It was just at this point that her attention was directed towards Katherine. She always considered that Katherine knew her better than any other member of the family did, which simply meant that Katherine considered her feelings. Lately, however, Katherine had not considered her feelings. She had, on at least two occasions, been deliberately uncivil! Once Aunt Aggie had suffered from neuralgia, and Katherine had promised to come and read her to sleep and had forgotten to do so. Next morning, her neuralgia being better, Aunt Aggie said—“I can’t, dear Katherine, imagine myself, under similar conditions, acting as you have done.... I had a sleepless night.... But of course you had more important duties”—and Katherine had scarcely apologised. On the second occasion Aunt Aggie at breakfast, (she was always bitter at breakfast, mildly unhappy over her porridge and violently sarcastic by marmalade time) had remarked with regret that Millie, who was late, had “picked up these sad habits abroad. She had never known anyone the finer, whether in character or manners, for living abroad;” here was a little dust flung at the inoffensive person of Philip, now soundly asleep in Jermyn Street. At once Katherine was “in a flurry.” “What right had Aunt Aggie to say so? How could she tell? It might be better if one went abroad more, lost some of one’s prejudices ...” quite a little scene! Very unlike Katherine!
Aunt Aggie did not forget. Like some scientist or mathematician, happily let loose into some new theory or problem, so now did she consider Katherine. Katherine was different, Katherine was restless and out of temper. She had been so ever since Philip Mark’s visit.... With her sewing or her book Aunt Aggie sat in a corner by the drawing-room fire and watched and waited.
Upon that afternoon that had seen Katherine’s meeting with Philip by the river Aunt Aggie had been compelled to have tea alone. That had been annoying, because it looked as though the gay world was inviting everyone except Aunt Aggie to share in its excitements and pleasures. At last there arrived Mrs. Trenchard and Millie, and finally Katherine. Aunt Aggie had sat in her warm corner, pursuing with her needle the green tail of an unnatural parrot which she was working into a slowly-developing cushion cover and had considered her grievances. It had been a horrible day, cold and gloomy. Aunt Aggie had a chilblain that, like the Waits, always appeared about Christmas and, unlike them, stayed on well into the spring. It had made its appearance, for the first time this season, during the past night. Millie talked a great deal about very little, and Mrs. Trenchard received her remarks with the nonchalant indifference of a croupier raking in the money at Monte Carlo. Katherine sat staring into the fire and saying nothing.
Aunt Aggie, watching her, felt quite suddenly as though the firelight had leapt from some crashing coal into a flaring splendour, that something strange and unusual was with them in the room. She was not at all, like her sister Elizabeth, given to romantic and sentimental impressions. She seldom read novels, and cared nothing for the theatre. What she felt now was really unpleasant and uncomfortable, as though she had soap in her eyes or dropped her collection under the seat during the Litany. The room positively glowed, the dim shadows were richly coloured, and in Aunt Aggie’s heart was alarm and agitation.
She stared about her; she looked about the room and pierced the shadows; she sewed a wrong stitch into the parrots’ tail, and then decided that it was Katherine’s eyes.... She looked at the girl—she looked again and again—saw her bending forward a little, her hands pressed together on her lap, her breast rising and falling with the softest suspicion of some agitation, and, in her eyes, such a light as could come from no fire, no flame from without, but only from the very soul itself. Katherine’s good-tempered, humorous eyes, so charged with common-sense, affectionate but always mild, unagitated, calm, like her mother’s—now what was one to say?
Aunt Aggie said nothing. Her own heart felt for an instant some response. She would have liked to have taken the girl into her arms and kissed her and petted her. In a moment the impulse passed. What was the matter with Katherine? Who was the matter with Katherine? It was almost improper that anyone should look like that in a drawing-room that had witnessed so much good manners. Moreover it was selfish, this terrible absorption. If Katherine began to think of herself, whatever would happen to them all! And there were Millie and her mother, poor things, chattering blindly together. Aunt Aggie felt that the business of watching over this helpless family did indeed devolve upon her. From that moment Katherine and the things that were possibly happening to Katherine never left her thoughts. She was happier than she had been for many months.
But Katherine, in the days that followed, gave her curiosity no satisfaction. Aunt Aggie dated, in future years, all the agitation that was so shortly to sweep down upon the Trenchard waters from that afternoon when ‘Katherine’s eyes had seemed so strange’, but her insistence on that date did not at all mean that it was then that Katherine invited her aunt’s confidence, Aunt Aggie was compelled to drive on her mysterious way alone. She was now assured that ‘something was the matter’, but the time had not yet arrived when all the family was concerned in it.
In any case, to begin with, what was her sister-in-law Harriet Trenchard thinking? No one ever knew what Harriet Trenchard thought; and foolish and hasty observers said that that was because Harriet Trenchard never thought at all. Aggie Trenchard was neither foolish nor hasty; she was afraid of Harriet because, after all these years, she knew nothing about her. She had never penetrated that indifferent stolidity. Harriet had never spoken to her intimately about anything, nor had Harriet once displayed any emotions, whether of surprise or anger, happiness or grief, but Aggie was penetrating enough to fear that brooding quiet.
At least Aggie knew her sister-in-law well enough to realise that her children were an ever-present, ever-passionate element in her life. On certain occasions, concerning Millie, Katherine, Henry or Vincent, Aggie had seen that silence, for a moment, quiver as a still lake trembles with a sudden shake or roll when the storm is raging across the hills—especially was Katherine linked to her mother’s most intimate hold upon life, even though the words that they exchanged were of the most commonplace; Aunt Aggie knew that, and strangely, obscurely, she was moved, at times, to sudden impulses of bitter jealousy. Why was it that no one cared for her as Katherine cared for her mother? What was there in Harriet to care for?... and yet—nevertheless, Aggie Trenchard loved her sister-in-law. With regard to this present business Aggie knew, with sufficient assurance, that Harriet disliked Philip Mark, had disliked him from the first. Had Harriet noticed this change in her daughter, and had she drawn her conclusions? What would Harriet say if...? Aunt Aggie added stitches to the green parrot’s tail with every comfortable assurance that ‘in a time or two’, there would be plenty of trouble.
Ultimately, through it all, it was her jealousy that moved her and her jealousy that provoked the first outburst ... instantly, without warning, new impulses, new relationships, new motives were working amongst them all, and their world was changed.