the midst of a conversation with “I might have the bed there” or “There isn’t really room for another chair if I had one,” and then would make a little noise like a top, ‘hum, hum, hum’. In defiance of her serenity she could assume a terrible rage and indignation were any member of the family attacked. Her brother George and Katherine she loved best—she did not, although she would never acknowledge it, care greatly for Henry—Millie she admired and feared. She had only to think of Katherine and her eyes would fill with tears ... she was a very fount of sentiment. She had suffered much from her sister Agnes, but she had learnt now the art of withdrawal so perfectly that she could escape at any time without her sister being aware of it. “You aren’t listening, Elizabeth,” Agnes would cry suspiciously.
“Yes, dear Aggie, I am. I don’t think things as bad as you say. For instance,” and a wonderful recovery would reassure suspicion. The real core of her life was Katherine and Katherine’s future. There was to be, one day, for Katherine a most splendid suitor—a Lord, perhaps, a great politician, a great Churchman, she did not know—but someone who would realise first Katherine’s perfection, secondly the honour of being made a Trenchard, thirdly the necessity of spending all his life in the noble work of making Katherine happy. “I shall miss her—we shall all miss her—but we mustn’t be selfish—hum, hum—she’ll have one to stay, perhaps.”
Very often she came peeping into Katherine’s room as she came to-day. She would take Katherine into her confidence; she would offer her opinion about the events of the hour. She took her stand in the middle of the room, giving little excited pecks at one of her fingers, the one that suffered most from her needle when she sewed, a finger scarred now by a million little stabs. So she stood now, and Katherine, sitting on the edge of her bed, looked up at her.
“I came in, my dear, because you hardly ate any luncheon. I watched you—hardly any at all.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Aunt Betty. I wasn’t hungry.”
“I don’t like your not eating—hum, hum. No, I don’t. Mother always used to say ‘Don’t Eat, can’t Beat’—of military forces, you know, dear, or anything that had a hard task to perform.”