Betrothal -- Fiction; England -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Families -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction
you’ve never been to Glebeshire? You don’t know the Clarence Faunders
then? They’re only five miles from us”, or “Yes. We live in
Glebeshire—a little village not far from Polchester. We’re very lucky
in our clergyman, a Mr. Smart, one of the Smarts, etc.” Moreover, she
never when she was quite alone said to herself: “Oh! what a heavenly
day!” or “How lovely the new leaves are”, or “Look at the primroses!”
She only said to herself: “Lucy Cartwright’s Annie has got to have that
ointment”, or “I must tell Rebekah about the poor Curtises. She could
take them the things.”
Nevertheless, when she discovered that Katherine cared for Glebeshire
with a love as deep as her own, how happy she was! How firmly that
discovery bound them together! For them both that journey twice a year
from London to Garth was as exciting as though they had never taken it
before. The stations, whose names were like the successive wrappers that
enclose a splendid present, Rasselas, the little windy station where
they changed from the London Express into the halting, stumbling little
train that carried them towards the sea; then Stoep in Roselands,
tiniest station of all, with the sea smell blowing across the dark
fields, the carriage with its lights and Jacob, the coachman, the drive
through the twilight lanes, the gleaming white gates, the house itself
and old Rebekah on the doorstep ... yes, of all these things was the
love between Mrs. Trenchard and her daughter made.
Most wonderful of all was it that, with Katherine, Mrs. Trenchard never
knew a moment’s awkwardness or embarrassment. With everyone else in the
world and, perhaps especially with her own family, Mrs. Trenchard was
often awkward and embarrassed, although no one but herself was aware of
it. Of this embarrassment Mrs. Trenchard had a horrible dread: it was to
her as though she were suddenly lifted off her feet by a giant hand and
held dangling: she felt that all the world must see how her skirts blew
in the wind. With Katherine she was always safe: she grew, most
urgently, to depend upon this safety. Then, as the years passed she felt
that she might, with justice, consider Katherine secure. Katherine
seemed to have no interest in young men: already she adopted a rather
motherly attitude towards them and, perhaps because Henry was the young
man immediately before her, considered them rather helpless, rather
clumsy, rather unwieldy and ungainly. She was always kind but a little
satirical in her relations to the other sex: young men were, perhaps,
afraid of her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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